Rome Wasn't Destroyed In A Day

Automatic drawing with pastels, done during therapy. Somehow a lot of the blues in the original drawing got lost in the phone camera snapshot, but really, it's not important because none of it in this case was intentional. Talk, make lines, talk, put down colors. Triangles. I think one of the offices they use there is bugged, but not the one we were in that day.

Sandwiched in between AmeriKKKa burning and a holiday that means nothing to me---certainly not a maudlin inventory of "gratitiude", not when there are fleeting glimmers to appreciate in every day of the year, even the ones bogged down with the acrid fog of depression or anxiety. Sandwiched between a day of religious fundamentalists and genocide and the real life Hunger Games called "Black Friday" when a blood sacrifice or two will be made to the Gods of Commerce. And thinking tomorrow of making yams for Abuelita, and she'll likely ask again for me to play my violin for her and once again I'll literally fiddle while my culture's corpse burns.

Anatomy Of A...

 

collage on paper.

I'm lost on the spectrum of socio-political ideology in this country, except for the fact that I know exactly where I am. But where that is won't neatly fit where others would like it to be. In our last episode I outraged the "social justice warrior" (in which social justice mainly boils down to nitpicking over semantics) contingent by having the audacity to speak up and say I've heard the word "bossy" applied to men as well as women, and was not about to be silenced by it. (Not that I get called bossy, really. Plenty of other things, including "spicy" and "fiery" more than that. But who gives a fuck?) Tonight? I've bothered a bunch of rich white transplants, friends of a friend, or clientele, can I really say? Hear hear to the small independent shop owners. I stated that I'd most certainly experienced harassment on the street from upper class white men, so much as any other kind, while they were all trying to maintain that this is only done by poor brown people. They didn't take kindly to hearing that yes, it happens. I noticed an interesting defense being invoked repeatedly by the rich white kids though -- well, if you find projection and speculation interesting. They kept insisting that rich white men were all good and above perving on women, but other men weren't, and kept insisting that anyone who didn't agree was simply "afraid" to say so. Ultimately, in this very solipsistic defense, there was nobody that disagreed with their worldview. Only people who were afraid to admit it. So there you go. Racists who claim to be mind-readers. Both types, the SJW's and the reactionaries who talk as though their racism/classism is something new and daring, are two unaware sides of the same shiny, high-market value coin. But only one side seems to need to believe that their view is the only one so badly, that they'll try to convince us all that any dissenters are just lying out of fear.

Or maybe they just know that fear is such a powerful control mechanism for so many people, it's hard to imagine life without it?

Pencil drawing of a plague doctor mask done today in art therapy group. Would like to do a whole art series revolving around modern plagues, Eric is thinking possibly as an Astral Knife project.

Hallucination vs. Vision (I Really Don't Care)

 

 Today I was finally able to get a scanner that is compatible with Linux, and configure it in just two hours. I don't know why it looks soft focus though. I scanned this at 1200 resolution. I'm sure you're riveted to know that. So here you have it, another "hallucination"/vision-based image, another pandrogyne figure, but so much more than that. On the other hand, "hallucination" implies things aren't really real because they're not perceived by everyone in Assiah-level, hard world reality. Ultimately though, I just like the way "hallucination" sounds, a roller coaster word that makes me think of "imagination" "hallowed" "lucere" "lux" "luz" "lucious" "sin".

Taina Punk

As Inktober rolls along, here's a drawing of a Taino woman expressing my thoughts on a national celebration of rape, torture, and genocide. But I probably can't explain it as nauseatingly as Columbus does in passages of his own diaries, along with a particularly brutal account from another of his crew of beating and raping a Carib woman.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/10/14/8-myths-and-atrocities-about-christopher-columbus-and-columbus-day-151653#.VDtC3w6_tTs.twitter

So reading these things I'm only left with a sense of mourning.

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Inktober drawings made in the past few days:

Last night was joyful, a celebration of creative life, friends, and much to see and do and talk about, both at the (S)he Is Still Her(e) art show and at Tommy turner's film screening. I feel grateful for the way my life is presently, the people and ideas in it. It comes naturally to me to rant, and not quite as much to gush, but  I really feel like I'm in a shimmering translucent bubble that's existence at the moment. It will burst at times and reappear at others, because the Universe is constant flux. But right this second, 12:26 am, I'm content with what is before me.

Inktober Posts Interrupted By A Psychotic Break

But they're here now.

 Drawn from memory: photo of a Chicano immigrant teen in a zoot suit, 1940's Los Angeles. Seen on a documentary on Spanish PBS regarding Mexican immigration in that time period. Oddly though, it didn't seem to go into the Zoot Suit Riots which you'd think would be a key event in discussing the subject. Or maybe it was in a different part of the program that I missed?

Women with the heads of pigs were once a recurring motif in Irish and English folklore. The stories would be a gender-flipped version of "Beauty & The Beast": woman (or her first-born daughter) is cursed to have the head of a pig, usually for acting mean to a beggar who's actually a sorceress or whatever in disguise; eventually the love of a man breaks the curse and she's transformed into a beautiful woman. Except I drew this one playing atop the corpse of a corporately manufactured pop-star. Don't ask me which one, they all look and sound alike.

If only the power to turn classist jerks into pigs actually existed. Then I bet gentrification, poverty, homelessness and hunger wouldn't. Price me out of my neighborhood? BAM! Now you literally are a capitalist pig.

Tempus Fugit

10/3 #inktober drawing. From memory of life, a woman I saw peering out from the back of a subway elevator.

They're tapering down my klonopin. I break the pills in half. I don't mind; it hasn't thrilled me the way it did when I first started with it. With my self-imposed moratorium on self-medication (at least for three months,I'm just riding with no preconception as to where this will lead to.

Inktober

I just found out about #inktober, the challenge to do one ink drawing for every day of October. So here's the first:

Though I've finally found time to write after midnight, meaning it's time to think about a new ink drawing. Artist fun.

Thinking of the phrase "radical acceptance" and wondering if "accept" necessarily means "be passive before". Or is it to sit and observe fear and disgust as though they were on a microscope slide, pondering the anatomy of each without recoiling or charging, and finding the best ways to dismantle and reconstruct them?

"The Arts Have Lost Their Dynamic & So Have Become Violent"

I think my opinion of that as a complaint is pretty obvious.

It's from a pocket sized Joseph Campbell book I found, put out by Shamballah. Abuelita's neighbors are pretty great about discarding piles of books in the hallway or on the stoop, though their literary tastes are hit-and-miss. To date my best find there was in the mid-90's, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The worst? Some misogynistic upper-class angsty rape apologist piece of shit by some guy named Tim Sandlin. Let's get all Behemoth on rape-apologists.

art by Charlie Stone

art by Vladimir Janovsky

Spider Ulcers

Finished piece. Pen & ink, collage/cut up technique, watercolor paint. I want to do more like this. I want to make a book. Maybe call it  "Got Eight Gene Problems But Your Cage Ain't One", after reading this new article about how schizophrenia is actually eight disorders created by combined malformed genetic clusters or some such thing. What does that make schizoaffective disorder then? Eight gene problems and a "bitchy resting face"? Known to my case handlers as "flat affect". Whetever, it helps me pose with Gunter Brus images.

Where's my ax?

Eric and I went to see the Viennese Aktionist retrospective at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, an out of the way trip to the Yupper East Side but well worth it. It's a three story exhibition of visceral glory, Nitsch, Brus, Schwarzkogler --some of them came from Schwarzkogler's "3rd Aktion", a series of photos that Eric always associated with the birth trauma he experienced though can't remember - does anyone remember their birth? It's one of the things that led to his appreciation of this art movement. Also the "Wedding" series.

 I took some other pictures of just the work, but haven't had a chance to go through them all yet...or figure out which ones won't get me kicked off Instagram.