today at tumblewordsproject

first
You always mess up. The only answer it to be truthful to your people. Follow your mind as well as your heart. Red scratches on a torn piece of paper, so light as to be overlooked. The tentative effort to express yourself, your fears & insecurities. If you could start over you would mess up again and there’s no erasure here. Each scribble is there until the end of existence. There is no white-out in life or art. If you’re lucky your aimlessness will be overcome by an innate need to make something sensible from chaos. A few scratches on a page. A cat pooping on scratch board, the artist’s comment on life. You mess up. You don’t belong here. Are you smart? No. Are you too dumb? Yes. As a child you didn’t know if you were wright or you were wrong. No one said yes or no. But you knew you felt as if you did not belong. Were you smart? You painted the word NO in capital letters and circled it. But it was all an afterthought, a caption or postscript to the image. Large red eyes staring at you with sorrow, with compassion. IF you could only start over he says to you. But you see no hope in those big red eyes with the wrinkles surrounding them like cracks in a wooden mask, like the veins of doubt threaded throughout your life. The mouth that smiles with sorrow. The big ears incapable of hearing what is right in front of your eyes. IF, you say, IF you could only start over. But you always mess up and there is no erasure here, nothing to make the faults disappear, no serums to hide the truth rather than reveal it, applied each night with a hand well aware of the futility of its mission. IF you could only start over again, you say, but you know there is no such thing as a new beginning, that’s one thing you do know. Nobody told you if you were right or wrong. IF only you could start over, erase the blue frown & the red face, the red lips failing to obscure the blue smile. The only answer is to be truthful to your people.

second
2000 frames in 3 minutes
art as labor intensive exposition of non-narrative beliefs
random images fall from whatever is at hand
the chaos stirred by the wing of an insect
a coupon from Walgreens for catsup or mustard
the seduction of money & the lowest impulses
the artist picks up this object and drops it onto that canvas
like a gift to a lover who won’t accept who you are
hidden among the autum leaves like an old photograph
a beautiful girl with brown eyes like jewels on a royal cape of feathers
the lascivious tongue
the nose rimmed in white
the slobber & mumbles of subterfuge
the bread of life
the body of Christ
a man or a woman with sorrowful eyes
a woman in shades of plum wanting to suck out your life then disappear into the night one more time
the artist is looking for someone to trust but the only place to find that person is on the other side of the mirror
the body is broken & bloody
entrails spell out your name in the end
the question is can something be made from nothing
2000 frames in 3 minutes

third
Nietsche said that’s what makes artsts special
something from nothing so the rules don’t apply
Neitsche killed himself in a madhouse
out of the mouth of madness --
out of the poisons we take into our body --
we find truth
bloodsoaked cloth tied around our wrists painting the beginning of the story
someone else’s story
his story
my story
a contrived chaos
a fallen & broken wing

typed just now from the unrevised words written into a spiral-bound notebook today March 29, 2008 in Victor Hernandez’s workshop, "Capirotada."