Ritual, in the form of death walks among us and it greets us with full eyes that are framed with time and many things to do.

fig.278.90) There's no such thing as an endless bird, Brancusi wasn't right at all.

Painting isn't about objects at all it's about definition. It's about slowing down because it's all about the fantasy of stopping this moment. It's the place where the amorphous pleasures of Dionysus and the Apollonian structures of control will meet behind a bush. It's as if a pair of Fridays were to become enmeshed during the ritual balling up of a paper calendar by thee prophet, the prophet of Carthage before leaving their office once more. It's the interlocution of something that's been made up from the bits that couldn't get away. It's that which is thrust upon us when we first try. If you say knock knock to someone, than maybe they'll make a painting for you too.

There are eye's of profound dirt and I think that they can see all of the black that is there inside of us, all of it at once. This is the sort of development that hasn't been wildly successful at adapting our older kids towards emotional growth or stirring within them a desire for further matriculation. But it has driven the public school system harder then necessary into the brink of its own collapse by insisting that evaluations like this support the need for school choice, charter schools, and a weaker teachers union. Tests like this one have been used as ammunition to remove the arts and humanities from our schools as too frivolous. They've drastically reduced our kids recess periods. Like a terrible shotgun blast they've affected the length of the school day along with other sweet partnership deals that have reduced or eliminated quality lunch programs, janitorial support, and engineering. Let's talk about the things that we do, let us now equivocate...

"The dim march of the teapot sailor, oh the moon she went a calling. Sweet as silver ribbon in the eyes of her tailor, slow as chaff that's fallen low, Say goodbye to the teapot later, oh say goodbye it's dim and verbally slow. The world inside is lost in labor, burned then blamed and horrified..." 

I remember this very stoutly. I remember arriving at the war in my same old coat. I was wearing the pants from our trip to Avignon and my shirt was splotched from lunch.  There were still flowers, some were in the windows behind the still lucid glass, some where laying in the streets. I arrived and someone gave me a long piece of wood, a broom handle and a broken whistle. Someone else told me to wait.

Harvey Kurtzman was a very special one, in the 80's EC was binding these really nice boxed editions for many it's titles, this included Mad, which Kurtzman worked on for many years. A friend of mine collected a lot of these sets and I read through them on the weekends, picking over the early brush work of Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta and Al Williamson. All of these artists were influential to me and what it was that I wanted to with my own drawing and painting then. Mad however was not, I couldn't make the leap in my mind between the older material, the stuff of the Marvin years rather than the later Alfred E Neuman era that I had been reading just a few years before. That is until I got to meet Harvey Kurtzman. He gave a short talk at a little con in Ypsilanti when I was about 16. He mostly talked about Little Annie Fanny, his playboy work but he patiently answered what seemed like hours worth of questions about his Mad days and the work that he did with EC. He talked about jokes and colors and brushes. He was a bit snappish or curt but funny and not at all mean. After experiencing him sharing his experiences I went back and all of it finally flipped for me. Much of the Mad Magazine that I knew from the 70's and 80's now seemed formulaic while Harvey's Mad, the newly real Mad was warmer and funnier and better crafted then it had ever seemed before.

Painting is about reaching inside for the place where, in the dialogue, our hero can at last exact their revenge by saying, yes. It's about waiting for all of the buses at once. It's about the release of math. It's about courage growing from the corner of the room. It's about a reductable form that's in the shape of a transitive thought which has been hung on a loose narrative. Painting is parochial, it's like I'm offering you a stick, they said to me, one that's good and it's sturdy enough for good thwacking. Painting is more bad television coming down from Prayerville. It's about drawing from the right side of the brain. It's about the soft round edges of stone being well seeded with the teeth from our lonely attic. It's about the garden that grows from my dead pants. 

"This is how the artists’ run, run little artist run run run, This how the painting goes, blippity pop bombidy-dum iddy-bye oh. Nobody knows when the Mayor might vote. Nobody knows how the shoe will gum when the math will sum or when the day will come. All we know is this how the artists’ wil run, go go go..."

There's death between the doors at each end of the hall. The walls are papered in flowers and stripes that bring to mind apricot. The framed picture between both ends is tidy. It's an image of a small park. There are gutters and pans and plenty of flat places on which to sit. The voice of the place is vibrant although it isn't very bright. It actually resembles something Victorian with it's dark and judging fringes gilt perfectly. It's quite clear that by the 1890's the park had already acquired its Bughouse Square moniker, there's a thick stack of papers from the Times saying so. Its soapbox orators confessed, they rambled and bellowed at all manner of great and small topics from 1910 until the mid 60's when the local atmosphere would at last lose its bohemian character.

In 1917 Gently Jack Wobbly started up the Dill Pickle Club, a speakeasy that was on the edge of the park. It catered to the wholesome ravers of lit-craft, and all of the seedy mums too busy to bake a pie-pie. The club eventually got closed in 1937 this was after Jack had some difficulties maneuvering through the local tax loop holes. But on the last night they were open the whole team came out to play. On the one side it was the sluts, the socialists, and all of the social workers while on the other it was a motley collection of sick townies, there were 2 brothers that seemed overly fond of the picnic life and then there was Zealot John who had earlier lost his pup. Later, in 1959, after the city had traded down Washington Square with the Park District the whole mess was featured in an article that said Bughouse had gotten to be a meeting place for some cottaging lads. As a matter of fact it was so thick with pilgrams that six years later they used it for city's first official band practice. I was there with my own slide trombone, man I was proud of that jam.

On the hallways other wall, as if suspended on a film of a delicate scrim are the wavering names of all the bars in which I've ever had a drink. There's the America’s Cup, Paul Revere’s, Dooley’s, Landshark, Round Table, Lester’s Lounge (Peacock), Eleanor’s (Jack’s), Tuman’s, Pop’s, The Domino, Bluebird, Inner City Pub, Big Horse, Double Door, Empty Bottle, Club Foot, Elbow Room, Spin, Second Story, Mother Hubbard’s, O’Callaghan’s, Reno’s, Dispatch, Art’s, B’zar, Streeter’s, L&L, Gooski’s, Skylark, Hala Kahiki Lounge, Babydoll Polka Lounge, Keyhole, Spectrum, Jack’s Tap, Holiday (wp), Holiday (rs), Ten Cat, Black Beetle, Spite and Duyvil, Life, Mac’s, Nisei, Saluki’s, Blue Note, Hothouse, Carol’s, Bob Inn, Jimmy’s (hp), Rainbo, Goldstar, Czar Bar, Zakopane. There are so many more than this even this.

Let us now talk about what a painting is. Let us talk about how much it matters to the man that's been shot in the streets. Let's talk about the Susquehanna and all of the other short rivers that pluck the spent acres and easterly valleys. Let's talk about the color agents and the bulls and the teats of other loud dogs. Lets paint them at night before they've lost their glow. I think you'll know what it is that I mean, I think your horn still blows. Lets talk about the grinding weight of canvas as it slips the rails and settles to the floor. Let's talk about drugs. Let's talk about this pain and the ugly truth that drives around until dawn. Let's talk about smoking cigarettes all alone. Let's talk about the old man that left his towels by the bed. The t-shirt that he wore and the summer that he did not come home. Let's talk about painting some more. Let's talk about the wild night we spent in the gym. The flooded house behind the house that would not let us in. Let's talk about our cats, the ones that are alive and the ones that are half dead. Let's talk about the votes that we've cast and the liquor we've raged away. Let's talk about the boat that we sunk in the waters off Portsmouth after the tide had gone away. Let's talk about the train in the middle and the two trucks at each end. Lets paint a little and find somewhere else to begin...