Don’t Try

"Don't Try." 1/16/13. Charcoal on scrap paper. 5x7".
“Don’t Try.” 1/16/13. Charcoal on scrap paper. 5×7″.

self-imposed deadline + bad time management = short, sub-par entry!

This is another one of my learning-to-draw-with-charcoal sketches from January. I’m not gonna try to spin a narrative out of it, but this little scrap of paper does have some significance to me.

  • The charcoal was a gift from my friend, Mary Beth – someone I never would have met (let alone had the opportunity to become friends with in any other context) – but who was one of the most influential forces in my life, at the point when that sort of thing mattered the most. I was just beginning to get ready to try to figure out what kind of a life I might want to have. Mary Beth was the first person to push me toward art as a “career.” Without her, I don’t think I’d have ever had the confidence to put myself out there as I have or to try to sell my art.
  • "Save Yourself." 11/19/13. Pens and markers. 5x6½".
    This was also drawn in an NA meeting (ten months later).

    Despite the caption/title, this is an example of me trying; trying to draw things I hadn’t drawn before (a bird, a cup, an axe, a Disney cigarette). I’m pretty sure that Bukowski’s tombstone says, “Don’t Try.” Which – if I understand correctly – is in line with the whole Yoda “do or do not, there is no try” thing. I guess that’s sorta what I was saying here. I mean – sure – when I look at it, I don’t see much. It looks like failure. But it’s not, really; it’s a product of that time in my life. It’s not much so far as “art” goes, but it’s an artifact from an important period in my life, and that’s worth something to me.

  • Sometimes (when I’m losing my mind) I wanna do everything; I can’t sit still (until ALL PROBLEMS are completely resolved). In that frame of mind though, I’m usually only capable of making things worse. “Don’t try” isn’t a bad message to send myself at times like that. Sometimes, sitting still is all I really ought to be doing and I have to beat myself into realizing that attempting anything else is just gonna prolong my torture.

That’s it! Now I’m gonna get started putting together something decent for tomorrow.


Eye

The Google search that brings the most traffic to my Storenvy site is “rough sex images.” Something tells me these people might not be finding what they’re looking for…

I got an awesome package in the mail from Justin at Underground Conmunique today. And just in time to utilize my new li’l record listening station that I set up yesterday.

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Adorable. (Right???)

Every song by The Heat Tape sounds like another song by The Heat Tape. It’s a good thing that they’re all really, really good.

VBS thanked me on their record insert (which warms the cockles of my little heart). Wanna hear a funny story? When I first agreed to do the Vacation Bible School split with The Brokedowns (which as we know, wound up on It’s Alive after Traffic Street crumbled) I requested that VBS record extra songs so that I could pick and choose since I thought their track record was a little spotty. Before that happened, I wound up releasing their split with The God Damn Doo Wop Band, which featured “The Swarming” (a song better than anything most bands ever record) and since then, they’ve yet to record a single song that I wouldn’t be proud to release. If anyone’s ever (inadvertently) “shown me,” it’s definitely those guys. I might only just now be getting a physical copy of their album (“Ruined the Scene”) but I’ve been listening to it since it came out (two plus years ago) more consistently than (maybe) any other record to come out in that time. If you haven’t heard it / don’t own it, do yourself a favor and correct that.

And so long as I’m rambling – speaking of awesome packages from Justin… he was the first person to send me a care package when I was in treatment at Tranquil Shores. We’ve only met (briefly) a couple of times, in the midst of whirlwind fests, so for him to go out of his way like that for me / show me that he cared… it really meant a lot to me.

It’s really easy to bum out about how awful this planet can be, but it’s not all that much harder to take a step back and really recognize just how outstanding it can be. People can be rotten sometimes, but – far more often – (in my daily life anyway) I see, again and again, evidence of just how wonderful a lot of us are.

Originally this update was just gonna be a couple sentences but since it’s gone this far…

"Eye." 1/17/13. Charcoal. 9x12".
“Eye.” 1/17/13. Charcoal. 9×12″.

I think this piece fits in well with what I’ve been writing about. My friend, Mary Beth, was about to leave treatment and go back to Atlanta so she was granted a day pass to go out with her nephew. When she came back, she had a bag of art supplies that she had bought for me. Stuff that I had never used before. This is one of my nine “learning-to-draw-with-charcoal” sketches that I did shortly thereafter.

And it’s funny that the only person that currently owns a print of this piece is my friend, Doug, who I met at Awesome Fest 4 when he invited me to stay in the room he had reserved at [whatever that hotel in San Diego that used to be cool is called]. Not only did he let me stay for free, but when I found out that Dead Mechanical had nowhere to sleep, I sheepishly asked if … could they maybe… possibly… also sleep in the room? “Of course!” he said without a second thought. AF4 was the most fun I’ve ever had at any fest and Doug was definitely one of the people that made it what it was.

So… here’s to people like Doug, Mary Beth, Justin, and those lovable tykes in Vacation Bible School. I wouldn’t wanna live in a world without ’em.

Here’s a video of Vacation Bible School playing at Awesome Fest 4. (Perfect!)

I’m gonna take a little time now to do something nice for someone. (If you’re not at work right now, you should try it too!)


Life is Meaningless!

All day, I’ve been working on that ridiculously oversized drawing (the one I mentioned starting yesterday). I think I’ve put at least twelve hours into it so far. I might have problems.

Here’s the third of my nine learning-to-draw-with-charcoal “sketches” – the first four of which were done while sitting in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. The drawing’s from January, but this statement is from May.

I saw someone selling paintings with flat-color backgrounds behind characters like Merle from “The Walking Dead.” “Are you fucking kidding me?” I thought. “What’s the value in (or purpose of) a fucking portrait of a television show character, with nothing added at all to even personalize it?” I was pretty contemptuous for someone that’s trying to be – you know – well. But I realized: I don’t know why that guy paints, I don’t know what he gets out of it, and it really doesn’t matter. Maybe he’s the artistic equivalent of a rock’n’roll cover band playing in some bar every night – and maybe I’m a judgmental little shithead who just started painting a few months ago and should shut the fuck up.

The only thing that’s certain in all of this is that none of it matters. None of it is important. I’m sure there are people that think a portrait of Merle is great and that everything I’ve ever made belongs in a landfill. They’re not wrong.

I don’t wanna be judgmental and there’s no logical criteria from which I can really judge anyway. So… “I shot heroin. You paint TV characters. Life is meaningless!”

I don’t mean that pessimistically. If life has no inherent meaning, each of us can assign significance (or insignificance) to whatever we want, to whatever degree we want. That’s a pretty wonderful, freeing concept.

Admittedly, the statement, “Life is meaningless!,” was on my mind because I had been revisiting my Nate Gangelhoff zines and he used the phrase (hysterically) in an imagined scene wherein executives greenlight the publication of a Mr. T comic book. That’s in the third issue of “You Idiot” but both of his books and all of his zines are really spectacular.

"Life is Meaningless!" 1/16/13. Charcoal on scrap. 4x6".
“Life is Meaningless!” 1/16/13. Charcoal on scrap. 4×6″.