momentum not momentous

boy. all i had to do was hit return twice and my title became my subject and my post. that's how it is these days. momentum. all about gaining it. weird thing is, i'd like to gain momentum in my work, find that sweep across the horizon, ride the comet trail, the crest of the wave where the sensation of the ride is what it's all about, not the place you arrive. happy new year, y''all.

weapons of mass construction

i need my gum, my cigaretttes, my bobby pins, my simone de beauvoir,
my selective memory, my rich, dark chocolate, my dreams, every one
of them,and a few more. i need my lover to love me even when she does,
my massive assault on social injustice timed just right to make an impact,
that element of surprise, no backlash just flashbacks, the good ones,
no enemy, just cause and justice. a glass of fine wine or two or three, a friend i
haven't seen in years, and then i don't need much of anything really. just to be.
at home. in love. ya' know?

End of the Line

Brother, sister, where art thou?

The streets are slick with rain and I keep wondering where we went wrong.
Not when or why, because the when, the why, doesn’t matter any more. The why is why not?

I drive the snowy roads and remember that wintry day, the white out,
our photograph on the front page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Barely daylight,
there we were throwing snowballs, in the front yard on Highland Avenue. Happy. Our lives on fire. We were one.

12-1-07

THE GREEN ROOM

Grateful

To those whom I love and who loved me through all kinds of adversity, I am grateful. I thank you for being there and for showing me what it is to love. Takes a lifetime. And now it is my turn.

This is Life

I have this thing going on in my head about what’s happening to our minds. What we expect from life, based on the transfer. What we relate to, based on exposure. What we communicate. We’re not inside our heads anymore. It’s as if we’ve been taken outside of ourselves and have to conform to something more palatable because what could be less appetizing than one’s own limitations. This is the world we live in. This is today. This is life.

the new new

always questioning this need to be new when we have the same old problems, right? but i'm not talking about boring or unimaginative. i'm talkingabout that layer underneath. the one you have to look for. why is looking such a bad thing?

Untitled No.2

Untitled No.1

This series of photographs are works in progress.
I am too in it I can't talk about it yet.

$$

Grant. Sounds so religious, so unattainable.

"the dark is always at the top"

At 104

Run mind run
Over and around in color
Talk about truth
He never lies and that's why he took his own life
Kinship with nothingness, the wu chi
Oh how we miss your blue integrity.

Another Not So Happy Birthday, Rothko!

Yom Kippur

Today, I mourn the loss of humanity. I realize there is so much more to deal with than my own personal accountability; however, I will remain accountable but want to expand the scope of consciousness that will lead us all out of our own narcissistic entrapments.

MoneyTalks

another excerpt from September 10th

Doubling over with cramps he gasps for air, clean air, struggles to rid the poison from his lungs, the bile from the complimentary meal, his stomach rebelling. This time heaving uncontrollably he’s unable to make it to the bathroom. With the sleeve of his shirt he wipes off his mouth, stands up and leans against the cool wall of windows for support. Pushing the curtains aside he looks down at Times Square. Must be hallucinating, he thinks. It is vacant, empty of pedestrians. Then again he’s unsure that he is capable of distinguishing between reality and nightmare. Is he awake or asleep? Has he been asleep all this time? Did this really happen? With the plastic Marriott pen he punctures the flesh on his forearm. No, he is not asleep; this is definitely not a dream.

The paper in the vinyl folder with the embossed logo is so clean and crisp. He pages through the Welcome book and looks at the lists—restaurants, shopping, attractions, room service, places of worship. Flashing back to the plaza downtown it appears as an altar of human sacrifice. Like the toxic dump of humanity, mangled among the remains of the supreme excesses of architecture, the World Trade Center. Man created it. Man takes it away. There is no god to blame here. Not that he ever thought there was one but now he’s sure and strangely takes comfort in the fact.

excerpt from September 10th

He anticipates the inspector’s ludicrous objections. Not the structural insulated panels with pre-installed electric and plumbing, that is, if the unions don’t rampage. Or the walls of fire proofed recycled newspaper. The galvanized steel roof with photovoltaic panels and the cistern that collects storm water for irrigation, reducing water and energy use. Who could reject this approach in a city notorious for excessive power consumption? They’ll say the Dutch seized Manhattan in Battery Park, imprisoned the Native Americans and built a city of stone, that New York was built to last. And he’d counter with recycled plastic--a half life of a trillion years.

the spectrum

i'm hot
i'm not
so what

Muse Fix

conditional love

I shot you and

you shot me

in a wave of violence against humanity

and all we had were pictures to show for it.

I need your shot. You need mine.

I keep wanting to give them up. Yours, I mean.

To say I don’t belong

to these

pictures.

And then…and then…we keep showing up

in them

together.

Despite,

in spite of ourselves.

We keep showing up

to be together,

in spite of ourselves.

We can’t help it;

we can’t recant. is this love?

Is this love?

Dick Heads

This is in commemoration of Karl Rove's("the architect of the Bush Presidency") resignation. It is a detail from a mural collage 'Fornicating Pontificaters' I started more than five years ago. The genesis of this particular section "Dick Heads" came about from walking around and spotting a condom on the ground.{ Don't you just find the creative process facinating} I took a photograph not fully knowing where it would take me. Back at my studio I started inserting photos in the center of the condom.....voila so many dick heads so little time.

when thoughts don't matter

how hard is it to write something original when there is no intent? that's what i've been thinking about lately. when it's not a novel, a screenplay, an essay, an article. when the road map doesn't matter. like taking a trip to nowhere. no plan, no destination. just go. to just let go.

excerpt from September 10th

The crack of ice reverberates like a dissonant intruder moving through the loft-like space. Pacing the site line from the euro kitchen back to the drawing table seems like the longest walk of the century, his only solace in the smooth jolt of transparent liquor diminishing from his water glass.

Ode to David Lynch

untitled

dying to write. dying to live. living to die. why?

losing track

i look up and suddenly i don't know where i am but i know how i got here.

Life Goes On.....But Where

67" x 60" oil,gouache,acrylic,paint sticks,chalk on canvas.
I am really psyched this painting will be in a show at Benton Nyce Gallery in September...

surrender

down the road of wildest dreams

running in place,

after you,

after me,

the light blinding,

brilliant,

blameless,

blazing like flames.

oh baby, burn in hell with me.

how to

we're collaborating on an exhibition of art and text and I'm trying to figure out how to display excerpts so the viewer observes them much the same way one might observe a painting or a photograph. Of course, one reads from right to left but if the excerpts are positioned horizontally, will the viewer be lazier, less observant?

in the darker days of our humanity

Early morning blends into liquid day

of paint and shoot

and the trickling of words

in between explorations for love and money.

On the stairwell we wonder

if the mind is ours to keep,

if we need to grasp a greater reality

or fall deeper into the mesmeric trance

for the longing breeds the perpetual dance

of time honored and time lost.

Fear not the iron grip

bound and without boundaries

the uphill battle, the down hill slide

past the politics of cruelty,

grazed but yet unchanged.

Hope fades like so many sunsets

in this other worldly place where inequity and injustice,

proof after bold-faced proof (substitute “lie”)

makes a mockery of us.

Timelessness=agelessness

our narrow escape,

stoned on life’s expanding universe

touched by universal truth

but then, what is truth, what must we know

and then to know, how can we live?

detail/work in progress

what to wear

i decided i like to write in my nightgown--long, flowing, free...

untitled

can we stop?

can we stop?

if we don’t make it this way.

if we don’t insist

if we don’t resist

if we don’t desist

if we don’t exist.

can we stop?

mute

too late

In the distance a large crane like a giant insect moves across the Brooklyn waterfront near the site where Brian had developed the architectural design for sustainable living, a joke as far as he is concerned in a world that no longer deserves to exist, and for all intents and purposes would not, not in the same context no matter what measures are taken or how determined its inhabitants. Bottom line: it is too late, too little too late—an expression that whirs inside his head like the rotors of a helicopter that maintains position and altitude but cannot advance or land. Too little too late…too little too late.

art attack

the sound of color

autumn, auburn, audacious

slashing through canvas like the sharpened edge of a knife

so content to claim the space

and the right to preside

among others.

clean chartreuse

behind muted green of copper rising

top to bottom,

curving round chalky blue

and the endlessness of black

deep, dark

down and out,

longing the longing

and then…

a miracle

Tonight I have to say it's a miracle that artists (painters, photographers, dancers, writers, performers, actors, composers, every conceivable form) manage to survive with such little support. Have you noticed that those closest to you not only can't relate but can't even find something substantial to say about the work, that is if they even look, read, study (that's ambitious), focus or check it out at all?

geography of a disturbed mind

“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing with my wife.” I’d like to wipe that shitty grin off her face, won’t leave until she talks, so I take a seat in a chair by a smallish TV. The sound is muted, the room silent. Images of war, mass graves, bones scattered, flash across the screen. It could be happening anywhere. Rwanda, Bosnia, Lebanon, Poland, the West Bank. The human need for destruction is eternal. All boundaries are elastic. They stretch back and forth with enough tension until they break and form new territory.

solitary confinement

I'll just have to paint my way out.......

anatomy of a serial killer

That's the title of the unfinished novel from yesterday's excerpt. What really fascinates me is not the gruesome details but the back story--the family in which the serial killer grows up.

Family is the thread in common that weaves throughout my work--whether it's a play, a screenplay, a short story or a novel. We're not talking 'family values' here; we're talking dysfunction, malfunction, inextricable love and all the complex issues that make family an endlessly fascinating subject to explore. The gay sibling, the straight daughter, the suicidal father, the psychopathic son, the intersex child, the bisexual mother, the adulterous grandparent. You name it. They come in all flavors and sizes.

excerpt from unfinished novel

You'll know why I never finished it when you read this excerpt:

I have a hot, white love. Hot because it burns right through me. White because it's blinding. Each time she walks into the room I turn away with disgust. I know what's going to happen next. Sometimes I imagine The Retaliation. I shove a rag into her mouth. Tape it shut. Tie her wrists and legs. It is fear I want to give her like wrapping paper on a birthday present. It is the fear.

My room is kind of ordinary I guess. Double bed, old bedspread of cowboys and Indians. Posters plastered to the wall. The Unabomber, Johnny Cash, BB King, Theresa Russell and Charles Manson with that nurse. Underneath my mattress are all the magazines and the knife I bought at a pawn shop last week. On my turquoise dresser there's my wallet on a chain I usually hook to my belt, my hair gel, a comb and a little bowl of hard candy my mother always fills. Without thinking I'll take a piece then spit it out because it's so disgusting it makes me want to puke. Shit, man, what's her problem?!

In the corner on my night table is The Shrine. A lock of hair. A piece of rotten fruit. And a fingernail. Infinity plus Wound equals Sacrifice. I'm waiting to take the belt she uses. I want to work that one in.

work-in-progress No.2

the lie he perpetrates

He looks up marveling at the light as it casts a hue over the neighboring high rise and notices how color is light, a kind of visual intelligence that is stratified and deepens in intensity when the physics are right. Could anyone possibly understand this, he wonders, then admits he doesn’t know fuck about anything, that his wish to be non-existent is not some self-fulfilling prophecy but a last resort. He finds himself down near World Trade, choking on the toxic stew of fried building materials and watching people stare through the holes in the large round cutouts of plywood surrounding the carnage. Tourists are taking snapshots of their loved ones with the devastation, like a famous ruin in the background, reduced to a roadside attraction as if the event had not really happened, the unthinkable, not in a neighborhood near you.

art don't forsake me

why don't writers have blogs?

You spend so much time writing, why would you want to have a blog? My suspicions were confirmed when I searched for blogs by some of my favorite writers: Stacey D'Erasmo, Philip Roth, Rupert Thomson, Mona Simpson, Dan Chaon... Nope! There's the other somewhat dubious issue of copyright protection. Maybe that's why the few fave writers with blogs I did find ended up writing about colonoscopies, summer retreats and dead relatives. Now that Margaret has invented the Long Pen remote book- signing device she might have a few extra minutes in the day to grace us with delicious morsels about her creative process. That's right, all you great writers out there... We don't want to know about your personal lives; we want to know about art!

my mentor

I was thinking back to when I first found out that
Mark Rothko spent some time out here and
was even buried a few miles from my studio.....
I couldn't believe it....Rothko painted here,
agonized over his work here - maybe even
contemplated suicide here.

the short of it

All this thought of food is utterly distracting but he can’t stop the cinematic progression. Artichokes drizzled with lemony olive oil. Savory goat cheese with ash. Mussels in Thai curry sauce. Escarole in vinaigrette. Food as sustenance, that and the lusty bottles of Bordeaux. He thinks of his inspiration—the provocative films of Fassbinder and Sheridan, the rigorous designs of Frank Gehry and Zoltan Pali, the powerful works of Smith and Iglesias, the literary feasts of Nabokov and Roth…all the motivating forces coming together, attesting to the inferiority of his work. Always something wrong when everything is right. Why can’t he jimmy the lock on the past when everything seemed so simple... There were people, the ones you saw every day who were genuinely happy and then there were the ones who wanted to be seen by you. He plays out these scenes loop after endless loop until he recognizes the drift.

detail new painting/day5

finished or abandoned?

Paul Valery once said that "a poem is never finished, only abandoned." That's how I feel every time I'm approaching the end of a work. I'm not talking about editing; I'm a brutal editor.

Toward the end the work takes on a life of its own and it's out of the writer's hands. Anything you attempt seems false and unworthy and you wait patiently, attentively, for your character to emerge.

Five novels later, the end is still an illusion and if I attempt to defy the process, like a convict I'm engaged in forced labor and it's painfully apparent.

still life No.2

I have started a new painting
I am in the big fat beginning of it all
with that weird feeling in my gut and
my hand shakes as I approach the canvas
the inexplicable need to go look for things
one fatal distraction after another
InArtWeTrust...........

bones of sand

bicycle, cooler, towel,

each and every shell on the beach.

whole palm trees, the village, they were there

swept in torrents

as the wall of water raced the ocean entire.

the indian ocean,

inky black nightmare, vanishing coasts,

whole continents, their ghost like appearance

haunting, the impact unfathomable like a trash compactor.

everything animate and inanimate pushed forward then

swept out to sea except for the arm in the tree and

the silver bracelet, shiny with foam.

i see…unimaginable thirst.

thirst after so much water,

death from survival,

no mercy

only more mercilessness.

my cat and my goat, the only company.

150,000 souls and still counting,

souls reincarnating simultaneously,

animal to man, man to woman, woman to

animal to lover.

you can't stop mother nature, father always warned.

what an understatement.

like a conch to the ear, rushing waters, the wall…and

then the roar, the roar so deafening and the dissonance, the

crack, the snap and then the silence.

new hands, some grains,

bones of sand, sand of bones.

with and without,

invincible. we perished

thirsty, still young, when that kernel

of hope was still alive.

studio404

the low down

Thinking about the open vortices he designed to cool the compound for the money changer, Brian misses the door to the Greek coffee shop and decides to catch the next one two blocks down. When he walks in, at the corner booth, he sees his sister Gracie, her disheveled hair an indication she’d been up all night.

"Remember ‘The United States of Euphoria: Life on the Edge of Time?’” Gracie, at age 15, doing hallucinogens with her best friend and recording it for posterity in the form of an essay she handed into English class. At the time he believed her fascination with drugs would pass but it was the beginning of a life long addiction for which she would pay, time and again. He reaches out and this time she lets him touch her hand before she withdraws it. Scrambled eggs save the day, that and a glass of orange juice.