we are all hacks part 2

the above artists name is Felix Octavius Carr Darley 1822-1888

F.O.C.Darley.
from James Fenimore Cooper's novel, The Prairie, 1880.

another reason to work hard, draw everyday, eat your vegetables and draw some more, stay up late, struggle, and you will still never be this good.
and nether will i.

GUNS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM

james must have been driving, when we all spotted the hitchhiker sneaking down the back way home from some bar, the hitchhiker looked all tall and creepy, but hell we had Tommy Natch in the back and the two Menes brothers, so basically we represented a car load of goons,

ohhh, pick him up, pick him up somebody screamed and smushed the brakes on and took the steering wheel away from james

we squeezed him in and ask where he was going and asked if he could buy the gang some beer on the way, and he said sure and seemed to be enjoying the ride, and being teased and f-ed with, he tells us where he lives and it's out of the way but the guys in the back seat need a night cap and the grocery store was drawing us in with bright lights against a black sky, so we stop and park out front and he gets out and your not going to leave me here are you? and of course we are, but no we say, you coming in with me, and hell no we all say, we're all listening to new wave love songs.

he comes back out gives Tommy Natch the beer and we drive off but then he starts getting all ambiguous about where exactly he lives and james pulls over and says get out, and i open the door and come on get out, but he wont get out, so we stand there for a second screamoing,and give me a beer and i give him a beer and he gets up but wont let go of the door,

i want all the beer he says, i get back in the car and james drives off, leaving the fucking nut standing in the woods somewhere.

and we are all laughing and laughing, james gets on the highway to get home fast and 2 minutes later, i swear, Road block,

holy shit. and a state boy pulling up behind us at like eighty, RUN, tommy says, we can't run,

so james pulls over and before we can even say a word, James has a gun to his head, and i have a gun to my face,

and the troopers are screaming, hands on the roof, hands where i can see 'em, then i'm dragged out of the car and dragged into the grass face down, hands pulled behind me, face stepped on into the dirt,

where's the gun?

tell me where's the gun.

now there's like fifty state police standing on each of us, all screaming and trying to crush my face with knees, and pushing .9mm guns into our heads.

and tommy is laughing and taking a nap, no one can squish him.

so we're all sitting back to back hand cuffed to chairs, being interrogated, one at a time, turns out the nutty hitchhiker phoned the state police and told them that we had kidnapped him, threatened him with a gun and forced him to buy us beer, and beat him up before dumping his body in the woods.

why, we are all hacks

last weekend i stopped at the first yard sale of the season, and bought two great books from 1880, you all know by now that i usually only read stuff i find randomly, the book is titled COOPER'S NOVELS upon opening i find this wonderful print, and am amazed and fall helplessly in love, the novel is titled. The Crater, and just look at the wonderful scene presented here, a shipwreck, with some well dressed marooned sailor, his tent, packed with gun and books a nice sombrero, wow, that's where i want to be, lost at sea, with a telescope and a goat.

fantastic.

i find myself staring at this print all week, opening the book starting to read, and slicing back the pages to this print, and knowing that we as artists are all Hacks, that any art we create now is toilet paper, pornography compared to the stunning masterpiece of this tiny print buried in an old book bought for a dollar.

we should all hang our heads today embarrassed at our chicken scratched failings.

i can't read the signature very well but think it reads John Writghson.

i am going out back to burn my studio to the ground.

HYPERION

perhaps it's just me, but you know when i pick up a book, i expect it to be a self contained world, with a beginning, middle and end, with the stress on End. but this isn't what you get in SF novels, but jesus they should warn you or something.

And this book is great, very captivating, a little long, and dated from the eighties but pretty bang on with the future all outdated and plausible even now.

this is the story of seven people going to commit suicide at some time tombs and a monster, the shirke, who travels back from our future to judge all of us and grant wishes, interesting, and bloody, a Sf monster tale very space operaesque, they always use the word baroque, i like that. the best pilgrim story involves a girl ageing backward and her father's quest to save her and his fight against god.

i loved the book even though it just stops with no ending, i'm reading the second of all four of them now, fuckers, gotta learn how to tighten it up. does anyone even edit these massive piles of pages

filling pages is not how to please your readers. authors, editors, publishers i demand editing, or blood.

la push,wa

you know i talk about this place a lot, have spent a million weekends there camped in the log jam and paddling out among pelicans whales and mushed out waves, Toby and Suzanne sent this photo to me, isn't it the greatest, holy cow, drive, now, drive, fast. eat hot dogs and drink gallons of water shoot roman candles and look at the moon.

you know who's birthday is today

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSEPHINE. NOW STOP BEING SO DAMN CUTE.

THE KIDS

LOOK AT THESE ART CARDS, I HAVEN'T PUT THEM ON ETSY YET, I JUST FINISHED THEM AND WANT TO HAVE MORE BEFORE I MOVE. HAVE TO STARE FIRST.

top left to right: don't drink monster, old boy, cry kid, mom kid w/gun, bum boy, bookkid

my studio

the studio before the gigantic ping pong table showed up, and which will be pushed out side as soon as these f-ing rain&snow showers are ended, take a little peek into the studio, isn't it lovely, and plywood colored, if you come over, we can play some ping pong, listen to 8-tracks, drink tea, and look at the Art&surf board museum.

first grade dare

the sea's teeth

for years i've been collecting these little smoothed round drift wood pieces for a show, about La Push Washington. i'm going to make these into belt buckles and tie clips and pendants, what do you think?

the best part about these little jewels is that they only come down river in spring, get pushed on to the beaches with the crab shells, and bark, spring time at La Push is the most amazing, the whales come back, with babies and rub their bellies on the oceans bottom and you can surf with them, have you ever smelled a whales breath? or looked one in the eye? these moments are what the show is trying to capture and why i am having such a difficult time.

UNICORNSKULL TATOO

the above image is canted i know, but that's what i love about hand drawn stuff and crumpled up trash, it can be all screwed up and yet look so great, what are you doing today. if you want you may use these drawings as templates for body art, but i wouldn't recommend it. the older you get the more idiotic art becomes. the less hardcore. everything loses it's seriousness.

i'm done recommending books

the sun is shinning and i'm driving around town, and i really don't want to think that maybe all these books i'm recommending are way too autobiograpghical some how, trying to piece together all these stories i've been pushing on to people with explicit love could in fact betray some underlying defects, within me, or just too much detail.
the road for instance comes to mind and now i really get it, it's not about some mad max future america, dummy, it's about the fears of father hood, the fear of failing to raise these boys correctly, the dread of this future, the fear of future, this year anyway, with the economy all sad and treacherous, no body having a job, medical problems all the very real aspects of life i have always keep away from. thus the sci-fi dreaming, the space opera wishing, the crappy poetry submissions, the van living diaries, all very escapist, and then, the road pops up and perfect, it's just you and your family shoved into some world you can't even see, let alone understand, what is this, money?
we've always been the people with enough to live, to have a home to have cars, but not much more and not really wanting more.
but what do these books say to people of who we are, you give me a book about horrible childhoods, i give you a book to read about paris in the 1930's, do i think i'm Henry Miller? do i think, i'm Micky Spillane, did i buy an handgun? what do books really mean, when it comes down to the psychology of recommendation's, maybe none of us should have ever read any books, maybe we should all just live,
in capsules of pure white and silver, forever, that's another thing about sci-fi that really pleases me, no one ever reads or listens to music, goes to see bands or watches television in the future, they all seem very busy saving their own lives or others in big elaborate road novels, the road being outer space the cars being intelligent space craft, no body goes to bars to find out who killed the blonde who stumbled into you, in the rain soaked morning, when you were just out walking, trying to piece together a meaningless life.

guns are not the problem part 5

i had had this fantastic idea to get away from it all, had just met this beautiful film maker from Romania, named after a flower, and like i had said i had to get away from it all, the drama, the stupidity, summer was coming,and i liked to swim across things. so like the swimmer, i was going to swim across the country.

out side the new river gorge we found a great cliff to leap from and in Mississippi i swam in water the color of coffee and as warm as sperm, but none of this has to do with guns being pointed at me, which leads us to a little reservoir outside of Albuquerque and as i always do when i get to lakes, i thought i would swim across, so i'm swimming and it's wonderfully cool in this hot desert air when a boat pulls up to me and slows way down, and a bull horn screams at me, get in the boat! and theirs no way i'm getting in the boat,

You can't swim in the lake

I am i say and keep swimming, when the boat forest ranger pulls a gun and tells me to get in and i say, i'll swim in, i swam out here, i'll swim back,and i turn around and swim back pissed off, your going to shoot me for illegally swimming across a country. in a blue pick up truck with the hot air blowing against my eyes,

i had three guns drawn on me, that summer, that was the first,

the next time, we had been driving all night and pulled into some camp site late and someone called us in or saw the head lights, so while standing around stretching and getting ready to build a tiny pocket sized fire, a spot light blinds us and Hi, i say and wave,

and here i am talking to another forest ranger, when he pulls his gun on me and he thinks my belt is a flashed gun, so he searches me and points his .9 at my chest, never says sorry, but tells me the park is full, get the hell out.

we don't stop at national parks from then on, or anywhere civilized only country roads, and farm stands for tomatoes, sleep in the truck, and drive, i don't know what we're doing.

crossing the boarder from Texas to somewhere, at some immigration tollbooth, we get pulled over, the truck gets searched and as i stand in the shade, watching them search my truck, smiling, the cop watching me whips his piece out and Freeze.

he's going to drop me and Hands up.

i raise my hands.

What's in your pocket?

and now there are two guns pointed at me.

take it easy guys, there's a pen in my pocket, and someone lifts my shirt and pulls out my pen throws it on the ground and shoots it.

fuck you America, you'll never be free.