all of you buffoons and theives

riding backseat and blasting music like madness at the world, windows down and the air is freezing - c'mon, man, don't those windows go any lower? freeze man freeze -
my mind is reeling and the lights in the night road are smiling at me, and right back at them I agree "ha-ha!" and from the back seat I lean into the front and tell 'em crash man crash - right into anything, feel the car bend crush and shatter and leak oil and bleed...

and they agree but they don't listen, so I sit back into my seat, and watch the spots of light float across the roof like sprites coming to clean up the world or maybe just look at us, and wonder...we'd be cleaned up, the three of us, washed off with a hose...

but the grey-eyed goddess said

run away (quickly)

I don't know who this girl is, but my eye is behind her

harpy

memory

sleep easy

coming soon

messy dirty short comic book in production

maybe seeking to describe the sorry sullen state of mind (and hope)

siren

jank

sirens

Pythia

see what the waters have to say

pomo art

"If the painter and novelist do not want to be, in their turn, apologists for what exists (and minor ones at that), they must renounce such therapeutic occupations. They must question the rules of the art of painting and narration as learned and received from their predecessors. They soon find that such rules are so many methods of deception, seduction, and reassurance that make it impossible to be "truthful." An unprecedented split occurs in both painting and literature. Those who refuse to reexamine the rules of art will make careers in mass conformism, using "correct rules" to bring the endemic desire for reality into communication with objects and situations capable of satisfying it ... As for artists and writers who agree to question the rules of the plastic and narrative arts and perhaps share their suspicions by distributing their work - they are destined to lack credibility in the eyes of the devoted adherents of reality and identity, to find themselves without a guaranteed audience."

-Jean-François Lyotard

(meet me at the back of the blue bus)

we’re all trying to break out of Laodicea - we’re trying to be faithful to walk in the Spirit, not be complacent and lazy and just wait around for death while fooling around lasciviously with things like money and food – we’re trying to forsake that sweet non-sequiter where we say we believe in God but act like we’re meager and inconsequential beings circling pointlessly and aimlessly about the universe toward final sleep and then non-existence – ah the American church and its woefully complacent eyes – I am guilty –

"Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generation"

by Jack Kerouac, Esquire magazine March 1958

"The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word 'beat' spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in the postwar France of Sartre and Genet and what's more we knew about it--But as to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was really just an idea in our minds--We'd stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee, playing record after record of Wardell Gray, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson, Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -We'd write stories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goatee hitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message of blowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter the Penniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroes and wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating the new 'angels' of the American underground--In actuality there was only a handful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightily swiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of the universalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnet's 'peace' officers) but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity, the generation itself was shortlived and small in number."

not worth reading, or,

ON THE SEPTEMBER NIGHT, THE START OF THE SONG—DARK—

oh, sprite, siren, get yerself out and get down, get out and get down, find yerself where yu can’t go any farther, or sing any more, and sometimes the strings you wrap around your waist and the coat you pull tight around your shoulders they keep you from breathing, they stop your breath from working, they make it all broken –

o she can’t hear me

NEAR THE OAK TREE BY THE HILL, ROCKS IN THE DIRT

I went out on the porch there, and I took my guitar and I took my drink, and I played and sang timidly, you could hear it for miles I’m sure, the ants and the crickets and cockroaches all listened, the dogs and the horses heard, they all looked at me with their shining eyes, the porch light above me was dull but the moon up there was full in the sky, it’s like the man said, ISIS AND THE MOON SHINE ON ME.

happy thoughts

along the course of the conversation we gradually separated, she was the dock on the sea and I was the boat that lost its tether and floated away into the ocean, encroaching on the edge of the world there in the unknown -

the wall that no-one knows

I love this picture, that dude is pure artistic force

make of it what you will

"HE WAS SHOT IN THA NECK? HE COULD BE DEAD ALREADY. IMAGINE HES DEAD AND WERE JUST SITTIN HERE CHILLIN."

"DONT TALK LIKE THAT FOO MY HOMIE AINT DEAD. HES ALIVE. HES OKAY."

"BUT THATS REALITY."

just some stiff words

saw a woman sitting, dressed in black with long black hair like lightless fire, sitting in a shop drowning her coffee in whiskey and tears

obomba

OBOMBA SAYS: "abandon all hope." And mc' is quick to add: "ye who enter here." - Abandoned Bz up.

down and in circles

downcast man

free canvases are the best canvases

my autobiography

While I was playing Mario Kart the other day, I determined the name for my autobiography:

"How To Never Win - At Anything".

included will be a chapter on how to have fun while losing. Pretend you don't even play their game: drive the course backwards! Mock the flashing "reverse" sign! Look at your friends with condescension when they, bewildered, comment on your zany antics, and laugh all the way to the nuthouse.

(p.s. - lost 5 straight rounds of pool volleyball today. Keeping the streak alive!)

and foot

the bus driver

The edge of the summer is around the corner - I can tell cause people are getting tired of the sun, and once we cross that threshold there's a good chance of everything turning down and falling like a brick, not a leaf, and breaking apart onto the (now hopeless) indecision of fall's hard ground...

The bus driver, grasping at the wheel and wringing his hands up and down around it, turned his head half-way back and spoke to me: "Nothing ever turns out the way anyone plans. Hell you try and try and get your schemes together in your mind, but ultimately it ain't up to you. I mean, you want ta predict the future, look in the opposite direction of where you're going, that's where you're really headed, yeah sir, every time."

abk

abandoned bombers collab piece

the green man and snake is the portion by Jenkins Prinkensplatt

at the foot of the muses mountain

"Your eyes are like a window to your retinas, in that case...yeah and what else? Retinas, the man says, and no soul - where you come from is where you're going, lump a' cosmic dust strewn across an expanding nothing...

(the jewel-scattered hand still beckons like it's got some desperate thing to prove...)

take your leave to Delphi, try and find some truth, mingled with the python's dream...gotta know how it all ends cause I can tell it's killing you slow, wearing down to nothing what might be your soul..."

-Jenkins Prinkensplatt, from At the Foot of the Muses Mountain

there can be no rest

O find me here
Look under the never-passing night, it's hot and the moon is mostly full, and you got enough time out here where the lights are now encroaching but still a ways away, you can see em in the distance in a straight line from one side of the horizon to the other,
Find me here,
Where you can write in the moon's bright blue cast, and even at night the shadows fall off of you and onto the ground,
where old buildings and old fences cry desperately to stay standing, prop em up here and there as they need it, and soon everything is coming down...so many memories...
Find me here, amidst falling words that I swear I'll never look at again out of spite, but I know I will, until a Narcissus grows up maybe, maybe just there's something in here that's got wings and soars...
Shed yourself of the rest of society's trappings, the trappings of words, and style and grammar and posture...
Why dontya sit up straight, nobody likes nobody who slouches

first graff

rats

this is a picture of me thinking about doing homework...it's what I look like right before I decide to paint a stupid doodle on the front of my sketch book instead.

something else

(rublev)

my notebook...

something like artwork

"ISIS AND THE MOON SHINE ON ME..."

all capitals reduce inflection to nonsense

this is what happens when I am very tired

CALL ME SISYPHUS
WHILE I PUSH ENDLESSLY
AGAINST POINTLESSNESS
AGAINST HEAVY, CRUSHING
NEVER
WELCOME TO THE
UNITED STATES
WELCOME TO
ZAPPIAN MADNESS
THAT WILL NEVER
SMALL SLIVERS OF
DICED CREDIT CARDS
SCATTERED
FIND ME
THE BOULDER ROLLS
SLOWLY UP THE HILL
IF ONLY I WAS A LITTLE LESS WEAK
FIND ME OUT THE DOOR
I'LL BE DOING IT FOREVER
LEANING
THE REST OF MY LIFE
BUT DO IT
NOT SMILING OR SPEAKING ANYMORE
FOLLOW ME OUT THE DOOR
AND AROUND THE BEND
DIRT ON MY FEET
FILTHY FEET
SLIPPING AGAINST LOOSE SAND
LEANING
FOLLOW ME OUT THE DOOR
AND AROUND THE BEND,
FOLLOW ME
TOWARD
THE CREEPING PYTHON'S PATH
OF OUR EVENTUAL END...

nevermind

look at this
http://davechoe.blogspot.com/2008/06/pictures-from-lee-root.html

and anyone reading should come to this
http://davechoe.blogspot.com/2008/06/dirty-hands-world-premiere-in-los.html

ART IS NOT PRETEND

empty seats

roll camera
roll, roll, roll down
roll out,
speed
and we're going to roll out,
all the wistle-blowing feet
and we will pretend pain
and death and destruction
and beautiful sirens will
pretend opposite things,
and pretend a pain that
is never known,
only pretended
always pretending
happiness
and tears of joy
the whole life
-- life?
life of abstracted light
through empty seats
life of dead moments in a
screen...
well the earth dies screaming...
as I lay dreaming...

Big Smiley

Came across this poem by a member of the North Hollywood Boyz. Thought it was amazing so here you go:

BIG SMILEY FROM THE VICKS...... A BITCH IS A BITCH

THERES ANOTHER WORLD INSIDE
OF THAT U WILL NEVER SEE,
THERE R SECRETS IN THIS LIFE I CANT HIDE,
SOME WERE IN THIS DARKNESS
THERES A LIGHT I CANT FIND,
OR MAYBE ITS TO FAR AWAY,
OR MAYBE IM JUST BLIND,
PART ME IS FIGHTING THIS PART OF ME IS GONE,

BIG SMILEY FROM THE VICKS......
A BITCH IS A BITCH
DECEPTION
DONT NO WAT TO BELIVE...
SO MANY VISIONS OF MURDERS
AND BLOODY TORTCHER IN MY DREAMS...
FUCK A BACKSTABBING BITCH...
CANT KEEP THIS NH BOY DOWN...

slipping...

"Slipping into Darkness." Jailhouse tat on a church-going inmate.

[forget it]

The following was taken from the journal of Jenkins Prinkensplatt:

…(I can’t get away (not that I would want to anyway (that is, on account of this wretched state of mind (which (if it were deemed appropriate (and what is appropriateness anyway? (should I even ask that? (and what is it to ask? (all of us ask, don’t we, in this constant and endless thought (or, if you prefer, this eternal parenthesis (or eternal explanation (or clarification (clarification with no resolution (like wiping down a soft lens (“soft” as in inferior make and build (and it’s slow to boot (that is, it needs too much light (light I don’t have (oh, where was I? Ah, yes, (“yes,” mind you, and not “I will” (though I’m free from “thou shalt not” (but still a slave, to be sure (whose slave? You ask, (but I’ve already answered…a slave to parenity... (…

This excerpt is from a larger body of work which goes on seemingly endlessly in either direction, though its beginning seems to be a somewhat ambiguous time about 20 years ago.

Stray Sheep

“They’re just demons that I had in my dreams. And I just drew them, I drew them out how I saw them, and I put them on my leg.” -NHBZ member

Stray Sheep: Religion and Artwork of the Hispanic Gangs of Suburban LA County

coming soon

Tarkovsky's Advice

one more, just for kicks:

Desire

I desire to make cinema my art.

The first two words of this clause cannot be removed from their relation to the self.

I desire.

I am, and I desire because I am, and I am because I desire. If to desire is attendant of essence, it proceeds with existence and manifests in existence. If to desire is attendant of existence, it undoubtedly has profound effect on essence. Desire in a broad sense permeates everything we do, or don’t do. In this regard it must be said that desire is the beginning of art. But what is it to desire? Perhaps it may be explained within the realm of physiology; the desire of hunger provides motivation to eat, thus upon eating the desire is fulfilled. The resolution at the end of the meal, of course, is only temporary; the desire will return as long as the body functions. Desire, then, is not an end, but a beginning – though there may be no end to desire itself.

Perhaps there is sufficient evidence to say that desire is irremovable from physiology; mood-changing drugs and the process of lobotomy effectively change desire on a physical level. However, these only change desire, they do not create it.

But if desire is limited to physiology – from what type of thing can the artistic desire come, and how is it created? What does it aim to fulfill, and how does it fulfill? Nothing changes physically within the artist upon completion of the work in order to cue an emotional change, but the inward emotional change comes because of an external physical change in the work.

So there are clearly two types of desire – that which is attendant of existence, and that which is attendant of essence. There has long been argument over which precedes the other; whether essence precedes existence (cogito, ergo sum) or existence precedes essence (existentialism). However, this distinction is frivolous: essence of the self cannot be apart from existence, nor can existence be apart from essence. Indeed in relation to desire, the two come to occur simultaneously: in a newborn, desire for food and desire for love are equally present in the earliest stages.

In creating a work of art, the work only has full existence when it has full essence (when the artist has said everything he intended to say) and it only has full essence when it has full existence (when the last stroke is laid, as it were). Can any say which comes first? If the essence is first within the artist’s mind, it still cannot be said to come first, for surely the means by which it will be expressed is likewise in the artist’s mind, and neither will be true until they are manifest. And this manifestation must always be simultaneous. I would suggest this is parallel to our own existence, and may be part of the source of the desire to create.

This desire we are considering is one which affects not the body, but the soul. Yet it does have root in a physical medium: manipulating a thing, in this case, celluloid film or today’s digital media, is what fulfills. Just as the human has a dichotomy of body and spirit, so the artwork has this same dichotomy, though only in its relation to the human: it retains and cannot be removed from its existence in physical form, while also retaining the propensity to have profound effect on the spectator’s spiritual state.

But how does an art work fulfill desire? As existence fulfills existence in the case of hunger, so essence fulfills essence in the case of art (even if these demarcations are not so clear in a practical sense).

So now we have a working understanding of desire. Or do we? Not in the least! It is at its core indescribable; it can only be understood through experience. Any words used to describe it cannot be once-and-for-all. The question arises: then why any words at all? Because it is of primary importance for the artist to know what he is doing when he does art. For himself at least, if for no-one else. For this reason, I'll leave the idea here and come back to it later.

I desire to make cinema my art.

Three terms in the above sentence require definition: desire, cinema, art. Over the course of the following entries (though perhaps not sequentially), I will decide upon a basic definition for each of these. These entries will not contain conclusive and all-encompassing definitions, but will represent my process of working through what it is I want to do.

Coming soon...

To some, it may appear contradictory for a blog entitled "Sola Gratia - Fide" to contain a post such as the one below, picturing Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976).

To help explain, here are Tarkovsky's words about a film I've mentioned a few times, Andrei Rublev:

“This was the theme of Andrei Rublev. It looks at first sight as if the cruel truth of life as he observes it is in crying contradiction with the harmonious ideal of his work. The crux of the question, however, is that the artist cannot express the moral ideal of his time unless he touches all its running sores, unless he suffers and lives these sores himself. That is how art triumphs over grim, ‘base’ truth, clearly recognizing it for what it is.”[i]

So such a declaration of violence as Taxi Driver is, for me, incredibly truthful and powerful, not in itself, but for what it means to me.

---

[i] Sculpting in Time, p. 168.

Travis Bickle

"The clock sprig cannot be wound continually tighter. As
the earth moves toward the sun, Travis Bickle moves toward
violence."

-Paul Schrader, "Taxi Driver"

Coming Soon...

coming soon...

Andrei Rublev

Because I'm sick and tired of talking to people who stare at me blankly when I say "Tarkovsky," here's the opening scene of Andrei Rublev.

Watch This

If you like looking at things, look at these.

Andrei Rublev
Nostalghia
Notre Musique
Ran
Bringing Out the Dead


Only watch these if you enjoy looking at things. The last three are available at Blockbuster. (Godard, Kurosawa, and Scorsese.) The first two, forget it, the day Blockbuster carries a Tarkovsky film is...the day...something very unlikely happens. These are all popular films by well-known directors, though it's apparent to me that writer Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) is the real force behind Bringing Out the Dead, which is probably the most accessible film on this list for American viewers.