I am currently working on two projects. One a thriller novel regarding an individual and genocide right out of contemporary events and the other a visual arts project about "middle" or "average" America. When I take on projects I do a lot of reading so that I am informed and also to study to create the best possible art that I can.
For the novel I have been reading a very good book, "The Lie That Tells A Truth" by John Dufresne. I have found this book really helpful although I have to admit that "writer's block" does not seem to be inflicted on me like it is with other authors. I have been encouraged to write because friends have always said that I can create these great story subjects with good characters that I should get them published. Well when I took up the dare it was not hard to complete stories as I usually like to research and create believable stories from a world of facts that is then given real characters with a specific plot.
What alarmed me with this book was that the author attacked the writer Ayn Rand as a poor writer because the writing has a political motivation. While Ayn Rand's writing can be difficult to read and is dated I would have to say that Rand's been more read than Dufresne and is not any more polemic than Doesteyevsky who Dufresne quotes at least several times. I understand that Rand is hard to read from when I was assigned The Fountainhead in high school and I tried to read Atlas Shrugged during college.
Besides this shortcoming I find Dufresne has plenty of good advice to writers.
The book I read for my visual art project is "The Big Sort; The Clustering of America and Why it is Tearing Us Apart" by Bill Bishop. This book should be read to understand politics in America and the problems that we have in America. We have fragmented ourselves and then been targeted by consumerism in all parts of our lives that we do not want to realize that their may be a different America outside of our neighborhood. America today believes in diversity as long as the others do not disturb me and my neighbors who will decide who is in our neighborhood. These same Americans do not understand that they actually buy into the consumed America per the targeting of corporations, churches and political parties instead of their own original independent ideas.
I guess in both projects I am trying to show created worlds in hopes of creating a better world so I guess that I am like Ayn Rand and Doesteyevsky (and probably Mr. Dufresne) in that concern.
Remember if you see me writing in my notebook I may be putting you in a novel so wave and check your local bookstore in a year or so, although I will use the "characters and events in this work are fictional" disclaimer.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
The Answers That I Wanted?
As I am proud of stating, I am an exile in my homeland but in my life I have travelled across the globe. In college I studied other cultures and I made it my purpose in life to try to understand other peoples.
Some people would say that I have lived quite the privileged life going places that others dream of going to once in their lifetime. I have actually been to places where I am the only one of my "skin color" and the only one there in years so I was truly a curiosity to everyone else. In these situations you are neither real or not real, but an idea on two legs.
I was someone that no one had met but they all knew what I was, because being an American is being known worldwide. I am kind of a no one, a minor artist of small distinction, so there was no way that in the distant reaches that I have been that my work was known, let alone me. But being a different complexion from natives made me a foreigner and when discovered that I was an American I became "wealthy and caring" and apparently "famous" if I could travel to where they were.
I try not to ask questions in such situations but rather observe. Enough questions are asked of me and I want to learn through observation about those I visit. Even if I asked questions would I not just get the answers that I wanted. I have learned that it is better to be a nobody who takes notes (with a camera or a pencil).
In a foreign country this is easy but when I am in America I blend in and it is more difficult to observe as an outsider and people want to involve me, but not be recorded. This is partly because of Americans sense of personal independence / space that mistrusts observation as if it is a way of trying to take something precious, their independence from them.
You can't call it an issue of pride as I have observed more proud people that live in abject poverty compared to average Americans. Typically I have discovered that those who are impoverished are more willing to share themselves because it is the only real thing that they have to share. The people I have visited are proud of themselves, their families, hometowns and countries no matter what we think of their situation. Some of the people I have visited live in nations where they are constantly observed. Other people live in such remote places that no one cares about their lives to observe them or take the time to visit them.
There are lessons to be learned from people who are literally only numbers that are managed and other people who are not even numbers. I am an exile in America because of who I am and that I choose to try to be outside of my culture to observe, a foreigner, trying to glean some insight into my own culture and this makes me a suspicious figure to the Americans.
I often refer to my cultural heritage as being "mut" as I am a mixture. A term for a creature of no pure breeding. Due to my complexion I fit in with the majority and because of racial, cultural and socio-economic background I am accepted by minorities.
I live in an area that is a hotbed against illegal immigration even though borders are distant, immigrants relatively few, but an area that is proud of its history of ingenious, tough pioneers that were illegal settlers. They have legislated their animosity against new immigrants to their part of the American Dream.
When I visit foreign countries "educated" people are always proud to share their ability to communicate in English, usually taught to them in a more pure form than the dialect I hear at home. In America we try to insist that immigrants learn "our" language and complain that we can not understand foreigners' accents (my aging father detests English actors because he can not understand them).
Americans call up telephone call centers in foreign countries because something we have (an item or a question) needs to be fixed at that moment. Americans state that they become angry because the operator on the other end of the line, who earns a smaller income but is typically as educated or more than the American, can not be understood.
Dignity is not what you have but how you act and the most dignified people tend to be hungry but happy to have a life.
If you see me sketching something come over and have a look.
Some people would say that I have lived quite the privileged life going places that others dream of going to once in their lifetime. I have actually been to places where I am the only one of my "skin color" and the only one there in years so I was truly a curiosity to everyone else. In these situations you are neither real or not real, but an idea on two legs.
I was someone that no one had met but they all knew what I was, because being an American is being known worldwide. I am kind of a no one, a minor artist of small distinction, so there was no way that in the distant reaches that I have been that my work was known, let alone me. But being a different complexion from natives made me a foreigner and when discovered that I was an American I became "wealthy and caring" and apparently "famous" if I could travel to where they were.
I try not to ask questions in such situations but rather observe. Enough questions are asked of me and I want to learn through observation about those I visit. Even if I asked questions would I not just get the answers that I wanted. I have learned that it is better to be a nobody who takes notes (with a camera or a pencil).
In a foreign country this is easy but when I am in America I blend in and it is more difficult to observe as an outsider and people want to involve me, but not be recorded. This is partly because of Americans sense of personal independence / space that mistrusts observation as if it is a way of trying to take something precious, their independence from them.
You can't call it an issue of pride as I have observed more proud people that live in abject poverty compared to average Americans. Typically I have discovered that those who are impoverished are more willing to share themselves because it is the only real thing that they have to share. The people I have visited are proud of themselves, their families, hometowns and countries no matter what we think of their situation. Some of the people I have visited live in nations where they are constantly observed. Other people live in such remote places that no one cares about their lives to observe them or take the time to visit them.
There are lessons to be learned from people who are literally only numbers that are managed and other people who are not even numbers. I am an exile in America because of who I am and that I choose to try to be outside of my culture to observe, a foreigner, trying to glean some insight into my own culture and this makes me a suspicious figure to the Americans.
I often refer to my cultural heritage as being "mut" as I am a mixture. A term for a creature of no pure breeding. Due to my complexion I fit in with the majority and because of racial, cultural and socio-economic background I am accepted by minorities.
I live in an area that is a hotbed against illegal immigration even though borders are distant, immigrants relatively few, but an area that is proud of its history of ingenious, tough pioneers that were illegal settlers. They have legislated their animosity against new immigrants to their part of the American Dream.
When I visit foreign countries "educated" people are always proud to share their ability to communicate in English, usually taught to them in a more pure form than the dialect I hear at home. In America we try to insist that immigrants learn "our" language and complain that we can not understand foreigners' accents (my aging father detests English actors because he can not understand them).
Americans call up telephone call centers in foreign countries because something we have (an item or a question) needs to be fixed at that moment. Americans state that they become angry because the operator on the other end of the line, who earns a smaller income but is typically as educated or more than the American, can not be understood.
Dignity is not what you have but how you act and the most dignified people tend to be hungry but happy to have a life.
If you see me sketching something come over and have a look.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
No I don't endorse animal consumption of alcohol
I am starting this blog out with a piece I created last year but is now appropriate for other reasons, the automobile company bailouts. The piece is entitled "Found On Road Dead."
I am not trying to draw a link between an autombile company and the consumption of alcohol or animals instead I understand why one company did not accept a government bailout. The company realized that if they could survive a recession without the government telling them how they would come out of it better than the other American automobile companies they would have something better than the others. The overly marketed and thus "conscientious"American consumer could be pursuaded to buy a bailout-free vehicle even if the consumer was still in debt and piling up more credit if they can find it. That's how our corporate model and economy work now.
I am not endorsing or criticizing this American automobile company. I am trying to point out corporate responsibility goes as far as the profit margin. While I sell artwork and life since it is art also I am the wrong person for endorsements as I prefer being anonymous here. I am an American from the middle of nowhere that can fit into the crowd just about anywhere in this country.
Okay I do not endorse mixing alcohol with driving automobiles (call a cab if you party). I do not endorse animals consuming alcohol (whoever sold it to them should be closed) or animals driving automobiles (whether they have consumed alcohol or not). I do however endorse alcohol when consuming animals. The appropriate beverage per the fruit of the glaze on a roasted duck or bourbon or whiskey on barbecue beef or smoked ham is delicious.
I know I will catch some heat for this endorsement from vegetarians and animal lovers. My doctor should not worry about these culinary choices as the alcohol cooks out with the heat. I mean the heat from the cooking. As for the heat I might take from vegetarians and animal lovers that is my decision that I will live with anonymously (at least I don't have to share the meal with them so I can have more). By the way I love my pets and I watch the livestock fattening up, I care for both sets of animals.
I don't have to worry about what I endorse however because I am the best and worst commercial endorsement vehicle. I am anyone, everyone and no one with my anonymity. No one will pay me because they can not be sure if I endorse the product, who would be reached by my endorsement and what else I might endorse. People don't have to buy what I am selling.
If you think you see me, smile and wave. I'll smile and wave back.
I am not trying to draw a link between an autombile company and the consumption of alcohol or animals instead I understand why one company did not accept a government bailout. The company realized that if they could survive a recession without the government telling them how they would come out of it better than the other American automobile companies they would have something better than the others. The overly marketed and thus "conscientious"American consumer could be pursuaded to buy a bailout-free vehicle even if the consumer was still in debt and piling up more credit if they can find it. That's how our corporate model and economy work now.
I am not endorsing or criticizing this American automobile company. I am trying to point out corporate responsibility goes as far as the profit margin. While I sell artwork and life since it is art also I am the wrong person for endorsements as I prefer being anonymous here. I am an American from the middle of nowhere that can fit into the crowd just about anywhere in this country.
Okay I do not endorse mixing alcohol with driving automobiles (call a cab if you party). I do not endorse animals consuming alcohol (whoever sold it to them should be closed) or animals driving automobiles (whether they have consumed alcohol or not). I do however endorse alcohol when consuming animals. The appropriate beverage per the fruit of the glaze on a roasted duck or bourbon or whiskey on barbecue beef or smoked ham is delicious.
I know I will catch some heat for this endorsement from vegetarians and animal lovers. My doctor should not worry about these culinary choices as the alcohol cooks out with the heat. I mean the heat from the cooking. As for the heat I might take from vegetarians and animal lovers that is my decision that I will live with anonymously (at least I don't have to share the meal with them so I can have more). By the way I love my pets and I watch the livestock fattening up, I care for both sets of animals.
I don't have to worry about what I endorse however because I am the best and worst commercial endorsement vehicle. I am anyone, everyone and no one with my anonymity. No one will pay me because they can not be sure if I endorse the product, who would be reached by my endorsement and what else I might endorse. People don't have to buy what I am selling.
If you think you see me, smile and wave. I'll smile and wave back.
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