Haus der Luege : Noli Evocare Quod Reprimere Non Potes

...I’m in one place. With the exception of St. Patty’s Day (which I can take or leave, unless I need some vegetables winged at my head, which is what happens from the floats during the parades. Jay collected a dozen cabbages a few years back with which he fantasized about making kimchee. This plan involved many jars buried in the backyard. I put the kibosh on that right quick.), nothing much is happening in New Orleans.

Except for the earth-quickening of Spring. The air is finally in the 70s. The doors & windows are open. While July & August are quiet, too, March doesn’t have the ever-present fear of Hurricane-Around-the-Corner, so I can be home without thinking about packing up everything I care about & fleeing for high ground.

So I go out. Play with friends. Dance. Nap. Drink a bit too much. Paint. Think. Watch dumb horror movies at 2 in the morning with rosemary popcorn. Become a way-station for traveling tribe. Ride my bike. Pull some weeds. Play kitteh-bagpipes. Make new prints. Ship books & art. Tease friends on FaceBook.

It’s all battery recharging. I pack slack in preparation for when there is no downtime, no alonetime, no in-my-own-hometime, and there will be a LOT of that come May. June. September-December.

But right now it’s good. Peaceful. A little hungover. There’s a new painting on my easel, and I think I’m getting the kinks worked out. Jay’s set medic-ing today, and just got a gig on an ambulance, and folkloricfusion is here prepping for Gulf Wars.

It’s like a grown-up summer vacation. New Orleans ain’t a bad place to do it.

Something whack has been happening when I speak. And a similar whackitude is happening when I write.

I’ve always had this thing about wanting to be absolutely, clearly understood. (And yes, I know it’s impossible). With the preponderance of written correspondence, I’ve found that I’m peppering my missives with more and more emoticons and acronyms. That “WTF” has become spoken, rather than just written. That my few remaining Luddite friends stare blankly when I interject LOL-speak into a conversation. “ROFLCOPTERED” has become a word. Gah.

And emoticons. I’m just as likely to end a typed sentence in “O_o” or “;)” as I am a period or exclamation point. I hate the chilliness of the black word on white screen, and I will sink to these minimalist cartoons to inject personality into my intent. I know I’m not alone in this, and I’m wondering if this is good or bad for the language.

I know that English is an malleable, morphing, inclusive, vibrant, twisty, sculptural, mercurial, absorptive whore. I think that’s a good thing. But I’m watching a dividing line growing between those who are tech-savvy and those who are not. An impatience with reading more than three paragraphs, or, jeebus forefend, 140 characters on one side. On the other, an insistent ignorance of how net language is changing the way we think, speak, act. Maybe all in keeping with the way English grows & changes anyway. Perhaps the flood of new words and punctuation adds to its structure, and makes us think & inter-relate in new ways.

But I know I’m guilty of dismissing someone who types in all caps as an idiot. (I’ve actively heard the imaginary yelling.) I suspect I’m not alone. If someone doesn’t know what a LOLcat is – are you done with her? Someone else isn’t good at checking email - is your friendship over? An old friend doesn’t bother with MyFaceJournal. Do you not bother with him anymore? Is the separation between net & not-net savvy the new cultural divide?

The way I have conversations has changed. I spoke to my mother a while back and she asked how I was doing. I barely began to respond when she cut me off: “I already read that on your blog.” I have strangers bring up things I wrote about five years before, launching into an unremembered conversation I forgot I started. I’m falling out of touch with beloved friends because they aren’t online. I’m getting frustrated with having to repeat in person what I got tired of typing about six months earlier.

It’s like living on multiple meta-levels. I can’t keep track of which conversations I have with whom, where. Don’t know if I know someone online or in person. Don’t know how to set my face when I’m working a show, cuz someone comes up to me grinning like we’re best friends, and I don’t know who they are til they give me their screen name. It’s insane.

(Yeah, I know I’m all over the place again. Time to spend more time on my bike & in the studio than at the computer.)

...as they traveled across America in a painted bus, proving they could make a living as a performance art troupe. They called it "The Fairy Tale Experiment".

They swung by New Orleans, so yours truly makes an appearance around 29:45. I had no idea I waved my arms around so much when I spoke. You'd think I was Italian;)

http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi1092355097/

...cuz for the first time in a long time, I felt like doing some drawing. And I felt like doing some painting, but I had NO canvasses around, except for a HUGELY complicated piece that’s been beating me down.

And while I frantically tore apart the house & car, I was full of self-loathing.

For most of my life, my sketchbook was never more than 3 feet from me. I drew every day, for hours. For years. As I got older, the books became more and more interspersed with writing, journaling, plans, and now, when I work on sketches for new art, the designs are just as much drawing as word – a doodle of a demon cow, for example, with all the color filled in as notations like “rose (arrow to the left) navy, spangled with magic”.

But I haven’t been drawing much. As I opened the trunks, went through the bookshelves, dismantled the piles, I berated myself.

So what the hell HAVE you been doing? Sitting on your ass? Watching TV? Drinking?

And I had to put my foot down, take a breath, and think about what life’s been like the last few years.

I bought & built a house. Kept the art business going while covered in mold & gypsum. Built & rebuilt a renfaire booth. Wrote a book. Gone on the road. Re-did the website. Held down the fort while my blond became a soldier. Painted. Upped the online presence. Organized my show schedule. Managed several print runs. Hosted a fair chunk of guests. Taken dance classes. Taught other folks how to follow their own paths. Grew a garden from oil & asbestos.

I had to smack me around to cut me some slack. I’m no longer a kid with simple kid needs. My life has expanded beyond just me & the best-friend-in-a-book. But I’ve self-identified for 30+ years as an artist, and it’s limited me, even as I reach out in ever-widening circles.

Several of my friends have opened galleries in the French Quarter. One of them is Barbara Yochum, if you’re interested, and another is Tanner. Recently, I sat on Barbara’s shoulder, watching her paint. I’ve always envied her technique – she’s so loose & light & easy, so different from my tight, strained, bumbling attempts, and it’s rare that I get to watch another painter work.

Easy, full-armed motion, with any-color on the brush & turp. Doodling, erasing with a paper towel, more doodling. Letting the image evolve as it will. Blocking in more areas, with any color. More erasing. Only the loosest idea of where the image will go. Not forcing it. Fun, effortless, joyful.

I found my sketchbook. I have an idea. I’m gonna go see Shutter Island this afternoon, and then I’m gonna pick up some canvasses.

It’s time to get off my ass, even if that’s technically not where I’ve been, and get back to work.

...at least I got some coffee in me first.

It started with J&I talking about “debate”. He said that I don’t really DO it unless I feel passionately about the subject, and then, I go all out trying to convince the other party of my point. HE can happily take a counterpoint he doesn’t much care about, and debate for the sake of engaged discourse.

He’s right. I don’t much see the point in argument for fun. Discussion, sure, but just taking sides without GETTING anywhere? Not so much.

And then, off we went. First, lemme tell you a story:

Shortly after moving to New Orleans, I made a new friend who costumed for the movies. She called me from her current gig to tell me that the art department was short several hands, and while they couldn’t pay, it might be a fabulous opportunity to meet some people in the industry.

That first day on set found me in a cavernous, crumbling brewery in its last transformative throes into a mad scientist’s laboratory. I was a corpse manufacturer, which required sculpting bodies from newspaper and duct tape, which were then wrapped in cheesecloth, hung from meathooks, and sprayed with pseudo-blood and dirt. In the midst of this madness, someone called for sketches of cellular mitosis as props for the doctor’s lab.

I volunteered, and got out of the fray on the set, sequestering myself in the doctor’s office. I marveled at the meticulous attention to the props: the faux tilework on the walls, the monstrous 1930s desk, the rubbery body parts floating in glass jars. Seated behind the desk, I cracked open the dusty German tome, and focused on copying images, but something was making me uneasy.

I squinted at the ceiling 50 feet above me. The room in which I was working was a smaller, walled set inside of the larger one of the laboratory, and it didn’t have any ceiling of its own, being just a few well-camouflaged walls and a lot of props. I grabbed the lead set guy and asked “Hey, you sure this place is safe? I keep feeling like something is gonna fall on me.”

“Oh, sure”, he replied. “We’ve been working in here for months. It’s perfectly fine.”

So why was I so nervous? I didn’t stop drawing, but the back of my head wouldn’t stop babbling.

If something falls on you, it’ll be like a tornado, you’ll have to get inside a doorframe on under the table.

Under the table would be better.

No, if something falls, you won’t have time to get under the table, you’ll have to shoot back in the rolling chair.

Back?

Yeah, back, but not straight back, you’ll have to move fast back and to the right, so brace your feet to the left and push HARD.”

I’m only vaguely aware of this internal dialogue, but nevertheless, I’m working at an uncomfortable, odd angle: heels dug into the floor on my left, my body tensed and ready to shove away from the desk. I never once stopped drawing.

NOW.

I shoved back and right as hard as I could, slamming into the far wall, but not far enough away that the 12 x 20 foot board plummeting down on me didn’t still graze my shoulder and take a small chunk out of my left wrist. It then embedded five inches in the wooden floor directly under where my head had just been. An idiot grip didn’t look below him, pulled one end of the board (that had been resting on the two opposite faux-walls) to him, and watched helplessly as the whole thing rocketed down.

I was shocked, terrorized, and in pain. A medic whisked me away to the producers’ trailer where a succession of older men with expensive glasses asked after me as I cried, shook and bled.

“So, what do you do when huge planks of wood aren’t falling on you?” And I pulled out my little portfolio of my paintings which I always have on me somewhere, and handed it over.

He flipped through the book and said “Wow. You’re good. Do you do storyboards?

And of course I said yes (and I had, sort of, but only for a couple of indy films many years before, but I figured I could wing it on my comics background), and I gave him my card.

I got a call for my first real gig two weeks later.

So, that’s the backstory. And the pattern in it is inherent to almost all of my success. My intent, the passion I put into the world, and the risks I take to make opportunity, all conspire to get me what I want.

I don’t think it’s magic, per se, though it may look like that because it is not easily quantifiable in beakers & microns. I think that I am made of energy, and I can power myself through the world, and the world conspires to give me what I want, because I AM the world. We are all interlinked in the flow, and fueling our desires with our intent get us where we want to go metaphysically in the same way that picking a direction & moving our feet towards it relocates our bodies.

I believe this with my whole self. I do not doubt. I’ve seen, over and over, the manifesting of this way of being. If you’ve read my book, you’ve seen it, too. I put out what I want, I put everything I am behind it, and the universe rolls in ecstasy at my feet, to misquote Kafka.

Jay smiles at this. He says he neither believes, nor disbelieves. That he is an agnostic.

And of course I went at him. How can you NOT see this? You’ve lived with me for years. You’ve seen it happen over and over. Even you & I meeting, it is this thing I’m talking about.

And he smiles, and reiterates his stance, and makes me crazy.

He says, referring to the little story above, that the brain works in way in mysterious ways. That I was subconsciously aware of my surroundings. That I got lucky. That parts of me saw that board, heard the grip, calculated rate of speed & angle, prepared my body to get out of the way. That part of me heard the idiot above. That in 9 other realities, I didn’t make it out alive.

And I believe that it was precognitive. That the universe had other plans for me. That this would be the fastest (and most dramatic) way for me to get noticed by the right person to do what I’d really come to do, which was not to make corpses, but to draw cool stuff for cool projects with cool, driven people. And the universe conspired, as I feel it always does when I listen to it & follow the light, to give me what I want.

Jay says that he will most likely never agree with me until they come up with a radical breakthrough in how the brain functions.

And then we focused on the cats, who were beating each other up, and let it go. For now.

But I’m right.

...at my picture-taking rant. She cares enough enough about me that she broke out her points carefully, even while calling me, in no order: vain, spoiled, solipsistic, abrasive, condescending, artistically self-righteous & disingenuous.

Good Lord! Quite the lecture for those who don’t sort our vacation snaps...according to ‘composition’ and ‘moment’. Jeezus, Marrus. Can’t folks have a hobby without it having to meet your strange and comparatively high artistic standards of internet self-publishing? Or worse...making clear that participating in activities you don't endorse removes your reader from your friendly consideration; no longer a person you value and validate.

...some invasions of...privacy are one of the not-perks [of being an artist]. Suck it up and be decent to people who...want an image of you to remind them of some good emotion you’ve inspired in them…likely before you’ve opened your mouth with a post like this. Or wait until you’re rich enough to retire without ‘em and THEN write something like this. Then you’re Garbo. This post makes you Chevy Chase. And no one can stand him, anymore....

...They just want a goddamned picture, Marrus. Not a piece of your immortal soul.

My rant was intended to blow off steam, and to change some behaviour. Jay told me that the language to do one and the language to do the other are not the same. I hadn’t considered that. It’s good to have him around to temper me.

Granted, it wasn’t the best of my writing. Yes, I might have been a sawed-off shotgun and gotten some well-meaning people’s panties undeservedly in a twist. Absolutely, the topics of privacy, artistic integrity, hobbyists, my experience with rude, unthinking fuckers – all got mashed up in the fury of my typing. Perhaps I should have been more careful.

Usually I am. Usually, I spend several days crafting the pieces I put online. I feel that it’s sacred, this ability we have to fling our words out into space and have them fall on a million ears. I try to use my blog to educate, entertain, inspire, catalyze. I believe my rant incorporated the first & last of those.

Someone liking the way I look doesn’t mitigate the intrusion of a camera. Looks are an accident of DNA. And while people can do whatever they want as hobby: take pictures, sculpt, run hashes or marathons, owning a phone with a bunch of widgets doesn’t give them the right to do whatever they want with it. Texting in movie theatres makes me just as crazy as discovering surprise burger shots of myself online. Indiscriminate picture-taking-and-posting shows a lack of consideration that the moment should continue on, but you’ve stapled THAT moment down, forever.

How many of you have discovered unfortunate shots of yourselves? Has your job or relationship been compromised because of them? Can we untag or ask to take down? Sure. Are we pissing in the ocean? Absolutely. Is it our right to scream our heads off once in a while? Damn straight.

In the last few years, I’ve met so many people. I can’t keep track of everybody. Strangers come up wanting to hug me (don’t get me started on THAT. Hate it). People launch into conversations about something I wrote 8 years ago & I have no idea who they are. I’ve realized I can’t make everybody happy, and I can’t be nice all the time. I try, really hard, and usually I do a pretty good job, but I’m human, I get aggravated, and sometimes I go off.

I’m trying to do a lot of things here. I lost the way of making a living that was the reason I moved to New Orleans 6-ish years ago. I’m gonna be on the road for 10 weeks starting the end of April at a bunch of Faires. I don't yet have any distribution for my book other than my own sweat, and the kind things you guys say about it. I have NO buffer between me and all these well-meaning, and sometimes not-so-well-meaning people who think I owe them something. I’m VERY grateful they like my work, I’m MORE grateful when they buy it, but that doesn’t mean that I owe anyone a hug, a fuck, a photo, dinner or anything other than what we’ve already exchanged. The stranger who approaches me has hurt, verbally attacked, or grabbed me just as easily as said, “Oh, it’s a pleasure to meet you – I really like your stuff.”

There are no buffers other than the ones I make in these various forums, and my intention was to scare off the lunatics, or make even well-meaning folks think twice before aiming a camera at a stranger.

...you MUST look at Palin for President!!!!.

(and then brace for site spamming. Which hasn't happened yet. No. Really.

:)

(Warning: Rant ahead)

I’m told I'm photogenic. I don't agree, and more than that, I don't care. (And this is not a cry for people to tell me I’m gorgeous, so please don’t.) I think I'm kinetic & friendly (mostly), and to a lot of people, this translates to: "wanna pic of that".

I’m not a model. I don’t want to be. I don’t like the blind eye of a lens staring at me when I’m working (how would YOU like a camera pointed at you when you did YOUR job?) and I CERTAINLY don’t want every little moment memorialized when I’m off the clock. When I’m not working, I’M NOT IN THE PUBLIC EYE. Your wanting a picture of me doesn’t not mean that I WANT my picture taken. If I want one, I will ask. It was one thing when it was a friend snapping a moment who then had to print it out, but now, it's anybody with an iphone, and it gets stuck up & tagged on FaceBook, leaving me to police shitty shots of myself cramming a chicken finger into my mouth at a show.

And just because you’ve taken a gazillion shots does not mean a single one of them, let alone ALL of them, are worthy of photodumping on FaceBucket, or MyJournal. A photographer who doesn’t sort work according to composition, moment, lighting isn’t an artist. She’s a monkey pressing a button on a sophisticated piece of equipment she doesn’t understand. Taking good shots is not just about pressing the button at the right moment, it’s about looking at the results afterwards, and choosing what’s not just good, but excellent, and understanding why. A photographer might shoot for an entire evening or an entire week, and come up with nothing good. And chances are, I’ll be in that crappy shot.

The moment still happens if it’s not memorialized in digital. Put down the damned camera and just BE once in awhile. Nothing makes me crazier (well, that’s a lie, but it makes me pretty crazy) than seeing someone with a video camera glued to their eyeball as they walk around a Faire / New Orleans / a park with their kids. It’s a separation from the world, a crutch, a way to distance. And just because I can pluck the strings on a guitar does not make me a musician. You want to call yourself a photographer, fine, but don’t force me to be your unwilling subject.

(There are a few folks out there who consistently take excellent pictures – Eric Tetreault who shoots for CTRF springs to mind. His success comes from not only shooting constantly & covertly (I’m almost never aware of him photographing me, but I know how good he is, and therefore I don’t mind), but I suspect he is also a ruthless editor. Shadow Angelina (who's never taken a photograph of me) is also excellent. And Joe Decker, does beautiful, abstract, nature images that I couldn't get if I banged away on a camera for a million years.)

(This rant does not include happy parents that want a shot of the artist with their recently decorated child. I'm not the subject, I'm incidental. Or folks that want a picture of me with the painting they just bought. Again, my face is not the subject. The thing I created is.)

(And I realized that this is NOT the first time I’ve gone off on this subject. Sigh. This is from a voodoo ceremony three years ago. Things are only getting worse.

...by a website called "Fan to Pro". They're devoted to teaching folks how to turn their passions into their careers. (Sound like something I might be into?)

You can read it over here. It's got a lot of the answers to the questions I get asked - usually when I'm working and have no time to answer them;)