A Quiet Night

I am in the cyber cafe. For once I am alone in here. A great plastic carcinogenic bottle of water is sitting next to me. Who would have ever thought that somebody as toxic as myself would be eating organic nuts? They are good.

I watched the Obama speech in Ohio today. I may have to change my opinion about him, he actually seemed to answer the questions. The reporters on the network covering it had other ideas. They were intent on reminding the audience that Obama's administration is being pressured to tune down the idealism. It proves to me once and for all how flawed our system is. Our people voted for Obama and for whatever reason our politicians seem content to go against the people's wishes. We did not vote for a figure head. Obama is not our Queen, whoever voted for him obviously wanted him to fulfill his message. As much as I have been against him, I must admit that if he can come close to fulfilling his "ideals" then perhaps I may change my mind. I am far too much of a cynic however to believe that he will even come close. Even if he does not bend to the demands, our lovely Senators and Representatives (I use the term represent loosely) will surely stand in his way. The problem with our government is that it pays too much. Our founding fathers saw serving in the government as being an honor, not a career choice. There are too many career politicians who for the most part have no clue what a normal person's life is like. (Granted normal people have become so nihilistic that it is debatable if such a point would even make a difference.) With all the propaganda floating around, it is hard for anyone to keep track of the truth of what goes on down there in Washington. And people wonder why I smoke.

I am happy to announce that I have been accepted for a solo showing of my art. It is tough for me, I have been dealing with many new ideas. It is tough to translate them into anything coherent with so much going on. For the moment I am out of my writing phase, I have a few ideas in that realm, but they need time to incubate. On Wednesday I created "Orphee le Revolutionnaire." There is a veiled reference to the ideals of the French Revolution. The cityscape in the background could be as interpreted as nearly any city, but of course I do have my own ideas. For the sake of art, I am going to not say what those are.

More and more I am coming to find that life is a tragic play. Ideals are crushed, lives are lost, and still people find it necessary to remind everyone else to stop doing drugs of all kinds from caffeine to heroin. Why? If Wall Street had it their way, we would probably all be medicated. (For the most part, I think we already are.) People lead lives of being caricatures of actual people. It is unsettling when you find yourself on the fringe and looking in. In reading a critical biography of Jean Michel Basquiat today, I noted a line which said essentially that although artists tend to exist on the fringe, such a roll is granted to them by society and thus they are still playing a part. That being said I guess even I, in describing myself as living without regard to society, still have somehow been sucked into its immense blackness. Sociologically, or rather Pessimistically Sociologically, society does have a need for the "other." Try as they may be to be pure and unjudging, they will always find somebody to vent their frustrations on.

From the depths of Dada, good luck.

Inserting the Catalyst of Change

College for me has been an experience of placing a round peg into a square hole. When I first got here I enjoyed the social setting and the drinking; I found very quickly that college is not for learning, but is instead for memorizing. Learning in many ways implies that you are given tools that you can use. I have found that memorizing has more of an association with learning a set of rules that you must follow and not deviate from. In many ways, college is like a cookie cutter and in this world that is rapidly changing for the worse, the people it produces are often unable to cope with sudden changes that they need to adapt too. The past few years for me have been a journey of self discovery. One day I thought I had found myself and then by the next I realized that I was merely transforming into a zombie.

This past year has been a great experience, realizing that I in fact am capable of standing on my own two feet and I have become confident in what I can do. Art for me is not a hobby, it is a life. I am dedicated to it. If I am not painting, I am writing or drawing or as recently I have been trying to figure out to introduce art to people who may not otherwise be receptive to art. I have found in Dada, a chance to express what is often otherwise a difficult matter with the English language. How do you take a cold, rational institution like college and make it laugh at itself? You could simply label it a banana and walk away. It is quite irrational, but just as the Dada artists of the early 20th century discovered, such intense rationalism can only lead to destruction. Some of the best ideas as far as solving the problems of the world right now are coming from people who are not afraid to look at a discarded soda bottle as being a brick for a house.

More and more I realize that my peers at college think of me as being completely insane. What few of them realize is that there is a method to my madness. Humans have a naturally tendency to look for patterns, even when logic dictates that one is not present. We see faces in clouds and Gods in the stars. To place something illogical around in words or images, they immediately begin to think about a pattern. Even though anybody sees a urinal and knows that it is a urinal, calling it a fountain immediately causes people to ask "Why?" The "Why-factor" leads to further thought and before you know it, a once dormant mind set on following the memorized rules becomes actively engaged. Their involvement with the art in trying to interpret it ends up making them part of the art. Even if they never answer "Why?" they have still taken the time to consider it.

As I embark on my day's journeys, I will leave you with this: