My superb friend Karen and her superb boyfriend Ed capture sea life on camera when they scuba-dive. Karen took the photo from which my drawing was derived. I have her gracious permission to use it; and it will get further use below in its reproduction to illustrate the difference between Art and Life:
Four years ago I kicked off my “Lives of the Eminent Poets of Greater Phoenix” with two of my favorite Valley Poets. One was Victoria Hoyt, with whom I’m co-featuring at the April 2014 edition of Balboa House Poetry. The other is the man I depicted above, Mr. Bill Campana, who, since George Carlin has passed, I am reasonably certain is the Funniest Man on Earth. Today is Bill’s birthday, and I wish him all the best.
Words:
Bluff, and stand-up-comical, and full of manic manna
It’s a wonder he’s still local–catch him if you can
Laudably SELF-AMPLIFIED: you will hear from this man
Las Vegas @ the Palace or perhaps the Tropicana
Bill commissioned a coffee mug from me, and says of my posted birthday wish for him, “thanks, gary. it’s muggier when i drink out of your coffee mug.” He uses lower case in his online communications, so as further tribute to him the title of this post is in lower case.
Last time I saw Bill was at the home of Julie Elefante and Robert Lee, and I took this picture of him:
Again–Happy Birthday, Bill!
When Truth and Beauty Got Married: a Febrile Fable
Once upon a time he said Wow are you Beauteous and she replied That’s me and us. He was taken and thus was she, and before Friend Time had much of himself to muse, Truth said I do even if sometimes harshly and Beauty said What the hell, count me in. They lived in a house called Upward, mixed it up in the Upward attic, and nine non-months later Rosie Roseglass was born a half hour in advance of her twin brother Duck F. Yuno-Wadsgudforyu. In no Time at all the twins divvied up the world, inadvertently separating their parents, and a good thing: they no longer got along, despite poetic propaganda to the contrary. The world was puzzled as to why half of it was just fine with horrendous conditions, while the other half was constantly creating and enhancing horrendous conditions. And they lived happily ever after, except for them. The And.
Afterword
1. Grateful acknowledgment is given to Joseph Arechavala for the what-if that prompted this Fable.
2. Grateful acknowledgment is given to the creators of Fractured Fairy Tales, a feature of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, for influencing my child’s mind in the mid-60s. Without that influence this Febrile Fable would never have been written.
3. The illustrative sketch was done on a piece of cut-up scratch paper during my shift at the Village Gallery today. That is why there is faded reversed lettering on the image; it is from the other side of the paper.
4. After I did the sketch I looked at it and realized that I must have subconsciously modeled Truth after Arthur Miller and Beauty after Marilyn Monroe. Funny how the mind works…
Ansel Adams once said that were he confined to his house for the rest of his life, he’d still find rich and endless subject matter for his photography. Your humble narrator says that were he confined to the subject matter Spoon, Water, Glass, he’d find endless ways to beat a dead horse to the ground and beyond with those three elements alone. Luckily, this need never be put to the test, and shall not; and this day’s Evocation of the Three has a special guest with the reflectivity of glass, the fluidity of water and the wieldiness of a spoon.
Words, which may make more and more sense on successive rereadings:
Sipping’s an S-WORD that ends with a G
Parsing BANANAs divests them of peel
Ousting a despot brings more from the sea
Owning that Ownership has its rewards
Note that our s-words may morph into swords
When you look in the mirror, do you see a lazy person, or do you see a person who hates laziness? Do you see both?
These two “digitally remastered” Blasts from the Past address the yin and yang of laziness. The design for “Laziness Deplored” was put on a T-Shirt and light-use worn for four years–it went well with a Hawaiian shirt. I also made a transfer of “Laziness Defended” but, fittingly, found myself too lazy to do the ironing. When I get around to it–2014 probably–I’ll wear that T-shirt to the ground, and maybe beneath it, if they bury me in it. But I hope to be too lazy to die.
On the other hand, I hope to be too unlazy to cease doing these pages, into which, to be melodramatic, I am putting my very soul. Please note that with “Laziness Deplored” I took the effort to make the double acrostic exact as to line length, meeting that criterion of a “true” acrostic. To find out how unlazy you have to be to do that, I cheerfully invite you to try it sometime..
Today is the one-year anniversary of the “One with Clay, Image and Text” blog. In the first year of the blog there were 321 posts, which missed the mark of a post per day but not by much. People in more than 70 different countries had a look at the blog, and one memorable day, thanks to the late, great and much lamented Roger Ebert, a single post received more than 1,500 views.
“Well, Isaac, what has you loined?” is what Judah Asimov would ask his son Isaac after they had just finished going to the theater and seeing a movie. Isaac’s father, who took the Asimov family to America from Russia when Isaac was three years old, valued his son’s inquiring mind, and was always encouraging him in his learning. I’ve found his question of great value whenever I do something, or have been through something, that was difficult yet rewarding. So now I ask: what have I learned from this blog of mine?
1) If I live to be 300, I will still be learning how to draw.
Most of my posts include at least one drawing, usually including calligraphy of an acrostic poem of mine, with the drawing serving as illustration. This is a constant challenge, and it reveals certain terrible defects I have as an illustrator, the chief of which is lack of patience. When I take my time I do far better than when I rush things. Here is an example of me not taking my time–from a weekly feature I do for the Facebook poetry group “Poets All Call”:
And here is an example of a work in progress wherein I am taking my time:
2) The social media may save the world.
Anyone with computer access and time on their hands has access to immense knowledge, not just of facts but the contents of their fellow world citizens’ hearts. We are in the mid-dawn of a new stage of civilization, and we “ain’t seen nothin’ yet” as far as its potential goes.
3) I sure love checkerboard patterns, spoons, and a soapbox to preach on.
‘Nuff said for now–I’m going to celebrate!
The latest in my Spoon series was prompted by a challenge from my friend Genevieve L, who manages a drawing group in Facebook. The challenge was to make a drawing of or including water in some form.
Originally, I thought to do a double acrostic, and got as far as this:
But this seemed a dead end–the triple acrostic would distract from the drawing, and it felt better to have the acrosticist STFU and let the draughtsman do the non-talking.
This one is crying to be made into a painting ten feet high. Alas, it would need to be photoreal, and none of that Giclée stuff either; that’d be cheating. If fifty grand fell out of the sky into my lap I’d quit my job and spend a year on the project. That’s unlikely to happen, since when I sit outside I’m usually at a picnic table, and if the shade tree didn’t stop the 50 Gs in its tracks, the top of the table would. But it is a nice dream.
This brings up the subject of Patronage and Grants. In his landmark novel Stranger In a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein had his Wise Old Owl character Jubal Harshaw yell, “A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!” I read Stranger more than forty years ago, when I was wet behind the ears and impressionable, but I shouldn’t have taken RAH’s word for it; after all, both Leonardo and Michelangelo enjoyed the patronage of Lorenzo “Il Magnifico” de’ Medici, and if he wasn’t The Government, who was? (Pope Julius? Well, yeah, but “in addition to” not “instead of.”)
So far the only people to buy my artworks or otherwise give me money to create have been private parties. But I did apply for a grant once, so this is no sanctimonious testimonial. And my hero Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five “on Guggenheim money (God love it).”
As for the image, and why the tenors and the eggs and the lock, and why the Spoon is All-Important, not to mention the torn envelope, which wasn’t mentioned, I’m of the opinion that the story the viewer creates of this concatenation stands a good chance of being better than the story I would tell about it.
Support the Arts, folks!
It’s been over 50 years since Bob Dylan wrote and first performed “Masters of War.” Millions of people have heard the song and many have applauded it; but judging by world events the song has had less peacemongering effect than a hill of beans. That’s because people, including me, thought it was enough to voice disapproval in eloquent terms, and didn’t take the message as a call to action beyond the pianissimo “You tell em, Bob Dylan–we’re with you–we’re gonna march on Washington; just you wait and see.”
Knowledge is power. How many Americans know the name Sarkis Soghanalian, an ACTUAL Master of War, and his tango with Spiro Agnew, disgraced former Vice President of the United States, and his later tango with the Clinton administration? Finding out is a mere Internet search away. Go ahead–I dare you.
Here is the latest page that will end up somewhere in the multi-volume LIVES of the Eminent Poets of Greater Phoenix, Arizona. It is of a talented and assured young man whose poetry skewers contemporary pretension. He also does a killer Christopher Walken imitation.
Here are the words to the double acrostic:
Jejune young ladies get him in the mood
And he reveals what makes them tickle you
Recounting, as becomes a raconteur
Encounters with the Selfie-ish. Bravura
Delivers him to starpow’r now & soon
One with Clay, Image and Text 