Roaring N’ Red: Piggy Bank.

First gathering I attended up there… in there… I got razzed hard by a group of businessmen. Jokingly, ‘course. Maybe my eyes played me, but everything and everyone were covered in blue-ish grids and a polish. Like fresh brass. A cat called Tom Miller – South Dakota business owner/operator, purveyor of fine liquor and finer woman, The Bella Union, wealthy everyman – especially gave me shit. He strolled up to me, fairly smooth, with a 1867 bottle of bourbon and a holster-less pistol in his pants. “Ya know, Sonny, I din’ have it like you didd.. [urrrp] I worked through fires, riots, duels and whores for errythin’ I gots”, he went on the tell me how kidding he was. I didn’t care; hell, I was lucky to be alive in some bizarre way. Maybe not officially “alive”.

My life honestly wasn’t like that at all. Ain’t no glamor in traveling Jazz. Some a these musicians will tell you that. The ones who don’t play the curtain game. All show, no heart man. They’ll tell ya, it ain’t glamorous now, and it sure as shit wasn’t then. No sir. I used to feel like I was wastin’ my pay by sleeping under a roof in the South. Booze huts to barns full a paranoid chickens and a sleeping ox. We’d find some tin out back – at least I would, Tony would stay up days at a time – and steal a make-shift for the night. Funny thing is: most these runners probably’d let us anyhow. Imagine that routine nearly 300 nights/year. Nights off, sometimes, but modestly. History plays at its own pace time to time man, don’t even care what the rest a the band is doing.

Now, I didn’t live until Black Tuesday in ’29. I didn’t see the crash first hand, no. Nor the depression or the following chapters. That don’t mean I didn’t see it at all. I saw it all right, clear as day through that grided blue filter I still see occasionally now. Believe it or not, way I lived wasn’t too far from that. Choice, that’s the word here. The difference, man. I choose to travel from tin-roof to tin-roof, in a 10 dollar pinstripe suit blowing into a shining golden horn until I died. (I miss Mable) Folk learned self-control during that time, somethin’ I never knew.

Black, White, and Pink Collage.

By Lee Krasner.  Supposedly painted between 1958 and 1974.  29 by 23 inches, ink and collage on paper.  It almost looks like she started to sign her name in black cursive on the bottom of the piece.

-Sonny

Was Told; (Sammy) Lost Them.

Long stretches of willows, plants that swivel their hips in the breath of the Sun. Luminous rays- heavy scents. The good and the bad, always the breathtaking. The compost, the flesh, the fields; all begging for a chance just to be themselves again. Dire need. The fire burns. Everyone watches. Condemnation! The televisions all go “zzzshhhhshhhh”, speaking in tongues – the struggle rages on. Does it, does it ever. Dark mysterious symbols trample the non-believers, the ONLY non-believers left, a sad sight to behold. We tolerate this with the whip on our asses and the glue on our feet. As John Doe says: “we tolerate it cause it’s common”. Shit… is that all there is left? Commonality?? The only thing left after the glory days. Days of steel, AND steal. Of bizarre treks through time to World Fairs and Cryogenics Laboratories. The frozen spikes on the scale of history. They impale the utter patheticness of the “new”. Once clean, through the hip. Splatter splatter go the Apples, and the seashells, AND the Gold Coins. Hot red turning cool quickly, then freezing in a pool of social glutton. The insides of those behind us rot. They look at us with eyes of disdain. The blood, the piss, the shit, the happy ever after. Where the hell did Sammy run off to anyways? She’s got to be here, just waiting for another good time to yell: “BOO! I’m still here!”. Only to follow sheepishly with, “you didn’t forget about me… did you?” To the snowstorms of heat and brown flakes? No. That’s what we’re told – but NO. The Aunt that none of us ever wanted. The one who took everything, even though she didn’t want to. Promised everything, gave everything, took everything. Cigar-burns. Give me liberty? Please! Give me a grimy, beautiful, wet, spinning sheet I can stand behind. By all means! Give me a new Jefferson. Give me a hard-hard days work, and a PKD Short to match. Enough barely, that’s all anyone wants. Actually… NO, and that’s part of the problem here. Oh my the fire burns. Closet basement dwellers, that’s what they all are. Pines away from a million. At least Sammy and Co. aren’t shifting their eyes one way and shaking hands firmly the other, though. Meanwhile tracing the terrible shit they call music with their lonesome, self-absorbed noses… smelling for the next big obscurity to rub in the face of the upstairs chap and his Electronica. Sammy doesn’t swing like that, and that’s a GOOD thing. But she needs lots of work. One day it will all end though, and they’ll realize what they’ve done. They’ll realize who the dreamers were, and they’ll own up to it. All of it. Now- Landmines; be careful, one may even wedge himself into YOUR gullet. That’d be quite the sight. Watch yourself tough. I mean it. It’s cannibalism at its finest.

8-2%5*20098.

-Sonny

Krasner’s “Right Bird Left”.

Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner’s “Right Bird Left”.  Painted in 1965.  I still prefer Rothko… but Krasner was one of very few female Abstract Expressionist, with a great style that rivals Pollack’s.

(click me)

-Sonny

Fields of Color [Stepping Inside].

One of my favorite American painters is Mark Rothko.  Some art historians argue that Rothko SHOULD NOT be considered American because he was born into the Russian Empire, in what now is Latvia, pre-WWI.  He was raised Jewish is Czarist Russia and luckily never experienced significant discrimination as a child.  That doesn’t mean his childhood was exactly pleasant, though.

Rothko was raised in a city, Dvinsk, where violence against Jews simply didn’t happen; but it was happening everywhere else.  Any fear that comes with such uncertainty and zero stability must be rough on a small child… you’ve been TOLD you’re safe (you know it deep down in your head) yet that fear, spawned from stories of the next town over, still lingers with all it’s un-possibilities.   Apparently though he and his siblings were raised in a Jewish household which focused on a socio political upbringing more so than a religious one.  Still though, I’d imagine turn of the century Eastern Europe as under the political boundaries of Czarism (and the growing Socialist movement) remaining very true to it’s very orthodox religious history and undercurrents.

Rothko came to the United States as a grade schooler, where he did exceptionally well.  So well in fact (in high school) that he was offered a scholarship to take up studying a Yale.  After a year though, the school suspended his scholarship indefinitely; turns out, Yale made him the scholarship offer basically on the grounds of luring one of his friends, an economist and philosopher, to the school.  Rothko quickly became very cynical about the school, and the Ivy-league in general.  The White Anglo Saxon Protestants must have been the “frat dudes” of his time; he hated the elitism and racism which only seemed to be spewing out of any W.A-S Protestant at a school like Yale.  He eventually dropped out.

Rothko’s artistic “story arc” is an interesting one; an artistic maturation involving child painting, the New Deal, Nietzsche, classic mythology in a sarcastic manner, and multiforms most likely deserves the word “interesting”.  It wasn’t until later in his career that Rothko hit his stride perfectly.  In these “signature” years, his style moved farther and farther away from his Abstract-Expressionist roots, friends, peers, and scene.  I always thought that among the Abstract Expressionists this guy’s, Mark Rothko’s, painting was the LEAST pompous and self absorbed.  One Google search comparison between Rothko and any one of his Abstract Expressionist peers at the time would give away this impression.  Shit, the movement itself is totally self centered with the highest of expectations and goals.  The infamous “Ten” of NYC (this of course included artists like Jackson Pollack) preached “to protest against the reputed equivalence of American painting and literal painting”.  Talk about lofty goals; vision exceeding reach.

Somehow Rothko’s paintings never come off that way, probably because they’re so… in so many words… BORING.  They lack the completely insane freelance movement of someone like Jackson Pollack’s paintings.  But alas NO!  They truly are not boring.  They’re calmly meditative, patient, and immersive as fuck.  And all of these paintings are relatively large.  Rothko wanted people individually to stand about a foot and a half away when viewing any one of these.  The whole point was to be overwhelmed by the size, which again submerges you INTO the painting, but NOT overwhelmed by the shapes, colors, movement, and layout.  In this sense, Rothko is NOT an Abstract Expressionist.  Probably more of a “minimalist”.  But I always hated categorizing and pigeon holeing someone like Rothko.  That’s enough yacking… here’s a taste of what I’m talking about:

(click any one of these for the JPG on its own)

Thanks to ANYONE, and I mean anyone, who can overlook Pollack, Kransner, Gorky, de Koonig, etc and appreciate Mark Rothko as somewhat of a rougue during that time; or just anyone who’s curious enough to look up stuff on him.  Thank you.

-Sonny

Pinnn’s SpielLabor.

This place is already giving me that nightmarish feeling. I’m tripping over myself looking for these folks. It smells like sad pathetic falsehoods in here. Snuggling up to the counter-top, “GLASS of… WATER.. Please”. I’m yelling over the shit these people call either “house” or “techno”; whichever they claim it is, it isn’t. The ceiling looks at least 500 feet above my waist. No surprise there; “it’s all part of the process”, I’m muttering to myself silently. A group of brunette twenty somethings gather to my left. Professionals. The drunk one isn’t speaking any language I’ve ever heard, and her face is… well… droopy. Sagging down into her chest. That’s it. Make your presence known; snatch up that attention, it’s what you want. What you NEED. Fucks. And to my right: a sad sad sight. The type of person who would attach onto anything that spoke to it. Head low. Eyes a wandering despondence. Ahh- here we are. Haahaha… the keeper makes me giggle like a fool. At least he’s having fun. I turn around and the site of raw uncut bar/club nightlife absolutely worries me. Not in a “I’m not safe here” way; more of a “is this what we’ve become?” way. These Goddamn people. I’d say they need to get fucked, but most of them probably are on a regular basis. No- they all need a good three hour sitdown with 2001. That’ll (hopefully) straighten them out. Why am I here? Oh yes. To the stairs I stroll. My body glides lower to the ground than normal, like I’m somehow traveling under the “gone-out” radar. The strobes around the dance floor, and over the DJ’s booth are enough to make me vomit. I’m beginning to feel it. Get out! Those big towers pulsating down on me with their beady lights going do… do… do-do-do. I close my eyes only for a moment; immediately bump into someone. Holy shit: I know you, man. This thick red beard starts talking about how he’s been making music for this troupe, but it’s frustrating because people wanna adapt his songs to their own style, he doesn’t like it, but he tolerates it cause it’s music and music’s the SAVIOR, but he’s about to quit and do his own thing, and blah blah; it was interesting at first. But… you know, he pisses himself over John Ford; so that explains that. Finally, the stairs that look to have no end. “In these situations you should always watch your drink (not shrink)”… I know I should… “Yeah, well you haven’t been. Who knows what’s in that water”… Shut-up, if I someone wants to give me a helping free of charge I’m not stopping them… Kk? And the march to an upper floor begins. Something really fucking cool better be waiting for me up there…

-Sonny

Zzzt, shshshshshshshshshshsh.

The Earth above and around him listless, he sits in a bath of deliberation; bathed in purpose, and completed by nothing as of yet. The walls crystallize into a sparkling teal color. This is the man behind the man’s one true home. A filthy labyrinth of meditation. Somehow between the thousands of Chiroptera lies redemption and studiousness. A serious home on serious Earth. Tonight’s absolutely no different. In his musing, he’s once again lost track of the time and date. Days and weeks feel like one in the same down here. Down here. The coffee’s on; the little black tail sails by the pot without sound. It’s unusually quiet, even for a deep, dark cavern. “Record highs again today as the….” Zzzt “…explaining the recent spike in…” Zzzt “…ime Alley’s quarantine for now.” The tele grabs firm hold of his attention; it seems to be switching channels all on its own, at least in his mind. Story after story. Enough stories to make him immortal, so to speak. He swivels his chair back to his workstation. “Something big walks this way…” he thinks to himself obediently. Below the platform a steady pace of tiny water droplets echoes in the gigantic hollow rock. The studies continue. Unknowingly, he advances to his eventual downfall; and subsequent rebirth. But what is this new antagonist who pokes at him so?? The one thing he could have never even dreamed of seeing. The one thing that will make him crumble to fragile pieces. He traces each screen over and over again. He leans closer, hand on chin. The florescent blues and greens from the monitors illuminate his face. It’s a young face, but one scarred with a lifetime of hardship. His eyes are cracked and red, half open. Drip-bloop goes each droplet. “Someone’s coming..!..” he mutters out loud to himself. Straining, he looks deeper into the screens. His collage of Urban/Industrial decay gradually merges into a perfect composition. It’s enough to make him want to cry, and knife a stranger. White noise filters in through the outsides, eventually consuming this vision of his. “Ahh!” It’s deafening visually and aurally. An executioner of those susceptible to it. The kind of terror he could never identify, or put his finger on, but always lurked close to him. He dreamt this time would come. He nightmared how it would end. “STATIC!” he cries out to the cave, “White noise!!” Convulsing madly, he collapses onto the floor, foaming at the mouth and bleeding at the nose. The critters even retire to the utter darkness. He’s completely alone, and he’s lost control entirely. This unseen, unknown conspirator calls the shots now. The keys to his mind have been swiftly taken by it. It could be weeks before anyone finds him. The static has him right where it wants him. Alone and vulnerable. Helpless in a way he hasn’t been since his earliest memories. Paralysis begins to set in as the man lays awkwardly on the platform floor. His hands are clenched in unmovable fists. His teeth mashed together to the point of broken, chipped and a lot of blood. Motionless, he awaits the next phase of the attack. Would it be external, or from within???

-Sonny

[Scious] Con vs Sub.

Once, not long ago, NONE of this happened to me. At all. Today it happens all the time. Not sure why. Am I worried about things? Damn straight I am; but I’m certain this isn’t my problem. No- the mentality isn’t an issue here. So what then? I’m thinking my subconscious and conscious jostle for mental control like the two parties do for control of the Legislative branch. In my confusion, nothing else CAN result from this besides blatant insomnia. Surprising this is not, however. My subconscious rattled around my head, shuffling for supremacy, since I was young. My dreams especially, always threatened the real world Sonny to the point of Rene Decartes’ philosophies on the nature of this “real” world. I’ve done it all in my dreams (like many of us have): killed/been killed, ruled/grobbled. And as I sit here on this computer at this unfortunate point in time, I can’t help but think my subconscious is beginning to take hold, and my very human conscious is being lost. Only via occurrences like these, is my conscious standing a chance against the onslaught. But it isn’t even fair fighting: these are sneak attacks, by and large. One day they won’t work at all, and I’ll be paralyzed consciously in endless sleep. Motionless and peaceful. I suppose that’s nothing but INEVITABILITY. To the bone. But if death is permanent sleep… then in the end, the SUBconscious wins, correct? That is, of course, assuming he/she/it lives on while the conscious rots in the Earth. Decomposition is its most beautiful physically though, not mentally. In a way this whole battle is pointless: the sub will win in the end. With everyone. All the con can do is hold on…. cling on to some meaning before it becomes nothing along with our human corpses.

-SSonnny

The AIofC: Earth Is A Man.

This is Matta’s 1942 painting entitled “The Earth Is A Man”. This abstraction is yet another example of a painting that is much more awe inspiring in person. But this digital print is a good reproduction of the original. This painting resembles MUCH of his 1940′s art. Look here. During that decade, the Chilean painter used similar yellows and green/gray tones to capture a wondrous view of the world around him. Most of these paintings depict the natural world, although they also are open to large amounts of interpretation.  The term “inscape” comes up; although this term refers to an “inner landscape” inside the artist.  Basically, the artist’s mind as a landscape in his/her paintings.  Matta’s “Invasion Of The Night”, another 1940′s piece, is VERY similar to “Earth Is A Man”, both in color and composition.

(click me)

-Sonny

Teepo to Big Brain to ??.

Between must-do’s today I ventured over to my local comic shop “Big Brain”.  I helped out some American-Indian on my way (I’ve heard it’s better to use that term than “native” from some VERY reliable sources), he picked me off the street to inquire to.  I pointed him in the right dirrrection, hopefully.  He couldn’t speak very good English; but that didn’t matter.  I guess the word for “stop”, in whatever language he was speaking, is “teepo”.  Seriously, all it takes is a little patience and time.  Fuck- let people speak the way they want.  I had a history teacher who was an expert with the history of the tribes of the Mid-West.  Especially MN, the Dakotas, WI, etc.  Their entire history is quite interesting.  Enough beautifully visual folklore to last a complete Seven Ages.  Ages?  The “Black Elk” novels are beautiful in this manner.  Even when translated over, the imagery, the legends, the hopefulness, is stunning; I can only imagine reading them in their original texts.  What people don’t realize about these tribes (and the tribes of north/western Africa, but that’s another tangent.  Possibly a tangent too many) is that yes- the wars happened- much like European history.  But much more fills these histories, many times only VERBAL histories.  These people, and the tribes of Africa, all have their own very specific social, ethical, moral codes of conduct.  Sometimes they’re broken, sometimes they’re upheld.  Is that so different from European/Far East/South American history?  NO.

After my run-in with this man, I thought about getting “Scalped” at the comic shop.  I read through a couple of them.  I just couldn’t get into it.  Maybe I’d have been able to if I started with #1.  Either way, I didn’t get any of it.  Although Jason Aaron’s a pretty damn good writer.  I’ve been searching for a new fix for quite some time now.  [Wow.  I don't even know what this is, but it is GOOD.  I need to go look at it quit.  Ahhh: Sage Francis' "Hoofprints In The Sand"]  I continually read 4 comic books right now.  But two of them are ending.  Astonishing X-Men and Thunderbolts.  The other two, which aren’t about to end anytime soon, are Walking Dead and the self-titled Batman.  I shopped around for a while.  I picked up and read through LOTS of different shit.  At one point I was going to get the newest Hellboy.  But didn’t.  Same with Dark Tower and Ultimate Human.

I did find a new book which, perfectly for me, just put out its first issue (at least of this run) last week.  It’s called “Voodoo Child”, yeah what an awesome reference that is, and it’s pretty neat.  I might have to put this into the regular pile.  It was created by two brothers named Weston and Nicholas Cage (NO idea if this is Nick Cage the actor, but I doubt it).  The new run is penned by Mike Carey, who is a good writer in his own way.  It’s semi-horror-ish.  Well- it depends a lot on where it goes from here.  But the premise is more horror than sci-fi (either way I’m good).  Just before the civil war broke out in the late 1800s, a Louisiana house full of abolitionists and Lincoln supporters was attacked by a group of slave-traders and Confederates.  The group burned down the house and killed the entire family/group inside.  A mother and her son ran away, and almost made it, until they got shot in the back deep in the woods.  Before the attackers could find them, a Cajun Voodoo practitioner places a blessing on the son to live through the event.  Flash forward to 2005 New Orleans, where the devastation of Katrina is still massive (it is still great today.  That city still needs lots of our help).  The boy is back.  The art is georgeous.  The covers are done by Ben Templesmith, who’s an amazing painter.  Here’s the cover:

(click me)

Others:

Doktor Sleepless: The Mortician Of Love.  Lots of things are revealed in this issue, and it does a decent job at examining American Societal Paranoia.  The implementation of massive under ground bunkers has always been one of the more bizarre nearly exclusive American endeavors.  It is a bit of a conspiricy theory to insinuate that the Feds made a bunch of these for politicians and people of “importance”, and that those bunkers still exist.  But it does seem plausible.  The government has done dumber things than that.  Apparently Mister Sleepless is acquiring these in order to CAUSE the catastrophe (with existing wide-scoped technology in order to deal with Fallout), not hide from it.  There’s also a lovely little monologue about the nature of hate.  In which Ellis makes the case that no one can ever truly hate if they’ve never loved.  Love, and especially love lost, is the catalyst for hate.  The trick is avoiding it.

All Star Superman #10.  Don’t get me wrong.  As I’ve stated before, I HATE Superman.  I think he’s a schlocky character who is more influential than great.  Once again, the two things can overlap, but they aren’t dependent on each other.  Case in point: Andy Warhol and Elvis.  I owe Superman, and Schuster, my gratitude because without both of them I wouldn’t have even gone to a comic shop today.  But I still don’t like him.  On the other hand, I do like Grant Morrison.  A whole lot.  This little run of 12 will go down as a BRILLIANT Superman run.  In that the premise, the overall concept, is so simple but so cool.  Big Blue is dying from a Solar Radiation overdose.  His future self, along with his future-future-future selfs (I’m talking many millenniums from now), told him he’d complete 12 ultimate miracles before D.  Death.  Creating life, one of these 12, highlights this issue.

Criminal #2.  Why the hell number 2 when Ed Brubaker is on something like 8.  No idea.  Blackness Dan, sheer blackness.  This book won the Eisner Award this year for both Best Writer, and Best New Series.  And it totally deserves it.  This book’s a perfect example of why comic books can, and sometimes SHOULD, be for adults.  Not only that, but this book stands knee, no… neck deep in Realism.  There’re no tights, or super-powers, or zombies, or high-concepts (looking at you Grant).  No.  Just cocaine, guns, prostitution, domestic abuse/violence, murders, broken noses, needles, knives, sex, dirty public restrooms, more sex, dealings, debts, Vietnam veterans, robberies, and the like.  Yeah- highly recommended.

————————————————

Suspend your greatest wants for once; the water is getting deeper and deeper and deeper.  If we weren’t our own Gods, it’d save us.  But it won’t.  So tighten up, and follow that by loosening up; because the end is right fucking nigh.  You’d better either go along with the whole thing, or throw your arms up in crazy outrage.  Only we can save us from ourselves.

-Sonny