To feel everything in every way,
To live everything from all sides,
To be the same thing in all ways
Possible at the same time,
To realize in oneself all humanity at all moments
In one scattered, extravagant, complete, and aloof moment...

~Alvaro de Campos

It Is What It Was What It Will Be

Where The Sidewalk Ends...

थे बिग टी

"...if only men would learn how little the cleverest and most gifted among them can control, how little they can know of all the multitude of factors the orderly movement of which is the history of the world..."

~Tolstoy

Leaving Khotin -1919

Calendar For the 13th Month

The World In A Sentence

Been Gone For A While...

Lookin' and Learnin'...

REDEMPTION

REDEMPTION: (ri demp′s̸hən) noun: the act of delivering from sin or saving from evil...

What They Don't Teach You - #336

You have to inhabit it
to overcome it.

Her Autumn's Lust For Life

Jump or Burn?

historyofthenight.blogspot.com

I'm working on publishing a long story called "History of The Night" that I've been writing, drawing, photographing and designing for over a decade now.

If you're curious please check it out at:

http://historyofthenight.blogspot.com

or just click on "about me" to your right and go through there.

I'll be updating the story every couple days with various pieces of writing, photos, drawings and paintings that are designed to be read and viewed in just about any order, and yet still tell the same story in an infinite number of ways; it's like a choose your own adventure on acid, but the chapters and photos will also be listed chronologically.

If you do stop by, I hope you enjoy it.

-L

Call It Camouflage

"A writer continually struggles for clarity against the language he's using or, more accurately, against the common usage of language. He doesn't see language with the readability and clarity of something printed out. He sees it, rather, as a terrain full of illegibilities, hidden paths, impasses, surprises, and obscurities. Its map is not a dictionary but the whole of literature and perhaps everything ever said. Its obscurities, its lost senses, its self-effacements come about for many reasons-because of the way words modify each other, write themselves over each other, cancel one another out, and, most importantly, because what's left unsaid always counts for as much, or more, than what is said...Language is always an abbreviation," (of the truth.)

~John Berger

Nothing happens, twice.

-Samuel Beckett

Let The Soul Rise

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."

~Kerouac

Fuck The Nobel Prize

Horace Engdahl: Man of The (European) People

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - The man who announces the Nobel Prize in literature says the United States is too "insular" and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Horace Engdahl said Tuesday that "Europe still is the center of the literary world."

Engdahl is the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which selects the literature prize winner. He is expected to announce the winner in the coming weeks.

Engdahl says the U.S. "is too isolated, too insular" and doesn't really "participate in the big dialogue of literature."

Since Japanese poet Kenzaburo Oe won in 1994, the selections have had a distinct European flavor. The last American winner was Toni Morrison in 1993.

----------

We don't "participate in the big dialogue of literature?"

Umm, maybe that's because every ten years or so Europe has yet another genocide or ethnic cleansing catastrophe it must have a "big dialogue" about for the next fifty years in its art and literature because it's so guilty for letting it happen over and over and over again, asshole.

What a steaming pile of horse shit, Mr. Nobel Prize. As my Zeyda would have said, "I vouldn't vaste my piss on your award!"

The Most Bad Ass Car Race You've Never Seen...

Claude LeLouche.

A 1967 Porsche.

Paris at dawn.

260 m.p.h.

No cuts.

Totally authentic.

I dream of this.

Enjoy.

Fast Eddie's Last Hustle

They'll talk of his cool, his looks, but to me what made him so special was that underneath the veneer was the most soulfully passionate American film actor of all time. Paul Newman never hid behind his cool or looks, and when he broke he broke honestly, with all of himself, for all the world to experience, the way we all do. More than a movie star, he was an actor. He did his job and he did it well.

This is the last scene from the film that made his career, "The Hustler," one of the best and most stylish coming of age movies ever made.

Ladies and Gentleman, "Fast" Eddie Felson, one last time...


"Fat Man, you shoot a great game of pool."
"So do you, Fast Eddie."

A Matador para Staubs

"It is true that the great tradition is lost, and the new one is not yet established. But what was the great tradition, if not the habitual idealization of a long past way of life...All centuries and all peoples have their own forms of beauty and tragedy, so, inevitably, we now have ours."

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

~T.S. Eliot

RENE 5:11

I can't say enough about how incredibly inventive I have always found this sequence with its simplicity of set-up, and the unabashed romance of artistic creation it invokes in the viewer. The sequence is a perfect use of montage, sound editing and time lapse; the three musical selections heard within the sequence are in total service of the character, and the music places Basquiat clearly within the artistic tradition of his influences, (mainly miles, dizzy, parker, roach, and hip hop) connecting the past with his present in too many ways to count.

Amazingly all of this is accomplished with the slightest of hand and deftest of cinematic touch by the director, Julian Schnabel, who managed to accomplish this in his first film with the most basic economy of means. This is something you almost never see, let alone see done well in films with all the money in the world behind them.

I don't know about the accuracy of this film's much debated portrayals of its characacters, and I don't really care because moments like this trump all talk of "facts." The first minute and a half is pure movie making, the second is, at turns, comedy, and then tragedy when one knows how Basquiat's story was to turn out in the end.

And I must write something about the unheralded Michael Wincott. He is an acting treasure, one of our best living and working no matter if he's playing a downtown, gay art impressario, a cuban writer forced to name names by Castro's kangaroo court, or a comic book psychopath in "The Crow." Wincott has that rare chameleon-like ability to totally disappear into whatever role he plays without calling any attention to himself; that's probably why you know his face, his distinctive voice, but not his name.

By the way, notice the walls of Basquiat's studio when this scene begins. I love the child-like city-scape painted around him, it's the kind of city Basquiat or Haring would have flourished and lived forever in creating their art on their own terms - if only the world was so perfect. It's a beautiful little touch that reeks of "you had to be there" accuracy of detail.

"I didn't know Tony Bennett painted!"

Night Book, Finis

"I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe in three doctrines, which have, as I think, been handed down from early times, and been the foundations of nearly all magical practices. These doctrines are:---

(1) That the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.

(2) That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

(3) That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols."

---William Butler Yeats, "Magic" (1901)

Shhhhhhhhhhhh....

Sunday Morning...

Face(S)

Face:

Singing face
frozen in time.

Face:

Whispering face
trying not to scream
as it tells you
all the secrets
you'll use against them
later.

Face:

Whithered face
with the eyes of
a young girl.

Face:

Scared face
afraid to come
closer.

Face:

Lonely face
in the middle
of a crowd.

Face:

Desperate face
unsure of what happened
or why.

Face:

Determined face
an endless "to do" list
written across
teeth.

Face:

My laughing face
even though it
does not get
the joke.

Face:

Happy face
Sunday afternoon
listening to the sounds
of the marathon runners
footsteps and the crowd's
screams on the street
below.

Face:

Dead.

A mask
dreaming
he was once beloved
upon this Earth.

Korea Town - Los Angeles, 3/18/06

This is Fearlessness

When's the last time you saw a two minute, uncut close up in a movie? This is the most chillingly intimate scene filmed in the last twenty years. YouTube doesn't do the overlooked classic "Birth," or the actress justice, but a bad share is better than no share at all.

See the film on as big a screen as you can, it's utterly stunning, a fully visualized novella, and an ageless rarity that becomes more and more moving with each viewing.

Jonathan Glazer has only made two films, this and the cult classic "Sexy Beast," a lot of commercials, and many music videos, most famously for Radiohead. It's hard to pick one, but if he's not the best director working in the world, he is our most passionate and daring.

Please, make another film.

To Friends Scattered Across This World...

The Only Thing I've Ever Known Somebody Else Said Better Than I Ever Could:

"The Journey Is The Destination..."

The Night Book Is Gonna Make It Funky For You

"Watch a Hardy Boy Mystery!"

The original booty rap video circa 1986. Ridiculous, yes, but try not to nod your head to this. Try.

And then imagine an 11 year old boy glued to some of the first episodes of Yo MTV Raps realizing, "this is the life I want!"

It's Sunday!

American Journalism Needs to Clean Up Its Act...Or Get A Life

Like, d'uh

PALO ALTO, California (Reuters) - Bigfoot remains as elusive as ever.

Results from tests on genetic material from alleged remains of one of the mythical half-ape and half-human creatures, made public at a news conference on Friday held after the claimed discovery swept the Internet, failed to prove its existence.

Its spread was fueled by a photograph of a hairy heap, bearing a close resemblance to a shaggy full-body gorilla costume, stuffed into a container resembling a refrigerator.

One of the two samples of DNA said to prove the existence of the Bigfoot came from a human and the other was 96 percent from an opossum, according to Curt Nelson, a scientist at the University of Minnesota who performed the DNA analysis.

Bigfoot creatures are said to live in the forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest. An opossum is a marsupial about the size of a house cat.

Results of the DNA tests were revealed in an e-mail from Nelson and distributed at the Palo Alto, California, news conference held by Tom Biscardi, host of a weekly online radio show about the Bigfoot.

Also present were Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the two who say they discovered the Bigfoot corpse while hiking in the woods of northern Georgia. They also are co-owners of a company that offers Bigfoot merchandise.

Despite the dubious photo and the commercial interests of the alleged discoverers, the Bigfoot claim drew interest from Australia to Europe and even The New York Times.

Biscardi said the DNA samples may not have been taken correctly and may have been contaminated, and that he would proceed with an autopsy of the alleged Bigfoot remains, currently in a freezer at an undisclosed location.

Sasquatch

Why is it that every time someone "finds evidence" of Big Foot or The Lochness Monster or aliens, the picture or video that gets "released" is either blurry, half cut-off or looks like something from a cheap movie studio tour. You would think these guys would spend the money to hire a professional photographer if they were going to go to all this trouble, and moreso if it was real.

And Big Foot in Georgia? Of all places! Are you kidding me? The KKK down there would hunt down any black man who breathed near a white woman even if had he been on the run through those same woods for months. Now you're telling me that not one of these guys could hunt down, much less mistakenly run into a big loping 7'7 ape-man until now? Okay.

By the way, speaking of incredible, not to be believed finds, a couple years ago, after a meeting for work at Universal Studios, I once "found" the legendary "Back to The Future" De Lorean, the one that Michael J. Fox drives, abandoned, alone and rusted in the very back of the Universal lot. It was just sitting there, the skeleton of it, its previous movie glory all but forgotten, looking like Johnny Unitas in a San Diego Chargers uniform.

I bet it's still there.

That's Hollywood.

Anyway, read for yourself.

(CNN) -- A policeman and a former corrections officer say that on Friday they will unveil evidence of what they claim is their biggest find ever: the body of Bigfoot.

The thawed body of a creature reputed to be Bigfoot reportedly weighs more than 500 pounds.

Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, a pair of Bigfoot-hunting hobbyists from north Georgia, say they found the creature's body in a wooded area and spotted several similar creatures that were still alive.

The carcass of the furry half-man, half-ape is 7 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs more than 500 pounds, they say. However, the two are not disclosing the exact location of their discovery to protect the remaining creatures.

Tom Nelson, chairman of the biology department at North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega, said he's "pretty skeptical" the world will feast its eyes on a new species Friday.

"That would certainly rock mammalogy," joked Nelson, who specializes in the study of mammals. "I see a research grant in my future."

Whitton and Dyer plan to unveil what they say is DNA and photo evidence of the discovery in Palo Alto, California, in conjunction with a group called Searching for Bigfoot Inc.

A photograph on that group's Web site shows what appears to be the body of a large, hairy creature with an ape-like face, stuffed into a large freezer.

According to a written release, the two announced the discovery on an Internet radio show, "Squatch Detective," several weeks ago. iReport.com: Do you believe in Bigfoot?

"The only person we would allow to come down and verify the body was 'the Real Bigfoot Hunter,' Tom Biscardi," Dyer said, referring to Searching for Bigfoot's CEO, who has been looking for the elusive, legendary creature in the United States and Canada since 1971.

Whitton is a Georgia police officer who is on administrative leave after being shot in the wrist during a pursuit. Dyer is a former prison guard.

DNA tests on the body have begun, said the statement, and "extensive scientific studies" will be done on the body by scientists, including a molecular biologist, an anthropologist and a paleontologist.

Nelson, the university professor, acknowledged that new species of animals have been discovered in recent decades and that, in science, "we always acknowledge the possibility of something new."

But he said that even in north Georgia, home to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the foot of the Appalachian Trail, it stretches the imagination to think a family of 7-foot-tall creatures could have eluded hunters, hikers and creeping development until now.

"To the average person, these places just seem like extreme wilderness where you'll find lions and tigers and bears," he said. "The reality is that you're never more than a mile from a road."

The group says the animal is male, has reddish hair and "blackish-gray" eyes and human-like feet, hands and teeth. E-mail to a friend | Mixx it | Share

We're Baaaaaaackkkkkkkkk!

The Dream Team has finally returned, 'bout time.

The Bloody Warmongers

This is footage of a Georgian TV reporter shot by Russian snipers while giving a live report on attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to innocent civilians.

I REALLY REALLY want my hometown to win a championship before I die...

...but I'm afraid a picture is worth a million words.

The Mystery Of Genius

If you are remotely interested in visual art, Netflix this flick, it's truly amazing to watch the master work, and maybe the best documentary made of any artist ever...

Self Portrait

7-8/08

Sometimes There's Nothing Wrong With A Healthy Dose Of "Fuck The World..."

Even Outlaws Need Dental Floss Too

INT. LIVING ROOM. LATER.

Eddie is watching TV and doing coke off the coffee table. Bonnie comes in. He offers her the coke. She does a line. They watch TV for a long, awkward silence...

Eddie: I feel terrible.

Eddie grabs the remote, and crawls on the floor in front of the TV. Flips the channels: Fox, CNN, MSNBC…War, Famine, Catastrophe, etc...

Bonnie: Are you depressed about the news, Eddie?

Eddie: Yeah.

Bonnie: Yeah, the news is depressing.

Eddie: I mean, the aborigines had their problems too. Sure. Y’know. Tigers in the trees. Dogs after his food. I mean, in the middle ages, everybody really had to worry about witches and goblins. But we have stuff eating at us. We have stuff. We don’t even…I mean, why do you think all of the warlords of the world are stashing all of these chemical weapons for the powers that be…Them…Us. Us…Them. The call em’ weapons of mass destruction, but they’re not. They’re very, very selective! Chemical weapons are very careful about what they destroy. They annihilate people…and preserve things. They love things! You and I would be dead. Gas. Puke. Gone. Whereas, y’know other earlier, older people…the ancients…could look to the heavens, which in their minds was inhabited by this thoughtful, meditative…y’know maybe a trifle unpredictable, wrathful, but never-the-less, up there… this divine…onlooker. Us???? We’ve got anchor persons, and talking heads. We’ve got politicians who decide life and death issues on the basis of their media consultants. That’s what we’ve got!

(Eddie spits up.)

Bonnie: Oh boy, Eddie, I think I’m going to need a mangnifying glass to find what’s left of your good points. What is going on with you?

Eddie: Suck my dick.

Bonnie: No, c’mon. I’m being serious here. I thought you had this girlfriend...and it was this…significant, y’know, mutually fulfilling, blah blah blah, relationship…

Eddie: Things have taken a turn for the worse. That’s all. Suck my dick.

Bonnie: Like what?

Eddie: She doesn’t love me.

Bonnie: Who?

Eddie: My girlfriend.

Bonnie: What do you mean?

Eddie: What do you mean, what do I mean? My girlfriend doesn’t want me.

Bonnie: Oh sure she does.

Eddie: No.

Bonnie: Why?

Eddie: I don’t know, but she doesn’t.

Bonnie: Are you sure?

Eddie: Bonnie, I’m a real person. Y’know. I’m not some God damn TV image here, okay?! I mean, you know that right? Don’t you know that…

Eddie begins jumping up and down like a little boy having a tantrum...

Eddie: Suck my dick, okay…suck my…SUCK MY DICK!

Bonnie: You know if your manner of speech is any way of reflection of what goes on inside your head you are lucky you can even tie your shoes.

Eddie turns and stares at her…

Eddie: Oh, You want me to be kinder? Is that it? Kinder, gentler?! Well, I say, “NO!” Be harder. Be colder. Be a rock. Or polyurathane. That’s my advice.

He holds up his whiskey glass to the light.

Eddie: I say be a thing…and LIVE!

Bonnie: Have you ever considered that maybe you’re doing a little to much shit there, Eddie. I mean even outlaws have to take precautionary measures...

Eddie: Maybe you’re right…….Do you ever have that experience where your thoughts are like these totally separate, totally self sustaining phone booths in this vast uninhabited shopping mall in your head? Do you ever have that experience?

She looks at him.

Eddie: I don’t feel loved! Even if she loves me, I don’t feel it! I don’t feel it…and…Y’know…I’m sick of it, okay! Y’know what I mean?!

Bonnie: I’m going to go.

Eddie: What for?

Bonnie: Home, y’know. My kid...

Just Another Poet

K-Man

I Cat I

Elke + Miss Penny, Boston - 6/08

Beauty

the great "lost" artist, ryan larkin.
celebrate him.


RYAN LARKIN

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ryan Larkin (b. July 31, 1943, Montreal, Quebec - d. February 14, 2007, Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec) was a Canadian animator who rose to fame with the psychedelic 1969 Oscar-nominated short Walking and the acclaimed Street Musique (1972) who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film Ryan.

At the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), Ryan learned animation techniques from the ground-breaking and award-winning animator, Norman McLaren. He made two acclaimed short animated films, Cityscape and Syrinx, before going on to create Walking and Street Musique.

He also contributed art work and animation effects to NFB films including the 1974 feature Running Time, directed by Mort Ransen, in which Ryan also played three bit parts.
Ryan left the NFB in the late 1970s.

Ryan Larkin's father was an airline mechanic[citation needed]. Ryan Larkin had attended the Art School of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts where he studied under Arthur Lismer (a member of the Group of Seven) before working at the National Film Board of Canada from the early 1960s until 1978.

In recent years Ryan was plagued by a downward spiral of drug abuse, alcoholism and homelessness, but recently found himself back in the limelight when a 14-minute computer-animated documentary on his life, Ryan by fellow Canadian animator Chris Landreth, won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film and screened to acclaim at film festivals around the world. Alter Egos (2004), directed by Laurence Green, is a documentary about the making of Ryan that includes interviews with both Larkin and Chris Landreth as well as with various people who knew Ryan at the peak of his own success.

Starting in 2003, Larkin had been working with composer Laurie Gordon of the band Chiwawa on a new animated film entitled Spare Change (his first in decades). Together they formed Spare Change Productions and were seeking funding for the film through Gordon's production company MusiVision. They received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec but were still short of financing. MusiVision and the National Film Board are working in co-production and will finish the animation in the summer of 2008. Spare Change will feature at least one Chiwawa tune for which Larkin created storyboards and animation, including Do It For Me from the 2005 release Bright. MusiVision is also producing a documentary about Ryan's final years. Larkin, who had panhandled outside Montreal Schwartz's deli, also appeared in a documentary on the famous restaurant, Chez Schwartz, directed by Garry Beitel

In December 2006, Larkin created three five-second bumpers for MTV in Canada, a preview to Spare Change. Larkin said that he had given up some bad habits, including drinking, in order to better focus on his animating career.

Ryan Larkin died in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec on February 14, 2007 from lung cancer which had spread to his brain.

Interrogator/Interrogatee

dance(!)

Journey Far, Journey Deep

"In relation to the remarkable breath and depth of of his art it is fascinating to find he never left his homeland; indeed he probably passed his entire life within a radius of only a few miles. All his voyaging was done on the inward sea of his own spirit..."

-Robert Wallace - The World of Rembrandt

Words For The Painting

Even when I was a kid I knew how to solve the problem:

whatever you choose to do, do with with a blind, stupid, drunken confidence no matter how little you actually know. This is called being an American.

I'd seen many others pull off this trick, some were doing it for the experience (which I applaud,) while others did it to jerk off their ego (which I also applaud as long as I don't have to clean up the mess afterwards, because nothing's more entertaining than seeing an ego come apart under the pressure of the world crashing down on them, in some sadistic way, especially when that ego has ran you around and back and forth and over and under - then it's really, really, really entertaining!)

Perhaps I had even pulled this trick of "pretending to know" off a couple times too, and for a while it seemed to work; pretending to know, pretending I was this great...if I had to put a percentage on my success rate I'd say, I don't know, 50 percent of the time?

But then it slowly dawned on me that the unsolved problem, the unfinished task, the disaster I knew I could fix and, more importantly how to fix, but did not fix, this was much more true to me than all the confident Robert Redford moves I could make to just get the job done. I knew very, very young that I was never going to be that guy, the quarterback who was going to lead the charge down the field; that if I had a strength, and I was going to do anything with my existence, that it was because I was good at courting chaos, controversy, anarchy and accidents, at inviting good luck and bad into the fray of my life, not instituting my will over these things and bringing some ready-made, autographed order to the scene.

I was good at entering into chaos, shining a little light, finding my way through, and, if I was lucky enough to survive, reporting back on my findings with either words, images or some kind of combination of both; my life is kind of like being a journalist, only I'm writing my by-line in some ancient tongue I'm making up on the spot.

Anyway, for some weird reason I could not and still cannot explain, perhaps I am even at my best in the middle of the accident, the plane crash, in the fucked up, bizarro, tripped out, and surreal. Survival instincts, when they kick in, are the most powerful endorphins we have, and the most natural and intense of all highs.

You see every single time I've played it safe, bang, I'm dead. But let me fly by the seat of my pants right into those trees on the horizon, and if I get out of this alive then, fuck, there's going to be something to be made out of this, perhaps even money.

So slowly, but finally once and for all, I have enough experience to finally say that the finished, the polished, the buffed up and presented for sale on the showroom floor is boring and dead to me. I'm not interested. I'm not entertained. I'm not impressed.

Ah, but the confused!
The abandoned!

The stumbling, fumbling fool dropped down in the middle of the jungle with no idea which way to go; now that is life, that image is the essence...Not only does the fool not know how to get out of the jungle...Well, he doesn't know how to get out of the jungle and, besides worrying about being eaten by tigers, finding a way out is about all he can handle...And this state, for the most part, is life, yours and mine, and it is what I am interested in no matter what form it takes...

Because - and this really isn't said enough in the world we now live in where everyone is watching everyone else - life, even at its most mundane and localized, is exciting and interesting!

Sometimes boring, yes, sometimes depressing, sometimes lonely and disappointing, but constantly moving, changing and enlivening us whether we want it to or not, whether we avoid it by systematizing ourselves to death or not, whether we label everything, think we've seen it all, lived it all, all of it so boring, or not. All you have to do is engage with, at the very minimum, the most basic of living skills, (and believe me, at times this is about all I can do,) and you are certain to have some experience every day that changes you, sends you into a new direction with new ideas, new synapses firing, new - new - new...

And if you are in tune with this idea and open to it, it seems to be some sort of natural compensation for our inability to stop getting old - old - old. Don't get me wrong, most people, they take their experiences and basically use them to reiterate to themselves who they are, where they come from, and why they are right about everything and always have been, rather than just being open to the experience and letting it send them where they need to go. I can't speak for those people...I only know it's a diseased mind-set because I've certainly been one of them at times, and will be one again, but that is why this is a lesson I have to constantly keep re-learning, and why I'm writing this diatribe down right now, I suppose.

See I was working on this painting, and paintings are so brash, so indulgent, so useless and meaningless and unneeded by a world that just plows along and over everything. But a painting, a drawing, in its uselessness, its messiness, its absurdity at even being attempted to be created is so defiant and rebellious, the way a poem is, but on such a grander physical scale, and that's one of the reason I love it; the bad kids, no, the worst kids, the ones you can't tell nothing to, they're the ones that paint.

Julian Schnabel said something like, "painting is an act of peace," but I don't think so, I think painting is an act of rebellion, not only against the normal goings on of the world, but against rational time itself. I think Giacometti had it better when he said that painting and drawing were "absurd acts in and of themselves." When as a conscious adult you pick up a brush or a pencil to paint or draw, you're willfully stopping time, saying fuck you to it whether you're conscious of this or not, simply because the act of expressing yourself, in the society we live in, by utilitarian standards, is utterly absurd and only becoming more so. This idea of what "matters," well out here on the frontier, I can tell you that the only thing that "matters," is buying and selling. But the wonderful thing about this is that as society clamps down on us more and more, treats us more and more like these products, our art, our expression, it becomes more important, more visceral, more physical, more sculpted, more pointed, more treasured and cherished as being the last playground and pavilion of our need to be human no matter how ugly, messy or beautiful that is.

Painting and drawing to me are elemental, something we've needed to do since we were living in caves, to physically transcribe our experiences, imaginings, fears, desires...To step outside of time and find our own language with which to do it. Finding a language, that is the very definition of style; but the ones who have it are those same stubborn kids you can't tell nothing to, the ones who won't let that unique, human thing inside of them be beaten or bored to death out of them...

So i was looking at this painting I'm doing, this so simple, so complex, so incomplete metaphor for my life right now, and it's distilled, slashed, burned, covered up and reduced down to five fading flower-like figures on a plywood board that I found in an alley that looks like it's been riddled by AK-47 bullets. I was staring at the painting which is painted with anything from oil, acrylic, blood (my own,) and wax, at this one section, and I said aloud, "I should paint that light blue. That will finish the painting. That will make it beautiful."

So I mixed up the blue with the white, and I picked up my favorite sable brush, and I was about to start painting when the words came to me, "Even when I was a kid, I knew how to solve the problem..." I saw them splayed and dripping across the painting.

And, without another thought I dropped the brush, jumped over the dog fence that keeps Geryon (the Italian Greyhound who I refer to as either "Houndy" or, alternatively, "The Gimp" because of his broken leg,) out of my studio/kitchen, sat down at this computer still hung over, and started typing out

words for the painting

just to see where I would go.

I'm not going to paint that section blue. I'm leaving it as it is.

-7/20/08

The Painting above is by Robert Rauschenberg, an artist I never really thought about until five minutes ago, now I have to look at everything he's ever done. This is how it goes, one things leads to another, my curiousity bumps into everything, and then the day is done without me knowing what happened.

Song of The Summer (i'm late, but this beat is too great...)

"...third world democracy
i got more records than the KGB..."

she's so brash, talented and hot it's stupid.

...stick a needle in your eye...

When The Camp Becomes The Shore

oil, acrylic and wax pencil on found wood - 55 x 26 (inches)

Summer Break

gone fishing,
be back
soon...

L

"Where one burns books, one will soon burn people."

~Heinrich Heine

“Here lies one whose name was writ on water.”

~John Keats

Simple Life

Somewhere there is a simple life and a world, 

Transparent, warm and joyful. . .


There at evening a neighbor talks with a girl

Across the fence, and only the bees can hear 

This most tender murmuring of all.

But we live ceremoniously and with difficulty 

And we observe the rites of our bitter meetings, 

When suddenly the reckless wind

Breaks off a sentence just begun --

But not for anything would we exchange this splendid 

Granite city of fame and calamity, 

The wide rivers of glistening ice, 

The sunless, gloomy gardens,

And, barely audible, the Muse's voice.

~Anna Akhmatova
June 23, 1915, St. Petersburg

Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

Last Flight Out - 6/21/08

Last Flight Out - 6/21/08, originally uploaded by levari.

Generations - 4/04

Generations, originally uploaded by levari.

Dog Days Howl Early

Dog Days Howl Early, originally uploaded by levari.

Some Men

Boys playing at being men and men and their pride and men with their wars and so many men willing to die and men and their valleys staring up and men on their mountains all alone and boys playing at being men with no idea.

Men watching other men cry and swearing that's not them and men trying to sleep
and men not sure of what move to make next and men listening to their children sleep and men unable to turn out the light or turn up the heat and men in their old age trying to get out of the chair one more time.

Men who build nothing but their remembering.

Los Angeles - 5/1/06

Bringing Daddy His Beer - 12/07

Bringing Daddy His Beer - 12/07, originally uploaded by levari.

Navigarre Necesse Est. Vivere Non Necesse.

"To set sail is necessary. To live is not necessary."

~Inscription - Boston, MA

he knows something you don't - 4/08

Jonathan Bricklin - 4/08, originally uploaded by levari.

The Tight Rope Walker - 6/08

The Tight Rope Walker - 6/08, originally uploaded by levari.

Modigliani, originally uploaded by levari.

“What I am seeking is not the real and not the unreal but rather the unconscious, the mystery of the instinctive in the human race.”

~Modigliani

Dream (Bonnie and Clyde)

We were in that hotel
 by the ocean.
 
You and I in that bed
 in that hotel room; the world outside behind
 the curtains dipping in the late afternoon 
breeze.
You buzzed about 
with your things 
to do list, your book with 
all the places of interest, as if we could still pretend we had all the time in the world. 

I looked up at 
the tiled ceilings
 so high, 
the ancient frescoes 
faded
 and chipped so elegantly, you the countess of the crumbling villa of my mind.
 


And somehow we made it so it did not matter 
that they knew
 where we were. 

It did not matter 
that they were 
out to get 
us and 
we knew they would 
sooner rather 
than later. 

It did not matter 
that when they came for us 
it would be forever 
this time; we both knew we had put off the inevitable for as long as we could, passed through all the boundaries, our bodies together and apart, hand in hand hurdling head first through all the fears.

The doorbell chimed as the alarm rang out, and you, on cue, innocently went to unlock 
the door
 for the delivery men just as you once told me you would, for that was your destined role.



I called to you 
promising 
not to forget
 to make plans 
for our trip 
to the countryside, though we both knew there never would be one. 

But before I got up to shower, shave and accept our fate, 
I watched you 
and made myself 
remember
 what it was. No matter what happened now, as I watched you one last time, 
I swore 
that I would never 
forget 

what this room
 once was.

Then they burst through the door, guns drawn, murder and fire in the nozzles of their eyes.

Alone, I awaken calmly in my childhood bed (long ago converted into a guest room and office.) I'm not now an infant, there's no mystical return to innocence, the clean slate or tabula raza I've heard so much about. I'm just lying here in the bed I grew up in, me, who must now begin all over again knowing full well that there never really can be a beginning all over again for people like us...

Fort Washington, PA - 7/20/05

Can I Get An Encore? - 3/08

Encore - 3/08, originally uploaded by levari.

'Star Valley' On A Sunny Day

To give account to none, to be one's own
vassal and lord, to please oneself alone,
to bend neither one's neck, nor inner schemes,
nor conscience to obtain some things that
seems power but is a flunkey's coat...

~Pushkin

Andrew - 12/07

Andrew - 12/07, originally uploaded by levari.

R.I.P. Holden Caulfield

If you would have told me,
when I was a young man,
that one day I would tell you
(without laughing)
that I've learned more
from all the compromises
then any idealistic stand
I could have ever taken,
I would have called you
a fucking liar and a phony,
then taken a torch to the future me.

That's what I would have said and done
(back then.)

-Los Angeles to Boston - 5/25/08

Kitai, Los Angeles - 11/07

Kitai, Los Angeles - 11/07, originally uploaded by levari.

Dawn Come Frigiliana

Dawn, Frigiliana, originally uploaded by levari.

Portrait of Ricky On The Roof Of The Rossmore - 5/18

Ricky, Roof Of The Rossmore - 5/18, originally uploaded by levari.

My Endless Love of The Burlesque

My Endless Love of The Burlesque, originally uploaded by levari.

"Everybody gets corrupted...

"Everyone gets corrupted...", originally uploaded by levari.

...you have to have a little faith in people."

Portrait of A Bookstore Owner (The Dying Breed) - 4/08

Portrait of A Bookstore Owner - 4/08, originally uploaded by levari.

Grandmom - Beatrice Farber - 1940

Grandmom - Beatrice Farber - 1940, originally uploaded by levari.

To All The Lionesses all over the world,
Happy Mother's Day.

Ode To Irony

our shield,
our laughter,
our camouflage,

our public success,
our hidden tears,

our shining mask,
our deepest fears,

our passionate fatalism,
our sophisticated cynicism,

our war without peace,
our acceptance no grief,

our buy
and
our sell,

(write it!)
our lie.

-4/07

3/06

3/06, originally uploaded by levari.

When My Desk Got Away From Me...

When My Desk Got Away From Me..., originally uploaded by levari.