The Town Painted Red

Part 18 of 30

There's Death In Them Thar Drawers

By now we’re sharing at the heart level, you and I, as we've joined forces against an overly-sexualized society. I know I’m completely worked up, my boldness enlarged, beet red, engorged by the confidence I have in your alliance, you with me. And how many of you I’ve heard from, so willing -- bending over backwards -- to join in intimately, whether it's whetting knives, swords, blades of every form; then rallying men, women, loved ones, hated ones in common cause; then to charge forward with a battle cry for the ages, the rancor in our bones, the rancor in our marrow; all of us as one by now so stoved up that to merely lance the thing is to make it spew.

Let me put before you another reminder of the outrage around us being perpetrated on a daily basis. Right there it is in full view, such profligacy, such wild abandon, the shamelessness of it all! It gives me pause. Let us take it in and clear our heads. Lean out the window and catch our breath and try to comprehend what horrible force has been loosed, what this reckless swinging from building to building means, people with paintbrush in hand, buckets of red paint, and fearlessness, a unknown boldness that drives wanton men and women to expose themselves in every way. This is nothing to mess with.

“Painting the Town Red.” Of course I’ve heard that phrase a few times, but in my sheltered life I never really thought it through. Somehow we’ve all absorbed the phrase without fully taking it within ourselves as serious. Red’s a nice color, we might think. Honestly it’s one of my favorite colors. Red, green, blue, yellow … just some of the colors I can list off the top of my head. Dig a little deeper and there’s purple, lavender, chartreuse, caucasian, afro, blonde, black, curly, straight, cheese, toast, in a nutshell the entire rainbow and more.

Red, though, is the color where none is the number. Denoting that all restraints, all limitations are exceeded or surpassed. The number none means no boundary is sacrosanct, no consequences are worth considering in surpassing or bypassing them. The man, at least symbolically, swings from landmark to landmark in the Big City, his paint brush a’wash with red in thick coat, obscuring or replacing the tamer colors of tamer society. Meaning the most carnal behavior is now the norm. And, yes, There Is Death In Them Thar Drawers and, you know what? Only few of us care. That guy doesn’t care, he’s simply pissed away all concern, and as the red flows freely, prepares himself (society itself) to bring society and the whole social pact down.

Well, I for one do object. Is there anyone, just one witness, to agree with my lone voice of revulsion and shame? Hearing none, we're done for the day.

The Graffiti of Quick Draw McFiti

What would you think if I turned out to be local graffiti sensation (or to some spoilsports and haters of the arts, scourge) Quick Draw McFiti? What a surprise that’d be!

Interesting question, huh? You’re probably wondering why I asked. No reason, heh heh, just throwing it out there as a rhetorical question to muse on, let’s say. But, really, what would you think? I can well imagine how the run of the mill folks would take it. For the non-artistic among us, I’m sure so many of them would curse my name and feel that I should be brought to justice at long last. Then we'd have the other end of the spectrum, art lovers and fellow artists, who would be either very happy that the mystery was at long last solved or happy the authorities were getting me off the street, out of jealousy, or even because they're sticks in the mud.

It’s the last crowd that makes me sickest, frankly. To be the object of envy, or to put it more charitably, misunderstood in whatever artistic pursuit you choose, then vilified, is no good. It totally brings me down to contemplate that response, but of course everyone knows there’s lots of crumbs in life. Then there's the artsy-fartsies who think art isn't for the various walls around town, but for the museum. To them, I have a few things to say. The cleanliness of a wall is not worth stifling the artistic sensibilities of a person like Quick Draw McFiti -- Let's hear it for him! I’m not sure I can even forgive them, and people who know me always see in me a very forgiving person. I forgave that kid that sprayed "CRANK" on my outhouse.

But let’s set the naysayers aside; it’s dragging down my spirit. It’s the artistic-minded, the lovers of art, those who celebrate the spirit of the artist, that I celebrate. Whoever McFiti is, they may not care about that little detail as much, because they’re not looking to nab him or give him his comeuppance. Their thing, like I said, is to celebrate. You see a blank wall and you’re like, “Yeah, a blank wall.” But you see an artistic tour de force — and Quick Draw’s works are so often described with that term, if I do say so myself — you quickly shake off the doldrums and come alive.

I’m alive today and happy! Happy to see this arms-open-wide piece in the light of day. It looks better than I remember or even expected. For such a quick drawing. You just shake the can and cock it toward the wall and whisper a little prayer for guidance; there’s no UNDO button. It actually might be that detail alone that gives such quick abandon to McFiti’s stuff. Which I thoroughly resonate with. My thinking's precisely the same. Whatever you have in your heart and mind, put it down quickly, then let it be. The truest art simply flows.

Anyway, as to the details of this particular piece: It’s exactly something that’s in my own heart, continually. The prophet appears, like Isaiah or Jeremiah or Elijah*. They’re known for extended prophecies that welled up and overflowed from their heart. But the key to their power was their giving-over to the Spirit. Few edits, little self-consciousness; this was something bigger than themselves, and quicker. Like Quick Draw McFiti! Who has a similar message: The prophet throws his hands up and proclaims, “THOU SHALT.” A great positive message!

I’ve had that very thought in my own heart for a while, and how good it is to see it finally on full display. You don’t know how proud I am, and yet I’m only the conduit for a greater power; if we don’t personify it, we could merely call it The Power of Life! Elan, Energy, Elixir!

Draw on, mysterious Quick Draw McFiti, you’re doing our sad old world a great deal of good.

*Time would fail me to tell of Anna Phanuel.

This Is My Art

Writing here, my occasional blog post, I now realize, is my art. I'm an artist, it turns out, as much as anyone. Only instead of dabbling with oils, watercolors, or other pigments, my art is the weaving, expression, and/or putting forth of words. Phonemes, sounds in the form of letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, with a good solid chunk of virtual type as the result.

The weird thing about it, if there is indeed anything weird about it, is that they never mentioned it quite like that in art class. They completely divided it up, as I recall, so art was painting, drawing, and molding (like the time I made my dad a clay ashtray about an inch thick), and writing was just an orphaned offshoot of English class. Looking back on it now, to me, that's weird. What's it got to do with English? You could just as easily write in some other language if you knew one.

Art class, though, obviously wasn't so strictly isolated. You don't even need to know how to talk to do art. You could grunt along, living in your old little world, and still make a halfway good ashtray. Or the Venus de Milo, were you so inclined. The foreign speaker would be at no disadvantage in doing art as my school narrowly defined it. He'd just babble out something incoherent, then dazzle the entire world with a painting of waterlilies.

I guess I must have had a good education in one sense: It laid the groundwork for me to come independently to this conclusion after around 50 years, that they were all wrong about art and writing. So that I can today declare, finally and definitively, writing is also art, and I'm writing, so I'm an artist. This is my art!

I was just in a bookstore today, true story. And if that's not enough, I was also at the library. And I saw a lot of books. Mostly crap, probably, certainly a lot of it I wouldn't be interested in reading. I more or less lump several genres in the crapper, like mysteries, true crime, popular religion titles, and certainly romance. For the most part, just to make a comparison to painting, these are the paint-by-number pictures of the writing world. It's a lot of hack work, churned out cynically and worth our scorn. Then there's the good stuff, actual literature, etc., etc.

Of course I classify my own blog posts in that last category. With the good stuff. Art as it was meant to be, nothing rushed out for an easy buck, but agonized over, and full of blood, sweat, and tears. Picasso couldn't do better. Monet, Manet, and Minet, all, would throw up their arms. And that makes me very proud. I'm to be envied. I use initiative to put ideas into motion, and nobody can say I don't. I love my art!

The Rubble My Hiatus Has Left

Everything's desolate. Old ladies are screaming. Old men have given up their pills. Young men have little hope for the future. Young women have dropped their compacts and fled. It's like that one famous Picasso painting, "Generica." So named for the generic havoc that was caused when people had no hope, like when war consumed them. You see their bitter struggle, how they turned on each other and were at each other's throat.

If I knew anything about painting I could definitely give a blank canvas a run for its money. The canvas would see me coming and meet me halfway. I'd go to the art store to get supplies and people would fall to their knees to commission something from me. I would be signing my autograph to blank canvases and simply selling those. Because I have the art up here, in my mind. But, alas, I don't have any actual artistic ability down here with my hands.

One big reason for my artistic limitations has to be the fact that I'm way too self-conscious. I know what would happen if I looked at a blank canvas. It'd be just like this, I'd be thinking I don't want to imitate, I don't to paint cliches, I don't want to do what they expect, I just want it to be real. But exactly what that is ... yes, I have the ideas up here ... I wouldn't be able to paint because my hands wouldn't coordinate with my mind when I picked up a brush or a pencil.

Really, though, I do have enough masterpieces stored away in my brain, up here, that I have to triple bolt my door at night just to keep art thieves from stealing me. Then they'd have me on sale at Sotheby's -- and because I would have to waste so much time everyday trying to explain why I'm so valuable, I know I'd get bored and very frustrated.

I think there's a lot of inspiration in desolation like war. I like to drive by poor neighborhoods, like a block away from where we live, just to be inspired. And you know that I'm something of a Skidrow aficionado. I'm a connoisseur of condemnation. If I see a kid wandering through the rubble, it puts me in an artistic frame of mind.

You know how some people hate those commericals for the Christian League Of Helping Poor Children in other countries. You've got the big well-fed guy from the United States walking through a slum. And you think, couldn't this guy at least have lost some weight before he filmed this commercial? And you know he's staying in a fancy trailer or hotel somewhere. But there he is crying big tears for their plight. I like those commercials, especially if we could get rid of the American guy. And I'm sitting there with my hands framing the scene, as though I'm about the paint another masterpiece. Because squalor is a great subject for art.

Well, squalor ... rubble ... desolation ... that's what my hiatus has wrought for me. There have been good times. Walking around the half acre, having the sun smile on me, all that. The days off. The occasional root beer float. Dreaming of bigger and better things, like going to the store and seeing what food they're giving away samples of today. All those things take time, and having a hiatus from the blog and my newsletter has given me the time.

But like I said, it's left behind a lot of desolation. I've lost everyone who ever came to this blog. They've deserted me for other Grandma imitators, and possibly news sites. And certainly the internet hasn't been the same since they introduced pornography to the general public. The day they did that my traffic dropped like a rock. And I never got that traffic back either. But I'm strict on one subject, I will not run any blue content here ... not for any reason. If you're a pervert looking to get your jollies off from something twisted you think I might say, then please, I'm begging you, leave this site right now!

So I don't know what will be next. Maybe I'll use some of my hiatus time to get some art supplies and try again. I wonder how big a canvas I should start with. It can't be any bigger than the door. I don't want to leave it out overnight and have thieves take it half finished. Maybe I'll get some of that fluorescent chalk and a black light and make some art that has deer's eyes glowing in the dark. That's very artistic. Or I'll tell you another, some glowing white chalk on a waterfall, as though it's beamed there from moonbeams. Extremely nice.