wes, i was just thinking about you when i wrote this.

I think my creative side is shifting more back to the visual art sort of side of the house. I might be done with words for awhile, I think after reading American Tragedy that I have finally got there with what I want to say and how to say it… especially after my last bit of book fury where I digested the Odyssey again and the three other books on my blog. I got it, storytelling and how to tell a story, a story that needs to ferment a bit.
What I want expression wise and something I have always been coming back to over and over again is the interaction aspect of it. Something public and expressive. Something that the artist creates in a live environment, but at the same time being able to manipulate that off of reaction. Unless you’re a stripper I see very few but worth wild options none of these I have the balls just yet to do.
When I was younger and even now still to this day, I would look at the man-made structures around me and think about skateboarding, if there was a good enbankment, or curb, the way a handrail lowered herself down upon the steps. I didn’t realize this at the time, but this was art and the modern world was our canvas. Just recently I was playing SKATE on x-box 360 and I swear it was the most exciting thing I have done in a long time. Maybe because I lost about 50 percent of my ability to be creative on a skateboard, but this videogame did everything right. It was wide open with a million obstacles that you could hit in a million different ways. You were in charge.
Playing that game I thought about NECKFACE. This young graffiti artist who I have always believed will be something simply because he is a skateboarder and looks at the world around him in a different way. When he is upon a train driving home, he doesn’t see a billboard or the bridge, he sees art and comedy. If you searched on goggle for Neckface begins, you will see what I am talking about.
I always thought about making a cool video of some of the most violent images that have been ran through our minds over years for whatever political movement it served or whatever media rating in the doldrums of network lows. I would like to take these very images of our darkness and reverse it in some way…. like the cartoon renderings of Mona Lisa with a moustache.
Challenger blowing up into the creation of the universe
JFK getting shot, and cartoon of rainbows bursting out of the back of his head,
That Nalpam image of the zipper girl running down the street while the soundtrack to flashdance plays, or maybe footloose.
Flowers sprouting out of the end of the gun that the viet-informer held to the head of his best friend before he shot him
The twin towers in reverse, and then growing almost spastic like a kid making a killer sandcastle.

I still remember the video Wes made to the song, “I say to myself, what a wonderful world”
Now that is art to me.