Two people, or maybe three, or maybe two at different times. A defective chess board, or maybe a more perfect, cruciality-driven meld of game and life.
Most of this was done late December 2018. Today I made modifications. It is not new for an artwork to change with time: the whole film medium depends on that dynamic. Here you have documented static and dynamic, with two specific, but not too specific, times.
Once upon a time, in the William C. Jack Elementary School library, there was a book of mysteries for children that was edited by Alfred Hitchcock. In it Mr. Hitchcock stopped a story in the middle and told his readership that they had just been given a clue. That’s all I remember about that book, but it did lead me to another, also edited by him: STORIES THAT SCARED EVEN ME. For some reason, after I “not finished/finished” this drawing, I thought of that book. I also thought of my friend Manuel Paul Arenas, whose writings favor the macabre. I thought that it would be nice if Manny wrote a story for which my drawing is the perfect illustration. I haven’t asked him, and he probably has better things to do, but that was my thought.
I’ve got the blues today. It is my late brother Brian’s 62nd Birthday. Chalk on black paper scratched my drawing itch.
darkness eternal
is i n c o m p l e t e without the
memory of l i g h t
I missed Caffeine Corridor tonight. Fell into an exhausted sleep soon after I got home and woke up too late to get there on time, and with necessary laundry to do besides. Alas, I missed my fellow former Monsoon Voice, Susan Vespoli, whose poetic scapes can be so pellucidly magical.
Under “house arrest” while laundry was cycling, I took chalk in hand and did this mood reflector.
Here is a companion piece to “The Great Human Adventure, Part VIII.” I think the two will work as a diptych, but we’ll see.
Before I started working on Part VIII I chalked up the back of the paper it is on and placed a piece of black paper behind it and at an angle. Then I drew with a hard-pointed mechanical pencil with sufficient force to impress the line drawing onto the black paper. I’d originally intended to glue a lot of cutouts from the black paper onto the White, but I found that just three were enough.
After I finished and posted Part VIII, I was taken by how completely different the chalk line drawing proved to be, despite being–literally–the same drawing. It was like the second drawing was a whispered rumor of the first.
At 64 years of age, with my memory fuzzy about previous artwork and/or postings, I can’t remember whether I’ve done a “Great Human Adventure” piece before. The “Part VIII” serves two purposes. It’s unique even if I already did a “Great Human Adventure.” It also acknowledges that I am far from covering all the territory that Human Adventure may cover. When I read a novel and the characters become my friends, all too often the author wraps up all the loose ends, including the death of the main character, and leaves no room for further adventures. What I’d like to see is wiggle room for more stories, and not before the novel starts nor after it ends. “A year and five months went by and some life-changing things happened, including overseas travel and the acquisition of a scar, but we will need to put that aside for now.”
More Good Adventures are always possible. Friends, I want them for us.
The earthly remains of my brother Brian were cremated and put into a cardboard box. The family agrees that Brian’s final resting place might be best placed inside an urn of my creation. I hope by May I will have done something suitable; meanwhile, I’m getting my skill back, some at a time.
I’m also doing birds and other miscellany. Practice, practice, practice–feels good to be back.
First I watched FIRST MAN, which stars not Matthew McConaughey but Ryan Gosling. At the 2:07:33 point in the DVD Neil Armstrong is standing at the lip of a crater. Here is a drawing based on that shot, with grateful thanks to the filmmakers:
Next I watched Season 1 of TRUE DETECTIVE. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are partnered, and shown at two different times of their lives. So without freezing the DVD, I started imagining an older-yet McConaughey, and this quirky drawing came out:
I feel proud that these two drawings seem to have been done by two different people. I worked harder on the first one–building up tone with the pastel pencil I was using was a tricky business–but the second drawing required a lot more than looking at something and recording and embellishing.
In his famous novel 1984 George Orwell imagined the countries of the world reduced to three. They were named Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania. They were in perpetual conflict. Two of them would gang up against the third, and seemingly win, but then a different two would form an alliance against the new third country, ad infinitum. All conflict benefited the real movers and shakers of the world. Their machine turned misery into wealth and power. No one knew who these very powerful, very wealthy people were.
Part of the perpetual shame of being a citizen of the United States is that the United States benefits enormously from conflict. Huge corporations euphemistically named “Defense Contractors” work with the military to create more effective means of ending lives. Little research and development is devoted to defense; much is devoted to offense.
The current President, when a candidate for the office, when asked how he would handle a certain collective that has been described as a “Terrorist Group,” replied, and this is as exact a quotation as my memory provides, “I’d bomb the shit out of them.” As President, he has caused to happen a certain amount of bombing that has resulted in the deaths of noncombatants. These deaths are euphemistically called “Collateral Damage.”
In the movie VICE, based on the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney, there is a scene that occurs during the Nixon presidency. Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are near a closed door to a room where Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger are discussing their plans to carpet-bomb Cambodia. Somehow Cheney and Rumsfeld knew this. Years later, Cheney would be instrumental in compelling the US to invade Iraq, while the “Defense Contractor” Halliburton, which formerly employed Cheney as Chief Executive Officer, benefited from enormous, no-bid, cost-plus contractual work. For further information please run an Internet search on “sailboat fuel.”
Part of human nature is a desperate need to feel like one of the “good guys.” “Good guys” cannot exist without “bad guys.” In my lifetime, according to my ever-evolving government, the “bad guys” have included ex-Nazis, organized crime, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, North Vietnam, “Red” China, the U.S.S.R., the Palestinian Liberation Organization (“P.L.O.”), Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Iran, Iraq, Daniel Noriega, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS and/or ISOL, Saddam Hussein…Moammar Ghaddafi…Osama bin Laden…so many more. Ironically, many of these enemies were created by the zealous efforts of the US Government to effect regime change, ostensibly for the good of the world.
The way to avoid Pushback is for the initial Push not to have occurred in the first place.
The words to the acrostic:
Post this suspect’s APB
Unto dog comes tick & flea
Shave it burn it write it: Bic
Have a prospect take a pick
One with Clay, Image and Text 