BAD ART That Needs To Be Spanked

FRIENDS!

We survived August!! Why does everyone, including me, hate August? April may be the cruelest, but August is the long, laborious haul through the swamp of time.  And temperature.

I want to apologize for how quickly and thoughtlessly I wrapped up my Adventures in Spirituality series. I had wanted it to end in a crescendo of enlightenment. But I came away knowing what I’ve known all along. We’re all writhing through some complex laser maze of karma, looking like freaks to the rest of the world and the finish line is death, and probably another, harder maze. 

And of course—42.

I didn’t go into my adventures with Judaism, Islam (because I don’t have any), or AA. So i’ll talk a little bit about those today—as a little spiritual epilogue.

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First I wanna talk about art for a minute. I’m almost ready to give up on watercolors, people. I started working w/ watercolors in 2013 after wanting to try it for many years. I saw it as the most right-brained activity on earth & I wanted to master it. But I’m still pretty lost after 4 years.

I keep waiting to have a dream about watercolors because that’s how I’ll know I actually “get it.” There’ve been times in my life where I’m struggling with a task and then i’ll dream that I’m doing said task and I’ll wake up the next day & be able to do it perfectly. That’s how I learned to drive a stick shift—I wasn’t getting it, then I had a dream I was driving perfectly and I could suddenly do it. That’s how I learned certain gymnastic tricks, and some foreign languages too. Does this happen to anyone else?

Allen Ginsberg sleeping w/ kittens

Anyway…still no dream re: watercolors so I still suck at it. I get really stressed out about it too. I know I’ll ruin whatever I’m working on and have to turn it into something else. Like this portrait of Allen Ginsberg sleeping w/ his pussies ^^^ was supposed to be another self portrait, but I spilled a big droplet of black paint right on the face, when I was trying to be so, so careful…

…and so it had a beard. And so it became AG.

I’m so glad I found some new neon pens. After I used up my other ones on the Singlewood storyboards I couldn’t find any ink that I liked. Plus I was busy w/ watercolors. But guess what? I want to do more neon dot drawings, aka pointillism, aka pixillism, aka impressionism, aka stipple instead of watercolors. Until the dream of painting perfectly visits me.

The syringe mandala is coming along. I need to do another year’s worth of shots to finish it though : )

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ADVENTURES IN JUDAISM, ISLAM, AND AA

When I was in 3rd grade I had a boyfriend who was in 4th grade. Coincidentally his little sister was best friends with my little brother. Our two families started spending lots of time together. They were Jewish. Other than having different holidays from “us Xtians” and a few dietary quirks, I couldn’t really tell the difference between Jewish and Xtian. 

I really liked my boyfriend, who was actually just a friend. He was smart and adventurous and didn’t talk too much and had no problem with the fact that I was a girl. I kept waiting for him to call me stupid or pussy or say “you’re pretty good…for a girl” but he never did, and that was new to me. He seemed to like and respect girls. He gave me all his Judy Blume books to read. 

Yes, I got “Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret” from a 10-yr-old boy. And it’s funny, I think the girl in the book was Jewish, but liked to pretend to be Xtian. And I was the opposite—I really wanted to be Jewish. I did go to Temple with my friend a few times. I didn’t like it much better than Church, but for some reason it struck me as more “intellectual” and less “judgmental.”

I asked my mom if I could be Jewish and she said I could but I probably wouldn’t like it because I would have to go to regular school AND Hebrew school, like my friend. Plus Jesus would no longer save me and bring me up to Heaven with him. I didn’t care about that, but going to school twice a day? I wasn’t sure if I could handle that. I decided I was too lazy and unsmart to be Jewish. I also learned, from reading Judy Blume, that Jewish people & Xtian people could still get married to each other.

Alas, there was to be no marriage though… I don’t know which happened first, my falling out with my smart Jewish boyfriend, or my parents’ falling out with his parents…

Our falling out happened when I committed a terrible fashion faux pas at a young girl’s funeral—she was my classmate & his Temple-mate. Of course for the funeral my mom made me wear a dress, which I hated and which always inflated my gender dysphoria. But I decided to wear my ’70s rock-n-roll Kiss boots to offset the femininity of the dress. I was supposed to meet my boyfriend at the funeral and we were going to sit together.

But when he saw what I was wearing he was like “BOOTS!?? You’re wearing boots to a funeral??” Basically he shamed me and wouldn’t sit next to me and after the funeral he & his friends taunted me, so I ran to my mom’s car and I don’t think I ever saw him again after that.

My brother & his sister were still friends, and our parents were friends. At least they were until his parents brought some pot brownies to one of my parents’ parties. I guess the mom showed up with her plate of brownies and told my mom she should try one, and my mom asked them to leave!

(Because to my parents ALCOHOL was NOT a DRUG;

POT = a dangerous DRUG for derelicts and scummy hippies)

I didn’t hear about the pot brownie incident til I was a teenager. I told my mom she should’ve eaten one.

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Later on I dated a Syrian guy. He was not Muslim though. He was completely Syrian-American and I learned nothing about Allah from him. I still don’t have much firsthand experience with Islam. I will admit—pretty shamefully—to having a twinge of Islamaphobia. Due I suspect to how it is portrayed here in the mainstream media, and my lack of knowledge.

I’d just like to remind y’all that I’m pretty skeefed out by devout Xtians too. It’s not a racial thing, it’s a belief-system thing.

So Muslims, get in touch. Teach me a thing or two.

I'm usually against selfie-portraits, but I wanted to see how I'd look in dots. Pretty Good, as you can see : ))

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And then there’s AA. It pretends not to be a religion, but it is. As much as crystals or chanting or meditating or praying to a spaghetti monster are religions, driving to sit in a room and recite the Serenity prayer and talk and talk about your deadly/undying love for booze is too.

It’s a cult of sobriety that works for some people—many people—and not others. I’ve been to exactly one AA meeting and I knew it wasn’t for me. Anonymity and rote memorization hold no appeal. If you think this blog is indulgently long-winded, go to an AA meeting and you will hear people blogging with their tongues, with even less editorial finesse than I.

ALRIGHT! Those are my final thoughts on religious things. Unless I have more, which is a possibility.

Like I said I’ll be doing more art & less writing this Fall. I hope you can find time to rejoice about that.

Also, please find time to send me your art & poetry for the Fall Issue of the Octopus Review.

Vin the Famous Artist. Year of the Write-Dudes Metallic Neon Gel Pen