The world is there, at your feet
Take a piece, a chunk
Or the whole thing
But be reverent
That what’s it’s there for
Fear is a phantom
Debilitating and dead weight
Even if it’s bitter
The world is sweet
And all you have until
You unravel it into
Raw clay in your own hands
So shape it, pound it
Make it what it has to be
The same world, the new world
Your body in another land
Hair matted and full of lice
Eyes milky and unfocused
Cheeks chapped and raw
Teeth rotting and yellow
Neck and shoulders with insect bites
Chest sunken
Stomach distended
Hands calloused and black
Genitals with a rash
Legs thin and wobbly
Feet with bleeding sores
Your body in another land
People say, “I’m just one person, what can I do?” The reality is that everything human beings have ever imagined, built, organized or created has been the consequence of one person taking the lead. Each of us has this capacity to act in and on the world in the way we choose and as we are able.
Hymn of the Christian Right
My Jesus saw refugees on the road and ran and closed the gate.
My Jesus met the meek and gave each of them a gun.
My Jesus met the woman in trouble and told her to just get on with it and have the baby.
My Jesus saw the power of white people and became white also.
My Jesus met the poor and told them they should stop being so lazy.
My Jesus wants me to be wealthy and tells me to have an Amazon.com Christmas.
My Jesus can walks on water to chase the immigrants back across the Rio Grande.
Hold out your arms
So I can stack the bodies
Of the dead children in them
How many can you carry
Before you are crushed
Under the awful weight
No, instead, hold out your arms
So I can stack the grief and loss
They weigh more
A legacy stolen
The future with a gaping hole
We thought would be filled with flowers
I didn’t spend more than 40 years being a serious artist just to be weird, quirky, stylish, obscure, edgy or any of that. I spent those years in genuine effort trying to make sense of that piece of the world offered to me by my education and my life experience.
I believe that this work is worthy work, work that deepens the humanity of my art and my own humanity at the same time. This is not a selfish process because any effort by anyone to discover their humanity is a gift to the world.
I believe it is honest to see art and to make art in this way.
All men are not created equal. Inequality starts at conception. After that, it’s all up to us.
Children are built to need love, but adults are not always built to give love. Haven’t you noticed?
The task of older people is not to go quietly and cooperatively into a senior living setting. The task is to assess the wisdom gifted by age and volunteer it, offer it or inflict on young people—even if they don’t always listen at first.
The task of young people is not to accumulate stuff, have fun and practice me-ness. That will come. The task is to know enough to know there is wisdom to be had and to search it out thoughtfully.
The human brain is arguably the most complex and astounding creation of evolution. It is how we perceive, understand and negotiate the world—sensations, images, sounds, emotions, ideas, languages, everything. The brain builds the mind, stores memories and is the gatekeeper of our consciousness. It ‘s ready at birth to do its work. It assembles the mind mysteriously and lets the mind crumble away mysteriously.
For all its wonder, the brain is also the source of devastating mental illnesses. It can distort the world, wash the mind in darkness and even call for the execution of the self.
This is what we see in the current world of stress, addiction, isolation and COVID. This destruction happens in all ages, economic classes and races. Our nation is killing itself and its spirit in so many ways, and the suicide rate is one clear measure of that.
I have been a professional artist for more than 40 years. I have done all that a professional artist ought to do—national and international exhibitions, teaching, curating shows, mentoring young artists, getting work in museum collections, giving lectures, volunteering for art causes. I have worked in numerous 2-D and 3-D media as well as performance, text, public art and video. In that time I have maintained a coherent vision in my work.
And still my studio is filled with quality work that I can’t sell at a fair price. And I know plenty of artists like me in the same predicament, with studios full of topnotch work that they have to curate.
So I ask myself, where does all this work wind up when the artists die? Does it float up to art heaven? Is there a giant underground vault maintained by Goodwill where it is stored? Does it become just another commodity with a shelf life? Is it waiting for a PhD candidate in art history to find it and resurrect the life of the artist? Should there just be an annual bonfire of unsold art?
Do you have any suggestions?
Some thoughts:
The societal issues of the campaign—violence, policing, racism, inequality—sometimes seem less crucial to me than figuring out how to combat the fear and ignorance that are the fuel for Republican popularity.
How can any Christian buy the argument that Donald Trump is the savior of anything when his life repudiates every one of the Ten Commandments?
I believe that at one time political parties offered different visions of how to build the best America. Now they offer combative visions that they use and forget the American people in an effort to gain personal and party power.
It eludes me how easy it is for Republicans under Trump to lock their consciences in the basement.
How many times must we experience the butterfly effect of violence? One event explodes into national or international protests. Then the same events follow every time. Press frenzy before the complete picture is evident. Peaceful protests that turn violent and lead to looting and arson. Heavily equipped police face-to-face with ordinary citizens. Politicians fanning the flames for personal gain. Is this necessary for change to happen?
The Republicans will throw “socialism” at the Democrats even though all Americans benefit from some major legislation that is socialist at its core. They will try furiously to hide the term “authoritarianism” that is at the core of the Trump view of the governing. Americans have to be educated to see this at every turn.
Trump has drained the swamp. And he has filled it with vile and stinking excrement.
We have to have hope and do the work necessary to ensure that we build a government that really does make America great again.
That body next to you
In bed is flesh
Telling tactile stories
Accumulated over decades
Intimacy is the measure of love
Interrupted by twisting and turning
And the small distances between
Sometimes canyon wide
Conversations in the dark
Kids, money, why? Say it
Minutia, but always at the end
I love you
We imagine that coitus
Is the main event
It’s not
Just that body, warmly there
Next to you in bed
In these times “the American people” is a fiction. We are a country divided, even fragmented, even shattered, even splintered. “The American people” is used by politicians of both parties to pretend full support for ideas and programs, which have purely partisan character and intent.
“The American people” does take on a transitory meaning when there is a major natural disaster or a 9/11. Americans become one and focus on solutions and healing before they forget and split apart again.
America is a socially, religiously, ethnically, culturally and racially diverse nation. So it is not unexpected that we face many obstacles to being one people. So maybe “the American people” is just a dream. Still it is a dream worth believing in and working toward, bringing with it benefits we can only imagine and hope for.
The womb is cozy, warm
But all of us get outed
Taking all the umbilical considerations
With us as we become us
Sometimes pain
Sometimes eyes forced open
Sometimes the prodigal son
Sometimes meeting the trickster
But always mystery if we pay attention
There are other wombs
Like a warm eucalyptus bath
Or wrapped in the Adagio for Strings
Or in the arms of a lover
But none are available in the grave
God is real to the degree that justice and love are real. We struggle to define all of these elusive things. We fail as human beings if we do not believe in them, and believe in them with fierceness and humility. We remain empty if we no not take them into ourselves.
My sleeping brain dreams
With its own absurd logic
A dance of fears
And the oddest juxtapositions
Dramas juggling yesterday
And the never happened
I fall asleep hoping for
The dream of flying, again
But mischief, hurt and terror
Come tonight
Ferociously uninvited
Holding me to the pillow
Dreams have morphed into myths
And changed the world
And filled men with the madness
Of right living
Dreams just make me wonder
If I am never not dreaming
One of the best art exhibits I ever saw was “1492.” This exhibition presented some of the greatest art produced by all the cultures making art in the year 1492. The range of objects and imagery was staggering in quality and diversity.
In our times there is also a great diversity of art, especially since we are living in a world of more than 7 billion people with wide freedom of expression. In the midst of such visual clamor, critics and art historians take on the task of producing some kind of order and sense. The result is usually naming isms and movements, clustering artists together and identifying--de facto--which art is most significant.
These decisions filter down very often to educational, museum and coffee table book contexts. The artists missed in the ism sweep are often passed over or forgotten until individuals with an appreciation for those artists give the time and effort that leads to rediscovery.
Art presents itself as all about the artist who is original, marginal or “out there.” Yet these are the artists often excluded or forgotten in the identification of style or fashion. To me, this is the reason why excellence should be a primary criterion in asserting the worth of art.
For the ancients and for the indigenous peoples, nature was intimately connected to the gods. Over time, we have dislodged God from a place in nature, trying conscientiously to find a place for God.
Nature did not intend us or have any expectations for us. We just happened. We are the ones who assigned ourselves the task of overseeing nature—the domain that gave us life.
It’s time to recognize that even if we take God from nature, sacredness in nature still remains. In our time, to believe that God is creator of the world means we are poisoning God, choking God, raping God, mutilating God. This can make God as creator very uncomfortable.
But sacredness remains. Sacredness makes sense. Sacredness can be sustained as a vision. Sacredness is true.
Here we are.
America is being shamed.
Many are showing their lust for power.
The chance to regain a conscience is being thrown away.
The most powerful man in the world is dangerously erratic.
Ears are deaf to calls for healing.
Everything is oppositional.
The law had its pants pulled down.
Lying seems effortless.
Hope is behind a high fence.
The world is gasping, sighing and breathing in relief all at once.
Heads are rolling.
Heads are spinning.
Heads are aching, aching, aching.
With a new name, I think I need a new outfit… especially if I get invited to the Inauguration.
(a) a black beret, a sterling silver nose ring, a skin-tight black sleeveless shirt with aluminum foil trim, jeans with no knees, Keds, a fluffy fake leopard fur belt
(b) a sky blue Lycra body suit, a Himalayan cap, a black thong, rainbow colored wrist bracelets, gold bling necklaces, knee high boots
(c) a Che Guevara cap, a red neck bandana, camouflage shirt, cargo shorts with studded pockets, ammunition belt, combat boots with colorful laces
(d) jeans, pink leather chaps, Tom of Finland leather vest, red cowboy boots, pink leather wrist cuffs, cowboy hat with snakeskin band
(e) yellow silk shirt with balloon sleeves, sleeveless argyle sweater, green corduroy pants, striped elastic belt, white wing tip shoes
My backyard in November
Even the dry brown oak leaves
Are afire in the late evening sun
The bushes are yellow
But mostly red, red
The lawn is a patchwork of grasses
Weeds and errant perennials
The Virgin Mary, out from behind the irises
And summer milkweed
Commands the yard again
Winter will come, and the fireplace
I will wait impatiently
For snow drops and crocus
And the explosion of flowers
We call spring
It’s done. Now both sides must act with humility and generosity if we are to right the American ship. Hope, courage, leadership, competence and compassion are the qualities that will move us forward. But this will not happen magically or easily. It will take hard work—damn hard work. Every day.
This not something that will happen only from the top. This is a task for every politician and every citizen. Each individual must decide what is possible for them to contribute.
So celebrate and then nose to the grindstone.
Each of us struggles to reach a balance between our needs and wants. For children needs and wants are the same thing. For marketers the task is to convince us that wants are needs. For many people in debt, wants trump needs. For savers needs are clear.
In many cases the wants/needs issues have a moral basis. This becomes clear when we vote for elected officials. If our vote is one that is based on our wants, it can seem selfish action. If our vote is one that is based on our needs, it can be seen as an action in support of community.
This is an important consideration in a culture which is too often: “I want it. I deserve it. And I want it now.”
I think it’s time for me to get a new persona. Which new name?
Gary Gaga
Spice Boy
DJ Gaffney Thug
G-yonce
Art-Delicious
G Rap Daddy
Dixie Dick
G-punk Malicious
Garyatric
Buster Cred-Z
Gary Man Rocket
What I’ve been thinking
The most destructive addictions in America are not drugs, alcohol and sex. They are consumerism and convenience.
I have been recycling, composting, growing some of my own food, conserving water and energy for decades. I still create too much trash, and all of it can’t be recycled. I just think we will just slowly choke ourselves to death.
Politics is about government. Government is about laws. Laws create order and are not moral imperatives. We need to sort out our values first. Politics can’t do that.
When did we stop expecting integrity and leadership from those who govern us?
Less talking, more listening.
Make MAGA mean what it really should mean.
Though there have been many casualties on the way, history shows that the good is the most powerful force.
Freedom should not be me-dom
America is not first when America is worst
Patriotism is never hate-triotism
Anti-abortion should not be women’s extortion
American fear brings the dictator near
The racist wars are American scars
The privileged cower at the loss of white power
From the beginning of the American democracy there have been those who have tried to undermine the core values of this nation and its Constitution. In recent times we have had Huey P. Long, Strom Thurmond, Joe McCarthy and the Ku Klux Klan, for example. Now we have Donald Trump.
Trump, like these others, bullied and lied their ways to a power place that is about personal power and out-of-control ego. Worse, they are capable of bringing out the demons of racism, inequality and privilege.
You’d think we would have learned our lesson after all this. But racism, inequality and privilege are stubborn weeds. We mow them down, and they grow. We mow them down and they grow. When they are fertilized with the shit of power for its own sake, the thicket is ugly.
I died because
My brain is dead
One day we will be able
To mine the neurons still busy
Alive and remembering
They will still speak
The ways we lived love
And raised the children so they
Needn’t undo our job
In adulthood
And surely there would be enough neurons
To recall the ten thousand little things
That made our lives our own
The box you want to think or live outside of is not a box. It’s a home, a house of worship, a school, an office or government building. A home can be seductively comfortable. A house of worship can be rigid. A school can be dogmatic. A building can demand conformity.
It’s the individual who determines when these boxes are constricting or oppressive. It’s the individual who measures the risk and summons the courage to push out of the box. It’s the individual who sees life expand.
Because so little is known about the historical Jesus, we have created many a Jesus over time and for our needs.
Fairy tale Jesus: a white-people Jesus who is there for us, saves us and helps us keep our privileges
Bro Jesus: a friend who walks beside us, lets us walk in his shoes, answers our prayers and give us an elbow bump when we need it
All-suffering Jesus: helps us understand pain and suffering as an inescapable aspect of life, and takes on our suffering even unto death
Radical Jesus: teaches us how to be out in the streets, to be passionate about righting wrongs, to do whatever is required for change.
Love Jesus: invents love in a new guise, explains it to us, calls us to it and then shows us its ultimate consequence
WWJD Jesus: lives in a bracelet around our wrists and acts as our conscience in a time of big and small moral crises
Your personal Jesus: all of the above and more Jesuses are with us. You can make Him whatever you need Him to be. If he’s real to you, you’ll know it.
