Sometimes it's the little victories that make me remember why I enjoy breathing....other than the fact that breathing is a completely involuntary activity, which is good for most people, including myself....otherwise I would have died years ago instead of coming-to with my face in the dinner plate and my furious mom who still made me finish every bite of the meatloaf.
In any case, the victory in question here is the fact that I discovered two large scale drawings I had been working on that, until tonight, I had believed to have been destroyed! For those of you just joining this program, let me catch you up: Several months ago, while I was in the process of moving away from Louisville Kentucky (for obvious reasons) to Brooklyn New York, and then to Pennsylvania, and then to Denver by way of Kansas City MO....where the hell was I? Oh, yeah...during all of that I was forced to live off of ramen noodles and raw pillow cases, as well as having to put almost all of my belongings into storage. It was while in this storage hibernation that most of my belongings took it upon themselves to bath in the water of a burst pipe to a water heater for the better part of a full weekend! Hot damn! Long story short, pillow cases actually have NO nutritional value whatsoever, much to my chagrin.....and I lost my entire portfolio of artwork from the past 15 years in just one weekend. Or so I thought.
Well, basically, yeah....I still lost my entire portfolio, just now minus two works in progress.
Recently I have been going through the transition from writing to drawing (which I seem to do every year as the spring approaches) and decided to go through my surviving box of large print and water color paper to start some new work, when I discovered the two hidden between the sheets in the stack! I can now remember putting them both in there to help flatten them out, before forgetting about them altogether when packing up and leaving Louisville without so much as a "Goodbye" (which makes me wonder if there are still friends there that haven't even figured out that I moved away, seeing as how I'm such a hermit and all....but that's a question for another day).
This whole scenario came about due to being able to see my friend Duncan read from his new book, Super Cell Anemia, at his release gathering. Duncan is an old friend from Louisville, one of the handful of people I met my first year there, who moved here to Denver about 7 or 8 years ago, and is definitely one of the pluses of coming here myself (even though I hate to admit that I've only seen him TWICE since I came to this city....see what I mean about being a reclusive hermit?). He has been involved in several bands, one of the most notable from the past would have to be Endpoint, and I have had the opportunity to see him on stage more times than I can count. But, I have to say that I was never privileged to see him like this before, reading his own work, his book, that he has been laboring over for two years now, give or take. And while seeing his perform before has always had a personal aspect to it (if you know Duncan and the music he's been involved with, you know what I mean), it's still different. This was just him, Duncan, alone on the stage reading his own work the day it was released, and I can't tell any of you exactly how happy I am to have been here to be a part of it!
Like I said, this is what led to my sudden inspiration to draw again, which is how I came to find my two lost drawings. See the full circle aspect here?
Here's what I don't understand: if a child honestly hates meatloaf, I mean, REALLY hates it, and it is an ordeal to make this child eat it every time you cook it (or defrost it more often than not)....why, WHY would you force that child to eat it time and time again under the threat of violence until he is crying over his own sick?!
Here's what else I don't understand: why is it that I get inspired to write after going to an art opening, and I get inspired to do artwork after a reading? Why am I so ass-backwards in this regard.....or any regard for that matter?
By the way, congrats Duncan!!
