Are We Vignette? (Almost)

 FRIENDS, COUNTRYMEN, & Some Sucky Trolls:

Lend me your Sears catalog spans of attention.

What can I say about this year? There was a lot of down time, then a lot of cabin fever, then a lot of time on the porch & in the yard. In our natural Florida habitat w/ all the clover & bumble bees & raccoons!

There could’ve been lots of arts & crafts & belles lettres going on. And there was some of that, but not nearly as much as I had planned. We did a couple episodes of the Buzbee & Whitman show but found our enthusiasm for the broadcasting arts had waned. But more on my failed arts projects later…

…what I’ve really enjoyed this year is YOUR arts projects & social studies adventures & technical advances. You’ve all come a long way. And I loved seeing how you filled your extended time slots so creatively.

Quiet Time

One realization I made this year was I am the master of my crafts. All of them. Up until now I have considered myself a foolish little dilettante playing at being an artist, or writer, or musician, or surgeon. But now I see that I am good at these things (not gifted, but finally arriving at my own latent pace). And you all are even better at your things than I am at mine.   

That’s okay. It’s not a competition. I always have been competitive though. I was an athlete before I was an artist. I grew up in a frat house full of brothers and was forced to compete at everything, even when I didn’t feel like it (most of the time.)

But I gave up being competitive this year. I’m just ready to plant flowers & vegetate. To read all the books on my to-read pile. To worry about growing old w/ depression & mental illness. To continue on the spiritual journey I started in 2017. 

Publicity Photo 2020

FIGHT CLUB

Speaking of the spirit journey, which I don’t speak of much because of y’alls’ maturity level on the subject— (Yeah, I got all your backward Zeppelin warm-fuxxies. And such. They made me cry & laugh at the same time. That’s what comedy is to me now — first the tears then the laughter. Must walk the path of darkness right into the whoopie cushion of light. [fun fact —didst thou know Led Zeppelin almost named theirself/theyselves “Whoopie Cushion”? Somehow I think their majesty would’ve been lost no matter how great the song writing, had they gone with that name]) —

Anyway, the spirit journey—which started with some shaky automatic writing in late ’17 and progressed to a vivid & violent encounter w/ the spirit world in March & April of 2019— is something I still don’t want to pour out here in this blog because it is an ongoing exegesis. 

One thing I did not want this spirit journey to be was me writing predictions for the future. That was not my intent with the auto-writing this time around. I’m nowhere near the psychic writer that D Foster Wallace was, but if you’re a quiet & astute reader you’ll find the virus, the search for a vaccine, the race riots of the summer, plus something about all game show hosts being sadists —(I’m looking at you ellen, and even you late alex!)— all made it into the mix.  

No, the thing I wished to address with my written meditations, the thing I wrapped up in white light as I scribbled away in the night, the thing I prayed rabidly for has been wiped out, at least temporarily, by this virus. And that’s a morbid twist I didn’t expect, but it has worked much faster than the legal system ever would!

Quantum Quintuplet Cartoon Doodle

ART

I told you how much I’ve enjoyed your creative efforts during our mutual quarantine, but let me say a little bit about these new scribbles you see before you — 

    first of all I know what you’re thinking “Vin, you are most definitely not the master of your craft”

But what if I told you I drew all these (most of them) w/ my eyes closed. I’m pretty much blind as a bat these days no matter how much light there is. I’m not even sure if DOTS are possible for me anymore. So there you have it…my new technique invented out of necessity. 

Art is something I wish I was better at, or went to school for, or could’ve handled going to school for; I did go to school for a few weeks, and then I flipped out (mostly about the cost of art school, but also my inferiority complex kicked into high gear around so much talent — see paragraph above about competitivity).

But I’m also glad that my artwork retains a child-like spirit, an unschooled sloppiness that no amount of framing & matting could disguise. I think it’s fitting for my quintuplet comediennes too!

4/5 Quints Ice Skate in Berlin

TRANSITION

I know I declared my transition COMPLETE on 4-25-19. I was feeling mighty masculine & toxically aggressive*, potent*, volatile* around that time. And I was looking pretty strong & fuzzy too. But I’m happy to say my transition was not complete.

I’ve changed & transformed some more since then. This really is an exercise in patience. I keep wanting to say, Yes I can see a dude in the mirror at all times. But there are stretches of time where I go back to looking quite feminine too.  And having to cover my fabulous soul patch w/ a mask has resulted in much misgendering during the pandemic. 

But someday I will be able to do one of those slideshows that starts with my first day on T and ends with Whitmanesque Whitman gazing through grey whiskers at an amazed audience.

[*These are not adjectives I want to embody as a male, and I don’t believe that these traits reflect masculinity on the whole; however I struggle with these bursts of self-dominion now, just as I went through bouts of sadness and low energy as an estrogen being. Hormones >: / Am I right?]

So….now let’s talk about my other transition. The one that took me from Baby Boomer to Gen Xer to Millennial Snowflake — all in the course of 50 years.

Pub Photo w/ initials

INCLUSIVITY

I began my life as a Baby Boomer only because I was born to Baby Boomers. I was expected to mirror their traits & values — hard work, self control, emotions way way on that back burner meant for melting butter…comparing yourself to everyone else & making sure you were just like them…but better. Not in any overt competitive way…but a sly comparison, a tallying of goods and accomplishments.

Only after moving away from home was I able to fully experience the traits & values of my poor little generation - Gen X. Oh what high ideals this generation possessed! Unfortunately we were pretty damaged by our lack of greatness to fulfill the promise of our ideals. But we also possessed enough of the hard work ethic of our parents to push through our slumps and create the world we wanted. We made progress, especially social progress, but also technological progress. And that’s what we were good for.

And only lately do I feel that I have been absorbed into the massive mosh pit of emotions that is The Millennial Generation. You who are the product of my gen’s loins do possess that high idealism, the urge for social progress and the verbal communication skills & digital intuition we passed down to you.

But you are Gen X on speed.  Our identity crisis became your mess to clean up. And while Gen Xers made progress in incorporating natural human emotions into the capitalist machinery that made up the bulk of our lives, Millennials required the capitalist machine to bend to their emotional will.

Wolf Howls to Warm Up in Iceland

Millenials are sensitive (as snowflakes apparently). This is just fine with me, as a bleeding heart libertarded artist dude, I like what the millennial & zillennial generations have allowed us to consider that we were never allowed to consider before. Mainly, that each one of us is a special stardust masterpiece—a unicorn that can’t be lumped into some Venn diagram of what a man or woman or Latino or black or Asian or disabled, etc…human is.

This, I learned, is called inclusivity and I was eager to participate in the new social order. As a Baby Boomer-Gen X prototype, designed to compete and compare at all costs, this seemed like a damn fine idea.  Even though it required some self-censorship, some uncomfortable realizations, some tears, some guilt…I felt like things were not going to go back to the old Boomer way anytime soon, so I might as well embrace something that I’d silently believed in all along.

When I was doing the ‘zine, I often made a point to specifically express that submissions were open to women, queer folks, people of color, etc… This did not mean I didn’t want subs from white guys, it just meant that I was already getting a lot of subs from white guys. I occasionally solicited work from poets I had friended online, and even then the men were more likely to submit stuff than the women. [Maybe because I have a masculine name now & they thought I was being predatory? Or why, I don’t know]

Anyway, I feel like this in itself offended some people, and I am still wondering why? I’m not a social justice warrior out to crucify those who aren’t on board with the identity politics of the day. But I’m also one who believes being a decent human doesn’t fatally wound anyone’s freedom of speech. So… I’m still in the dark as to why things are still so divided in these two camps.

If anyone wants to chime in, please do so.

Asleep in Austin

 I dragged the line into a space so new & vacant

                   My frenemies will never find it

             Maybe I do speak in the voice

                                                     of a Trumpet,

when the solo needs interrupting

                                          But remember

                               how Bush corrupted our vocab in the oughties

        & how like Obama (aka boring) we sounded

till 2016…

[piece of a poem I wrote in Oct ’19]

IN CONCLUSION

Thank you for reading this far, if you have. This is my progress report for 2020. And most of my progress is into blindness & old age. But I’m happy with what I’ve accumulated from these years on planet — I have a lot to take back to the mothership.

This is a terrible photo & I wanted to delete it but new Blogger doesn't have a delete photo option anymore. Sucky. Music lessons in Austin.

So…what about Shelter Cat & Trust Fund Baby? and The Octopus Review? and Singlewood? And regular old poetry submissions? and DOTS??? And Adventures in Reality? and all that stuff I used to just GIVE YOU FOR FREE?

There may be more…if I feel like it…remember…I’m only an 11% blogger & social media presence now.