NEWS!

If you're reading this: sorry. I'm getting around to it far to late. I just wanted to let you know that I've moved. I've moved the blog over to www.theelectricennui.blogspot.com and the shop over to www.footnotepress.etsy.com. Perhaps you may read this and one day we'll be reunited. If not, adieu!

Wow! I'm sorry it's been so long? Does anyone still read this? Am I arrogant to assume anyone ever did? There are nine of you 'followers' so I'm assuming (statistically) one of you has to have been reading; at least the follower that is secretly me to make me look like I've actually have followers.

I've been giving all of my writing energy to my zine and my project with my pal Bryan - I'm sorry. I'm just trying to release this forty page zine every three months. Anyhow, this issue seems to be about my life as a rhizome. It sounds a lot more cryptic than it is (but it sounds as pretentious as it really is. I'm trying to impress you.)

I was reading some stuff this guy Gilles Deleuze wrote about Kafka. I've read a lot about Kafka (more has been written about him than I think he'd be able to take without puking). This stuff was all over the place, though, jumping from one concept to the other. Did you ever feel like something was utterly mad and ultimately enlighting all at once? This is the feel I got from it.

Upon more research, this seems to be the point of the way Deleuze writes about things. Most literary criticism reminds me of regular rock music - verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus. Pretty straightforward. Deleuze analyzed Kafka's life more like dixieland jazz - three intruments playing a solo simeltaneously. Whereas most critics (and authors, and directors, and so on) seem to list events or concepts in a logical order, one leading to the next, Deleuze showed how many are interconnected to each other, and how many things really make no sense. This way of describing and looking at things seemed to make no sense to me, and also make too much sense to me.

Replacing the good ol' timeline - point A to point B - was a web. There is no beginning and no end. The artist picks where to start, where to go, and where to end, all arbitrarily. Is this just a pointless way of looking at the way I look at things? Maybe.

It's like the brain. There are a limited number of cells. But the connections between the cells can be infinite. All the importance lies there. There are a limited number of things and people in my life. But the connections between them stretch on forever.

Being Realistic is Blowing my Mind!

I'm departing from my regular format (make art, write about it) because I haven't been painting as much as usual. I've been devoting more and more of my time to writing (thanks Bryan), and let me tell you: being realistic is blowing my mind!

Lately, I've been sitting at the window with my hound, the both of us striking a Lenin pose (looking far off into the Utopian proletariat future!) trying to come up with an interesting narrative to write about. That's me thinking about a narrative, not my hound (Henry). He's probably thinking about lizards or Socrates's essences...I don't know.

Henry and I do this for days. Meanwhile, I have been keeping a list of interesting (and real) people I may use for a narrative. Here it is:

Christine Chubbuck
Kaspar Hauser
Ota Benga
Gherasim Luca

The one thing I believe they have in common is that they all have lives that are completely unrealistic. The irony that was dealt to them, has been dealt in such copious amounts that it is hard to believe that it is real and/or a supernatural hand has not interfered. Check 'em out on Wikipedia.

Yesterday, I began writing about Ota Benga (I'll let you all see it when I'm done). I was at Barnes & Noble trying to figure out what his English sounded like (what does a Mbuti accent sound like?) when it struck me.

There is something else all four names on the list have in common: they all committed suicide. I don't know how I missed it. As I said in my last blog post, I'm not a nihilist...am I?

The Reality of a Working Class Whale

Poor proletariat whale! He's on his way to clock in and look pretty on the cover of my very first zine. Anyhow, I'm sure you can understand my absence from the blog considering I was writing for the zine. What is a zine, you ask? Simply, it is a blog you can clutch and press to your heart (or some may say its a blog for chumps).

Anyhow, as usual, my ideas form (or step out of the mist of my grey matter) while I'm working on a piece to express those very ideas. Is this a case of acting before I think (aka hoof in mouth disease) or do my ideas only exist after they're articulated? Sounds like a linguists wet dream (linguists have notoriously subtle fantasies).

The entire zine unintentionally focused on reality as its mediated for us by different things. Wow, vague, I know. I'm not looking for anything metaphysical - I'm not your suburban wiccan (no offense small town witches) . Its really rather boring, but I think thats the point of it all.

The boredom of the summer is erasing all of me. Arguably, (but let's not argue - you say potato, I say tomato) memory is a creative act. There is no film or harddrive in our head. Everytime we remember something we re-create the narrative as accurately (or really however we see fit) as possible (considering we group many unconnected incedents into a narrative in the first place makes memory dubious). Think about a lot of your memories - do you see yourself instead of see from yourself?

Anyhow, as everything we see, hear, feel, etc. is mediated by our mind, our life is in the perpetual past. Given, the spark travels pretty quick from eye/ear/fingers to our thinking machine, but it still takes time. Okay: our memories are creative and our "present" is really in the perpetual past. Oh man, I think I'm hyperventilating, I'll be right back...

I'm sure you drew all sorts of weird conclusions while I got my paper bag, but to get to the boring point of it all that I spoke of. If the present is really memory the first time its remembered and memory itself is a creative act what happens when its boring? I'll level with you here: my life is crazy boring. Honestly 90% of my day is habit: work, eat, sleep, type blog, blah, blah, and blah. If our mind were a TV, reality were a show, and memories were re-runs, would I care to watch any of it? Honestly: no.

I'm not getting all nihilistic on you here (trust me: number one descriptor of yours truly: spunky). I just think I'm starting to understand Marcel Proust's point when he says that habit is what kills us.

Desperate House Wares

You owe me one! I went on an entirely too long diatribe of Kafka's Metamorphosis that somehow descended into a muddled murmur about Marx and the division of labor. I deleted the blog post and threw away the painting.

Thus, I'd like to apologize: I'm sorry its been so long (naturally, my ego assumes you care). I had to start over again with a new painting and blog post.

Over the course of this blog it's become progressively clear that I have a two-fold obsession when it comes to painting: an obsession with language and a commodity fetish. Hence a talking teapot was really a predictable eventuality. Actually, this is part of a series of nine watercolors of sarcastic commodities called "Desperate House Wares".

Clearly the profundities of sarcastic appliances are abundant. To be frank, though, initially I only thought they were funny. To be frank again, I believe funny should be the numero uno aspect of art. I won't explain this: I'm sure you understand and it really deserves a blog of its own. (The beer, Spaten Optimator, also deserves a blog of its own - it's only $7.69 and it's a German bock with 7.6% alcohol! Vegan and (arguably) best beer for your money.)

Ok, to finally get to these watercolors: After two Optimators I found my self staring at this teapot and getting upset. Who does this teapot think it is? It does what I say (namely, warm my water and pour it where ever my whimsy wishes)! However, why is this picture so stupidly annoying? We don't need Marx to tell us that a commodity is a commodity because of its use-value. That is to say, we don't need to read Das Kapital to know we buy a teapot for what it does (and that we wouldn't buy no smart mouth teapot).

So what is a teapot that doesn't do what it does? What is an unsittable chair? What is a useless commodity? It's not just an abstract object. Further, what am I when I'm out for the summer, not working? I know it sounds dumb, but why do I feel so horribly existentially bored? If a teapot is not in the mood to warm up your tea, what is the point of being a teapot?

The Little/Huge Gap

"I will have thought." Things happened, happen, or will happen. But how can something will have happened? How can anything happen in the future and the past simultaneously - in the future-past? Thus is the future perfect tense.
Stare at the future perfect for a while. Let it dissolve into its silly parts. Check out what surfaces. It's a gap. There's a small gap between what we say and what is.
Our language (spoken, written, and thought) builds a world for us, but it isn't necessarily the world around us. We often think of words as being permanently chained to their couterparts in reality. Is this really the case?
Try two things. First, make up a word. Make up a word for something that doesn't exist. Or think of the future perfect - a way of saying something that cannot be. Second, imagine something unknown that may exist but does not have a word for it yet (but leave it nameless). Or think of anything you know (like a stone, or a house) that only has a word that describes a group of things (like the word stone or house) but does not have a word (or name) to describe it individually.
The first thought tells us that there can be more words in our language than things to describe. However, the second thought tells us the opposite is true: that there are more things than words can name. Whats the point?
Well, I guess the point is... that there isn't one - that there can't ever be one. Not really, at least. The future perfect tells us that there is a tiny gap between what we say and what is. Is reality generally conveyed accurately in what we say, write, and think? Maybe, maybe not. The real question is: Can my world be represented perfectly by words and can words do their job perfectly? The answer has to be no. Words and the world they describe are not like me dancing in front of the mirror. It must be more like me dancing, and you imitating me. (Quick aside: we both think of 'dance' but are we thinking of the same dance?)
So is this a big deal? I honestly have no idea (yet). But it's out of that gap - that mystical little/huge gap between what is and how its said - that this painting came from. This is a painting of words without meaning and meanings without words, where they come to meet but don't match, from the non-existent future-past. This one was a painting of the gap between the thoughts of God and the words of men.

The Sartre of the Sea

Perhaps if a jellyfish were to clearly be up to shaping some kind of legacy, we'd more readily recognize it as existential. Moreover, jellyfish can't lift up a stringy tentacle and announce "I am doomed to be free!".

However, who is to say that jellyfish don't think of the world existing for an eternity after they have passed on from their watery world? Much is to be said about how condusive to existential thought idle ocean-floating can be.

Give the Sartre of jellyfish a talk bubble and what would he do with it? I'm no jelly fish, but I reckon she'd be too deep in thought to use it. Had I been born a jelly fish I wouldn't waste my time chatting it up, not with all the jelly fish thoughts to think.

Anyhow, regardless of all these theoriticals on the life of jelly fish, I'm sure we can agree that jelly fish are typically the pensive type. Not the cuttlefish, though. The jock of the invertebrates of the sea.