After a month where I could
barely get around to refilling my meds, breathing room is in sight.
This past weekend I've talked a lot about having to “reconstruct
meaning” for myself, which might sound a lot larger than it should.
In short I'm having to re-teach myself to write and paint after being
endlessly, relentlessly hampered for a while.
“Threats and Warnings”
(new-ish one on cardboard) might not be the very LAST painting in the
Apocalypse Series but it might be the last major one as I draw the
whole thing to a close. Two series will continue----abstracts as part
of a current series called “The Random” and a new series called
“Hot Garbage”. The Purgatory and Apocalypse series were more
based around symbolism and mythmaking----Hot Garbage will largely be
figurative art (or my permutation thereof) for its own sake. All or
most of the paintings in the series will be titled, “Hot Garbage”.
Stay tuned.
DISASSOCIATION AND THE APOCALYPSE
I've always glommed onto
graffiti---I like the look of it---I like the coded history of layers
of vandalistic scrawlings. One sure sign that I'm about done with the
Ozark Experience is that the Army Corps of Engineers have done the
dumbest thing on earth by fencing off the ruins of the hotel at Monte
Ne...that, to me, was possibly the last holy or sacred place left in
this region. Someone asked us a while ago what we found sacred about
that place, and would we find it more sacred if preservationists
fixed it up. My answer was more or less “no”. I like Coin
Harvey's ruin for what it's become—--a hollowed-out hulk covered
with the graffiti of the ages----a witchy mecca which we've
celebrated in image and noise....
In the late 50s/early 60s you have
this young hood who scrawls “Vic + Shelly” on those sodden
walls....15 years later his disgrace of a longhaired son is partying
at the same site and maybe he draws a pot leaf and/or some slogan on
the wall......a few layers of vandalism have emerged since
then---maybe he can see “Vic + Shelly”, maybe he can't. He has no
idea that was left by his Dad, who he can't stand.....15 to 20 years
down the road our stoner has cut his hair and moved on to a corporate
job....his son, who's a wannabe gangsta, has now tagged the
wall.....three generations of hooliganism in layers. Boggles the
mind, huh?
Being autistic, I'm naturally
riveted by this stuff and I can kind of get lost in it. Urban/public
art enthralls me, but I have no head for it....these days if you gave
me a couple of spraycans and said, “go!” I'd have no idea what to
put on a wall or why.
These days, though, a part of my
autism that's become more pronounced is just an increasing inability
to fit my brain into any kind of linear communication----visual or
non-visual. People talk like a bunch of goddamned chattering monkeys,
I get tired of hearing them talk and I get tired of hearing myself
talk and I just stop talking---don't even know what to say.
That level of disassociation
fits pretty beautifully into the ethos of the Apocalypse, though.
Mike McAdam and I developed this weird style of sloganeering, lexicon
and cartoon art with the Apocalypse Krew---we had an identity forming
even before we developed musically. It was an incoherent smear of
smiley faces, frowney faces, suicidal dreg figures, recurring images
and phrases that would dribble off from militant ravings to primal,
screaming nonsense words that mostly were comprised of
bunched-together, incompatible consonants. Sometimes I
sqwzaaaazzztptgh. That still makes sense to me. It really made sense
to me in my early-to-mid 20s when I went around in a state of
constant angst and agitation and wanted to put my fist through
everything.
That level of primal
disassociation makes its way into much of the Apocalypse Series, and
this painting as well. The heyday of my vandalism was probably as a
teen or a young adult and most of it
revolved around whatever bands I was
listening to, which devolved into arguments (on the walls) about the
merits of said bands. Pretty meat-and-potatoes. Basquiats, we were
not. Banksy, we were not. We were not Banos, Iz the Wiz, Dondi or
Lee.
Stylistically, that's the path I
follow, here and elsewhere. As the painting is based around one of
our songs, snippets of the song's lyrics appear, buried and obscured
in layers and layers, as if some janitor keeps painting over the bad
kids' etchings----the bad kids keep building a wall of written or
drawn entropy as if to tell the hypothetical janitor, “nice
try----paint again, Frank!” There is no concrete crystallization of
the lyrical content in the space of the painting---just layers of
obscured messages, none of which you'll ever get the entirety of. As
we come to the surface, you'll see quotes from the Bible (that bit
from Matthew about “render unto Caesar that which belongs to
Caesar”) accompanied by the quote from Vonnegut's fictional
“Messiah”, Bokonon (“pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't
have the slightest idea what's really going on.”---words to live
by!!!)----those are also obscured and marred. No thought completed.
Or codified. Or anything.
It's a way of life. It's a way of life
for more people than will probably admit to it.
MAKING IT WITCHY
Why use the Manson family as
Icons?
Without condoning any of their
crimes, the chaos of what they brought to the world is a deeply
ingrained part of the geography of my youth. Think of them less as
Icons or people to be admired---more as signposts. This is the kind
of ride you're in for. It'll get ugly----it'll get bloody. There will
be taboos----there will be loud, gibbering, scary madness.
Flashback to 1998 or so: My roommate
and I are at a Rave. Mostly we're there to hawk our hallucinogenic
videos to a DJ (which winds up being a fruitless endeavor) but we're
also ripped and trying to have a good time. I had dreadlocks at the
time-----some raver kid walks up to us and starts asking us, “are
you peaceful hippies, or are you the other kind?” I think we were
taken aback by the question----what the hell did that mean? We tried
to assure him that we were “peaceful”----I don't know---maybe he
was intimidated and thinking we were redneck bikers who were going to
kick his ecstasy-gobbling ass. But a part of me kind of enjoys the
fact that we might have been the “Other” kind of Hippie. And his
worst nightmare.
At another time several of us
went out on a Sunday (early evening) to a Chinese Buffet that we used
to frequent back in the day....I think it was one of those lost
weekends where we all got pretty blasted. We were probably all pretty
bedraggled----again, I had the dreads, which were probably down to my
knees by this time---one friend of mine was wearing a tie-dyed shirt,
a pair of really gnarly sunglasses and a pentagram necklace---and no,
I don't mean a pentacle----I mean A PENTAGRAM----upside down, evil,
Satan, yadda yadda yadda. Stoner Metal bands like Queens of the Stone
Age, Acid King, Fu Manchu and Monster Magnet were burgeoning at the
time and it all kind of made sense to me.
The late church crowd was
probably in effect (Sunday in the Ozarks, after all) but I'll tell
you this: At least one table in our general vicinity cleared----they
asked to be seated elsewhere. The population cleared FAST.
That turned me on.....it still
kind of does, to be honest.
Our public access show, “The
Abbey of the Lemur”, really played into the same impulse, of
course. Dark Counterculture. Think the MC5 and the White
Panthers----that was us. In the late 90s/early 2000s.
I was never a Peace, Love and
Flowers guy. I mean, I am----ultimately that's what I want for
everyone----flowers optional----but I've known people over the years
who were of the school of “you can't get mad...anger is WRONG!
Anger is BAD!” Thing about a lot of those people is, I watched them
go crazy. BAD crazy. MEAN crazy. HARMFUL TO THOSE AROUND THEM crazy.
And the most sanctimonious people I knew became the most horrible
people I ever met.
Anger's fine....anger helps bring
about justice. Anger is an energy. You want to be able to work past
that anger and get yourself to a healthy, sane place....but anger, in
and of itself, is a good thing to stay in touch with. Anger helps
you get shit done.
Anyway, the Apocalypse Series has
about run its course. By the time our album comes out I probably will
have moved past it to something new.....things will get different but
the piss and vinegar remains.
THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
ANTHRAX-Among the Living
PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED-First Issue
PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED-Second
Edition/Metal Box
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND-White
Light/White Heat
copyright 2016 Molotov Editions
