“I’m a Fucking Artist, Guys.” 12/14/12. Pen. 2×3″.
I was sitting in someone’s coin-out [rehab graduation ceremony] and feeling a little upset over a girl [shockingly out of character, I know] and trying to do something productive. I had zero ideas though. I mean, once you’ve made ten or eleven pieces, what is there really left to do as an artist? “What do other assholes draw?” I thought.
Campbell’s soup cans! Because it’s like… really clever, right?? Really, I just figured it was one of the few things I stood a chance at drawing somewhat recognizably.
When I was done, I wasn’t upset anymore – which means that this cartoon has basically the same story as HALF OF THE OTHER stuff I’ve made.
Which is cool…
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Just recently, I realized that I stole this caption from Dear Landlord. Right before Dream Homes came out, Zack posted something online about the tracklisting being changed. The song “Bong Hits” was instead going to be titled “Rosa” because – as he put it – “We’re fucking artists, you guys.”
“Blueprint For a Successful Evening.” 6/17/13 and 5/12/14. Acrylic paint, spray paint, and ink. 24×18″.
I’m always busy. I always have “really important” stuff that I “have” to do. When I was living in DC, it was Traffic Street Records year-round and law school around final exam time. Back then (before heroin became the main problem), I feel like the biggest point of tension in my relationship was my emotional unavailability. Every night, Taylor would ask me to come to bed, I’d tell her I was almost done, and then six hours would pass before I actually made it to the bedroom. So every night she went to sleep alone, woke up while I was still asleep, and then came home from work to find me busy packing up records or laying out a record insert or [whatever]. Eventually, I started doing whatever Traffic Street stuff that I could at school instead of the apartment, so that she’d already be asleep when I got home and I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about not coming to bed and not paying attention to her.
Heather and I moved to Jacksonville this June. She didn’t have a job lined up before we got here so, for the first two weeks, we were both home all the time. Since I’m always busy, I’m never bored and I’m always content in that regard. But Heather has been working [forever] and likes having a job to go to every day. Consequently, she was bored out of her mind. And – maybe because of my own insecurities and my experiences with Taylor – I felt guilty anytime I was working instead of paying attention to her. It was stressing me out. And the fact that she was visibly bored and unhappy made even harder. Especially when I tried to talk to her about it and she just tuned out. Eventually, I decided that there was nothing I could do and just went about doing my own thing. But when it got to the point where we were barely talking at all, it was too much.
I’m feeling disconnected. I’m trying to push through it, assume the best, not stress out. If someone’s not talking to me, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with me. They could just not feel like talking. Or it could have everything to do with me. But if every attempt at conversation – every question asked – is met with a one-word response, what am I supposed to do? [Moving to a new city together] is supposed to be exciting. And it is for me. But I feel like only for me. And that tempers the excitement a bit. I opened up, put everything out there. Explained with sincerity how I’m feeling. And I got nothing back. Literally, no response.
[ -written June 17th]
I was at a loss. Now I couldn’t work. I sat alone in the living room dumbfounded. And scatterbrained; I had my probation deadline hanging over my head and hadn’t finished my community service hours yet. That was also weighing on me and fucking me up. Especially since I was getting my hours from home; that meant that I could have been doing it in that moment, but wasn’t. Instead, I decided that I needed to paint. It had been too long.
There’s a small block of text in the center of the canvas:
My first impulse is to lie in bed, face down, and cry forever. My second is to beat off. I need to write and paint. I spill my guts and… I’m struggling. Sharing life isn’t easy. I might not be built for it. It’s tough to know what’s right for me. I like being me but it isn’t easy. I guess nothing is. That doesn’t feel true.
The next day – as has so often been the case this summer – I did a total one-eighty. Within twenty-four hours of painting “Blueprint,” I was working on a drawing that says: “I couldn’t be happier” – something I genuinely felt.
REVISION (5/31/14):
Nearly a year had passed since I painted this piece and it remained unsold. That’s mostly due to the fact that I hadn’t been displaying it because I didn’t really like it anymore. I don’t usually go back and work on old pieces because I tend to think of them as “artifacts” from another time in my career. But if I was keeping it locked up in a trunk, in a garage somewhere, it wasn’t really doing much good as an artifact or anything else for that matter. Better to go back, work on it some more – until it was something that I could be proud of and sell with confidence. It took another ten hours or so and I finished it on May 12, 2014. Sixteen days later, it was sold. Here’s what it used to look like…
“Blueprint For a Successful Evening,” as it was upon its initial completion on 6/17/13..
“Success rates” for slit wrists and knives to the heart are surprisingly low. I didn’t want to go to a hospital…
Forty-eight hours before “No Accident” and the moment when I started to finally “get better,” I was in my room – researching suicide methods that didn’t require anything that couldn’t be found in my apartment at Tranquil Shores. I was going to kill myself because a girl was mad at me. A girl that I wasn’t even sure that I liked.
Earlier that afternoon, we did an exercise in group. We had to pull a couple items out of a basket and relate to them. I declined to say anything aloud, but when it was time for art therapy group, I started writing.
The fortune was absurd, the paper it was printed on was dirty and crumpled. Together, they were useless. This pencil is not useless. It has incredible potential. It is an instrument of a higher purpose. In the right hands. It is comforting. I like holding it in my hand. With paper, it can save me from almost anything. And it is forgiving. It has an eraser. If I make a mistake, it allows for correction. Or at least undoing. The mistakes I make with it are rarely entirely forgotten. I don’t know how to apply this to my life. Is it by chance that the trauma I addressed [in group] this morning, that I was supposed to see is not happening anymore (but which I claimed could and would (and sort of was) still taking place) – is it by chance that just hours later it pretty much is [happening again]? Or did I choose that memory because it had already begun? Yes, that’s it. It’s just more clear now. Because I realize I’m no longer willing to be honest which means I can’t get better. I can’t be helped. So there’s no reason for me to be here. Except that to hope that things will change once more. I no longer believe that I’m a drug addict. Sort of. I know I can’t use drugs (or that it’s not worth the risk in any case). But I’m not going to pick up. Fuck that. I’m over it. It’s not appealing anymore. But I’m miserable. Like I realized on my first weekend here, people are unhappy for countless reasons other than drugs. Me? I have no legitimate reason to be unhappy. It’s all in my head and it’s illogical. Is that recognition enough to get help in getting well without disclosing my irrational stressors? Celexa is an SSRI. Cymbalta is an SNRI. Which means that it does the same thing as Celexa, plus more. Adding Celexa to my prescription [regimen] adds little to nothing. And it will be another 3½ to 5½ weeks before we even know if it’s having any effect. I need something different and I need something faster. I am chemically imbalanced. I need chemical balance. Abilify might work. It’s too expensive. It’s less expensive than inpatient treatment. Maybe I’d be better off with Abilify and outpatient treatment. Here or elsewhere. At this point I’m not afraid to leave.
I don’t like art anymore. I don’t like treatment anymore. I don’t think I’m ready to get better anymore.
“Clarity.” 12/10/12. Pencil. 12×18″.
This piece is called “Clarity” because that’s how I actually felt in this moment. I thought I had nailed it. I was deluded enough to think that my primary issue was chemical, thoroughly confused as to whether or not I needed any kind of mental health therapy or substance abuse treatment, yet I was somehow lucid enough to know that those feelings (and my written rant) were totally insane. The title is “Clarity” because I thought it was hilarious. I wasn’t laughing, but I knew it was funny. Even then.
Later that night, I made a half-hearted attempt to kill myself by asphyxiation. (Success rates are in the seventy to eighty percent range).
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When I handed over the Traffic Street inventory to Kiss of Death, Glenn gave me a few new KoD releases. One was The Slow Death’s first LP. I listened to that record a lot while I was at Tranquil Shores. My name is on the thanks list even though I didn’t have any hand in its release. (Though I had been a big fan and supporter of The Slow Death and helped them out in other ways, so it wasn’t totally shocking). Still, I wasn’t expecting it and it was a really nice surprise. I had become so far removed from the world that I had lived and breathed for so long… Little things like that helped me feel connected in those days. It meant a lot to me. It seems appropriate that my first experience back in that world was the little tour with Rational Anthem this month, up to the fest that Jesse (of The Slow Death) organized. Here’s a song from that first LP that came to mind while I was writing this entry. And here’s a second song from their brand new record.
“We’re Not Hiring (or: A Like Bats Fan Walks Into an Office).” 8/28/13. White-out, marker, and pen on cardboard. 11×14″.
“You’ve got a five star enterprise here, and it sounds like a great opportunity, but – what, with huffing gasoline in mom’s basement and wearing out my Like Bats cassette, my schedule just can’t accommodate anything new right now. Thanks for letting me use your bathroom though.”
I thought of this cartoon back in March when I was planning on reissuing Like Bats demo as a cassette. Anyway, the Like Bats cassette hasn’t happened yet for a couple of reasons, but I requested a new quote on it today and decided that it was TIME TO DRAW THIS CARTOON! (The plan was to get it printed up on a poster that’d come free with the cassette). Maybe we’ll still do that. I don’t know! (I haven’t talked to the kids yet). In fact, they’re hearing about/seeing this cartoon for the first time just like everybody else.
I put off smoking cigarettes (and eating/drinking) all afternoon just so I could get it done. I think it came out well. I like it!
“Moving Boxes (and Little Else).” 5/24/13. Tempera and pen on paper. 12×16″.
She might be scared, but that has nothing to do with me, my choices, my attitude, or my … how I’ve been.
I’m ambitious and I have confidence but moving out starts the ticking of the clock. It sets the deadline for my success or the date of my failure. Not moving out is what I’m comfortable with. But how long is it okay for me to stall intimate relationships so that I can enjoy myself (and do the things I want to without worry)?
Is it okay for me to be okay? Complacency. Fear. Priorities. GROWING UP. I understand far less than I let on. Strange that someone with all the answers in interactions has nothing but questions when alone.
That’s the text within this piece – painted in my Friday expressive art therapy group at Tranquil Shores. It was getting closer to the time Heather and I had talked about picking up and moving to Jacksonville. We were bickering a lot. I had asked her what was really going on. When she failed to come up with anything, I suggested that maybe she was scared about moving to a new city. After all, it wasn’t me. I’m itinerant! I’m punk! All we do is move. We have no roots. “I don’t live anywhere!” She, on the other hand, had never moved to a new city before so she was scared and that was making her irritable. Obviously.
But this was expressive art therapy and (in therapy) we don’t look at what’s wrong with other people, we look at ourselves. So that’s what I tried to do as I painted and – when I started writing – all of this suddenly came out of me.
God dammit. It was totally me. I was terrified. If I moved to Jacksonville with Heather, I’d suddenly be responsible for rent and utilities and who knows what else. I had been out of (inpatient) treatment for three months and thus far was doing great. I was supporting myself without having to give in to reality and get a real job. (Which – in hindsight – I realize may not have been all that impressive a feat considering that I had absolutely no bills to pay). But if I moved to Jacksonville and came up short on money for bills one month, all of a sudden, I’d have to admit that I was wrong. I’d have to get a job and acknowledge that I couldn’t support myself creatively…
Maybe I should just break it off and stay in Bradenton and live with Taylor’s family forever…? I don’t need a girlfriend or to be an adult or…
God dammit.
“Moving boxes and little else” is an acknowledgment that I had moved more times than I could count but was terrified to move forward.
But I did! And – so far – so good.
This piece is important to me because the process of creating it really was revelatory. I had spend a lot time thinking about this stuff and had gotten nowhere. After I made this piece, the bickering between Heather and I stopped completely. It’s pretty remarkable how much garbage sometimes lurks just below the surface (and how badly it can fuck me up). This piece is proof that art is essential to the maintenance of my mental health.
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Here’s the song I quoted in this entry. It’s from the new Dead Mechanical album out soon on Toxic Pop (who split released the last DM full-length with Traffic Street (that’s my label, you guys!)) When I lived in DC, I spent a lot of time in Baltimore. When I wasn’t copping or shooting heroin, I was usually at a Dead Mechanical show. (Sometimes both!) But getting to see them play all the time was definitely one of the best things about living up there.
Here’s another song from the same record. Just ’cause.
Hit the Toxic Pop website to check out the album art (by Julie Benoit!) and pre-order the LP, which starts shipping next week. (I know the site says that it starts shipping in early August, but Mike (Toxic Pop) sent out an update changing the shipping date due to delays at the pressing plant).
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This painting is currently for sale. Or – if you’re not a big spender – you can pick up a signed and framed (behind glass) print/poster that’s the same size as the original.
“My Favorite Cartoon.” 1/15/13. Pen on scrap. 3×4″.
I was sitting in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and I was pretty bummed out over (surprise!) a girl. (I’ve astutely noticed that this seems to be a pattern). You see… When we saw each other just before we went into the meeting, she hadn’t paid me quite as much attention as I felt that I needed (ALL OF THE ATTENTION).
So, as I had become prone to doing, I tried to work through my anxiety and hurt feelings with a pen and a piece of paper. I drew a little cartoon, but I wasn’t happy with it. Which made me even more upset. So I tried again. Annnnnnnd… same result. I put my pen and paper on the floor and decided to just sit in my misery and sulk. Because I so enjoy feeling that way. (Who doesn’t?!)
But that was what the old Sam would do. So I begrudgingly picked my pen and paper back up and started again, not even knowing what I was drawing. And this is what came out.
And then I wasn’t upset anymore.
So while I really like this cartoon, what makes it my favorite isn’t necessarily the cartoon itself as much as it’s evidence that I can use art to heal all my stupid, petty wounds. It helps me step back and realize that every little thing that happens around me is not (and is not meant to be interpreted as) proof that I’m a worthless, unlovable piece of shit.
Here are some related images…
This is the original as I’ve framed it. Underneath the glass, the cartoon is “laminated” in packing tape because… [see next picture for more]When I had *my very own apartment* at Tranquil Shores, I took it upon myself to “decorate” (to the extent permitted). Of course, I put my favorite cartoon on my front door. To protect it from rain though, I had to “laminate” it first. After a couple days, I was told that I couldn’t have it visible outside like that, so I hung it from a piece of scotch tape, just inside my front door, to greet any/all visitors.At Dave Strait Fest in Minneapolis last weekend, I picked up a copy of New Noise magazine. There was a feature on Rumspringer, in which Wes describes meeting me. I was selling records outside of Common Grounds and handing out fliers with a list of bands with upcoming releases on Traffic Street. In the feature, Wes says something to the effect of “Sam swears they weren’t business cards, but they totally were!” I thought it was funny that I found that article while attending another fest, at which I was (arguably) distributing “business cards.” But *this* time, I wasn’t giving them to people, I was…Using my homemade keychain to tape them up to walls, signs, bike racks, and all other vertical surfaces. “Business cards? Yeah, right! These are stickers! I just don’t have a major label budget like all these millionaires with pre-stickified stickers. There’s this thing, maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called punk.”
Was flipping through pictures, looking for a piece that I don’t see all the time and settled on this one. It’s a cartoon I drew for my friend Avi. It’s about what a judgmental butthole I used to be. The text below it is from the same time as the cartoon.
“Sam Explains Avi’s Life to Him.” May 28th, 2013. Colored pencil and pen, collage. 3½x5”.
My first reaction to the Silver Sprocket Bicycle Club was something along the lines of “Fuck this hippy dippy, peace punk, Plan-It-X, fake community bullshit. This is one kid running a record label and trying to make it seem like more than that as a marketing tactic aimed at dorks who want to believe that their ill-attended costume parties and stupid fucking dance parties are somehow important.”
That might say a little something more about me than it does about anything relating to Silver Sprocket or Avi.
When I met Avi (2009) at the Basement House in Tampa, he was a nice enough sort, but I also found out that he was making these custom jackets (that he was selling for – I don’t know – eighty dollars? One hundred dollars?) I scoffed when I found out – if not out loud, then in my head. (Expensive clothing = not punk). I also remember hearing about his “business model” and about “presentations” he’d given to bands before putting out their records. This only confirmed my suspicions: not punk, not cool.
In spite of all this, I liked him. He was a geek and he had it all wrong, but I liked him. In the nicest way I could manage, I tried to tell him why the way he ran his label was wrong and the way I ran my label was right. My memory isn’t too clear, but I’m sure I sounded like a tremendous asshole.
Silver Sprocket may not be a bicycle club, but – as I’ve come to realize – it is more than a record label. Or – at the very least – it’s more than your typical DIY record label. Avi does things. He does things that other people are afraid to do. He has ideas and he follows through on them. He believes in fun. He’s not jaded and cynical. From what I can tell, he doesn’t worry about how other people are going to react to the things he does. I have a sneaking suspicion that Silver Sprocket is more profitable than your typical DIY label, but I no longer think that there’s anything wrong with that. The more well-adjusted I’ve become, the more I realize that my contempt was nothing but jealousy. He had something that I didn’t: self-esteem. And, from that, the courage to be innovative, different, and (most of all) really, really punk.
Punk.
And here’s an incredibly appropriate song (by a band with releases on both Silver Sprocket and Traffic Street)!
![This is the original as I've framed it. Underneath the glass, the cartoon is "laminated" in packing tape because... [see next picture for more]](https://sammythrashlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/myfavoriteframed.jpg)
![At Dave Strait Fest in Minneapolis last weekend, I picked up a copy of New Noise magazine. There was a feature on Rumspringer, in which Wes describes meeting me. I was selling records outside of Common Grounds and handing out fliers with a list of bands with upcoming releases on Traffic Street. In the feature, Wes says something to the effect of "Sam swears they weren't business cards, but they totally were!" I thought it was funny that I came across that while at another fest at which I was (arguably) distributing "business cards." But *this* time, I wasn't giving them to people, I was... [see next image for more]](https://sammythrashlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/myfavoritesticker.jpg)
