Beings

Bad manners

It’s about something that happened a long time ago that is provoking the “hello”. It rings like super stings, but it gives back what it brings. I think it is beautiful to have you here thinking and dancing upon my feat, hearing my heart beat. I’m loving the way your voice rains down in sleet. You are a precious treat.
I wonder what will happen next. People do stupid things all the time, but I’m at a loss as to what might’ve caused this one.
Oh, it’s just that sometimes it is expected that you behave in a certain way. And if you rock the boat at all, people are either all out to defend you, or think of it as their life quest to bring you down.
-You’re not a person I want to know.
-Is that so?
-You’re a public menace.
-Really.
-You’re in trouble in more ways than one. It’s been a long time coming.
-Yeah? I’m not overly fond of being given shit. But should you attack me, I’m equipped to deal with it.
-Now isn't that just asking for trouble.
-According to you.
-See you say all this stupid shit and you don’t recognise that you’re doing it and you don’t even see it and yet you think you can deal with it? Now that’s what I call a fuckwit.
-Yeah, but I thought it would give you enough to think about to go to the trouble to say something back.
-Ah.

There’s a lot of things you could fear might happen. Social rejection, fragmentation of friends, embarrassment to the family… And all for what? So you could wrap up the tail ends of some stupid joke that you thought needed tidying up.

Mechanisms of coercion

Apparently harps are very expensive to buy. Unless they’re just some sort of toy. Of course they’re probably a good investment, for they age well, like violins and wine, if you take good care. Trumpets though, they’re a different thing. They tend to lose their pitch over time. But what’s material value when apposed to sentiment? And people collect all sorts of things that are not considered valuable until one day someone says they are. Abstract concepts apparently are imagined to make the world go round. But really that is only a medium through which to get the desired result. .So then, one harp will be smashed to obtain another. Thus the concept kills another version of what it seeks to obtain.

Which weighing symbols

I once wrote a book of poetry, it had this image on the front cover. I sold only a few copies, the rest I decided to give away to people. The receivers were embarrassed, rolling the book into a position where the cover was less obvious.

I was told later, that “that book upset a few people”. But it’s not the worst book I’ve written. The worst ones were a bit too long to print out and sew together myself. English always gets me into trouble. That’s why I stopped speaking at one stage. I was trying to explain a few things about what happens when you absorb the stuff around you and add it up together and put it into sound-sense and visual symbols. I also wanted to explain what it was like when you can hear and see a feeling. The intangible sense: 5th dimension electromagnetic frequency or “feelings”, they enter the body and they are not my opinion, unless I choose to let them be. Just as when someone says, “Nice day isn’t it?”, do I then chose to make that also my opinion, or do I think of it as “other”. Well, same thing applies when I get a feeling from “another” translated into words. Do I then just write it up as a character’s speech and follow the thread until I understand why I’ve linked with this thought? Or do I think, yes, I want that to be me… Intangible senses are a which, that society regards as an illness, to be suppressed with pills; just as Nanas thought washing a kid’s mouth out with soap would cleanse a filthy word. And how people have at various times thought it a good idea to murder. Making the fear become so big it won’t go away. That’s when you get superbugs. They stand up to all the murder and suppression of their kind. Because ultimately humanity needs equilibrium as much as the earth does. I like places that allow everyone to speak. For the shopkeeper-polite does not say much at all, if it is hiding an antagonistic troll. I carry an umbrella to stop the battering sun. I can’t dim it down, it burns as brightly as it wants to. More than a decade ago, I had wanted to do this.
But my friend Nat said, “Don’t you’ll embarrass me. You’ll look like an old Greek woman”. Nat had nice dark Italian skin. She also said I shouldn't say I don’t like sex with the man I was seeing, because I’d end up, “a fat lonely old lesbian.”
I farted in her car that day and couldn’t seem to get the gumption to admit it was me. She palmed it off as the old blankets in the back seat, but after that she never wanted to know my stinky person again.

Elucidate

You want to send me on a journey?
I’ve got a few moments
While I eat what you’ve served
To think around the ground of this scented time.
It’s an illusion though, to know
A deceptive light that guides a means of conversion.
Anything forbidden is inferred to be illegible.
Anything intolerant is deduced and slipped on.
Claims of special knowledge decorate
But do not necessarily awake that feeling
Contrary to logic. It is just a state of brightness
Conjured for my happy fool
Hanging from the squib’s extinguishing tool.
Do you want me to clarify this?
Painting to lean your back against.
Underside of the chair, it won’t get much of an audience, except for those who like to crawl under chairs. I remember sitting under chairs. I’d put them in a line like they were a train then push the treadle on Nana’s old foot energy sewing machine. I wonder if people might start going back to making these. Might do wonders for the ankles. Work out while you sew things up!

It’s all about sugar

The Devilz Avocaat doesn't like lemonade. It turns him into a fluffy duck. Doesn't like sweet things in general, prefers sausages and steaks. But he has dealings with Sweetie Glut, a sugar baron in a world where sweetness is a powerful fuel.
Devilz Advocaat: Sweetie, I thought we promised never to go there again. That old witch’s curse, it’s a ruse. I mean it. You don’t believe its true do you?
Sweetie Glut: Shall we prove it then?
Devilz Advocaat: I’d rather not get that horrible stuff on me. I despise it for other reasons. One, I don’t like lemons and two I hate things that are transparent. And three, I hate sticky situations.
Sweetie Glut: Mmm. I rather like it.
Devilz Advocaat: Well you like everything sweet.
Sweetie Glut: Ha.
Devilz Advocaat: Me, I’m more a fan of snags and stakes

Sweetie always has a stomach ache, so doesn’t tend to move from her resting spot. But if anyone needs to know the most rotten things about something Sweetie can tell them (at a price of course: sugar). Sugar can be used to power engines and vehicles. It is the best fuel in the kingdom and Sweetie has a strangle hold on most sugar operatives.

When is a painting finished?

(Suspended)
When is a painting finished? When someone buys it. Otherwise, I’ll let it sit a while. (Humasnail)
Then, if there’s no takers, I take it a step further. Often this means an entirely different image. Sometimes an extension on the previous one.
This one (Ontogenesis) has been sitting around for years, but it’s big (6 foot by 8) I’d have to hire a truck to move it and then I probably wouldn’t be able to fit it in my studio space, that’s the only reason it hasn’t been painted over. Some prangsters took it once, but the fella who owned the shop it was hanging in got it back for me. It’s about the growth and development of an individual. Specifically the surge in electro-magnetic frequency development. It’s a telescopic view of developing collective nuance.

A few people said it looked aboriginal. And this worried me because the last thing I want to do is steal from other painters that aren’t being properly recognised for their work. Plus, I don’t think I can. My favourite styles of painting are indigenous Australian and street art. (There is a wide variety there, but within those genres there’s a lot of artists I like.) However, when I painted Ontogenesis, I was thinking of nature, while working on abstracts and that’s just what came out. I’m an automatic artist. I paint what flows within the confines of direction (should I be commissioned or give myself a task).

Still, not as though I’m making enough to hire a gallery space.

Recently I went to a gallery in my area. She said “what sold” was a painting something like this: To me, it’s an underpainting. I won’t invalidate the work. All art is valid. And if that’s what sells in this gallery, I’m guessing there is some trend in interior decorating that likes the brown tones (and likes the minimalist feel): make the painting look like something, but not quite. Make it simple and set the buyers mind free to put their own psychology on it. But above all it must match the furniture. And make it look like it has been seen before. Then you’ll be recognised.
Eat my eyeball. Not sure if that hot hat would work on a windy boil day. I probably have to be good at socialising and selling as well. Plus it might possibly annoy me; that all my paintings sold before I got to finish them properly! To splash a few brush strokes across the canvas, it isn’t often satisfactory, I don’t feel like I’ve done much more than roughed out the idea.
(Sort and type) Is what sells about modesty? being a person of few brush strokes? finding the big TOE? I find the idea of single identity strange. I find blanket judgement inconceivable. I like myriads. So… no lovely bright gallery space for me. But that just means more opportunities for others! joy! I get to go to their exhibitions (no charge to me)and watch them despair as they wonder if they're going to make enough sales to cover the costs of catering to all the freeloaders.

It's always indefinite how many times a painting must be painted over before it can be exhibited. That, and painting over too quickly before it becomes fashionable. Still, it's all nice brush practice and what's life for other than to let the brush have its say?

I’ve been painting some furniture for Fern Rainbow’s Apollo Bay gallery by the sea. Probably needs a bit more detailing to punch them out and match them… and I've cropped the image, but they are actually parts of seats.

Now wouldn't you just like to sit on that!