Tagged: art

Celebrating you

Ah, the grand adventures we’ve had.

Last year’s trip to Europe will be pretty hard to top but I’m convinced we’ll manage.

Thirty-plus years together and every single day is still fun, the hours in your company a treasure beyond assaying.

We’re essentially very silly people. We laugh a lot. Two irrepressible clowns. Our humor definitely veering toward the strange and bizarre. “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, the Marx Brothers, Jacques Tati, “Team America”, and the bookstore gals in “Portlandia”. The sharper the satire, the more expertly the scalpel wielded, the more we like it.

Because if you start taking life too seriously, you quickly figure out, to paraphrase David Thomson, the world doesn’t really want to be saved. And that, as they say, is a mighty hard row to hoe.

Better to experience existence with a healthy sense of the absurd, gales of incredulous laughter, rather than tears of self-pity.

More than three decades of shared joy, passion, a long history of creative collaborations (including two terrific sons). Always seeking to inspire one another, egg each other on, pushing the envelope, aesthetically and spiritually and experientially.

We’re the damnedest couple. I’ve never met a pair like us, with so much obvious affinity and chemistry and yet two totally different, independent, strong-willed individuals.  We’re nothing like clones, our differences can be quite profound. We’ve had some heated arguments and they haven’t always been resolved. Some are on-going and irreconcilable. Like your insistence that Justin Trudeau isn’t an airhead and humans are fundamentally good, wisdom and faith will prevail, offering a bright, shining future for our species…

What I most appreciate is your ferocious loyalty, the way you’ve supported me, my life’s work, from the moment we officially became a “couple”, recognizing and acknowledging the importance of literature to me, to my very essence. Never a flicker of doubt, despite some tough, trying times. We’ve had to sacrifice quite a bit, struggled financially to maintain my status as a full-time author and not once have you expressed any resentment or criticism.

There’s a line I sometimes quote from an otherwise forgettable Jack Nicholson movie, “As Good As It Gets”. At one point he says wistfully to Helen Hunt: “You make me want to be a better person”.

That’s it. That what you do, not just for me, but for everyone who comes into contact with you.

Thank you, Sherron. For all that we’ve shared, for everything still to come.

“Forever and ever…”

 

“Stargazer” (3000 B.C.)

While we were in Greece this summer I was exposed to “Cycladic Art” (3200-2000 B.C.) and, in particular, fell in love with a piece I saw in Athens titled “Stargazer”. Here are two photos of the real deal:

stargazeristargazerii

I couldn’t keep that little sculpture out of my head. We saw some wonderful art during our European jaunt (including outstanding exhibits in Istanbul and the Czech Republic), but “Stargazer” and a couple of other objets d’art were the most memorable.

I guess my wife finally got sick of me going on and on about “Stargazer” because Sherron made me a replica for my birthday, adding the finishing touches this past week. This is the end result and, man, am I pleased and honoured to own such a lovely work that speaks so intimately to my heart and my spirit:

my-stargazer

Quote of the day–Max Ernst

Ernst:Man Ray“…my roamings, my restlessness, my impatience, my doubts, my beliefs, my hallucinations, my loves, my fits of anger, my revolts, my contradictions, my refusal to submit to any discipline including my own…have not created a climate conducive to a serene and smiling life’s work.”

Max Ernst

“A Personal Cosmology” (prose poems for the spiritually inclined)

Recently, I wrote a series of prose poems to accompany six visual pieces I’d created.

The marriage of words and images worked wonderfully and I’m delighted with the result. I’ve always loved collage, combining text and illos, loved staring at a photo or painting and riffing on it, writing off the top of my head, no pre-planning, just letting ‘er rip. “Automatic writing”, the surrealists used to call it.

Here’s one of the prose poems, just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about (click on the image below to enlarge for reading):

Years ago I composed a series of prose bits* on the back of eight postcards I found, some of them based on famous art works, others historical photographs. Again, all I did was glance at the front, grab a mood or thought, flip the card over and commence scribbling. Worked like a charm (and a cool way to break an intractable writer’s block, hmmm?).

Just a little tip, o fellow suffering wordsmiths.

…and since I’m feeling especially cheerful and generous these days, how about some new music, an ambient number I call “Atmospheric Disturbance”:

  • You can find these “postcard stories” in my Stromata collection, available from my virtual “Bookstore“…or you can order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.

  • Update, March, 2017: The Oleander Review, a literary journal affiliated with the University of Michigan, has accepted “A Personal Cosmology” for publication in their Spring, 2017 issue.

A Lonely Profession

I have a very small circle of friends.  I mean real friends, you shallow Facebook generation, people I’ve known for years and with whom I have a shared history.

It’s small…and getting smaller.

Part of it is natural attrition:  people grow away from each other or their lives becomes too busy or what have you.  Or they die.

I’ve lost good friends, men and women I’ve been closely associated with more than two decades, for all of the reasons just stated.

Others I’ve shed.  Deliberately, ruthlessly.  With knowledge aforethought.  What can I say?  You cross me and I can be a real bastard.

I’m the first to acknowledge that it ain’t no easy chore being my friend.  The long silences no doubt grate.  And you know I hate, hate, HATE talking on the phone.  The telephone is an infernal device, the only thing left that can really threaten my concentration.  If a phone rings anywhere in my house between 9:00 a.m. and 4:30 (when someone else will be home to answer it), I immediately explode into a string of expletives that would melt the ears off a plastic dashboard Jesus.  Interrupt my work and you run the risk of being murdered.  It’s that simple.  God help the poor fucking telephone solicitor who breaks my train of thought.  Perhaps that’s why so many calls are automated these days.  People like me were traumatizing employees.  Whose lousy pay offered poor compensation for the frequent tirades and threats they endured, their headsets smoking as they fumbled for “disconnect”…

I don’t do small talk, couldn’t give a fuck about the latest movie you’ve seen or book you’ve read or the gorgeous autumn walk you just enjoyed.  Dig?  I.  Don’t.  Care. If you got any thoughts or observations, stick ’em in a 100-word e-mail and zip it my way.  I’ll get back to you within 48 hours.  That’s a pledge.  E-mails allow me to keep in touch on my time and terms.  It is the perfect platform for a busy curmudgeon.  It is the only form of communication I welcome.

And, of course, when I do get together with my friends they have to put up with my admittedly caustic wit and, let’s be honest, rants on my new favorite pet peeve or a long lecture on Gnosticism and the novels of Philip K. Dick.  Amazing how, at once, a person can be both boring and a boor.  I manage it quite easily.

I have a natural compulsion to entertain, to be the center of attention.  I’m capable of saying almost anything, the most provocative and cringe-worthy statements, refusing to recognize the fine line between satire and offensiveness.  I despise political correctness; watching our tongues and minding our manners like good little Stalin-era proles.  Fuck that.

Nights out with me are rare but they’re usually memorable.  Just not for the right reasons…

For the most part I enjoy being alone.  Very comfortable with silence and solitude.  I don’t require company or diversion.  I’m doing something creative literally every single day of the year and I simply don’t have much time for other things.  When I’m not working, I’m with my family.  If I’m not doing either, I’m sleeping.  That’s pretty much the schedule around here.  The reality you have to adapt to if you’re going to remain in the picture longterm as a pal and confidante.

There’s one other thing and this is important:  you wanna be my friend, you gotta read my work.  Every single word of it.  Read it, listen to it, hold an informed opinion on it.  Having any conversation with me and not alluding, however briefly, to my raison d’etre, my entire purpose for existing on this planet, is like slapping me in a face with a sock full of canned ham.  You don’t recognize the central role writing plays in my life and respect the enormous amount of time and effort I expend on putting words on paper, you ain’t no friend.  You might be an acquaintance, a chum, but you sure as fuck ain’t part of the inner circle.  You’re somewhere out in the Oort Cloud, a distant signal, a far point of light.

I fully recognize that these are hard terms, entirely one-sided and solipsistic.  But the closer I get to fifty I’ve become less and less tolerant of superficial relationships and part-time pals.  And, unfortunately, I live in a pretty remote locale so there’s little chance of mingling with fellow writers and artists, who would have a better grasp of my obsessions and the demons that relentlessly drive me.  My wife and I have talked about moving to a larger center, where there are more opportunities to take in good movies, enjoy a cultural evening out.  With our boys getting older, a year or two from heading out on their own, it might be time to seriously ponder a change of address.  We’ll see.

Whatever happens and wherever I live, creativity and the compulsion to express myself will remain my primary focus.  Unless my brain is fully preoccupied with a project or artful experiment, I become bored, restless.  Dangerous.  If it’s frustrated or annoyed, a mind like mine can quickly turn on others…or itself.  It rages fearfully.  Vindictive and brutal, refusing to forgive the slightest fault.

Believe me, it’s a good thing I’m such a workaholic.  It’s better for everyone involved.  Those long silences mean I’m deeply and happily immersed in a book or story or short film.

Be sure to ask me about it the next time we run into each other.

I’m always happy to talk shop with a friend.


(Visuals by Cliff Burns)

“Winter Light” (Short film)

My wife Sherron and I have collaborated on a short film, a “visual essay”, if you will. It’s abstract and non-narrative, a sparse vision shot in the heart of a Canadian winter. I’m astonished at the technology available for budding filmmakers–filmed with a DV camera, edited in iMovie, music created with Garageband.

Have a look…

Winter Light