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2000-03-20 19:17:32

loss, it's against the law, and art

Where are you? Where did you go? I looked for you everywhere you might have been... But you weren't there. Was it something I said? Something I did? Is there another guy? Do you prefer his hands to mine? Oh God... Already I miss your look, your touch, the flow of you against my skin... The words always come so easily whenever I have you with me. But now that you're gone... Where will they come from? No one can open me the way you can. What the hell am I supposed to do now? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? Do you think I can just replace you? I guess I will have to learn to move on... And live without you. I'm sure there will be others. In time perhaps I'll love again as I loved you... But for now... All I see is black.

As I made so poignantly clear in the last paragraph, I lost my pen today. My pens are important to me. Black Pilot pens are the only way to go. I always have one with me. I'm always writing something on my hand with them... It sure is annoying to lose one. Oh well.

You know that Kids in the Hall sketch, where that guy (it was Bruce McCulloch, I'm pretty sure) lends someone his pen, and the person walks off with it, and Bruce runs after him through the streets croaking, "My pen! You have my pen! My pen!" I like that one.

Wesley Willis is cool.

don't kill people you don't know
don't shoot people with guns
don't rob gas stations and banks
don't rob [?] stores elsewhere
it's against the law
don't sell illegal drugs
don't bust people in the head
don't stick up people for money
don't ever take things that don't belong to you
it's against the law
never assault a police officer
never threaten a security guard
never kill a probation officer
keep your ass out of the metal clink
it's against the law

Hey man, I don't have any spiritual thoughts. Leave me alone.

Now for some Deep Thoughts.

I read My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok, recently. I had seen people reading it for some English class in high school, so of course I was never inclined to voluntarily read it. But I did. And it was pretty good- I'm just glad I didn't have to read it for a class. It got me thinking about the nature and purpose of art. What's it for? Is it to make the world a nicer place? Or is it a way for an artist to express the truth as he or she sees it?

"The world is a terrible place. I do not sculpt and paint to make the world sacred. I sculpt and paint to give permanence to my feelings about how terrible this world truly is. Nothing is real to me except my feelings; nothing is true except my own feelings as I see them all around me in my sculptures and paintings."

On the one hand, it seems pretty selfish for the artist to be making art just for themselves, and then attacking the poor taste of all the people who won't buy it. But, on the other hand, the average person has horrible taste in art. I'm sorry, but Norman Rockwell and N'Sync ARE NOT good art. But still, art has to be appreciable by other people, or else it's useless except to the person who made it- in which case they have no business trying to get others to buy it. But also, art has to be brutally honest and uncompromising, original and unique, or else it's not "art-" it's falsehood, exploitation, propaganda, cotton candy, empty calories. There's kind of a conflict there. Do you make art to sell art, or do you make art to make art? Maybe sometimes it's the same thing. But sometimes it isn't. How to balance between the need for art people can identify with and the need for art that is real and true? Hell if I know...

"I would not be the whore to my own existence. Can you understand that? I would not be the whore to my own existence."

i like ya a lot like cool whip,

grey

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