Monthly Archives: September 2013

Current Journal, Status Update

Journal: September 25, 2013

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I feel sick to my stomach but the problem is all in my head. Funny how that works, huh?

I remember when I used to directly address with total transparency whatever was crushing my fucking soul. These days, I don’t have the guts. I can’t handle the consequences.

This strikes me as the kind of shit someone writes or says when they’re relapsing. I’m not, but this is probably also the kind of shit someone writes *just before* they relapse.

Luckily, I know myself well enough to know two things. 1) If there were drugs right here, I’d be fucked; but immediate and effortless accessibility is a prerequisite for me to fuck up in that way. 2) I’m a fucking basketcase, overly invested in the present moment. So while I might feel like I’m in crisis right now – realistically – I’ll paint a fucking picture, go to bed, and tomorrow I’ll be manically happy about some stupid pop punk song and be okay until the next time something brings my regularly simmering gloom, shit, and misery to its boiling point.

I’m gonna go play with some fucking watercolors.

I don’t like this version of me. I don’t like that I allow things to affect me in this way. There have been moments when I’ve shown more strength than I am right now. I hate that I’m talking like this again. And so shortly after acknowledging and writing about the last time I found myself here.

Countdown to the feelings of shame, embarrassment, and regret consequent to writing this entry… 5, 4…

I have friends that call me when they’re in a rough spot. I have a lot of friends that turn to me when they’re struggling. But I don’t turn to anyone. I turn to the fucking internet. I don’t have the courage they have. Why am I better at being a comfort to others than I am to myself?

This song just came up on shuffle.

An F.Y.P cover by Off With Their Heads.

Artist Statements, Cartoons, Intentional, Outpatient

Muggle Problems

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"I Can't Compete With Harry Potter." 5/20/13. Pencil, watercolor, and pen. 16x20".
“I Can’t Compete With Harry Potter.” 5/20/13. Pencil, watercolor, and pen. 16×20″.

Taylor really likes Harry Potter. She’d watch the movies on an endless loop as I sat next to her working on Traffic Street stuff. Even after she broke up with me and I moved seventeen hours south, she called on the eve of the last movie’s release. “You should go see it at midnight too and it’ll be like we’re going to see it together!”

Hilarious!

Heather and I had been dating for three months and had plans to hang out. I called her. “Oh – I just finished reading the first Harry Potter book and now I’m watching the movie – I’ll call you when it’s over.”

And so it began again.

—–

Artist Statements, Expressive, Inpatient

Evil

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"Evil." 11/1/12. Pen. 8½x11".“Evil.” 11/1/12. Pen. 8½x11″.

I didn’t like Spirituality Group because I didn’t have any spirituality. But it was Thursday afternoon at Tranquil Shores so that’s what was happening. I was especially miserable on this particular day and it got worse as group went on. Toward the end, we were given an assignment: Write a letter of forgiveness (to yourself) and share it with the group. I wouldn’t share but I kind of wrote the letter.

Dear Sam,
You are a total fucking shithead. You gave up on everything a long time ago. Though you sometimes have brief moments of optimism, they’re few, far between, and extremely short-lived. Everything you say is calculated and contrived. You may be the most dishonest asshole to ever walk the earth.
I’d like to forgive you on the grounds that you’re doing the best you can – that you can’t help but be a miserable little prick – but even that’s not true. If you wanted to be a better person, you would be.
And you’re not even nice to look at! How have you not been choked out yet? People can’t stand the fucking sight of you. Even your voice is outrageously obnoxious. Every day that you continue to live is either a slight against God or proof that he doesn’t exist – or at least doesn’t care about anything anymore. Or maybe you’re the new plague for the twenty-first century! Sent down to punish this wretched world gone awry. Only YOU are deluded enough to (even jokingly) attribute that kind of significance to your stupid presence.
All I know is that people, and the planet, would be better off without you around. Please kill yourself now.
Unfortunately, time has shown that you’re too weak to even bust that move. Seeing as you’re too pathetic to even express in words (given the limitations of human languages) I’ll forgive you. It’s a pity thing. It must be hard to be so worthless and rotten. Besides, I’m not one to hold grudges. I just hope that you’re somehow miraculously transformed or that – somewhere out there – there is some kind of hell for you to burn in one day.
Love, Sam

As a kid, I’d always said that I didn’t believe in God. Sometime in my early twenties, my position went even further. I wasn’t willing to identify with atheism because I didn’t want to stake any claim — and because I didn’t want to identify with atheists (who often seemed as righteous and fanatical as the worst evangelicals). And agnosticism was just dopey (or agnostics were anyway). They were to spirituality what undecided voters are to politics. I wasn’t undecided – I didn’t give a shit. I was a non-voter, a total non-participant. If anyone asked if I believed in God, I’d tell them it wasn’t a relevant question – that it meant nothing to me.

In trying to not be a heroin addict anymore it had become necessary to let some of that antipathy slip away. I had taken to talking about God as if I believed.

But this was Spirituality Group and I hated it. I looked at the letter I had just written and I hated that too. It was like I was trying to be clever with my self-loathing. It made me hate myself even more. I flipped over the letter and started scratching an upside-down cross onto the page, around which I wrote I FUCKING HATE GOD for making me this fucking stupid.

This was on November 1, 2012 – before I learned to use art for emotional regulation. If this is art though, then this is the first time I did it (even if by accident). After scratching down the last of my authentic expression [the words I HATE EVERYTHING] I wasn’t done but I didn’t know what to do. “What else do people consider evil?” I thought.

From that point on, each thing I wrote was sillier than the next. I wasn’t miserable anymore, I was actually having fun.

My favorite part / the coup de grace came when I snuck the least evil thing that I could think of onto the page.

HAKUNA MATATA

—–

Status Update

Website news (9/23/13)

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A few things going on with the website.

  1. Prints are now sold sealed in archival sleeves (with thick backing boards) rather than in glass-fronted frames. I adjusted all of the prices in the store to reflect the change. Whereas a print of “Stand Up and Say No” used to come out to $24.98 after framing and S/H, it’s now listed at $13.99 with no additional fee for S/H.
  2. Lots of content on this site was published as typed. I didn’t spend any time editing for strength and I fell victim to a “more is better” mentality. From now on, I promise to take a little more time and not pad my artist’s statements with anything that I wouldn’t be interested in reading from someone else.
  3. I deleted a few categories in the store to make it more navigable. And I added pages exclusively for Recently Added and Now On Sale.
  4. I’m toying with the idea of not posting artwork in the blog at all and just posting the statements on each image’s page. (Go to the Gallery and click on an image if you don’t know what I mean). What would you think of that?

 

Here are some entries that have been revised so far. Let me know what you think.

Artist Statements, Expressive, Post-Treatment

You Make Me a Worse Person (I’ll Feed My Negativity and Roast in My Fucking Hate)

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"You Make Me a Worse Person (I'll Feed My Negativity and Roast in My Fucking Hate)." 6/21/13. Colored pencil. 9x12".
“You Make Me a Worse Person (I’ll Feed My Negativity and Roast in My Fucking Hate).” 6/21/13. Colored pencil. 9×12″.

I had to bring my scooter with me because I was going to be in south Florida for the next month. When I loaded it into the back of her car, I accidentally scraped the bumper. She was angry.

The document verifying that I had completed my community service was due with my probation officer that afternoon. I asked if we could stop somewhere to print it out before we left town. That was also a problem.

We were in no hurry and my probation was on the line. This was important to me. Why was it an issue? I didn’t understand. I was hurt so I didn’t insist upon it; I just got in the car, dejected.

We had a four-hour drive and in that time we didn’t speak at all. Eleven days after moving in together and just two days after the explosion of sunshine and fucking rainbows that was “Out All Day,” this is what came out of me… In bits and pieces, it says:

FUCK EVERYTHING. I’m ready to be dead now. This is a drain. I failed today. Can I say “everyday?” Fuck community service. Fuck being a responsible human being. Fuck the scratches on your stupid fucking car. Fuck our apartment. You make me a worse person. I’ll feed my negativity and roast in my fucking hate.

[If you’re not familiar with borderline personality disorder, that’s what it looks like]. Here’s what I wrote about this piece when I was done with it:

I don’t wanna share this ’cause I don’t wanna give people the impression that I’m unhappy. But fuck that. Real life isn’t a simple narrative on a straight trajectory in one direction. My art can say, “I couldn’t be happier,” one day, and “fuck everything, I’m ready to be dead now” on the next. That’s reality and I’m not into painting a picture of my life that’s any less honest than I’m capable of being.

This scribble isn’t exactly “art fully realized” but I held on to it like I would a photograph. It’s a document, an artifact, or a memory – and not a bad one. This was cathartic and it was an opportunity…

I didn’t have my website yet but I was already regularly sharing my artwork and (sometimes) related writings through my Facebook page. To that extent, my day-to-day and my emotional process had become a public spectacle of sorts. I always feel awkward acknowledging this but my art has come to mean something to people (friends, fans of my old record label, even total strangers). I’ve received more than a few emails and messages from people telling me how powerfully they’ve been affected by something I made or wrote. I’ve been regularly called “an inspiration.” [I feel especially awkward acknowledging that]. But it’s been amazing, encouraging, and – in turn – has truly inspired me. One consequence, however, is that I feel like I have a responsibility now. With this piece, I had a choice: Did I want to be some icon of hope or did I want to be honest about what my life, in recovery, is really like? In sharing it, I opted for the latter, and I’ve done my best to honor that decision every day since.

——

When I first added this piece to the website, there was a journal entry from that day (9/22/13) along with it.  I later decided to make that a separate entry.

Current Journal, Status Update

Journal: September 22, 2013

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I was updating Storenvy listings when I found the original statement that I had written for “Out All Day” back in June but hadn’t included when I wrote my blog entry around it in early August. So I went back just now and worked it in.

In doing so, of course, I also read what I did write at that point: something about how I had sold a bunch of records and books that day but no artwork. And how I had some ideas as to why that might be, but that the reasons didn’t matter. That’d be true if it weren’t for the fact that I was afraid to acknowledge them. But I can now.

In early August, I was doing my best to be positive and upbeat but I think it was coming across in my art and my writing that all was not well. I had just wrapped with the shooting of “No Real Than You Are,” one of my first entries on this website was a painting detailing a relapse from earlier that day, and I think I looked a lot like a disaster waiting to happen.

I was used to a regular flow of feedback from posting my artwork on Facebook. When I got home to Jacksonville and launched this website in the last week of July, I half-suspected that I’d start to get more than ever (especially in light of the text content I was posting to accompany the art). That didn’t happen. Instead, my stream of feedback ceased almost entirely. After a week or so, I asked my friend David if he had any guesses as to why that might be. “I don’t think people know what to say,” he told me.

At the time, I thought that meant that the things I was putting up here were so earnest and vulnerable that they made people uncomfortable. There might be a little truth to that but, in hindsight, I think it’s mostly because I looked like I was about to fall – back into heroin, misery, and shit – and like I had no idea it was coming. If nothing else though, I know that my soul felt rotten and my strained optimism wasn’t hiding it. I had fallen apart to some extent – more than I was willing to let on (and I still haven’t talked about everything that happened with anyone other than my counselors and a few close friends). I’m sure I’ll eventually get to the point where I’m able to be as open about that period of time as I am about most of my life but – for now – I’m just happy that I pulled through it.

While Heather certainly deserves a lot of credit for my well-being overall, I think that – had it not been for Rational Anthem and the trip they took me on – things could have turned out much differently and much worse. I can say without any reservations that I’m really happy to be exactly where I am right now. – I’m really happy that I don’t have to remind myself to be grateful right now.

Granted, I was in a rough spot last night but those things happen. In fact, in that respect, tonight’s a lot like the night when I actually made “Out All Day” – just twenty four hours after the emotional turmoil that created “Blueprint for a Successful Evening.” I just hope that from here my next piece doesn’t turn out to be along the lines of the one that came next.

Artist Statements, Intentional, Post-Treatment, Status Update

Punched in the Dick By a Baby Gorilla

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"Punched in the Dick By a Baby Gorilla." 9/21/13. Pencil and marker on vellum.
“Punched in the Dick By a Baby Gorilla.” 9/21/13. Pencil and marker on vellum. 8×10″.

After a couple of days, not having Adderall really drastically hurts my mood, energy, and outlook but – if I just miss a dose – the only consequence is… silliness.

Months ago, riding in the car with Heather back in Bradenton, I had gone longer than I should have without Adderall and I decided that my having been “punched in the dick by a baby gorilla” was the funniest thing ever. I spent ten minutes finding any excuse at all to say the words, “punched in the dick by a baby gorilla.” It’s not at all in line with my usual sense of humor, is totally stupid, and – it’s just absurd. Which is probably why I thought it was so funny at the time; it was funny that I’d even had a thought like that.

Last night, after I started to feel a little better, I spent a couple hours painting. Smoking a cigarette, looking at Instagram, I saw something my friend Trey made. I like my art a lot, but every now and then I wish that I actually had the talent to put an image on my canvas exactly as it appears in my head. Unfortunately, that takes practice. Which is what Trey’s sketch inspired me to do. For some reason, the baby gorilla thing came to mind so I went with that.

I realize that any high school art student could bang this out in two minutes or less but anything other than a cartoon Sam standing perfectly upright is still pretty tough for me. It took me two hours to get to the point where I was ready to color and outline this. It was good practice though and I had fun making it.

 

Just listed for sale ($25).