(The following is an excerpt from a larger memoir piece chronicling my experiences of living with mental illness and addiction. I will be posting the rest of the story in forthcoming blog posts.)

Teenage Lobotomy: acclaimed neurologist Dr. Walter Freeman performs a little mental health adjustment, early 1950s-style.

When I was nine years old I could control the weather. My parents had bought their first ever “new” house, a tract home in a fairly new subdivision. This was a big purchase for them; upward mobility as exemplified by a life-changing purchase. While both were frugal with money, a trait their youngest son would not inherit, after 16 years of marriage, raising two sons, and much hard work, they were finally able to buy a new home. They had both grown up poor, my mom a child of the brutal climes of Eastern Kentucky; my dad a product of a colorful Irish American ghetto in Louisville. They were born out of a kind of poverty that seems to be retained at the genetic level, generations of lacking that is encoded in the marrow. I have never actually sat down and eaten in a restaurant with my family. “It’s a waste of money,” is my dad’s lifelong rationale. The home was a two story house with four bedrooms, a fireplace, and a large backyard. It was there that I would secretly display my occult powers of meteorological prowess. At that time I was obsessed with the idea of magic. Not stage illusion but the real deal; wizardry, sorcery, necromancy – the works. Much of this interest was surely spawned by the innate imagination of childhood. Once I discovered standard fantasy stories like fairy tales, “The Hobbit,” and “Conan the Barbarian,” that initial spark of dreams was soon engulfed by the fires of a specific form of self-hypnosis that surely falls away from all children over time. The problem was that my magical gift was a secret. As soon as I was certain that no one would possibly see me, I would sneak out into the fenced backyard. Our dog would invariably try to follow me out there but I would issue her a stern look and quietly close the sliding glass door behind me. My parents had opted not to purchase any grass sod for the back of the house. “Who will ever see it but us?” was both a question and statement of finality posed by my dad.

So on that sandy, weed covered lot is where I would throw my arms in the air, directing invisible forces that in turn pushed the wind, rain, and even calm sunlight to do my bidding. I could feel the electrical crackle of my spirit touching the unknown, a current that would make my young body come alive with invisible and impossible energies. I had yet to hit double digits in age and I was already addicted to my first drug of choice: my mind. But some distraction would invariably break the spell and I would run off into other imagined possibilities.

I did well in school and reluctantly played sports like Boys Club basketball. While in his teens, my dad had been a heroic-sports-figure in his hometown. The ultimate plan was for me to someday go to the University of Kentucky and play basketball. Then I would become a doctor or lawyer; anything to help raise our family further from impoverished roots. Yet my original dream was to become a special effects and makeup artist. My bedroom wall was covered with centerfolds from magazines like Fangoria and Famous Monsters of Hollywood. I was obsessed with the cinematic trickery of people being transformed into monsters or succumbing to spontaneous explosion of body parts. I was also a crazed illustrator of these types of things, to the point where my parents were contacted by a concerned teacher to make sure everything was alright in the family home; or at least in my head. My dad eventually resigned himself to the fact that both of his sons were about as athletic as a boulder and accepted that we were closer to loose screws than tight ends. I did well in school. I made good grades and was placed in the gifted program when I was eight or nine. I enjoyed these classes. I was introduced to the game of chess and the music of Bob Marley by one particularly vibrant and loving teacher and over the years I have forgiven her for both. Barring my belief that I was some kind of secret sorcerer, I had a normal if not peaceful childhood.

When I entered junior high school my previous assets and loves – academic smarts, a love of reading and drawing, and an open sense of camaraderie and inclusion – had somehow mutated during the summer break into shortcomings that set me a part from even kids whom the previous year had been, if not friends, at least civil allies. I fell headfirst into my ultimate solace; reading. I can recall being twelve-years-old and reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle.” When I finished that book I realized that I wanted to be a writer, a novelist. Vonnegut lead to all kinds of other writers, some hits and some misses. In the early-eighties, Deane’s Books was my shrine. Located a block from the Atlantic Ocean, Deane’s doubled as a photo lab and bookstore; since the store closed so early, in early afternoons I would make the mile long walk after school. They rarely had the lights on in the place, instead opting for the natural lighting provided by the plate glass windows. This darkness of the room was a comfort to me and I thought that it was almost revolutionary that this bookstore seemed more like a living room than the clinical atmosphere of the chain bookstores with their operating-room, fluorescent lighting. In one corner of the store was a shelf that contained everything from D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller to Gertrude Stein, Anaïs Nin, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Judging by the fading covers and tightened spines, some of these books had sat there for decades. I was introduced to such left-of-center publishing houses like New Directions, City Lights, Grove Press and anthologies like The Evergreen Review. Since these paperbacks were all “new” old stock, I bought books by the armload, as most were priced at a dollar, maybe four dollars at the most. The owner of the shop, photographer Virgil Deane, seemed amused at the stacks of books I would place on the counter. I can remember him even suggesting certain authors. It was also in this musty place where I purchased Richard Brautigan’s “A Confederate General from Big Sur.” This novel radicalized my mind. I quickly went back to Deane’s and snatched up “Trout Fishing in America” and “The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster.” I idolized Brautigan and identified as much with his kind of softness he had found in alienation as I did the quirkiness of his characters and free-for-all narrative. The intimacy of his very being seemed somehow contained in the ink that dotted the old, browning pages of those books; I felt included in the story. In the same year I discovered Brautigan, he took his own life. I remember reading about this in USA Today, People Magazine or some other big media outlet and can recall how he had been essentially relegated to some countercultural relic, a “sixties writer.” I was certainly aware of suicide. In the previous year, two local kids had killed themselves; one by gunshot wound and the other drank a bottle of antifreeze. But I didn’t really know them. Brautigan’s death seemed weirdly personal. I felt like I had lost a close friend that I had never even met. Brautigan led to other poets and writers so I just followed the breadcrumb trail. I emulated my new heroes and began filling notebooks with the kind of almost-specialized, terrible-yet-sincere poetry that is surely exclusive to teenagers. I bought an old manual typewriter from a thrift store and began meticulously tapping out countless novels that would either be fully completed or fizzle out after the first two paragraphs.

My original corrupting and enlightening influence: poet-novelist Richard Brautigan (1935-1984).

At age 13, I became fascinated with “The White Album” by The Beatles. Always a fan of music, I had already begun collecting vinyl albums, a fixation that would eventually lap over into adulthood and own me for the following fifteen years; nearly three decades and 3,000-plus albums later, I would cite this as unbridled compulsion. But the two LPs that made up the 1968 album by the Fab Four had captured me fully. I felt that same crackle from five years earlier, when I was convinced that I was conjuring all kinds of barometric weirdness. Only now “The White Album” was the wizard and it seemed to control my every move. Since the opaque, white cover held few clues I was left with investigating the song titles and accompanying poster and portraits of the band for information. My fascination suddenly shifted to obsession. I played each side of the record over and over again. I would stand over the turntable watching the purple label with the gray words “Capitol” spinning around at 33 and 1/3 rpm, apparently hoping that the circular motion would force some kind of confession or revelation that wasn’t being released by the music. My fascination soon led to me staying up for two to three days on end without sleep, my body fueled by the same magical electricity that I foolishly believed that I could harness a few years earlier. I began making up reasons to miss school, my grades immediately plummeted and my energy soon turned on me. My anxiety led to all kinds of stomach aches and nausea. I would ramp up and then collapse within from sadness. Then suddenly I would return to agitation and then try to sleep but thoughts seemed to fight for occupancy in my mind. The exhaustion from insomnia and subsequent depression made me feel as if I was walking between two worlds. At night, I started to sneak out of the house and set out on these needless midnight wanderings around my neighborhood that culminated in me walking on the beach. At some point I discovered that smoking pot seemed to lessen, or at least redirect, the ideas that seemed to move in my head at the speed of light. I smoked it alone, usually at night in the backyard in an attempt to sedate my mind. Standing hidden under a fig tree, I would blow smoke up towards the moon and wait for the drug to nullify the barrage of ideas, notions, and confusion that swirled inside of me.

I don’t know how I wound up seeing the first of many psychologists. I don’t know if it was me asking my parents if this was a possibility or them suggesting it out of concern. But I knew something was not right. We all did. I clearly remember sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment. There was a middle-aged man sitting a few seats away who kept sighing in these deep, anxious breaths. I didn’t feel like I was judging him, even though my teenage mind surely wanted to. I needed to assure myself that I didn’t belong there and his obvious anguish seemed like my free pass back into normalcy. The first thing I noticed about the psychologist was that he resembled the dad from “Family Ties,” a television show that annoyed me to no end. I felt comforted by my dad being there since he could do most of the talking. Weekly visits became a part of my routine and I eventually went in alone to talk to the doctor. He suggested that part of my problem could be my intelligence. A test was arranged to see if my “genius” was part of the issue that plagued me. On the day of the big quiz, and committed to proving him wrong, I smoked a defiantly huge joint an hour before we returned to his office and was bombed as I filled out my answers. Needless to say, I succeeded in completely failing the test. The psychologist seemed embarrassed when we came back the next week to hear the results. “Well, we can rule that out.” I never received my Mensa membership card.

What I did receive was a battery of examinations. CT scans, EKG tests, X-rays, and blood tests were issued to rule out the possibility of brain cancer or any organic, non-mental issues. One blood protein test apparently flagged me as possibly bearing the mark of depression. Both of my parents underwent the same testing and my mom’s DNA was labeled the guilty party. The initial diagnoses ran the gamut from depression to being in the stages of early schizophrenia yet I was finally labeled as having Bipolar Disorder. Along with these tests, I was also supplied with my first of many prescriptions. I was put on daily doses of Tofranil and Valium. My anxiety increased to the point that I had developed a mild ulcer. Every morning, two pills were placed on the woodblock in the kitchen; at night another two pills were set out for me. In the next four years I would be prescribed Tofranil, Valium, Stelazine, Nardil, Tegretol, Elavil, and then, ultimately, Lithium. One psychiatrist explained to my dad that they had made “great strides” in Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), or shock therapy. My dad looked at me and then at the doctor, and then back at me. We left.

I soon surrounded myself with a group of older friends that some would have simply labeled juvenile delinquents. I grew my hair long and adopted their standard look of blue jeans and ratty tee shirts. A few of them had tattooed their middle fingers with a peace sign. I demanded the same, a mark of identification. My parents were thrilled when I came home with my freshly stabbed India-ink-and-sewing-needle rendered body art. But in this nest of a half dozen troubled kids I found, if not understanding, a complete acceptance of my burgeoning madness. Many were from broken, if not destroyed, families and had been neglected, shunned, and some had been abused – and were being abused – emotionally, physically and sexually. I was initially shocked as I would enter their homes and meet one of their drunken parents, eager to share their weed with me, sometimes passing the burning joint over the head of a toddler.

The side effects of the psych meds were increasingly brutal to my system. I would gain weight and then lose weight. I began vomiting throughout the day. I would be hanging out with my friends, driving around the beaches and suddenly signal them to pull over. “Dan’s gonna puke!” they’d laugh and as the car rolled to a halt, I would lean my head out of the window and vomit onto the ground. While they were amused and somewhat worried about my increasing weirdness, the biggest concern was that I not “get puke on the joint.”

It was also at this point that it was decided that I should be removed from school. I was in the eighth grade at the time. I was briefly entered into a program where a teacher would come to the house a few times a week and teach me for an hour. Since my parents and older brother were all at work each day, I was expected to honor this commitment to continuing my education. The woman that was assigned to me was nice enough but the combination of psych meds, my now-regular daily dose of weed, and an overall hostile laziness turned my lessons into a kind of staring contest as she tried to explain algebra or the basics of the United States legislative system to me. After a few weeks I just stopped answering the door. She would knock and I would sit on the living room couch until she gave up and left. Somehow it was decided that I passed the ninth grade. That was the end of my formal education in the public school system. I was left alone each day. I returned to my original comfort in life: reading. I would pull a volume from our 1978 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia and just absorb what I imagined I was missing in school. I also read as much fiction as possible, spending every penny I had on books. The bad poetry continued. I gave up on writing novels when the $10 typewriter broke.

I was eventually admitted to a teenage mental hospital. I couldn’t leave the facility, or main hallway for that matter, for 72 hours. The very idea that I was locked up sent me into an incredibly frantic state. The best thing happening there was that I could smoke cigarettes, a habit I had picked up in the previous year. I guess my parents kind of accepted my smoking since I was increasingly fucked up like a soup sandwich in every other regard. There was a tiled room filled with overflowing ash trays and an electronic lighter on the wall (patients were prohibited to own actual cigarette lighters). You pushed a metal button and a round, one-inch diameter of steel would quickly turn orange like a burner on an electric stovetop and you would lean in, cigarette in mouth, and light up. While I was there, another patient decided to press her face against the wall lighter. She was led off to a seclusion room, sobbing with a planet-shaped burn on her cheek. She was confined, placed under observation, and everyone’s smoking privileges were pulled for twenty-four hours. The following day, the other patients were grousing over the unfairness of this punishment as we picked at our breakfast in the day room.

I suddenly plotted my escape. It seemed quite simple. My dad had loaned me his old powder-blue Sears suitcase when I packed for my admission into the hospital. I had not slept since I arrived there and had been looking for ways to get out. I didn’t know what my plan was once I escaped but I imagined I would figure that out once I scaled the east wall. The cleaning crew came in mid-morning during the same time that one of the group sessions was held. I declined to go to group and sat on the edge of the bed in the room that I shared with three other teenage lunatics. As I heard the vacuum approaching our room, I quietly closed the door, a forbidden act in the ward. When the vacuum was outside of the door I began to furiously swing the packed suitcase at the plate glass window. I was hoping that if I could crack the center of the pane I would then be able to kick the rest of the glass out and climb away to an uncertain freedom. I swung it over my head, sideways like a baseball bat, and then started kicking at the glass. It was hopeless. After the twentieth blow, I finally realized it was plexiglass. I was eventually released from the ward and it seemed like life went on as usual. I had a new saga to tell my friends but they seemed unimpressed. Most of them had already spent time in juvenile delinquent halls or even jail, so my tale of incarceration probably sounded like a visit to a spa to them. The whole experience doubled my cynicism towards my predicament. In the eighties, growing pains had transmuted into “chemical imbalances,” a catch-all diagnosis apparently directed towards any kid with a bad attitude or weird outlook. This is was what I told myself repeatedly to disqualify myself from the pack.

Franciso de Goya’s “The Madhouse,” (1812-1819); thankfully, during my brief time spent in the the teenage bughouse, I could still smoke cigarettes.

The vomiting increased and I couldn’t keep any food down. My dad took me to have a CT scan for my stomach and esophagus. I would be awake for the procedure. Two bottles of barium were produced. “It tastes like strawberries. You need to drink both of these so we can see what’s going on with you,” said the technician. I tried. I would get down a mouthful of the chalky, pink liquid and then immediately puke it back up. And we would try again. I leaned over and puked all over my hair and the white paper that covered the examination table. Buckets and small plastic containers were produced to catch the vomit. “Just keep trying. You need to drink these or we can’t see what is happening inside of you.” Eventually they gave up but by that time the room was covered in ropes of pink vomit. My dad held my arm as we walked back to our ’83 Chevy Cavalier. I would double over, regurgitate more barium, and then he would pull me upright. When we left, the path where we had walked through the parking lot looked like a line of cotton candy that had melted in the sun.

Finally, I underwent an endoscopy. I was awake for this procedure and was in incredible agony from my ongoing stomach problems. As they lowered the camera down my throat, the nurse injected morphine into my IV line. As the opiate hit my blood, I felt an incredible high I could never have imagined. Weirdly enough, I can remember the dreadlocked technician talking about music and the basses he owned. I couldn’t really respond since I had a two foot long, black hose jammed into my gullet. I was so stoned that they could have randomly shoved various things in the room into my gastric cavity and I would have been indifferent, if not welcoming, to them all. The camera revealed that I had a knot of gelatin capsules from the Tofranil wedged in my digestive tract and they successfully dislodged the culprit as they pushed the camera deeper into my body. Afterwards, they wheeled me into a room where my parents waited for the outcome. High on morphine, I asked the doctor for a “bag of that to take home.” He laughed, looked at my mom and told her, “You had better keep an eye on this one.”

That same year I made my first attempt at suicide. Agitated to some internal edge that I never even knew existed, I swallowed all of the pills of my recently refilled bottle of Tofranil. I walked down to the beach to see a friend. I guess I went to say goodbye. I’m not really sure. We spoke for a brief moment. My memory fails me in whether or not I admitted that I was in the process of murdering myself. Tofranil is classified as an anti-psychotic. Over the course of the three-mile walk back to my house, the chemical payload began to detonate in my bloodstream and brain. I began to hallucinate. Aztec-like figures, odd astrological wheels, trailing lights, and cascading, hieroglyphs transmitted from some alien language would spiral and pinwheel across my field of vision. The drug seemed to numb any sense of horror or fearful response. Yet I didn’t feel comforted. I was just experiencing consequence. “I am dying,” I told myself. Some kind of self-survival urged me to wake up my parents. I kind of paced up and down the hallway, wondering how to admit this to them. I was embarrassed by my foolishness. I shook my Dad awake. “I’m trying to kill myself. I took all of my pills.” The lights of the Emergency Room lobby were the closest I came to seeing any kind of Heavenly white glow that night. I was quickly ushered into a small examination room by two nurses. They moved quickly and quietly. I looked up at the ceiling tiles as they laid me down on a gurney. The tiles seemed to pulsate in a rhythm of black, gray, and white. Words would appear on the particle foam surface but then vanish before I could read them. Distracted by all of this, I didn’t notice as one of the nurses returned with a long piece of clear, plastic tubing that was slathered in a clear gel. She guided the tube down my throat. As they began pumping my stomach, one of the nurses switched off the overhead lights. While I was touched by her consideration in mood lighting, I thought this was darkly comical, as if to say, “Please disregard the three foot tube running down your throat.” The door was slightly open and various medical staff and patients walked down the hallway of the ER, their shadows moving across the wall in front of me as the machine began to make a low whirring sound. Brown Tofranil gel capsules were being slowly sucked out of me. I watched as each pill climbed up through the clear tubing. I started to count them but eventually lost interest. I do remember thinking, “This is a moment I will not forget. This probably changes things.” And I was correct. I spent the next few days in a room in the ICU. The first night I was restrained to the bed’s metal railing with blue, Velcro straps. My parents visited and brought my cassette player and headphones and I listened to Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” continuously for the next three days. I would fade in and out of consciousness, waking up to the sound of Dylan rasping away. I also remember asking a younger, redheaded nurse out on a date, an offer that I’m sure got a good laugh at some nursing station or break room. At one point I woke up and my arm had swollen up to twice its size. Someone had missed my vein with an IV and the fluid had turned my right forearm into a Popeye-like appendage. I later told my friends that before I took the pills, I listened to David Bowie’s “Rock and Roll Suicide,” a lie that in hindsight was probably based on a distancing from the act, while possibly even justifying that very same decision in some sad attempt at adolescent, self-mythologizing.

The years of my middle adolescence were spent dosed on lithium and equally treated by my own regimen of pot and LSD. While I loved acid from that very first sight of the proverbial “breathing walls,” I also had a few full-blown, psychotic breaks from reality after ingesting the drug. A friend and I still joke about the time that I stayed over at his house to trip. He woke up just as I was leaping from the foot of his bed, completely delusional from the drug strobe-lighting my synapses, and hurled my body at full force into his bookcase. We still refer to this as my “Famous Attack on Literature.” I remember none of this actually happening but the story seems appropriate and typical of my then-mindset. It was during this time that I also joined my older brother’s hard rock and metal band as the bass player. I played my first gig at age 14 at a beach bar, completely terrified and staring at the floor as we tore through a few original numbers and our renditions of ZZ Top’s “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers” and Deep Purple’s “Child in Time.” The band was led by two twentysomething guitarists and I remember how I had to wait outside before we played, was whisked in during our performance, and just as quickly sent back outside when we were done.

My parents’ worries were now compounded as I would be gone at all hours of the day. My dad assured me, “If you break the law, you had better hope the police get to you before I do.” That promise stuck in my head, and I would invariably bow out of any plans for breaking and entering, or worse. As soon as the blue police lights flashed in the distance, I was the first one over the fence, gone. Like many teenage bonds, these were soon broken and I somehow orbited into another group that shared my love not only for getting high but also, amazingly, reading and even visual art. Now in my mid-to-late teens, I traded in my Black Sabbath records for Black Flag and traveled in the stream of underground rock. An all-ages alternative rock club changed my life. I eventually somehow landed a job there, and carrying the equipment from horrifyingly smelly vans to the stage for various touring bands put the idea in my brain to one day do the very same thing.

“Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upwards” – (Book of Job 5:7); Lunatic Larva, age six.

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

(What follows is the second part of a larger memoir piece chronicling my experiences of living with mental illness and addiction. I will be posting the third and final chapter, where I ultimately discover hope, in a forthcoming post. As an aside, I have once-again deliberately left out the names of anyone alluded to in this piece; for the sake of privacy and, at times, my own embarrassment. )

1989: 17-years-old and priced to move.

Throughout these years, my compulsions manifested themselves in interesting ways that were, in hindsight, based on self-negation, if not attempts at disintegration. Decades later, I discovered that in a healthier approach, Theravadan Buddhists called this Anicca, or “non self,” but rather than freeing myself from my ego and attachments I was actually drowning myself daily in its self-centered pool. I wanted to not exist so I would distract myself from thinking by succumbing to odd behaviors and inane, self-appointed tasks. I would spend hours systemically rearranging all of the furniture in my room, removing the bed frame and box spring so I had only a mattress on the ground. Changing the bulbs in my lamps to different wattages, I would then take a measuring tape and measure the distance of each piece of furniture from any neighboring adjacent item. I was cleaning up the crime scene, even though I would follow the trail of bloody footprints that always led back to me. Furious at the time I wasted in trying to find some harmony in my living space, I would then return all of these things to their original place. And then do it again, sometimes hours later. I had accumulated hundreds of books, so I would aim my attention on them, re-organizing them by utilizing some arcane mathematics that sizzled through my skull. Siegfried and Roy had nothing on my constant wardrobe changes. We lived in a fairly safe neighborhood; yet every door was routinely double-checked for security reasons. Later at night, when my family was asleep, I would go as far as taking a screwdriver and tightening all of the screws in the strikeplates. And after all of these laborious attempts at an amateur hour vanishing act I would reappear, realizing that I was in fact terrified of not being me: this almost-devotedly sad, angry, and distracted boy who could not stop looking in the mirror, even if he was hoping for even the slightest change in that reflection.

I nearly succeeded in my ongoing vanishing act, almost dying again; only this time by accident. At the age of 15, I was dating a girl three years my senior. I treated her terribly. I would either ignore her completely or demand all kinds of things, ranging from holding her captive with my rants, rides in her car or some wolfish teenaged carnality disguised as puppy love. I had discovered where my mom had hidden my Valium prescription so I naturally took a big handful of the yellow pills. My girlfriend picked me up and we took off for some nebulous destination that would reveal itself during the drive. I felt the tranquilizers pulling me down into the rabbit hole. I woke up to the sight of her red-faced from crying. She had been driving around aimlessly for hours in her hatchback as I sat slumped in the passenger seat in a tranquilizer-induced-near-coma. “Why are you crying?” I slurred, more confused by her emotions than my drugged-out state. “I didn’t know what to do,” she sobbed. “I was afraid that if I took you to the Emergency Room they would lock you up again and I knew that you would be mad at me.”

Throughout my adolescence, I was equally steered by obsessions. I would become completely fixated on some author, band, or visual artist and then collect, study, and scrutinize every possible realization about them until I would exhaust the experience. And then I would simply aim the crosshairs elsewhere. Along with Richard Brautigan, William Burroughs and all of the other beat-era writers were absorbed into my galaxy, along with various visual artists and bands ranging from the life-saving Velvet Underground to Captain Beefheart and King Crimson. Thankfully, I only made a brief detour into religious inquiry. But I was an impatient seeker who flipped to the end of the bible only to discover, unsurprisingly, that people like me were most likely going to be tortured for all eternity; a five minute conversion process from willing believer back to resolute apostate. Amen. I would retain what I had learned and discovered from these disparate sources and then lay awake nights reconfiguring that education at the expense of sleep, never fully understanding the reason why I felt compelled to dissect, rearrange, and then discard these sources that were as invasive as they were informative. In the exaggerated experience that is adolescence, I am absolutely certain that this was, and is not, an exclusive experience. But I eventually owned every album by the band Yes. That’s how sick I was.

When I was 16 my psychiatrist had signed some waiver that allowed me to take the GED exam to get my high school diploma. A friend drove me to the local community college to take the class, us passing a joint back and forth during the ride there. I took the test completely stoned but unlike my previous Mensa misfire a few years earlier, I somehow passed. A few months shy of my 17^th birthday, I enrolled in classes at that same campus, deciding to major in visual art. I was enamored of surrealists like Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy, but my own “work” leaned more towards a fourth-rate version of another painting hero, Francis Bacon. I did well in the classes, particularly in figurative studies. I think I made it through all of the foundation classes and up through Art History II before I started to lose interest. After my pencil portrait of William Burroughs was denied entry into the student portfolio show, naturally I cried conspiracy. One particular instructor took a special liking in me. Through her encouragement I hung on. She also sent some slides of my drawings of nudes to someone at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota. I guess I was nominally accepted and they sent me the course catalog and tuition information. After realizing that the two years there would cost roughly $30,000, my Dad and I had a good laugh and those plans were immediately scrapped. In hindsight, I think I was just too restless for formal education. I originally tried oils, then switched to acrylics, but realized there wasn’t a paint that could dry fast enough to match the energy of my agitation. I dropped out and focused on playing music again.

The rest of my late teens were guided by a growing misunderstanding of how life would be and, sadder still, an equally increasing consumption of alcohol. Originally, I hated alcohol and showed an early “allergic” reaction to it that was an omen of my increasing addictions. My first experiences of adolescent drinking were invariably unpleasant, always leading me to getting drunk, wanting more booze, and then either puking or passing out. When I was 14 years old, I split a fifth of Mescal tequila with two friends. That night culminated with me challenging an adult man to a fistfight. The next day I woke up fully-clothed on my floor, missing a few personal possessions and remembering nothing; which was probably for the better. I then proceeded to vomit for the next eight hours nonstop. “How about a beer?” asked my Dad, as I hung my head and heaved out the previous night’s fun into the commode. A second drinking binge resulted in me waking up under a white sheet on the living room floor of a friend’s house as my fellow imbibers held a mock funeral and memorial service in my honor. I took this as an omen and swore off booze, sticking to the ‘soft drugs’ of pot and psychedelics. “Marijuana isn’t addictive,” I told myself and then proceeded to smoke it more or less daily for two decades. Only now do I realize that I make things addictive. I am an addict and the world is my drug. But by the time I was 19, I began to figure out how to drink beer (cold and quickly) and it seemed to placate, or at least redirect, the whirling thoughts in my mind. It was also during this time in my life when I first injected drugs. I obtained a few Dilaudids and a syringe. Even though I was terrified of needles, my desire for some kind of mental relief created a kind of resigned form of courage. There was no one home and part of the romance of the moment was that it was based on the ritual of secrecy. As the narcotic hit my bloodstream, I immediately felt whole. I was 14 again, lying on that hospital gurney in the recovery room, nestled safely in a bed of cotton. I was suddenly complete. I felt what I thought must be normalcy; even sanity, that once-approachable castle in the clouds. My immediate reaction and love of both the high and the clandestine ceremony of syringe, drug, and spoon terrified me and I pushed those initial experiences back into a cordoned-off, lightless, area of my being. I was a child of the AIDS generation, highly aware of the uncertain danger of HIV transmission via IV drug use, and even though I was proving myself to be a complete fuck-up, some surprising sense of self-preservation warned me that my new lover would never treat me well. And I was right.

I was still prescribed Lithium at this time. Covered under my parents’ health insurance, every month we would receive cartoonish-sized containers of “Lithobid.” I had grown to a height of six-foot-four and weighed around 175 lbs. I looked like a scarecrow in a Butthole Surfers shirt, always chain-smoking Marlboro Lights. My hands constantly shook from the mood stabilizer and my eyes seemed to retract into my skull. While my parents and psychiatrist surmised that I was doing better, my mind seemed cauterized and consequently I was in too much of a soft blur to argue. I felt vacant and whatever weirdness my mental illness had overlooked, I sought out in life with a diseased form of gusto. I started to despise the psychiatrist that was treating me. I was required to go twice a month since he needed to do a blood draw to make sure my lithium levels were under the level of becoming toxic. The twinkle in his eyes seemed to be delivered by gin and tonics more than Gestalt therapy and he seemed half-in-the-bag when I would get there. Since I was on lithium, I wasn’t allowed to drive a car so my folks would drop me off at his office and then come back an hour later to pick me up. “I think he might be a drunk,” was my mom’s opinion. “You think so?” I’d ask, slamming the car door behind me and stalking into the lobby. Many sessions were spent with me staring at him as he yammered on or just looking down at my hands, the long index finger on my right hand already nicotine-stained from my two-pack-a-day habit. This particular brain-fixer smoked low-tar Carlton cigarettes or “air holes” as I called them. In a declaration of defiance, I began bringing my own pack of that very same brand of cigarettes to my appointments and blew hostile smoke rings at him. The saving grace of this was the psychologist whose office was located in the same gray, stucco building as Dr. Whiskey McLow Tar. A small, bespectacled man with a balding head and graying hair along his temples, the psychologist radiated an inviting and acceptance presence and spoke softly in an almost-mesmerizing accent that I could never deduce. Decades later, I now understand that this man’s demeanor and presence were, by the very definition of the word, beatific.

At the time I was obsessed with the darkly comical novels of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. I would stay up late at night, completely immersed in Céline’s novels like “Death on the Installment Plan” and “Journey to the End of the Night,” books that featured the exploits of perhaps the ultimate literary antihero in their salty protagonist, Ferdinand Bardamu. Misanthropy, a religious sense of cynicism, cowardice, sexual ribaldry, and unexpected meditations on beauty, combined with a general shitty attitude made Bardamu feel like my lost twin. Whereas Richard Brautigan had taught me to soften my heart, Céline’s books seemed to hiss at me to harden it into a weapon. Céline was like a life-saving demon, originally sent to destroy me but for some reason taking pity on a boy who had already been injured enough. “Mystery is the very soul of this life,” Céline assured me and since I was surrounded by such uncertainty in everything; I took his observation as a crack of light, the surprising reminder of hope delivered weirdly enough by one pessimistic son of a bitch. Céline wrote in a uniquely elliptical-heavy style: the action delivered…in broken phrases…that seemed to both propel…and stagger…the action towards…the reader. Twenty-five years later, I adopted this method in transcribing interviews with visual artists (the very same pieces posted elsewhere on this blog) wherein I began dropping in (…) elliptical breaks to try and capture the thoughts (…) and cadences of a person (…) articulating both life (…) and art; my tribute to Céline in every parenthetical pause. If lithium had been leveling my emotions, the discovery of Louis-Ferdinand Céline helped to recalibrate my spirit. Sometimes providence arrives in the weirdest ways, even in the form of a stack of books penned by a pissed off WW-II-era French physician-turned-crazed-novelist.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) and his cat Bébert in Copenhagen, 1945. If Richard Brautigan had softened my heart, the novels of Céline helped hone it into a weapon.

I opened up to this therapist, rattling off my ongoing book reviews of Céline and other similar literary chuckle-machines and general life philosophy; one based on anger, depression, victimhood, and confused sadness. I would go into great detail describing some acid trip or failed sexual conquest, a kind of defiant challenge to his assumed morality that was based more on my own immaturity than any kind of steady sense of integrity or even purpose. He never graced me with any hostile or judgmental reaction. After I would tire of hearing my own voice soapboxing away on LSD and crazy writers, I would sometimes slip up and a feeling would fall out. My guard would drop and I would admit my fears, or even worse, my dreams. “I think that you are going to be alright,” he would say, with a soft smile. I’d leave those visits pissed off, feeling that he had somehow actually tricked me into somehow showing my hand, opening up with bared fangs but still letting him see inside of me. Proving both my ignorance and naiveté, I also thought that this guy was incredibly cool since I could see the hint of a tattoo peeking out from under the white sleeve of his dress-shirt. Years later I read in a local news story how this man was a survivor of the Holocaust. His entire family had been killed by the Nazis and he pushed through impossible obstacles to come to America and become a psychologist. The tattoo on his wrist was issued to him by the Nazis when he was a child. In hindsight, I can only wonder if he knew the story of my then-beloved Céline; a complex and even genius writer who was also a vocal Nazi sympathizer albeit one who would also sneak into Jewish ghettoes at night to secretly treat the sick and injured. Even though I celebrated a kind of absolute nihilism, even in my scowling worldview I had enough sense of justice and compassion to not co-sign Celine’s bullshit views on Nazism; any more than I agreed with William Burroughs’ baffling conclusion that “women may well be a biological mistake.” Regardless of anything else, I am still indebted to this therapist, whose name I actually only partially remember. In the past decade, I have made some attempts to both locate and thank him but with no success. He might be dead. But his acceptance of me “as is” was a rare and needed thing during this period of my life. I am eternally indebted for his kindness. If nothing else, I will thank him in heaven.

Like many other mentally ill individuals (and especially addicts) I was certain of a-constant-unfurling of conspiracies. In hindsight, I think that my negative sense of self-worth planted the seed of paranoia, a suspicion that festered into delusional belief. One evening I went to see a movie with my then-girlfriend and a close friend. I was feeling restless and worried about some inevitable weirdness that was certain to occur at any moment. As the lights in the theater dimmed and the previews appeared on the screen, I was ready to blast out of my seat. Looking around, everyone else seemed focused on the screen, but they simply were not privy to the unnamed horror that was minutes away from arriving; or maybe they were all in on it. I somehow convinced myself that the well-trusted pair sitting to my left and to my right were most assuredly “in on” this cosmic skullduggery. My mind went into overdrive. I sat through maybe ten minutes of the main feature before I excused myself and walked into the lobby. I continued walking and left the theater; no refunds. I began aimlessly wandering the neighborhood, fleeing the invisible. I saw the neon sign of a bank and decided I would somehow be most protected if I climbed the wall of an area that housed the air-conditioning units. I lay down on the gravel and tried to let the hum of the machines calm me. Hours later I awoke covered in mosquito bites and wondering where I was. I was stranded twenty miles from my home with no way to get back, my party long gone from the now-darkened theater. Reluctantly, I called my dad from a pay phone and he came and picked me up. I really had no explanation as to why I had marooned myself and he didn’t ask. The next day I spoke to my girlfriend about the previous night’s escape but made no mention of the spectral doom that ultimately never descended upon me. I played it off, telling her “I was just bored. I could tell that movie sucked as soon as it started. So I just left.” This same paranoia increased my cut-and-run philosophy and more isolation, declining future invitations so I could stay in the safety of my room; reading, writing, worrying, and getting high.

Not long after this radical act of film criticism and on an otherwise uneventful night, I sat around drinking beer with my friends and gradually began to feel the hair rising on my skin, the werewolf returning. As they watched the Jodie Foster film “The Accused” in my family’s TV room I suddenly decided to take another try at suicide. I took my then-girlfriend aside and confided in her my plans. “What is wrong with you? Don’t do this. I love you. I can’t deal with this.” My memory is a composite of her reaction. I sat in my room and brooded over my plan. Eventually all of my friends left. I went to the kitchen and returned to my bedroom. I emptied the entire bottle of lithium onto my bedspread. I swallowed handfuls of the pills, washing them back with more beer. I sat on the edge of my bed, looking at the wall, wondering how quickly I would die.

I realized that I had made a mistake. I woke my dad. “I just took all of my lithium. I’m trying to kill myself.” He drove me to the emergency room of the local beaches hospital. I was placed on a gurney and rolled into an ambulance which then headed for the hospital downtown, the one with the psychiatric ward. I can remember lying on my back, strapped to the gurney (for obvious, crazy-person-onboard reasons) and watching the shadows moving across the ceiling of the ambulance. I could hear the two paramedics muttering small talk to each other from the front seats. Once we arrived at the psych ward, the attending nurse took my vital signs and then handed me a small plastic vial. “What is this?” I asked. “It’s Ipecac syrup. It’s called an emetic. It will force you to vomit up the pills.” Figuring I had already swallowed enough nonsense already, I forced back the syrup. Almost immediately I began to puke up all of the alcohol and lithium. Some of the pills had already dissolved while others were still fully-formed. I had been through much chemical weirdness in the past five years, but marveled at how my body wretched involuntarily from the emetic; my throat felt seared by the drugs leaving my body. Years later, I still suffer from acid reflux; a condition that my primary care doctor believes could have been a result of that very experience. After they gave me the all clear sign, with wobbly legs I followed the nurse into the main ward, walking through two series of locked doors. It was after midnight by this time, so the ward was quiet. The day room was empty, barring one guy wearing a robe who was watching a television that had the volume turned down. He gave me a disinterested glance and returned his attention to the screen. They placed me in a room, where another man was sleeping in his own bed, lying on his side. I walked into the bathroom and quietly closed the door behind me. There was no lock on the door. I stared at myself in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot from the previous half hour spent regurgitating beer and lithium salt. I splashed water on my face and then toweled off. I did it again. I turned off the light in the bathroom and lay down on my own bed, fully clothed. In the morning I met my roommate. I don’t know what “thought crime” he had been convicted of but he seemed as guilty and embarrassed as me. Everyone purportedly claims innocence in jail. This is not the case in a mental hospital. Some of the patients are certain of their sanity, others are confused about why they are even there and others still are downright belligerent towards the possible conspiratorial events that placed them in confinement. They aren’t guilty, just misunderstood. And many enjoy cornering you with a detailed explanation of their predicament. I was there for a few days. I heard a few tales but then I disengaged from the flock. The good news? You could smoke cigarettes and there was a pay phone. The day after my failed exit strategy from life I called up a friend on the phone. He was a little shocked by my actions, but after knowing me for the past few years he was not surprised. I spoke to the head psychiatrist at the ward and explained that I regretted my decision and wanted to go home. I guess I seemed lucid enough; he called my parents and they were there within the hour. I apologized to them immediately and told them I loved them. The ride home was quiet. I think we stopped for a hamburger, which I readily ate since I had not eaten in days, ignoring the hospital meals. When we got home, I assured my parents that I was fine and wasn’t going to leap out a window or chew open my wrists. My parents were surely exhausted from years of this foolishness and I was certainly tired of it myself. I can remember going into my bedroom, the scene of the crime, and closing the door. I listened to the Brian Eno song “The True Wheel” and near the end of the tune there is a chant-like outro accompanied by a wall of percussion. “…We are the losers, we are the cruisers… Let’s get it understood, let’s get it understood.” For some reason, that moment broke me and I began sobbing hysterically. A female friend had heard what happened and drove over to our house to comfort me. I made a pass at her, reaching for her body. She shook her head, smiled, gently pushed me away, and left. The next day I was back on lithium.

During my next routine visit to my psychiatrist, ostensibly to have my blood levels checked for my lithium levels, I told him that I wasn’t coming back. Our final parting was borderline cinematic. “You will regret this,” he said, or something similarly dramatic and clichéd. I quit taking all medications.

In my early twenties I began recording and touring with indie rock bands. This time of my life was an incredible distraction and boost to my tenuous self-esteem. Brave from a night of whiskey, I called the Memphis, Tennessee phone directory to track down a musician whose band I admired. I got him on the first call. I began taking the 17-hour bus ride to and from Memphis, first to record and then, eventually, tour. On the eve of my 21^st birthday, I went to a local bar and celebrated this milestone in alcoholism. I remember telling the indifferent-bartender, “I’m going to Memphis to tour in a band.” He looked at me unimpressed and redirected his attention to icing down the beer cooler. The leader of the band assembled a total of five dudes to climb into a modified, 1974 Cadillac Hearse and tour for two months. In this pre-internet era of underground rock, if you didn’t have a booking agent (and we didn’t) you were left to your own craftiness and willingness to tolerate assured degradation. Pay phones, a stack of sometimes-questionable-maps, 15-hour-drives, sleeping on the floors of total strangers, and hunger were the rule. We played 40-plus shows during that run and I came back, if nothing else – altered. Everything that can happen to a touring musician surely found me on that tour. It was an archetype of the next decade of my life. I was convinced that I had found my true calling so I leaned towards that vocation. It was also a period when I had much greater exposure to substance abuse. “Don’t do this shit,” warned some fellow band mates as I watched them shoot dope, mentally taking meticulous notes on how to both cop and inject heroin. I eventually left that band and joined another band based out of Virginia. In the “grunge rock”-era sweepstakes, this group had recently signed to a major label and I walked right in after the ink had already dried. Interestingly enough, the two leaders of this band had both been clean for a couple of years. They had recovery books throughout their house and were attending support group meetings. I witnessed their apparent happiness and undoubtable success from giving up using. They were the first clean addicts I had ever met. I filed this discovery away somewhere but continued on with my chemical warpath. I did even more recording and touring with this band, playing to even larger audiences throughout North America and eventually playing in a dozen European countries as well. I had some incredible experiences and opportunities during this time in my life. My self-esteem was up, if not dangerously escalating into arrogance, yet I would still be centered back down into brooding introspection. I can recall more than one night returning to my nice hotel room after playing to some huge crowd and sitting alone, with my ever-present booze and drugs, staring holes into the wall or peering out the window at nothing. I scared myself a bit when I was 24 and realized I had developed a mild habit (i.e. addiction) to opiates. I white-knuckled it for a few days and rode out what were-then flu-like symptoms. In hindsight, I think much of my passion for this part of my life, particularly touring, was strictly based on momentum. I was on the run from myself and a rock band is a great way to accomplish this. Most bands eventually break up and after a decade, my rock semi-career soon dried up.

Gettin’ Kinda Cocky: The Antennae Club. Memphis, Tennessee; 1993. Photo by Jim Cole.

Let Down Your Hair: Rome, Italy; 1999.

I was intermittently prescribed medication. SSRIs were now the pill-of-choice of most doctors for people like me and my mid-to-late twenties were spent on-and-off drugs like Prozac, Paxil and Effexor. These medications seemed to make me happier, but then they would push that emotional state into a kind of gleeful arrogance. In one instance, I was openly flirting with and pursuing a married woman. While she wasn’t exactly dismissing my overtures, her husband grew suspicious and thankfully my ongoing mental storm blew me in another direction, a different obsession. My alcohol intake increased, as did my use of cocaine and painkillers. My using became ritualized. I would select a dozen LPs and start drinking and drugging to this fixed playlist. After an hour, I would be pain-free and high, completely merging with some Doug Sahm record; an hour later I would be incoherent. More than one morning began with me vomiting up blood, the result of mixing hydrocodone and Wild Turkey. One night I fell out of bed, cracked my left temple on the corner of the nightstand and woke up the next day on the floor, my head and hair matted with crusty, dried blood. I was mastering the art of the pricy, self-induced near-death experience. Like many junkies, I eventually parlayed a minor back injury into a major drug habit through the auspices of the pain management clinic circuit. I would produce all of the needed documentation in the form of MRIs and X-rays and then proceed to deliver an Oscar-worthy performance to convince a doctor that I needed these drugs. I would play the fool, acting like a naïve victim, when dealing with a new doctor, even going as far as deliberately mispronouncing the names of the desired opiate. Sometimes I left empty-handed, other days were a pharmaceutical jackpot. I would go online and research which drugs were the most powerful and, ultimately, injectable, comparing titration charts on different websites. I joined a couple of online groups were I could anonymously chat with other lost dope fiends, taking notes on the best way to immolate oneself. I swabbed my nostrils with the gel liberated from a sliced Fentanyl patch, an incredibly potent narcotic usually doled out to cancer patients. My experiment led to a near overdose with me waking up on the floor hours later. I thought that I had invented “doctor shopping.” In one day I hit three different emergency rooms, racking up massive bills and garnering maybe a few dozen pills in the process. I would be empty-handed and dope sick by the next morning. Denial is an incredible thing, an experiential state of blindness that can border on the level of science fiction and otherworldliness. The words “harm reduction,” centered on using new syringes (whenever possible), never sharing those same rigs, and rotating the injection sites, both kept me alive and also kept me using. I wasn’t a junkie; I was a meticulous dope fiend and I celebrated the difference with every lie, body ache, and life-saving hit. My life was soon measured out in milligrams and grams; I had gone metric. I can remember the exact moment when I realized that I was actually addicted to these drugs; weirdly enough, while everyone was asleep, I celebrated this milestone by crawling under the family Christmas tree and wondering what in the fuck I was going to do. I crossed that proverbial imaginary line that suddenly became incredibly real. My choice had been taken from me; or maybe I just gave it away. I was a full-blown drug addict.

My early-to-mid-thirties were spent toiling at manual labor jobs, playing in local musical combos of varying quality, and in the constant pursuit of narcotics. I also had plans, the kind of bullshit, grandiose schemes that drug addicts think up to distract themselves from their own self-destruction. I was going to move to the Netherlands, where heroin was tolerated, and become an expatriate American Free Jazz bassist. I was going to go back to my home state and (somehow) buy a few acres of land so I could grow my own poppies, specifically the opiate-producing papaver somniferum, and live the life of a country squire-slash-opium head. I was going to release a boxed set featuring ten different colored-vinyl LPs with some vague concept about alchemy or the occult; all bass solos of course. I could barely get enough energy to shower each day, but I was constantly plotting some kind of master plan.

At the end of my using, I would shoot up a dangerous blend of opiates, pulling back a 50cc mixture of heroin, oxycodone and morphine to barrel into my bloodstream. I would nod out to the point of my respiratory system nearly shutting down, lying on my back and struggling to breathe. As a self-prescribed antidote to this, I would go stand in the shower, leaning one hand against the tiled wall as cold water rained down on my head. I would then lie back down and cover my neck and chest with wet towels. I’d wake up, still stoned, and covered in these soggy towels. Then I would shoot up again and repeat that same process. I would literally pray as I would register the hit, the blood jumping up into the syringe like a question mark. So that is where I left my using and I believe that if I were to relapse I would go right to that same place and possibly seal the deal. It took me twenty years to learn that LSD, bourbon, and heroin are not the correct treatment modality for me. And every day has been based on remembering that near-fatal education. People describe active addiction as lethal and that is certainly true. But for me, using was as much about a sustained sense of sameness. Being a junkie is creating a universe of stasis. Nothing moves and nothing happens. Near the end, when I wasn’t pulling my wet-towel-as-life-support trick, I can recall hitting up and then going outside to smoke a cigarette in the night air. I would inevitably slump down on the porch and stare down at my right hand, watching the smoke curl upward through my knuckles. There was nobody home; pure vacancy in the moonlight.

Ashes to ashes we all fall down: near the end of my using, “fashion” was no longer a priority.

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Artist Lee Walton has got you all in check with his upcoming mass chess challenge

[Screen still from Lee Walton's video "Mato Jelic."]

Walton’s accomplishments and bulletproof track record are seemingly based on disparate disciplines and concepts that are always one move ahead of the art pack, pushing both his ideas and implementation that encourage public participation, directly invite in elements of chance, and are delivered with a welcoming and subtle sense of humor in lieu of the heavy hand of a clinical aesthete.

Walton is acknowledged as one of the first artists to directly utilize social media in his work, beginning with 2001’s Red Ball, wherein Walton placed a red ball in a specific location determined by the online instructions of his internet audience; in the project F’Book, What My Friends Are Doing On Facebook (2009), Walton created a series of 50 videos based on the status updates of his FB friends. Since 2004, Walton has been orchestrating Life/Theater, an ongoing performance-happening that pairs unknowing participants with professional actors. Presented in previous locations including Canada, San Francisco, and New York, each Life/Theater performance has been ostensibly-based on questioning ideas of spectacle-versus-non-spectacle, the randomness of human interaction, and the illusion of appearances; at the end of each event, the actors reveal themselves to be decoys in an otherwise innocuous scenario that has in fact been highly organized by Walton.

Much of Walton’s work is also based on sports, competition, and games; which makes sense as his web site explains that “his original career goal was to play centerfield for the San Francisco Giants. His more conservative backup plan was to become a contemporary artist.” In his piece One Shot a Day Walton altered the rules of golf by allowing himself one swing per day. Between March 26 and August 15 of 2003, Walton finally finished all 18 holes, posting each day’s play as a video on his site. The Rules of Staying Young (2010) was a performance-installation piece based on a Mets vs. Giants baseball game.

Now Walton is bringing his creative and competitive spirit to Northeast Florida. The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum presents Lee Walton Plays the World (On His Phone): A Chess Performance in 40 Parts beginning on Wednesday, October 30 at 5 p.m. The exhibition beings with a walkthrough by CEAM director Julie Dickover and Walton followed by the artist engaging in 40 separate chess matches via the Social Chess app.

The press release for the event offers the following: Subjecting himself to the ultimate test, Walton will play 40 simultaneous games of chess with 40 opponents from around the world. The exhibition will include 40 chessboards, lent by members of the Flagler College and St. Augustine communities and culled from thrift stores, in which Walton will play each game remotely from his iPhone using Social Chess an on-line application. The physical chess boards will be updated daily in accordance to each move. There will be a 24-hour time limit for each move, and visitors can follow the artist’s games by joining Social Chess and by following the username leeball. 

The exhibit also features chess-themed drawings, video work, and a sound installation piece. In conjunction with the Walton exhibit, the museum is also offering two chess-related lectures that are free and open to the public: on Tuesday, Nov. 12 at 7 p.m., Seattle-based National Chess Master, Dereque Kelley will present a lecture on chess and chess appreciation; on Tuesday, Nov. 19 at 7 p.m., Dr. Chris Balaschak, Assistant Professor of Art History at Flagler College, presents the lecture, “Horses Running Endlessly: Modern Art and Chess.” The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum is located on the campus of Flagler College at 48 Sevilla St., St. Augustine. The Walton exhibit is on display through Nov. 30. The contact number for the gallery is (904) 826-8530.

I interviewed CEAM director Julie Dickover and Lee Walton via e-mail. What follows are transcriptions of those Q&As.

Julie Dickover

Starehouse: How and when did you become familiar with Lee’s work?

Julie Dickover: The stars aligned last year when Lee was in Northeast Florida on a short vacation, and Patrick Moser took that opportunity to invite him to do a small project and give an artist talk in the museum. Lee set up a stack of amps in front of the museum and students were able to sign up to receive guitar lessons from him.

S: Why did you choose to bring Lee to CEAM?

J.D.: I really like how Lee’s work explores different technologies, such as social media and games, and how his projects leave room to engage with his audience.  Once Lee and I started talking about a possible exhibition, he threw out this really fantastic idea about an exhibition around the subject of chess, and I knew it would be a great follow up to Liz Rodda’s exhibition that recently closed [Here is a link to Rodda’s site and my interview with her prior to that opening]. Maybe Lee’s exhibition reveals my proclivity for a certain type of open-ended exhibition, one that has the potential to engage the audience in a different way, and that also allows me to schedule interesting related programs. There will be a lot of chess playing throughout November, which is exciting.

S: I know you had put an open call and request for chessboards on Facebook. How was the response to that? Did you have any success?

J.D.: Ultimately our call for chessboards was successful, because I think we’ve almost reached our goal of 42. It was a bit of a stretch though. After not getting much feedback from the initial call, I went on a thrifting-excursion, but didn’t come up with anything. Lee put an ad on craigslist in Greensboro, and I started targeting specific groups, such as professors here on campus and arts people in Jacksonville. I have generally asked every person I’ve come into contact with in the past three weeks! After all of that, and buying five sets on Amazon to be safe, I think the total now is 39 and I have another instructor dropping off a set this morning [10/28/13]. I had thought that a chess set is just something people would have around their house, stuck in a closet somewhere, but I was a bit mistaken about that.

Lee Walton

Starehouse: Why do you choose to focus some of your work on sports, competition, and games? What do you find so compelling about these particular concepts or ideas?

Lee Walton: I have always been interested in sports, competition and games – long before I had any interest about the idea of art, or making works of art. I have a hunch that both are very much the same thing. Meaning is created out of thin air through the construction of situations. Game Seven of The World Series means more than the third game of the season. A drawing of a flower by Matisse means more than a drawing of a flower by a second grader. Unless, of course, that second grader is your kid. I have always been compelled by the idea that through “play” we can create meaningful moments that can teach us something about ourselves – and the way we understand the people and things around us.

S: Can you describe how you will attempt to play 40 other people simultaneously during the performance-slash-competition Lee Walton Plays the World (On His Phone): A Chess Performance in 40 Parts?

L.W.: For this performance, I will be playing on-line chess against people from around the world via Social Chess, an app. Each game has a monitored time limit of one move every 24 hours. Therefore, I can play 40 games at the same time (the maximum permitted). There are actual 40 chess sets in the Crisp-Ellert Museum.  Each of these boards will change daily to reflect my on-line play. I have played up to 11 simultaneous games before, but have never attempted 40. Chess is already hard enough, so I am not sure what I am about to get myself into…

S: Along with the actual chess tournament, how many actual pieces are featured in the exhibit? What do they entail? Are they also game or competition-related?

L.W.: Other pieces in the show include documentation from the Charcoal Chess Tournament, an event that happened a few years back with the Minnesota Chess Club. This involved an actual chess tournament in which the players used charcoal and paper to play the games. They had to draw their pieces, when they wanted to move or capture, they had to erase it, and then redraw it again. I am also exhibiting a sound piece created in 2000 that uses systems to translate chess games into musical competitions played with my guitar and voice. Additionally, I am showing two new works; a video piece called Mato Jelic and a wall drawing comprised of chess notations from my last 100 games.

S: The press release for your upcoming exhibit and tournament-performance alludes to the fact that you “experienced a renewed interest in the game of chess. This exhibition is the tangible manifestation of the artist’s pursuit to master his hobby.” When did you originally begin playing chess? What do you think are some of the most interesting aspects of this game? The roots of chess date back to the 6^th century and the game is almost an-archetype for many subsequent games; why do you think chess has both stood the test of time and remained a steady presence in human history?

L.W: First, I want to be clear: I am by no means an amazing chess player. The only thing I know for sure about chess, is that it is a lot more difficult to win a game than it is to lose. However, over the last six months I have been studying the game and feel I am getting better!

To answer your question, I have always enjoyed board games in general (except for “Candy Land”). However, chess is the only game that gets my adrenalin going the moment the first piece is moved. It’s strange. Maybe because there is no chance involved and each player can see the same thing the other person can see. It’s like fighting naked (probably).

As a kid, I played with my Dad and with some friends. Later, I found a book and learned a bit more. I played in a local tournament at a library when I was about 14. Somehow I won. I can honestly say it was a fluke. In the final game, I accidentally set up my pieces wrong. (To this day, I sometimes switch my Bishops and Knights accidentally.) Well, the guy I was playing corrected me. He then tried to beat me really quick by bringing out his Queen. In chess, this is known as a “premature attack” and it can backfire; and for this guy it did. I goofed around with chess on and off over the years since then.

Recently, I taught my daughter to play chess. By teaching her, I started thinking about the game again. I quickly realized how little I actually know about the game. So I got a book and caught the bug again.

I think the game has stood the test of time because there is always something to learn. The more we learn, the more the game changes. The more the game changes, the more we learn. Ultimately, it’s about change.

S: Have you ever personally challenged other visual artists to sports competitions or similar feats? If so, who were they and what was the outcome?

L.W.: I once created a season-long Free Throw Competition between Shaquille O’Neal and myself. I lost by seven baskets. In San Francisco, a friend of mine named Bao Vo and I created Last Place, a Pine Wood Derby race in which the slowest car to pass the finish line was the winner. When we get home, my daughter and I race from the car to the front door. It’s always close and we laugh every time.

S: Along with the competitive-based pieces and performances, much of your work and creative discipline seems focused on public art and events, happenings, social media and long-term projects that are inclusionary in the sense that they both invite and challenge the public to participate. What do you find engaging about this kind of offer to bring complete strangers into your creative world? How has the overall response been to these projects?

L.W.: I want my artwork to be an experience. Sometimes, this experience is completely private, like taking a walk. In this case, I may formalize the walk as an artwork by designating a starting and end point. This simple set of rules somehow gives the walk extra meaning. It’s not just a walk anymore; it’s art.

When making social and participatory art works, I aim to do the same thing.  I create bookends for people to have experiences. I create the structure, but the participants create the art.

S: Do people ever seem surprised to discover that you are both a contemporary artist and sports enthusiast or athlete? Do you feel like you have ever encountered any skepticism or even snobbery-based prejudice regarding your celebration of sport and competition in your work i.e. “No Jocks Allowed in the Gallery”?

L.W.: Yes, I have seen the sports world and the art world bump chests; maybe because they are both artificially constructed situations providing us with moments of escape from our realities; or maybe they bring us closer to reality? I am not sure anymore. Maybe they are both just rooted in play: “Make Believe.” We have to believe in something, right?

S: Who do you think has had the greatest influence on the 20^th century: the painter Francis Bacon or chess champion Bobby Fischer?

L.W.: Bobby Fischer. He could handle the Bishop much better than Francis Bacon ever could.

S: What are some of your upcoming projects?

L.W.: I am not sure what new projects are around the corner. Admittedly, I have been thinking a lot about Hacky Sacks lately.

[Screen grab for Lee Walton's "Social Chess" username.]

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

First day clean: September 6, 2007.

“More than those who hate you, more than all of your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm. More than your mother, more than your father, more than all your family, a well-disciplined mind does greater good.” – The Buddha, “The Dhammapada,” (3:33-43)

People describe “hitting bottom” in various ways. In my experience, while still using I would think that I had fallen to some plateau of degradation but then just kept digging myself lower and lower. In hindsight, I believe the “bottom” is really just the graveyard. I was lucky enough to somehow hit the brakes before that happened. But I admittedly had some menacing obstacles that encouraged that surrender.

At one point near the end of my using, I had come down with a case of “cotton fever,” a condition resulting from a bacteria-tainted-fragment of the cotton, used to draw up drugs into the syringe, quietly entering my bloodstream. I had heard of this health risk related to ongoing-IV-drug-use but if the threat of AIDS, Hepatitis, and even Myocarditis didn’t scare me away, this possible ailment surely did not. I was incredibly ill within what seemed like minutes of shooting up: fever and chills, body aches, and gasping for air were some of the hilarities I experienced. Over the course of a very long day, these symptoms eventually wore off. But while shaken up by this incident, I barreled forward into the madness.

After finishing another in a series of grueling gigs without drugs, I decided to stay up all night and drive to a local methadone clinic and sign up. While I hated that actual drug for recreational purposes and considered it a “dirty high” like cold medicine or weaker narcotics, its sustained effects surely helped stave off my cravings. I had heard that “anyone” could climb aboard and they accepted all takers. Of course, this information was told to me by other, runny-nosed junkies so I probably should have questioned my source. Knowing that the parking lots of these clinics are usually inhabited by early birds waiting for their daily dose or “take-homes” long-before daybreak, I left the house ninety minutes before the clinic opened. On the way there, I repeatedly blasted the Neil Young song “Don’t Be Denied” as a kind of cheer-leading anthem and self-aggrandizing moment. Addicts always think the camera is focused on them. Long story short: they denied me. Looking back, I think this was a blessing in disguise, however painful at the time, since I might have never left the world of drugs. And in truth, when factoring in my batting average, methadone might have expedited my chances of an inevitable dirt nap.

I also had the benefit of running out of recipes. As my habit increased, my need for drugs had risen accordingly. I was taking a variety of medications including Neurontin, an off-label drug usually prescribed for epilepsy or neuropathic pain, the phenobarbital Donnatal, and an array of tranquilizers. While these drugs put me in various states of dopiness and downright disorientation, they never hit the mark of my ongoing dope sickness. Even though by this time I considered myself an honorary-physician, I made an incredible desperation-fueled-error in purchasing a large amount of the painkiller Talwin Nx; a drug I was unfamiliar with and had neglected to investigate online with my dope fiend research skills. While most popularly-abused opiates fall under the classification of being opioid agonists, binding to the receptor sites in the brain and producing the junkie-desired fireworks, Talwin Nx is an opioid agonist-antagonist which contains the drug Pentazocine as well as Naloxone. The latter chemical is one of the key agents in the current-detox-craze drug Suboxone. Naloxone counteracts the effects of Morphine-like opiates and is used in Emergency Rooms to treat drug overdoses, blasting the central nervous system and respiratory function awake and hopefully kicking the near-dead junkie back to life while also kicking them into instant drug withdrawal. Not realizing this possible side effect, and still having opiates in my body, I took a handful of the Talwin and experienced one of the most discomforting drug-related experiences of my life, making myself even sicker in the process. Amazingly, the person I bought them from gave me a refund. I later returned and purchased more familiar drugs from them, the circular transaction of addiction.

I know that two experiences in particular were moments of clarity; or at least increased awareness of my lousiness. On New Year’s Eve of 2005, I had spent most of that day scrambling around town to cop, naturally, some of the much-loathed methadone. Hours later, I was successful in that venture and went to play the gig that night which was actually booked at the local navy base. I had gone from playing to a sold-out crowd at Brixton Academy in London, England a few years earlier; now I was strung-out and preparing to play to an empty bar at a military base – direct ego hit. Unless they have somehow been reprimanded for some violation, no one in their right mind is on a base on a holiday night, especially New Year’s Eve. The bar was located right on the beach. After we arranged our gear onstage and sound checked, I went outside and sat on a concrete block that covered, most fittingly, the septic tank. I can remember looking up at the moon and wondering how in the hell I had wound up at this moment in my life: almost 34-years-old, completely addicted to drugs, and now preparing to play cover songs for a bartender and two glum sailors nursing their beers. Years later, I believe this moment in the moonlight was some kind of prayer, however unarticulated and self-pity-driven. But I kept using. Fast forward to early 2007; I had ended a ten-year relationship with my girlfriend. I feared I was dragging her and her family down and I’m sure I was correct. My using was also beginning to affect my health. I seemed to begin experiencing an allergic reaction to opiates: sometimes when I would shoot up, my face would turn flush with flecks of red rising up from my skin. I had developed prostatitis, a condition that was certainly aided by heroin’s tendency to shut down and inhibit bodily function, particularly those of an “evacuation-based” nature. Not long after that, an angry-looking cyst appeared on my tailbone, a condition that was surely also exacerbated by the drugs and adulterants that I was injecting into my bloodstream at every available moment.

But the worst condition I dealt with was the absolute sense of emptiness. The decades-long spell I had cast with a cauldron of chemicals had finally worked; I was losing who I was. I had failed at everything and was now losing the shaky handhold with my oldest friend: drugs. My spirit was splintered and the shrapnel was hitting everyone closest to me. In the late spring of that same year, I had called someone who could hopefully hook me up with something. Horror of horrors, they were not home and I can still remember the annoyance and disgust in the voice of their spouse, who knew exactly why I was dialing their number. “Don’t ever call here again,” was their strong suggestion, before hanging up on me. Later that night at around 3 a.m., I was listening to “Corrina, Corrina,” by Taj Mahal, a song that I had always loved and had certainly played while falling into a nod. The universe snapped its fingers and the past years hit me at full force. I cracked. I wept. I gave up. And then the miracle kicked in.

I decided to reveal to my family what was really going on with me. I had used a series of excuses – depression, my artistic temperament, exploiting pain management, the “I’m Irish” card – to explain, rationalize, and justify my behavior to them for many years. They were, by no fault of their own, both my ultimate targets and enablers. My parents had already been reduced to buying a lock box to keep money and any pain medications safe from my ever-creeping hands. Of course, I eventually stole the key, made a copy, and emptied the box. Their understandable distrust in me was only overshadowed by an unspoken disappointment. I sat down in their living room and hesitantly explained to them that I was not the world’s most baffling pain patient but in fact was a drug addict. I can remember my dad weeping when I revealed the awkward disclosure of stealing their insulin syringes and finally closing the case of The Missing Spoons from the Kitchen. “Daniel, I had no idea you were this bad. Why didn’t you tell us this?” he cried. His tears hit me in the center of my heart. If I had any doubts about getting honest, they were demolished in that moment of seeing my father crying out of concern over what I had become. “Well, what do we do?” my mom asked. I had no idea. The world of drug rehabs, treatment centers, and detoxes was completely alien to me. My family is decidedly working-class and there was no Betty Ford Treatment Center Fund on hand. But I remembered the people from the band I had previously worked for. And I remembered those mutual support meetings. I looked online and found the meetings. After this admission, I still spent another week spinning my wheels, driving in circles. Anything to not get clean.

I finally went to a meeting, still using. I had to take a handful of pills to even operate the car and make the mile-long drive to the meeting place. When the floor was opened for sharing, I immediately announced “I’m an addict named Dan” and admitted that I was killing myself with using and needed help. That was the new abracadabra that broke the ancient spell. I talked to a man that night after the meeting and he agreed to be my sponsor, a guide and confidant in recovery. I then went home and threw everything away; even the “expensive bong.” Over the past decade, I had accumulated every possible piece of drug paraphernalia and a veritable library of drug related literature (i.e. “Grow Your Own Opium at Home!”). I went as far as demanding that my brother photograph me flushing the remainder of my drugs, as some kind of documentation of this turning point. Since I had told my family I was an addict, gone to one support group meeting, and was now destroying all of the very things that had been destroying me, I was making certain that I could not “take this back.” I had to move forward, however terrified. The next day, September 6, 2007, I went back to my second meeting – and my first day clean. By the grace of some higher power, I have so far stayed clean since that day.

Since I still couldn’t get my shit together to actually call a treatment center, I decided to kick opiates cold turkey. I am one of the most stubborn, bullheaded motherfuckers on this planet and I now realize that there is not a cessation program in this galaxy that would work for me. So I kicked. I was incredibly, almost-comically sick. Much medical literature on opiate withdrawal offers that the patient will experience “flu-like symptoms” for “24 to 72 hours” but that information, however well-intended, is really like comparing a broken heart to a broken shoelace. I lost around twenty pounds in less than two weeks, puking and shitting nonstop. I subsisted on cigarettes, nutritional replacement drinks, and gagged back a few spoonfuls of yogurt. I would sit in a meeting with my eyes watering and nose running, trembling, sweating and aching. Suddenly I would race to the bathroom and then stagger back to my plastic chair. Yet none of this was a surprise to me. I had felt the pangs of withdrawal for seven years; they were the alarm clock that ordered me to I use. What did surprise me was the grieving process I experienced. Maybe four days into kicking, I was sprawled out on my bed watching the film “Paris, Texas.” While Wim Wenders’ 1984 film is surely a poignant piece of cinema, I was suddenly overcome with an irrational wave of emotion and began sobbing. Through all of my cellular and emotional weirdness, at that moment I somehow followed this sudden surge of melancholy to its source: If I wanted to survive and live any further, I could never successfully use any drugs or alcohol again. They would kill me.

One of the many and-almost-universal delights of opiate withdrawal is that while the detoxing dope fiend is completely and utterly lethargic, with only the faintest level of strength and energy, sleep is impossible. At night I would lie in bed and listen to The Band’s first two albums repeatedly, letting the low volume of the music distract me from the ongoing battle raging through my being. One of the first and foremost suggestions that I heard at these meetings was this: pray. Keep in mind that I had no use for any God. If there was a God, then I was His mutant chimerical combination of mental illness conjoined with addiction. And I was already somewhat weary of these meetings since many of the facilities where they met happened to be located inside of religious institutions. But I was so willing to try anything to get through those first days that I did pray. I prayed for one thing and that was sleep. And that night I slept for eight hours non-stop, while still in the eye of the hurricane. I considered this a miracle. I still do. So I took more suggestions. I kept going to meetings, sometimes three a day. The meetings and people there were helping me kick, minute by minute, and I was going home clean. And I continued to pray to whatever was out there. I made up a God or some spiritual force. I prayed for help, I prayed for the lifelong obsession to use drugs to be lifted. Three days into getting clean, I prayed the purest request that I had probably ever sent outward and into the unknown. I have only revealed this to a few people in my life because it can sound so unbelievable, if not delusional. But my thoughts were always in the order of garbled ideas, negative inner chatter, and fear. I prayed to whatever was out there to help me, to save me, to stop me from destroying myself. And as soon as I finished that plea I immediately “heard” this in both mind and heart: “You can either live your dreams or die in this nightmare.” I felt an indescribable peace and stillness flow through me. I believed what I had been told. And I still do.

Two months clean: Aleister Crowley and me; Nov. 2007.

After three months clean, I decided to go see my primary care physician and reveal to him that I was an addict. He had been one of the main targets/victims of my drug-seeking-song-and-dance and I needed to tell him the truth – for my own safety as much as owning up to the reality of who I was. I feared a few possible outcomes: an understandable reprimand, law enforcement somehow being involved, or even his decision to no longer accept me as a patient. I had been treated by this man since I was 12-years-old and he had seen me through my highs and lows, but I was certainly apprehensive about disclosing this new information. His response? He leaned over, hugged me, and told me he was proud of my honesty and decision to get clean; he also explained that in his experience, recovery had seemed to be the best process to keep similar patients abstinent for extended lengths of time. During this time I was still being prescribed low doses of the psych meds Lexapro and Xanax; with his blessing, I decided to taper off of both medications. I was so weirded out from being clean that any side effects from coming off of meds – once again in my life – thankfully seemed unnoticeable.

I believe that nobody walks into a recovery meeting on an upswing, whether they are a newcomer or returning after surviving a relapse. But I felt an incredible sense of hope from that first day. I have also had to accept that I am with a collective group of people who are sick but getting better. But I identified with the others in the meetings who talked about their feelings and view of life. I was a mentally ill ex-junkie and within a few months was entrusted with a fucking key to a church and issued a box that contained literature and cash. So these people had faith in me when I did not even have faith in myself. And they still do. Over the years since, that same faith and trust has been returned in kind and I have also tried to direct that same love and encouragement towards the next broken person who walks inside of a meeting and takes a seat in that circle of chairs.

Once I had made the highly personal decision to get clean and enter a recovery program, I began to acknowledge my past history of being diagnosed mentally ill, suicide attempts and my stints of being hospitalized. Initially, I would wonder aloud in meetings if I was ever truly crazy or “just an addict.” I quickly reined in any speculation at these meetings but would still confer about my doubts with my small-yet-crucial network of fellow addicts. Since recovery immediately started to change my life for the better, I simply decided to throw all of my troubles into the box marked “addiction.” And admittedly both addiction and many forms of mental illness share similar traits: obsessive thinking, compulsive behavior, self-centeredness and self-aggrandizing … symptoms shared by both smack heads and various lunatics. But my self-acceptance of addiction eventually soured into a kind of parallel prejudice towards mental illness. I had friends in recovery that confided in me that they were being prescribed antidepressants or mood stabilizers and I would openly tease them; while secret judging them: “They are full of shit. They’re not clean. Recovery doesn’t come in the form of a pill.” I think that I resorted to this kind of intolerance to separate myself not only from them but also used that very prejudice as a way to buffer, if not soften, my own fears that I still bore the mark of madness.

Even though my life became incrementally better, I would still experience incredible depressions and those ancient electrical charges surging through my brain and body, sleeplessness, racing thoughts, rage…but I told myself that I was an addict, a newcomer in recovery. At a little less than two years clean, I was looking for a different sponsor and discovered a guy with whom I shared both a similar background of LSD/heroin-induced craziness and subsequent personality change and transformation into a-near-obsession with meditation and spiritual realization. I told him everything about my life, things I had told no other person (not even my previous sponsor) and he responded with humor, compassion, and unconditional love. Even though he has racked up forty-plus years clean, this guy doesn’t claim to be surrounded by angels and has his shitty days; but he is still my sponsor to this day for all of the aforementioned reasons. I coped with my subcurrent of highs-and-lows by going to more meetings and deepening my burgeoning-spiritual-practice. I also started running and began going to the gym; like a typical addict, I did this to the detriment of my health, exhausting my body to the point of repeatedly making myself ill. I would have the flu and go run five miles, proving that I still had a lot turn learn. A dope fiend without dope is still a fiend.

I eventually was hired on as a groundskeeper at a local hospital. While this was hardly a strong career move, I also had limited employment options and Drug Addict is usually a red flag on most résumés. I truly enjoyed the physicality of the work, being outside, and the company of my two co-workers. For two years, I would wake up at 4:30 a.m., pray and then meditate for 20 minutes, and then start my shift at 5:30 a.m. We started work early and left by 1:30 or 2 p.m., before the Florida sun reached its burning peak. Due to city ordinances, we couldn’t fire up any equipment until 7 a.m. Our boss knew this and seemed indifferent to what we did during that ninety minute gap; they just wanted someone there on the hospital campus at those hours. I spent the time journaling and reading, digging deeper into spirituality and an almost-scholarly study of mysticism and comparative religions (incidentally: religious zealotry or visions also being a symptom of mania – for more on my spiritual-based ramblings, check out this memoir piece). I was making $10 an hour and my wages were being garnished to the tune of $500 a month. Apparently, when you take out a college loan and spend the bulk of the money on heroin and electric basses, they still want that money back. But I also had health insurance for the first time in my life and was ultimately happier than I had been in years. Every day I did my morning spiritual deal, went to work, exercised, went to a meeting that night, and went straight home to bed to repeat this process the next day. And I stayed clean.

2008: A year clean and somehow leaving every turn unstoned.

The sad truth is that quite frankly, just like some non-addicts, some people in recovery are highly judgmental of mental illness, if not downright skeptical that one can have two diseases. In the support group environment of addiction people tend to share about many feelings, situations and conditions. Yet depression and mental illness are what a dear friend eloquently described what can at times be a “Third Rail” topic in meetings, a reality that appears too dangerous to approach. But as another trusted friend once pointed out to me, “Nobody ever has a fucking using dream about taking their Paxil!” And I heartily agree. And I certainly acknowledge that decades of ingesting a cornucopia of illicit and legal substances to alter my mood surely did not help my mental condition. Bipolar disorder can even be seemingly-triggered by drug-induced trauma to the brain. But in my own personal history, I quickly shifted from “getting high” to “using” in an attempt to quell my mind and its ever-shifting agenda of thoughts. This unspoken prejudice towards mental illness makes this a journey of the absurd and pure paradox. So I have learned to keep my mouth shut. I shared once in a smaller and more intimate recovery meeting about my reluctant return to the realm of psychiatric treatment. I felt that I was subsequently blasted by two people afterwards so I kept my mouth shut. “Don’t share about this in a meeting,” is the strong suggestion of my sponsor. “Some people just don’t realize that you can be an addict and be mentally ill.” I have taken his guidance to heart. Yet I still regularly attend mutual support groups for recovering addicts where it is strongly discouraged to engage in “dope-a-logs” and mention specific drugs by name or describe the insane antics of active using i.e. “We already know how to get high. We are here to learn how to live clean.” Conversely, I have attended mutual support groups for people dealing with bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses where the attendees freely rattle off drug names, dosages and side effects like they are swapping recipes; an almost kind of symmetrical and poetic irony to witness.

In 2010, through a friend’s recommendation and most-assuredly some weird divine intervention, I interviewed for a job as an editor at a local alt-weekly. I used a classic junkie technique: “If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit.” It worked. No one was surprised more than I that they actually hired me on. This paper had published a eulogy the previous year that I had written about my two-day teenaged-adventure-with the late poet Jim Carroll. Yet I had no real previous writing or publishing experience, let alone a college degree. But this job was the perfect fit for me, as my tasks included editing and writing copy related to music, film, and, most crucially, visual arts. I had an incredibly patient editor-in-chief, who, along with the equally supportive staff reporter and copy editor, showed me the ropes of the world of alt weekly journalism. I remain indebted to my friend who suggested me for the gig and aforementioned editorial staff for helping in change my life and push me further into writing.

2009: Two years clean and keeping an open mind about the whole God thing.

Beginning in the spring of 2011, my footing began to slip. I stopped bouncing back as quickly from stumbling into my shadow. I was approaching four years clean and doing all the things one is “supposed” to do but I was getting worse. Through the benefit of my ongoing meditation practice, I was starting to both see and feel these shifting moods surging through me on an experiential level. Throughout the day, I would sense the train barreling down the tracks, never knowing when it would hit me, but always certain of its arrival. And then it would move on. I would dust myself off, pray and go to a meeting. I threw it all back in the box labeled addiction: “I’m an addict named Dan.” I had talked to my sponsor about my concerns regarding my mental state. “Those are just spiritual growing pains. If they had all of these medications around when I was in early recovery I would have been full of pills.” A year later he was urging, if not strongly demanding, that I seek medical help for my condition.

After having a job that offered health insurance and being exhausted from trying to go at this alone, I finally began seeing a talk therapist. And she was a godsend. After our first two sessions, she suggested I give medication another try. I immediately balked. “Just write ‘patient refuses treatment’,” was my immediate response. Other than my resolute defiance in going back on psych meds, I felt an instant rapport with her and opened up. I dropped my caution. Most sessions involved me yammering away in a non-linear monologue of complaints, which eventually led to observations, insights, and gradual confessions. I had shared with this therapist an experience from my childhood that I had only shared with very few, a secret that had always sat in the corner of my life’s story. “So you are a survivor of molestation, of sexual abuse,” she explained. I left that session freed from decades of needless shame that over the years had festered within me, long disguised as some ancient guilt. As I put the keys in the ignition of my car, I felt an odd blend of rawness and relief. I sat staring through the windshield and realized what I really recognized was the rarest moment of clemency, liberated from my own violent self-judgment and a pain that had suffused into my spirit. When ghosts are reminded of their true name they sometimes never return. And while some of my innocence might have been taken from me as a child, over the course of my lifetime I must admit that I gave most of it away, selling it to the lowest bidder and pawning off whatever remained.

And then, almost-expectedly and true-to-form, I stopped going to talk to her. I boomeranged back to rationalization and denial of being bipolar. “I’m fine. I’m just an addict.” I found it harder and harder to bounce back. My three-year relationship with my girlfriend ended. Oddly enough, I went to a place of almost-immediate acceptance of this. And I still consider this woman to be one of my closest friends; another gift of changing my ways. But at the time it surely shook my sense of stability. My mind continued to spin out whirlpools of erratic moods. I would sit at my desk at work trying to write or edit some other person’s copy and felt that familiar distraction that made me imagine I was possessed by some alien force. The ringer would be turned off on my office phone, directing people I didn’t want to deal with straight to my voicemail. I feared they would hear me losing my mind through the receiver. Once my head was set back to normal, I would return their calls. I could always deal with e-mails, since, like their younger sibling of text messaging, they are such a wonderfully bland, toneless, and manipulative way to communicate with others. “How are you?” I am fine. I am ok. In the next hour, I might have a fucking gun barrel pressed up into the roof of my mouth. But I’m ok. Always the same answer, like an annoyed child being grilled by a parent after returning home from school. I kept moving forward; old fuel in the tank.

In a little over two years, I resigned from my job at the alt weekly over a failed salary negotiation. After nearly twenty years of manning the paper, my much-loved editor-in-chief and writing-guru told me that she was leaving and moving on to another job. She strongly urged that I ask for a sizable raise; even suggesting a certain figure as a bottom line amount. I approached the publisher with this request and he sent it up towards the owners of the paper. I prayed as much as I worried over my uncertain future. A few days later, the vice president-and-co-owner of the company explained that they simply did not have the budget to meet my goal; so I turned in my two weeks’ notice. This was not an easy decision to make. I loved my job but I was also exhausting myself, working 50-plus hours a week. Some of this was just part of the gig: my editorial coworkers also spent more than one weekend day back at the office proofreading and refining each weekly edition, or at home also chained to their laptops. But I think between my ego seeing an incredible opportunity to create, while also being prone to manic feats of craziness, much of my prolific output bordered on self-abuse. I would need a film review so I would leave work, go see the film, come home and write a review, and then have it in before the next morning’s deadline. On some mornings I would interview an artist or musician and have the copy finished by noon. During this time a brief relationship ended as heatedly as it had begun. I handled it badly, if not horrifyingly so, lashing out at her in a series of texts that were fueled by rage. At one point, I went for a jog and was convinced that a stranger driving by in his car was somehow sent by my ex-partner to spy one me; pure manic-based delusion. I still have much regret over my handling of all of this and my treatment of her in the aftermath, but like anything else, I only learn the lesson if I remember and apply the education, however painful it may be.

Late 2010: End of a long day at the office, cracking at the surface, but moving forward.

After resigning from my editorial job, I simply shifted gears into becoming a freelance writer and playing more gigs in a cover band. I had no idea how to edit before I actually became an editor so I figured I would I apply that same logic to freelance writing. It came down to willingness and faith. I would still get the work done. Yet my mind would accelerate at even greater speeds and I would then crash with equally-brutal propulsion. Sitting down at my desk, opening a blank document file, and then hammering out a 10,000 word visual art story or interview in an eight hour run; and then be rattled by the electrical current I had somehow siphoned out of nothingness. I had nowhere to aim this excess radiation that seemed to crackle around me after creating something. The job was done but my mind was still at work. Countless times I have been in the actual process of writing and tried to force myself to ignore what had once been a single voice but had now grown into a chorus of screaming doubt and self-hatred; another interior distraction that I am sure is common to sculptors as well as plumbers, albeit ones who might also benefit from psychiatric treatment.

I began dating a woman in the late summer of 2012. I was still shaky from my questionable romantic safaris of the past year. But I tried to take it slow. I was unsuccessful. I had met her previously at an art installation and the attraction was immediate; but I was seeing someone else at the time and for all of my faults, infidelity is one I have somehow shed. I told her everything about me, and both disclosed, if not warned her, of my former life as a full-tilt smack head. I was 40-years-old so why fuck around with the truth? She probably didn’t click her heels when reading that e-mail, but she also did not step away. I was intrigued by her beauty as much as her sardonic sense of humor and intimidating intellect. Interestingly enough, she admitted that she had never been drunk or high in her life. This is no longer my criterion for any relationship today, but as an addict I found this fascinating. “Don’t worry, I did enough drinking and drugging for the both of us,” I laughed. She rolled her eyes. I fell in love.

Even though I failed twice at taking my own life, and barely survived various chemically-induced trapeze tricks, I have continued to experience suicidal thoughts throughout my adult life. I had previously dealt with this as I imagine any sane person would have: I hid those thoughts away. In the spring of 2013, an old friend had sent me a text. The message was just an innocuous message, the kind anyone gets on any day. “How have you been?” This friend has always been a lover of firearms. A few years ago, his younger brother, who was schizophrenic, had been hit by a car and killed when he was seemingly wandering around a beachside road late at night. I knew his brother and was saddened by this tragedy and reminded of my own history of stomping around those very same roads in the crazy moonlight. My friend drove from Texas to pick through the wreckage of his dead brother’s life. When he showed up at my house, the first thing he did was pull the loaded clip out of his Glock and place it on the table next to me. Some people would call my friend a gun nut, yet I know him to be a very responsible gun owner. He hunts (and eats what he kills), is incredibly cautious with his small arsenal of weapons, and is equally adamant about his right to own and carry a licensed pistol. I have never fired a gun in my life. In fact, I imagine there are probably a series of checks and balances put in place to keep someone like me from ever owning a firearm. But when I read his text, my immediate thought was: “I bet he could help me get a pistol; and then I could then blow my brains out.”

After this experience, the thoughts of suicide accelerated into becoming a daily occurrence. I would lie in bed at night in the dark, scrolling through web sites on my phone, looking for places where I could possibly order cyanide. And then I would investigate gun sites or eBay looking for a pistol. I am actually embarrassed to say that my search for the proper gun has been very specific: a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson Model 28 revolver – the same gun used by my pre-teen hero in taking his own life. Richard Brautigan also purportedly chose a Winchester Western Super X .44 Magnum hollow point bullet to blast through his own agony and out of this world. These thoughts have rarely been situational or arriving after some dark mood but rather show up like a surprise visitor whose increasing appearance can be exhausting, disturbing, and most terrifyingly, even alluring. Suicide has been in my mind since adolescence; if there is any red flag that tells me something might be wrong with me, sporadic and unprovoked thoughts of taking my own life surely qualify as a sign of trouble. It is my ballast in taking my mental health seriously, however reluctantly. While succumbing to these thoughts, the movie in my mind plays out as such: I start boxing up books and records; planning on how I would bestow this messy legacy after I erased myself. And then comes the funeral planning, the death-march-playlist, the self-penned Threnody of Dead Dan, etc… The arrogance of such thinking invariably snaps me out of my fugue; if I am lucky it continues to do so. Someone once told me that suicide is a hostile act and I believe this to be true. It is the illusion of hopelessness combined with impossible pain and amplified into a grim finality. In the past four years, I have endured the horrific pain of having two people whom I loved, and still love very deeply, commit suicide. My memories and love of them also pulls me back from the edge. But some nights I still lie in bed, hypnotized by the light of my smart phone, looking up exit strategies and then clearing the search engine filled with “cyanide online,” “cyanide India,” “cyanide amount to kill oneself,” etc… At this point in my life I accept it as part of the deal. My hair has always been a mess of cowlicks; my brain a clutter of aberrant intentions.

As 2013 rolled onward I would crackle in agitation and restlessness, only to crash. My memory and concentration shifted like smoke in the wind. I couldn’t focus. I have been an avid believer in keeping a journal for years. But now I began carrying around a half dozen small notebooks to write down both my thoughts and also remember the simplest of tasks. So a passage of sporadic insight such as this (verbatim): “What hangs over me? Doubt. Fear. Fear of being judged. But I need only remind myself of two things: I always have these doubts. Maybe doubt is simply an inherent feeling that precedes accomplishment. I don’t know. However, I do know that my doubt and fears are always exaggerated, and my prediction for failure never matches the actual outcome” would then be followed by a series of mundane lists: “Buy spinach…put gigs in phone calendar…pay phone bill…call Rob back, etc…” Many mornings I would call my girlfriend, sobbing, urging her to break up with me. The same challenge would be blasted at her via text and e-mail while she would try to deal with working an 8-12 hour day. Sometimes my motivations are centered on self-destruction. But I guess to accomplish that I must first destroy everything around me and love is the first target in the cross-hairs.

There is some humor in this. At some point in the last year, I spent nearly four days not bathing and living on croutons and apple juice, urinating into a hospital issue plastic urinal bottle. I would lay in the dark, my phone face down on my writing table next to my bed. When someone would call I would watch the square of light illuminate the surface. Most people eventually stopped calling. I would talk to my girlfriend and she would be reduced to tears with my ongoing monologues of doom, agitated rants, and increasing paranoia. I was surrounded by feeble conspiracy theories. Fist fights were breaking out in my brain. My mind would attack me in every direction. And then I would forget the battle even occurred. The process would repeat; thankfully minus pissing in a plastic jug.

At the strong urging of my girlfriend and sponsor, I returned to seeing my therapist. We talked and at the end of the hour-long session, I asked her, “What is your diagnosis of me?” “I believe that you have Bipolar 2 Disorder and are chronically suicidal.” She then placed the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, on my lap and showed me the symptoms in black and white. I finally consented. I gave up. I surrendered. A few weeks after finally agreeing with my therapist’s undeniable verdict, I went to a psychiatrist. In that first visit I told him everything that I could inside of the allotted hour. I gave him an outline of my life that had pivoted on substance abuse, depression, rage, and creative endeavors. He told me that he marveled how I had avoided treatment for 20 years, but also acknowledged that a dirty secret in mental health is that self-medicating actually works – to a point. The psychiatrist reminded me of the seemingly-well-established link between bipolar disorder and creative people, the very same theory that the compassionate psychologist had once explained to me in my youth. But this seems like an honorary trophy given out to the team that loses every game. I’m sure there are many inventive, healthy people walking this planet whose brains don’t slingshot like yo-yos while they grow their own clandestine hemlock garden. I was indifferent to this. I knew all of the stories about various creative people hurling themselves out of their studio windows and blowing their brains across their typewriters. In fact, I had nearly destroyed myself trying to play dress up like them for the past 25 years, thinking they somehow lived and died by the answers I was seeking. “I don’t want to flat line you with meds,” he told me, which was very reassuring. This psychiatrist augmented my initial diagnosis, believing that I am Bipolar Disorder 2-B; or bipolar disorder beneficial which means I have somehow learned to use the disease to my own benefit. I turned the asylum into a production plant; again, an assurance that feels like another victory lap on an empty track in a rainstorm.

An estimated 2 to 7 percent of people in the United States suffer from, or as I now like to think, live with bipolar disorder; 60 to 80 percent of those same people self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. They are equally prone to higher incidences of both heart problems and headaches, particularly migraines. And out of all the known mental illnesses, bipolar disorder has the highest rate of suicide; a third will attempt taking their own lives and 20 percent of those same people will succeed. The mood swings and symptoms of the disease include racing thoughts, irritability, anger, depression, an impairment in judgment, problems in controlling impulsivity, distractibility and lack of focus, disruption of the sleep cycle, overworking, overindulgence, and suicidal ideation. These in turn can manifest themselves as rages and plummeting mood crashes, ongoing relationship problems with others, financial irresponsibility, careless sexual promiscuity, difficulty holding down jobs and unemployability, etc.*…I am surely guilty at some points in my life of acting out on these very things. After rattling off that laundry list, I also acknowledge that many of the above symptoms are shared by just as many people how are not considered “mentally ill” at all. There is a commonality of being human and the universal flaws and brain glitches in countless people trying to make sense of this life as they attempt to simply live. Everyone suffers and also experiences moments of joy. Every day is not our birthday. However, the symptoms of bipolar disorder, particularly the more self-destructive traits, are very specific, well-documented, and highly alarming. However, I make no excuses for past or current behaviors. But I do hope to someday make amends for some.

In the past few months, I slowly began confiding in friends about where I was at, why I was ignoring their phone calls, emails, and any form of human contact. I am grateful for their support. And I have been admittedly frustrated by the free-range and uninvited diagnoses by some: “But look at all the things you have done and still do… You seem fine to me…You’ll snap out of it…My mind is like that, too.” I don’t claim to own the exclusive rights to mental derangement, but these kinds of observations, justifications and rationalizations are the very things that have kept me from seeking actual psychiatric help. Addiction and bipolar disorder are two imaginary friends I never wanted. I don’t know if they forced their friendship upon me but they were surely never courted or invited inside. Whether through genetics, trauma, karma, a dice rolled in the universe, or some combination thereof, these parallel conditions became embedded in my being. They are a part of me and they are me. Sometimes I even think of them as weirdly wrapped gifts, forceful blessings I have yet to fully unravel. I think part of my problem lies in the fact that I am at complete peace with being an addict; or as much as I can be at this point in my life. I am powerless. I give up. But there is a deep part of me that wants to still believe that I can control my mental illness, even though my remembered history proves time and time again that I am not really guiding my brain, however tightly I grip the reins.

What do I do now? I take my medications. I have learned to gauge their effectiveness by how I treat the people around me and how they perceive my behaviors and report those observations back to me. My current cocktail of pharmaceuticals seems to give me ongoing headaches. I’ve informed my psychiatrist of this but honestly this particular side effect seems minor compared to the headache a Smith and Wesson aimed into my skull will produce. I maintain my daily program of compete abstinence and recovery. I “do the deal.” I am surely lacking in having a sense of stability and structure in my life but I am trying to claw my way slowly back to a healthier rhythm. Key to my growth, health and overall peace of mind, however tenuous, has been my spiritual beliefs. I have acknowledged that I didn’t give a fuck about God and was especially suspicious, if not resentful, towards all religions. But I pray every morning and every night, on my knees like some insane child Photoshopped into a Norman Rockwell painting. I talk to my God throughout the day, petitioning for everything from protection from violence to complete spiritual surrender. I believe that meditation has been one of the most radical discoveries in my life. And I do have certain faith in some God, a being that I originally “made up” and who now makes their presence certainly known in my life. I guess I believe that God, if anything else, is perception.

But there have been moments in my life since my original Prayer to Whatever that have been beyond coincidence and have also brought me closure, if not healing. They are countless and at-times-jarring, but can be equally playful or deeply profound. I will share this one that I still find particularly remarkable: when I had around three years clean, I had the opportunity to take a recovery support meeting into a facility that housed both mentally ill patients and addicts going through the hell of detox. This particular center was hardly a resort. Its rehab program was based on a three-to-seven day detoxification process, what is commonly known as a “spin dry” detox. Wham bam, thank you ma’am. I would meet a counselor at the door of the locked ward with two other addicts. I coordinated and led the meeting, bringing in other recovering addicts to share their story and maybe even bring some hope. The meeting was held in a day room, where five to ten people would be sitting on couches and chairs in various states of withdrawal from an array of chemicals, the counselor sitting quietly in the corner. Since this was also a mental health facility, we would usually also have a few non-addict-bona-fide-nutjobs in the meeting. This was fine with me and considering the venue, who could tell the fucking difference? Sometimes I would only realize there was an insane interloper amongst us when I would open the floor for sharing and then the big reveal would occur. My friends and I would bring in this meeting once a week. One day after the counselor locked the door behind us, I walked down the hall towards the meeting room. I suddenly stopped and looked to my right. I looked into the room, the four beds; the sunlight streaming through Plexiglas…this was the very same room I had been in some twenty years earlier, slamming that suitcase against the unforgiving window. That room had not changed. But I had changed. In my heart, I felt that ineffable presence of Something and acknowledged both a homecoming and farewell that was, if nothing else, poetic.

After writing all of this, as ever, I am still not really certain why I felt compelled to do so. Quite frankly, as cruel as it might sound, a part of me fears that by posting this I will be blowing an invisible Freak Whistle and summon more crazy people in my life; believe me, my cup runneth over with paranoia. I know that I haven’t written this seeking sympathy, compassion or even understanding – but rather to redirect the compass that points me towards continued survival. Self-disclosure is painful. We live in a world that seems to honor secrets. I am writing myself forward and through that world. I certainly have the defect of arrogance; but within that is also the truth that I can sometimes back up my words with action. I can get shit done. But I also surely suffer from delusions of grandeur, comparing my own life, pain, and dreams to my pantheon of ever-shifting heroes. But I believe that I originally loved authors like Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, or artists such as Francis Bacon and Max Ernst, due to an admiration not only of their work or identification with their worldview, but most importantly because they never held back. I personally doubt that anyone would care about art, literature, music, or anything that makes life interesting if people had gone halfway into their creation, only to turn back around when the process became uncomfortable or even terrifying. They leaned into both the anguish and wonder of this life and went as far to draw a map for the rest of us to follow. Whether we are sightseers, wallflowers or participants in this adventure is really up to us. I spent too much time wasted and missing out on being myself. I want to stay awake.

And I survive in spite of myself, a self-preservation that can at times seem as frustrating as absolute failure more than any kind of weak triumph. Sane is no longer a four letter word to me. But it’s probably an unrealistic expectation. The blues is a seemingly necessary but thankfully temporary condition of life. I only want wellness, happiness and to feel at home in my own skin. And I also write this to let others know that there is always hope, even if it is ripped out of the universe, kicking and screaming. Radical acceptance and empowerment are the methods and the goals. And I believe that by writing this, and not holding back, I am somehow letting it all go.

Tell All the Truth But Tell It Slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind-

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

September 13, 2013: Doing my current deal. Photo by Erica La Spada.

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

*as taken from The Bipolar Handbook by Wes Burgess, M.D., Ph.D.

Photographer Roy Berry chronicles the colorful characters of Fan Cons

["Trekkie and Son"]

Fast forward three decades later to 1939. Pioneering science fiction author, editor, publisher, and visionary polymath Forrest J. Ackerman attended that year’s inaugural World Science Fiction Convention in Manhattan donning a “futuristicostume.” In a memoir piece penned by sci-fi author and fellow attendee Dave Kyle, Ackerman arrived at this ground-breaking event with his shirt imprinted with the superhero-like-symbol “4SJ” (as in Forrest J. Ackermann) while “wearing his eye-catching street costume with green cape and baggy breeches.”

Since his death in 2008 at the age of 92, Ackermann has been credited as being the undeniable spearhead in launching genres such as horror and science fiction from the underground world of pulp magazines into the stratosphere of popular culture. Among his many accomplishments, Ackermann coined the term “sci-fi,” helped propel and push the literary and creative careers of writers including Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley, L. Ron Hubbard, as well as über-cult hero Ed Wood, while amassing a personal collection of over 300,000 pieces of memorabilia.

Ackermann (aka “Forry” and “The Ackermonster”) also helped broadcast, organize, and publicize future events that sprung from that initial gathering in NYC, a day that attracted 200 sci-fi, fantasy, and horror lovers who were surely seeking some kind of imaginative solace from The Great Depression and were undoubtedly pleased to discover that they were not alone in their otherworldly obsessions.

And that tribe has continued to grow. Over the course of the following decades, these fan conventions (or Fan Cons) developed in a sort of parallel rhythm with the increasing popularity of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror that manifested as comic books, novels, television shows, motion pictures, and related marketed-memorabilia. Today, a cursory online search reveals that there are 400-plus Fan Cons occurring around the globe that celebrate sci-fi, fantasy, horror, Anime, role playing games, and every other possible mutation that even a dreamer like Ackermann ever could have imagined.

And Ackermann’s decision to show up at that first Fan Con with his freak flag flying was as influential and prescient as his belief that sci-fi, horror, and general weirdness were valid art forms. A centerpiece of many, if not all of these contemporary Fan Cons, is the attendees wearing costumes paying homage from everything from Star Trek to Pokémon. This costume play (or Cosplay) is a blending of adoration, creative expression, performance art, inventive DIY artisanship, and, let’s not bullshit ourselves, possible mental illness.

Photographer Roy Berry is an admitted comic book freak and no stranger to what has been deemed “nerd culture.” Yet the 30-year-old Berry is also first and foremost a visual artist. As revealed in the following interview, Berry’s immersion into this world of Cylon Raiders, Klingons, Daleks, and Pikachus was fueled as much by Jim Beam as it was Jedi Knights. Berry’s upcoming exhibit Children of the Atom features a dozen 16 x 24 images of people dressed in various Cosplay Couture that Berry photographed over the past few years while attending fan conventions. Superheroes, Trekkies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and other subcultures are captured in a variety of postures; some seem deliberately self-promoting, some are playful, while others appear stoic if not indifferent to Berry’s lens. What is missing from these shots is any sense of sarcasm or snark. Berry is almost the ideal type to document this unique realm. The artist has enough knowledge of the Fan Con vernacular to move freely among the herd, while still maintaining the surely-needed discernment and distance of a fine arts photographer.

Earlier this year, the PhotoJax exhibit at CoRK Arts District included images from Berry’s The Vacation Collection, a series of deliberately plotted and arranged photographs that chronicled the dissolution of a then-relationship. Those pieces, which seem based on a blending of psychodrama, romantic-creative partnership, and portraiture, are a far cry visually from the off-the-cuff approach of his latest work. Yet Children of the Atom still taps into Berry’s apparent fascination with relationships, albeit in a brighter light, with imagery populated by caped crusaders and sword-wielding princesses who have the good sense to still tap into the inherent possibility of dreams and continue forward into their adult lives by engaging in the transformative act of playing dress up.

The opening reception for Children of the Atom is held from 3-9 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30 at Tact Apparel, 2746 Park St., in Riverside. The event will also feature cold beer and light snacks. The show is on display through December. “Tact is normally open on Saturdays and by appointment,” explains Tact co-owner and artist Tony Rodrigues. “We try to open every day in December though, to accommodate the holiday rush. I’ll be in Miami from Dec. 5-8 for Art Basel Miami Beach, so we’ll be stretched a little thin. But anyone interested in seeing the exhibit can call 904-568-5418 for an appointment.”

I interviewed Rodrigues via e-mail on Nov. 25 and then spoke with Berry via phone that night. What follows are the transcriptions of those interviews.

Tony Rodrigues

Starehouse: When did you first discover Berry’s work?

Tony Rodrigues: I met Roy when I started working on the curatorial/installation team at MOCA Jacksonville. He told me he was a B.F.A. candidate at UNF. I seem to remember it taking a while to drag that information out of him. He’s pretty modest about his work.

S: Why did you decide to present Berry’s work at Tact?

T.R.: Wendy C. Lovejoy, my wife and partner in Tact Designs, and I were impressed by The Vacation Collection series he exhibited at the last PhotoJax event at CoRK. I had been following the series in progress, but that was the first time I saw anything in print. Plus, Roy is just a really nice guy. I enjoy working with him and we share a common sense of humor. After handling and installing so much art together, both with MOCA’s collection and loaned works, I can see that our tastes and sensibilities about photography and art in general are pretty close.

S: What do you find so compelling and singular about his photography?

T.R.: I appreciate the duality of playfulness and deadpan execution in Roy’s work. Also, the work is deceptively complex in technique and composition. The Children of the Atom series is a slight departure from The Vacation Collection and another current body of work he’s doing with Ashley Olberding. Children of the Atom is shot more spontaneously and with a hand-held strobe. I sense that Roy has a firm understanding of contemporary art photography, its context, and a good eye in general.

Roy Berry

["The Hotel Bar"]

Roy Berry: Yeah, yeah hold on one sec (…) okay, this is the perfect time.

S: Are you at the beach?

R.B.: No, Riverside.

S: Tony said you had once been a Jax Beach dude.

R.B.: Yeah, I’m from the beach. I grew up there. I spent most of my life there.

S: Yeah, me too.

R.B.: Oh yeah? Cool. Where did you grow up at the beach?

S: Jax Beach (…) over by the graveyard (laughs). Let me get some basic background info.

R.B.: Sure.

S: So you graduated from UNF?

R.B.: Yeah.

S: When was this?

R.B.: Two thousand and (…) jeez, I don’t even know anymore (laughs). I think 2010. That sounds about right.

S: What was your major?

R.B.: It was communications. I was focusing on electronic media (…) and there’s a whole story behind that…

S: So tell me the story. How did you go from electronic media to photography? Were you always doing photography or some kind of visual art?

R.B.: Yeah, I’ve always been involved in drawing and painting or whatever. But I was living in Tallahassee for three years with a girlfriend and she was going to FSU. She couldn’t get into the film department there so the next best thing was (…) I think it was called the electronic media department. So people who couldn’t get into the film school would go there and make narrative films. So we made movies while we were over there and I came back to Jacksonville and thought, “Wow, that was fun. I’m going to try and do that here. They have the same program.” And I made it in and spent pretty much two years making movies and doing various stuff and then I realized this shit is just a major for news and sports people (laughs). I felt like I had just wasted a massive part of my life (laughs).

S: Well, you probably absorbed some information. And it sounds like it could somehow be a trapdoor into filmmaking.

R.B.: Yeah, yeah (…) that was the point. But I also got my photography minor during that time.

S: If nothing else, you got a handle on technology and how to steady a camera. And there’s always sports filming in your future. “Roy, go film that Jai Alai tournament.”

R.B.: Yeah, true.

S: So let’s talk about the show. Why are you calling this exhibit Children of the Atom?

R.B.: I think that is what The X-Men were originally called (…) you know, “The Children of the Atom,” this kind of early sixties, Cold War-era (…) and how this leftover radiation from WWII was “changing the youth” (…) so for me “Children of the Atom” is really about outsider people and for me, I translated that through people who go to these conventions and dress up. That was part of the draw initially to go these conventions. When you go there, you really see how these so-called outsider people are so excited to be in a group of like-minded individuals who understand whatever is going on in their life.

S: Bound by the compulsion to wear capes.

R.B.: The compulsion to wear capes! Yeah. The name kind of came out of trying to find a phrase that described these people. Not a mocking, judgmental idea behind it. They want to be mutants. And that is actually great.

S: Yeah, they celebrate this. I’m sure that they would know where the title of your exhibit comes from.

R.B.: Right; absolutely.

S: In our e-mail exchange, you explained that with this series you wanted to combine three things that you love: nerd culture, people in costumes, and whiskey. So what led to that inspiration? I’m putting my money on whiskey, by the way.

R.B.: Well, we went to a convention in 2006, the AWA (…) the Atlanta (…) I don’t even know what it’s called or stands for (…) it’s an Anime convention.

S: Yeah, Anime Weekend Atlanta.

R.B.: Yeah, that’s it.

S: I did some hard-hitting Starehouse investigation work with Google to look it up.

R.B.: It’s incredible. I had never experienced anything like that and some of my friends had; they had gone when they were younger. And they were trying to tell me, “Trust us, it’s going to be a shock. It is a little world in this hotel. And the trick is to just be drunk and have fun. And realize that everything here is absolutely non-confrontational. You can pretty much do anything you want and there’s going to be no problem; I mean, within reason.” That weekend was it – going to conventions, getting a bottle of whiskey, just staying drunk the whole time, and interacting with all of the people.

S: So possible alcoholism aside (laughs), are you a direct participant in what you describe as nerd culture and do you wear a costume or do you just attend in your civilian attire?

R.B.: No, no I wasn’t wearing a costume. Every year we talk about wearing a costume so we could possibly infiltrate these secret-weirdo-hotel-room-parties that are going on (…) but no, we never got our act together in time.

["Teenage Mutant Ninja Uncle"]

R.B.: I’m also like a comic book nerd. So there was also that motivation of going to take pictures but I also wanted to check out the comics (…) but yeah, there was just something really addictive about the energy that those places have.

S: What do you feel that energy is? Like you had said, is it because there’s a sense of celebration? It seems like you are visiting this ecstatic tribe of people. This is surely filed under nerd culture. And I don’t think you use that description facetiously. But greater society surely dismisses this kind of thing as these fucking crackpots that need to grow up.

R.B.: Oh totally, yeah. There’s people there attending these conventions that are almost dismissive. You have one nerd looking down on another nerd (laughs).

S: I think Philip Larkin wrote a poem about that (laughs). So there’s like a nerd hierarchy inside of these events?

R.B.: Yes, there actually is nerd hierarchy. It is like accidentally walking into a tribe; “tribe” is a good way to describe it. This is something special, it’s something else. And I think one of the most important parts about that is how friendly and wildly non-confrontational everybody is. It’s safe, somehow; and terrifying at the same time.

S: Looking at the images, the people seem pretty agreeable to being photographed. Granted, they are dressed up like “The Flash” so it isn’t like they’re trying to be subtle. So when you go in there, is alcohol still your guiding force?

R.B.: It usually is but it’s not so much a matter of “let’s have fun and drink.” It helps me focus on how I want to photograph the people. So once I start getting loose, I feel like I am able to get in and surprise them. There are these moments when they’re still in character and they might be just taking off their masks to spit out a piece of hard candy (…) some moment like that. And when I get drunk, I get fast and fidgety and start jumping from one place to another.

S: So the booze fuels your enthusiasm and approach.

R.B.: Yeah.

S: Don’t get me wrong; I’m not judging you or making fun of you with this. Drunkenness is surely allowed in making art. Some artists’ process surely involves mood or mind-altering substances.

R.B.: It’s funny because I never really drink with any other work that I do. I usually play it really straight.

S: When you see a “Spiderman” eating a corndog the tequila comes out. I have never been to one of these conventions, but I know that some of them are immensely popular and even legendary. So out of that population, what are your criteria for shooting a particular individual? There’s gotta be, like, eight versions of “Aqua Man” walking around. How do you decide which one to shoot?

R.B.: Usually the best option for me (…) so okay, there are eight “Aqua Men” (…) and which one am I going to do? It’s usually the guy that made a costume the night before. He has the enthusiasm so he really put a lot of work into it (…) but maybe somehow forgot about it and realizes, “Oh shit! I gotta be ‘Aqua Man’ tomorrow!” He looks kind of like garbage but he’s still so excited; he’s just as pumped as the other dude who spent months on his costume. And they’re [the alpha “Aqua Man”] usually the ones that will give you that glimpse of [in bored voice] “Yeah, yeah, take my picture.”

S: These old timers have become these ersatz superheroes. “Hey man, I am the ‘Green Goblin’ of the Southeast circuit.” So you’re looking for the person who is the more humble, earnest one. They actually convey it through their costume’s shortcomings.

R.B.: And then there are also the people around the photo booth area that are just complete characters, probably in or out of character. Like the guy in that dress [Booth Babe] (…) he was walking around so casually, like he wasn’t wearing an absurd costume. He seemed indifferent to his environment. And I asked, “Hey, can I take your picture?” and that pose just happened immediately; they have it [a pose] in their pocket, ready to go in a second.

["Booth Babe"]

R.B.: I try to keep my interactions with them as limited as possible. I don’t want to know their motivations. I feel like sometimes if I even knew their motivations, like if they had some really heartwarming story about why they do this, I think it would ruin my own magic.

S: Sure; why break the spell?

R.B.: Yeah. I want them to be just the goofy or straight, button-down they are but who are now just freaking out and busting loose in costume. I feel like if I knew anything else about them it would ruin the mystique.

S: So how many conventions do you think you’ve been to since the AWA?

R.B.: Ummm (…) probably a dozen or so.

S: Wow. So has that been a matter of going to one or two a year?

R.B.: No, because they’re happening all over the place fairly regularly. But I have tried to get to them as much as possible. I try to make MegaCon each year.

S: So is this an ongoing series or are you kind of burnt out on this culture? Are you done with this or is it something you will keep pursuing?

R.B.: No, this is one of these things that I will keep doing. Because it is so immensely enjoyable to me, that I could never imagine being burnt out. And it’s really easy; it’s an easy thing to go (…) I love this stuff anyway (…) I love comic books, I love sci-fi. So it’s a win-win for me to go be around things that I already enjoy (…) and then just seeing maniacs everywhere.

S: And that seems to translate. As I was looking at the images you sent me, I don’t get any kind of sense that the tone is cynical or mocking.

R.B.: No, that was another thing. I tried to never make them feel bad about anything. I would tell them, “You look so great.”

S: Are they open to direction? “Work that light saber.”

R.B.: Yeah (laughs). I usually don’t guide them. I either get them in between whatever pose they were about to do, which I love doing, or they are already in position; like in their default thing. I feel like posing them would be a little weird because they probably have to deal with that all day, too.

S: They all seem pretty agreeable and excited about having their picture taken. But I am wondering too, conversely, if you have ever encountered any strong resistance or hostility (…) like, threatened by a coked up Pikachu?

R.B.: Actually, I have. There was one time (…) the second time I was ever at MegaCon there was this guy dressed up as a Dragon Ball Z character and people had told me that apparently he had a history of being really belligerent.

S: It’s that Dragon Ball Z, man. It has a history of changing people for the worse (laughs).

R.B.: Yeah, he had taken off his giant, crazy hair and I caught a picture of him as he was removing it (…) I just went, “Hey!” and then he looked right at me as he was taking off the hair and he was just furious that I took a picture of him while he wasn’t ready. And then he followed me around (…) I almost got in a fight with this guy! That was the only time.

S: Really? So it just escalated.

R.B.: Oh yeah, he was following me around yelling at me and finally I was just like “Fuck off!”

S: That’s probably an allowed response to someone coming after you with Dragon Ball Z Rage Issues.

R.B.: Yeah, but then I realized the absurdity of the situation: I am yelling back at a guy in a Dragon Ball Z costume. I just let it go and went back to my hotel room for a little bit.

S: The things one must do for art. I bet you never imagined that encounter when you were studying electronic media. So on a more sociological or even anthropological level, who do you think are the most diehard or even fascinating fans? Because I know it ranges from comic book people, to the Joss Whedon fanatics, sci-fi heads (…) there are all of these tribes within one giant tribe. Which ones really stick out or intrigue you?

R.B.: Oh man (…) I guess the Anime people are the ones that I am really drawn to because I don’t really know anything about Anime. I have no fucking clue what character they are supposed to be. So it’s great going back through the next day looking at the pictures (…) “What was this? Who were they supposed to be?” But then there’s also the classic people who are wearing a really shitty superhero costume, but they’re always great. But the Anime people are so serious.

S: Just in the meticulousness in their costume and demeanor? Like, “this is no joke: this is Anime.”

R.B.: Yeah, yeah (…) even the crazy Dragon Ball Z guy (…) that was a really good costume.

S: Have you noticed any like East Coast vs. West Coast Gangsta Rap energy at these conventions; like Dr. Who versus Star Wars? You’re in the middle of all this. Is there tension between different groups?

R.B.: It’s usually when you start crossing genres. It will be like the people who play “Street Fighter” are making fun of the people who play “Magic: The Gathering.” But there definitely seems to be that nerd hierarchy that can seem very, very strong.

S: Well, that’s terrible to hear. It’s like division in The Tribes of Abraham. This is Old Testament shit played out in Gandalf hats.

R.B.: It is so odd (laughs).

S: This series seems like a fairly large departure from your contribution, The Vacation Collection, to this year’s PhotoJax exhibit at CoRK. Those featured couples, or was it the same couple?

R.B.: It was me and an ex-girlfriend.

S: In that series, the two of you were in these different environments and the tone seemed almost somber. And it all seemed very deliberate and controlled: the placement of the objects and the people. But I am wondering, with Children of the Atom, which seems completely different in both content and your actual technique (…) do you bring the same approach to an image of you and your girlfriend standing stone-faced in the woods to someone dressed up like, say, Chewbacca?

R.B.: I do think there’s a similar sensibility in how (…) in that The Vacation Collection series (…) it started out as a kind of tongue-in-cheek thing but really became a therapeutic way of me taking photos when we would just fight like dogs. So it was really serious, it was a serious view of a relationship falling apart, but at the same time it’s inherently silly to put two people in front of three things. Snapshot photography is very silly to me. And that’s really what it was: an arranged and maybe a little more thoughtful approach towards snapshot photography.

["Cane Field" from "The Vacation Collection" series, 2012.]

R.B.: I think that relationship was one big argument. But yeah, we would be in some beautiful place, we’d be fighting about something and then find a location where we wanted to shoot the photograph and say, “Alright; here we go.”

S: She was agreeable to this project?

R.B.: Yeah, she was. She was really excited and there were moments when we would hate each other at the time and then both agree, “That image turned out really well.” But I think there’s the same absurdity with that series and this new series. It’s just a little more from the hip. And right now my collaborator and girlfriend Ashley Olberding and I are working on another series that returns to that somber mood or traditional portraiture. And Children of the Atom was kind of the (…) I dunno (…) the palette cleanser between the two.

S: So between, you know, people dressed up like Smurfs and you, uh, working out your relationship-therapy-modalities in the woods (laughs) … you are moving forward.

R.B. (laughs) Totally.

S: But do you have a sense of new, similar or even divergent series? It seems like you enjoy working in the series format.

R.B.: Yeah, this series that I am working on now is hopefully going to be a giant effort with another friend of mine (…) it’s a series where Ashley and I take friends of ours and we go into their house and basically arrange them and then photograph them how we see them. And hopefully not letting their personality interfere with how we view their personality. We rearrange the room. “We don’t think this is like you,” so we will take a bookshelf out.

S: So you are kind of altering or reconfiguring their personalities, or at least the audience’s perception of who they are, through your mind.

R.B.: We are trying to fit whatever our notions of these people are. A lot of them are people I have known for a decade or more. Hopefully that will be finishing up in the spring and we will be showing with my good friend Sarah Colado, the painter. She’s working on a series where she gets people to bring ten objects and lay them around their feet. And she paints that portrait. She’s letting people bring their own personality, where we are kind of giving them a personality. It’s going to be a give-and-take kind of show. Yeah, hopefully it will be shown at CoRK. That’s what’s in the works.

["Elf Dicks"]

starehouse@gmail.com

Multimedia artist Nida Bangash is featured at Clay and Canvas Studio’s Open Studio Night

[Installation shot of Nida Bangash's work at Clay and Canvas Studio.]

This season’s event is no exception with the presentation of works by Nida Bangash. Born in 1984 in Mashhad, Iran, Bangash earned her BFA in 2006 from the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, Pakistan; two years later she received her MA in Visual Arts (with Honors) from that same school. In 2010, Bangash received a NCA/Charles Wallace Arts Fellowship, which allowed her the opportunity to study at the The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London, England. In the past six years, Bangash has worked as an educator, hosted Miniature Painting workshops at Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, been featured in over two dozen solo and group and exhibits, and won awards for her interdisciplinary vision and multi-media works. Bangash’s artist statement offers the following: “Trained in the traditions of Persian and South Asian miniatures, she employs these techniques through contemporary art that explores themes of abstraction through deconstruction or reconstruction, to cross-cultural experiences of the political, cultural and social.”

The Clay and Canvas Studio Open Studio Night featuring the work of Bangash, Leach, and Kuonen is held from 6-9 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 13 at 2642-6 Rosselle Street, in Riverside. “Turn in for parking by the minivan decked with lights,” explains Kuonen of the studio’s funky signpost/beacon. The event also features DJ e. lee from WJCT’s Indie Endeavor along with homemade treats and refreshments. The ever-magnanimous Kuonen also offers that Studio Prometheus (glass artist Kirin Hale’s studio) will also be open for the evening, and is located in the same warehouse complex as Clay and Canvas Studio. After the reception, visits to the studio are by appointment only and can be made by contacting either Tiffany Leach (at tiffanyleach.com) or Lily Kuonen (at lilykuonen.com).

I interviewed Kuonen and Bangash via e-mail; below are the transcriptions of the Q&As.

Lily Kuonen

Starehouse: How and when did you first discover Nida Bangash’s work?

Lily Kuonen: Actually, Nida found me. She recently moved to Jacksonville, and found me through the Jacksonville University website, and contacted me (I am an Assistant Professor of Art at JU). So, as a result I looked into her work to find out more about her. Once I saw her work, I was very excited to meet her.

S: What do you find so compelling about what Bangash does? In an e-mail to me, you had described her as a “miniaturist, bookmaker, and video artist.” These seem like three distinctly different mediums to work with. Along with her actual work, was it this kind of open-endedness that drew you to her?

L.K.: I think the unifying connection between the different amalgamations of her work is the narrative component of each. And the success lies in the transcendence of this narrative beyond that of language or cultural barriers. Nida was born in Iran and raised in Pakistan, and creates works using Persian traditions, yet, we can view her work her in Jacksonville, Florida and still draw a compelling narrative structure from her patterns, images, text, and video.

S: At each Clay and Canvas Open Studio event, the guest artists have been really diverse in every regard and I think the addition of Nida Bangash seems to reinforce this pattern. For example, in the past you have invited Mark Creegan, who works primarily in installation or material-based ideas that are highly conceptual and seem to almost celebrate the idea of temporality, environment, and even disposal-of-“the-work” altogether. Your last guest artist, Rachel Evans, deals more in mixed media works including figurative paintings and ceramic pieces that seem to be more overtly narrative-based. Using Creegan, Evans, and now Bangash as a kind of gauge of the diversity of artists you have presented so far, I am wondering what elements or ideas you and Tiffany are looking for when selecting a guest artist?

L.K.: You are correct in noting the differences in each artist, but what Tiffany and I look for isn’t necessarily diversity (yet that definitely makes things more interesting), instead we think about our space, and how it serves as a backdrop for the artists. This is after all an Open Studio which means we are opening up our work spaces in hospitality and community engagement. So we look for artists that will compliment or add to this type of venue. For Mark, his temporal works engaged the actual dimensions of the space. Rachel’s work was in direct dialogue with what we have named our space, Clay and Canvas Studio, since she works with both clay and paint. Nida’s work is complimentary to the intimacy of our space. Her works invite a close introspective viewing that finds a home in our modest “gallery” space.

S: How many total pieces of Bangash’s work are being featured? How many pieces are you and Tiffany each displaying?

L.K.: Nida will be showing a larger painting, a grouping of nine small works on paper, a longer story/image work that unfolds on the wall, a video, and a book that is in progress. Tiffany is showing many ceramic works (both functional and sculptural). I’m not sure on the numbers, but it is a wonderful selection. I always work right up to the last minute, so I am not positive, but right now I plan to have one large drawing in progress, a couple of smaller drawings, and 5-6 PLAYNTINGS.

Nida Bangash

[A detail shot from Nida Bangash's series "War Mannequins," water colour and graphite on waslee paper; 20cm x 20cm; 2013.]

Nida Bangash: Roughly six to eight months. My husband is a telecom engineer and works for Nokia, he was transferred to the United States about a year ago. Hence, we are here and move from state to state every few months. Jacksonville is one of our stops.

S.: While you are showing your work in conjunction with Lily Kuonen and Tiffany Leach, I am wondering if you are personally presenting any type of set theme or cohesive idea with your pieces – or are they more of a general overview and selection or sampling of different approaches and media that you use.

N.B.: In this show, I am presenting works from War Rugs with Love series. A selection of paintings, text pieces, drawings and a video constitutes my bit in the show. My work has always been interdisciplinary. There is an underlined “theme” to the show but the approaches are different and that’s how I make work.

S.: Your website explains that you are influenced by traditional Persian and South Asian miniature paintings and that you utilize these methods in contemporary art. Did the works from these eras influence your earliest attempts at art or was it something that you learned to appreciate in hindsight?

N.B.: I have been trained as a miniature painter in my undergrad from National College of Arts, Lahore. Miniature painting is essentially a traditional art form; to learn it one needs to travel back to its roots and that’s when you find yourself looking back into your history in paintings, literature, poetry and so forth. Since I was born in Iran to an Iranian mother and raised in Pakistan where my father is from I have a lot to dig into on my plate. For me, miniature painting is like binding medium, a space where I can make sense of these two very different cultures.

Of course once the technique is learnt and the aesthetic is understood one is no longer strictly confined to the discipline, that’s the departure and that is when it comes to you more naturally and effortlessly while working as a visual artist in a broader spectrum of contemporary art.

S: Your site also mentions your interest in miniature painting created during the Mughal Empire (16^th-19^th c.), which seemed to evolve over time through a blending of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Muslim, and Sikhism belief systems. In those miniatures from that era, there seems to be a corollary both in visual and spiritual content with the Illuminated manuscripts that were being created in Europe in a parallel development with their Persian and South Asian counterparts. I am curious if your fascination with these miniature paintings is as much spiritual as it is aesthetically-driven?

N.B.: Certainly there is a deeper involvement; the connection is not simply aesthetic or visual-driven. The technique and involvement with the process of making itself is very contemplative and meditative. The ongoing relation between Eastern and Western art extracts from spirituality and spirituality itself derives from this connection at the very human level in the form of Global art.

S: Your site states the following: “Pattern sits at the centre of Bangash’s art practice. Her works use the language of patterns as a means of weaving together the complexities of her cross-cultural experiences.” Why is pattern so important to your work? Like focusing on the use of miniatures – which seems like a very finite or defined medium, do you find a kind of comfort or sense of direction contained within the (for lack of a better word) rigidity of pattern?

N.B.: I don’t find anything confining in giving attention to detail and I certainly don’t think there is anything confining about the use of pattern and/or geometry. They can stretch as far as your imagination can take them. For instance, look at M.C. Escher and Mondrian on one hand and Australian Aboriginal Artists on the other; the sky is the limit for what they have done with these two words which many find confining. Interesting how we find both ends these days in Modern Art Museums, no? And I believe this is the very reason pattern and the use of geometry intrigues me and I continue exploring them in my practice.

Broadly speaking, miniature paintings were mainly part of manuscripts and illustrative in nature as they were meant to accompany a story or a text. My work at this point derives from miniature painting. I don’t think my practice can be put into that box anymore. It’s almost unfair to both. Over the years I have focused in developing a critically-charged approach towards this genre while continuing to explore the possibilities of it. I carry on experimenting with the formal build of Indo-Persian paintings with an interdisciplinary approach such as painting, drawing, photography, video, sound, installations, and collaborations with other artists.

S.: You seem to have a kind of panoramic and expansive approach to what you explore in your work. War Rugs with Love (2013) seems decidedly political in the sense that you address topics of war and peace/conflict and resolution. Black Sheep’s Wool (2012) was seemingly based on the similarities and differences “of skin, race, language and appearance.” At the other end of the spectrum, the pieces that you sent me, such as the “I Am a Tree” series, seem to be meditations on nature. Taken as a whole, I really see a sense of optimism and, even with the overtly-political works, a kind of searching for solutions rather than broadcasting ideas of pure outrage. Do you agree with this? If so, how do you tune your perspective in looking for hope or resolutions in the contemporary world, which can at times seem completely hopeless?

N.B.: I work with variety of themes, possibly because I make worked in many different places, and places inspire me, people inspire me, cultural and political boundaries intrigue me. They provide a space for discussion and investigation in my precise. I usually don’t stick to one theme I don’t think it’s really possible in my case. I don’t settle very easily.

Well now that I think of it, I sent you very few images that are not giving you a clear picture of the work. “I Am a Tree” has text pieces along with it. It is a series of nine paintings of trees and eight text sheets. The text is an excerpt from Orhan Pamuk’s novel “My Name is Red,” in which a drawing of a tree questions its existence as it doesn’t know which story it belongs to. The drawing never got into a book and is feeling lost and asking the viewers to not take it as a tree but take it for what it means. There is a video piece in the show too: Keep this Game out of Reach of Adults. It can also be seen on my website.

[Installation shot of Nida Bangash's work at Clay and Canvas Studios.]

N.B.: I don’t really stick to a palate, too. There was a time I didn’t touch a color other than Payne’s Gray for over three years. Even in this show, one work is entirely monotone while the other has a pop of color and then there is a bigger painting which has crazy colors. Colors don’t dictate my ideas; it’s the other way around … mostly. What I like about colors is that they can be very deceptive. Bright colors can say “Happy” when the work says “Irony”; you know what I mean.

[A detail shot from Nida Bangash's series, "I Am a Tree," gouache and ink on waslee paper; 4" X 6"; 2013.]

I am a tree and I am quite lonely… They allege that I’ve been hastily sketched onto nonsized, rough paper so the picture of a tree might hang behind the master story teller. True enough. At this moment, there are no other slender trees beside me, no seven-leaf steppe plants, no dark billowing rock formations which at times resemble Satan or a man and no coiling Chinese clouds. Just the ground, the sky, myself and the horizon. But my story is much more complicated.

The essential reason of my loneliness is that I don’t even know where I belong. I was supposed to be part of a story, but I fell from there like a leaf in autumn.

… I know nothing about the page I’ve fallen from. My request is that you look at me and ask: “Were you perhaps meant to provide shade to Mejnun disguised as a shepherd as he visited Leyla in her tent?” or “Were you meant to fade into the night, representing the darkness in the soul of a wretched and hopeless man?” How I would have wanted to complement the happiness of two lovers who fled from the whole world, traversing oceans to find solace on an island rich with birds and fruit! I would’ve wanted to shade Alexander during the final moments of his life on his campaign to conquer Hindustan as he died from persistent nosebleed brought on by sunstroke. Or was I meant to symbolize the strength and wisdom of a father offering advice on love and life to his son? AH, to which story was I meant to add meaning and grace?

I don’t want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.”

(An excerpt from Orhan Pamuk’s 1998 novel “My Name is Red,” which inspired Nida Bangash’s series, “I Am a Tree.”)

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Our Shared Past blends the personal and universal through the prism of family

["It Was Supposed to be Fun." All original images courtesy of Jefree Shalev.]

["A Few Years Later," photograph by Carolyn Brass, 2013.]

And if there is an even greater collective resemblance of memory, it is that they are generally tied into relationships; reveries which seem tethered to our connections to lovers, enemies, our own place in the greater universe, and invariably family.

The author Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was no stranger in fusing these types of interpersonal relationships with reminiscence, at times driven by an almost desperate sense of longing and an unflinching use of introspection. Over the course of his 50 year literary career, in novels such as “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight” (1941)  “Pale Fire” (1962) and 1969’s “Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle,” Nabokov wrote of characters that seemed troubled by themselves, many times trying to answer life’s riddle with answers pulled from their bonds or detachments with various family members. The Russian-born novelist had this to offer on both our tempestuous and affectionate affair with the past: “I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes.”

The upcoming exhibit Our Shared Past is a unique gathering of 34 artists contemplating the strength, love, and strangeness of memory in original pieces focused on familial bonds. The inception of the project began when local gallery co-owner, curator, and photographer Jefree Shalev sat down and opened a box of over two dozen Super 8 mm home movies that had been tucked away in a box for the past 45 years. Filmed between 1958 and 1967, the films captured Shalev’s family in a variety of common settings: weddings, picnics, holidays, and even documentation of events that appear mundane.

While originally indifferent to this cache of home cinema, Shalev decided to transfer the films to digital. After viewing them in total, he was struck with a myriad of emotions. Shalev then made a total of 175 screen grabs of particular images. The effect of viewing this distillation of family, nostalgia and the shadow play of memory made Shalev wonder if visual artists would be affected by this same experience. Shalev then selected and contacted a group of artists to see if they would be interested in choosing an image, or images, and render their own interpretation of what they saw. Every artist contacted agreed. While Shalev approached a group that collectively worked and created in different capacities, he was looking specifically for those who had expressed a strong interest in figurative work.

The participants for Our Shared Past is an engaging mix of both emerging and established artists that includes Thony Aiuppy, Brianna Angelakis, Jessie Barnes, Mark Creegan, Jim Draper, Overstreet Ducasse, Shannon Estlund, Crystal Floyd, Christina Foard, Mark George, Liz Gibson, Margete Griffin, Rebecca Hoadley, Christie Holechek, Chance Isbell, Jason John, Marcus Kenney, Rachel Levanger, Denise Liberi, Jonathan Lux, Patrick Moser, Dat Nguyen, Madeleine Peck Wagner, Sara Pedigo, Morrison Pierce, Kurt Polkey, Leslie Robison, Tony Rodrigues, Jonathan Shepard, Chip Southworth, Shaun Thurston, Jeff Whipple, and Tony Wood. Their chosen media runs the gamut from oil painting to video work.

The opening reception for Our Shared Past is held from 5-9 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 17 at The Joan Wellhouse and Martin Stein, Sr. Gallery located at The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, 829 Riverside Ave., in Riverside. The reception features a cash bar and includes live musical performances by Plumb Honey and Lisa Kelly. The exhibit is on display through May 25, 2014. The museum’s number is (904) 356-6857; their website is cummer.org.

I originally sent out an e-mail to all 34 participating artists to ask if they would be willing to participate. After receiving a confirmation from individual artists, I then e-mailed a questionnaire asking about their involvement in the exhibit. I also offered that any artists who could not make the deadline and wanted to be featured in this story were welcome to send in their answers during the run of the exhibit. In the artists’ answers, I tried to keep their actual responses as verbatim as possible, barring any instances of what could be overt syntactical or grammatical errors.

I also sent a set of questions to Holly Keris, the chief curator at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens. I then spoke to Shalev on the afternoon of Friday, Dec. 6. What follows are the transcriptions of those collected interviews, as well as the source images and finished works of each artist.

Holly Keris

Starehouse: How did you hear about Our Shared Past and why did the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens decide to host the exhibit?

Holly Keris: Jefree brought the concept to my attention and I was really intrigued. Plus, the list of area talent he had assembled to participate was impressive. The Cummer is thrilled to host this exhibition.

S: Factoring in the amount of artists involved, this exhibit seems like a pretty involved and daunting undertaking. Have there been any logistical issues or difficulties in getting this off the ground?

H.K.: Not for us! Jefree did all the coordinating and we coordinated directly with him.

S: What do you personally find intriguing about this exhibit?

H.K.: I love exactly what you describe below: family, memory, etc…most notably I love how this exhibition reinforces the importance of the broader concept of family. Not just the one you are born into, the one to whom you are genetically tied, but the one you choose to create for yourself – the one that involves your friends and your community. It speaks profoundly to the idea that despite differences, we are somehow bound together, whether it is apparent or not on the surface, and that through dialogue and understanding we can come together to form beautiful, strong ties.

S: I asked a similar question of the artists and I am also interested if you had the same experience as the curator. Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience of working on the exhibit, did the curatorial process and looking at the original images and finished work seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your view of the exhibit? H.K.: Looking at some of Jefree’s original images made me think of looking at photos of my parents as children. I still have their senior prom photo (they were high school sweethearts) on my dresser. And I think about the times we would sit and watch slides, not films, of the places they had travelled and of me as a baby. It has reminded me of how happy my parents were together (my father died several years ago at a very young age) and how genuinely joyful I was as a youngster, with a profound sense of adventure, wonder, and glee. It has also caused me to take a second look at all the snapshots I surround myself with throughout my home, and think about how I will look back at these more recent moments in later years.

Jefree Shalev

Starehouse:  I am curious about the basic chronology of the exhibit coming to together. When did you first decide to begin this project; was it within this year?

Jefree Shalev: It was probably about a year and a half ago when I received the actual films from my parents. They really didn’t know what to do with them, they no longer had a projector to show them, so I just said “Let me have the box and I’ll put them on DVD for you.” Then it took several months, believe it or not, to find the right person to do it and for them to finish the task (…) it was quite a lot of footage.

S: How many films were there in total?

J.S.: About 30 reels and they are really kind of short; they’re 8 mm movies so they are five minutes long at best. Some might be longer but for the most part they are about that size. I guess it was during the fall when I transferred them. Before we sent them back to my parents, we decided to watch them (…) and that was the thing. We were kind of unprepared really and were kind of blown away by a lot of different aspects of the experience of watching the films. For one thing, just the images themselves were so incredible, there were so many amazing scenes and the colors, you know from 50 years ago (…) that Kodachrome look was stunning and the outfits the people wore (…) the way that people interacted with cameras back then was so different from the way we do now, where everybody has a camera on their phone. So there is something that really just sucks you into it.

S: Do you think part of that was just that it was a bigger deal back then to have a camera? The technology was just a few decades old and had evolved to the point where people could apply it to their own lives. I know that I am incredibly self-conscious with being photographed. I always try to break into the “Olan Mills Mode” when someone is taking a picture I try to like, tuck in my chin. So do you think they were self-conscious in a different way (…) if that’s the right word (…) when they knew they were being filmed?

J.S.: Well, as I was writing about this for the catalog, it came to me that yes, they were self-conscious, but in a different sort of way. The one thing (…) or at least I see this in it from the vantage point of 50 years later (…) I see that they often waved at the camera. It was a communication. It felt like to me that was almost a communication from them to their future selves. That they knew that one day would come when the films would be developed. It took a long time; you sent them through the mail, they would come back and then you would be delighted at this wink that you gave yourself, you know? It almost has that same effect on us today watching those movies in that they are waving to this future that we are sitting in now.

S: And like you said, everyone has cameras and with the advent of the 80s and video cameras being readily available (…) now it’s almost a mundane reality in a way. Back then it was a more rarefied experience.

J.S.: People now are constantly doing selfies. The idea of doing a selfie in that time period was impossible. You know what I mean?

S: Yeah, and it was a waste of the film. You had a finite amount of actual film (…) even with the old Polaroid cameras; the film was expensive so you wouldn’t waste the film or opportunity.

J.S.: Right.

S: I find it curious in the notes that you sent me, which I appreciate since they gave me some kind of template to work with, that you had said that after watching the film you described how you were “struck by a combination of sadness and delight,” and that the sadness came from a sense of alienation from your family. I’m curious about your use of the word alienation. Was this as much in your head in regard to your feelings or over the years have you become disconnected from your family through geographical distance or even estrangement?

J.S.: Well, for one thing there is a sense of alienation from my family, so yes. And it has almost been a constant since I have become aware of myself as a separate person. That is definitely there. But what was really striking was the lack of connection that I felt to my own self in the films. I was able to see that boy and not feel like that was me. I could see him very objectively; and while my memories of my childhood are such that I would consider it a happy one. I could see that the boy in these movies was not having any fun at all. And that surprised me and I felt sad for him.

S: So why do you think that is? Do you think it was kind of a (…) I mean, were you surprised at that since it is almost a sense of false memory (…) I think memories can definitely be misleading.

J.S.: Right, and part of what this show is about is that and also in the way that images can be used in the same way; they are also misleading and they work almost in the same way as memories. You get a tiny glimpse into something and your mind puts the whole story together for you (…) you see the frame before and you don’t see the frame after it (…) so it is all about the false nature of memory and even a film that seems to capture an event.

S: How does your family feel about their memories and life events being used as a type of inspiration for all of these participating artists? Did you call them and say, “Hey, guess what? I am going to take our home movies and give a group of artists this free reign to interpret them.”

J.S.: My parents are not really “art people.” They don’t really care about it (…) and they also don’t get it. They don’t understand at all why anyone would be interested in these old movies and how you could actually make a show out of this; it’s just unfathomable to them.

S: Are they going to come to the opening reception?

J.S.: Oh yeah. They are going to be here for the reception and for me, that’s the show. The show is a performance piece. Because I just want to see how does a person react, who feels that way (…) I mean, does the art actually impact on them? Are they completely drawn into it or are they completely repulsed by it? What’s going to happen when all of these artists want to talk them and tell them how they interacted with this image and what it meant to them and why they picked it? They might want to know more about what is happening then.

S: You also are a father. After being under family surveillance (laughs) with a Super 8 mm camera, have you also carried on this tradition of documenting your own experience as a parent and the life of your daughter, Vitesse?

J.S.: Not at all.

S: No?

J.S.: No, not at all. First of all, we were pretty poor when I was raising my daughter and we just didn’t have money for frivolity. So yeah, there isn’t a lot of documentation at all. Whatever there is, pretty much her mom did. But we separated early on (…) by the time Vitesse was five, so…

S: Right. In your notes that you sent me, you went on to explain how this sense of detachment, which you have explained provided you with an objectivity in viewing the films (…) gave you a sense of this personal experience is really in some ways universal. I’m curious how this detached or neutral state gave you that specific realization. Was it like a “white light” epiphany or more from a culmination of watching all of the films?

J.S.: It was immediately striking that these images were so strong. It was like, “Oh my god it’s like looking at a painting.” As we were watching them, Carolyn [photographer Carolyn Brass] would take out her camera and start clicking pictures while we were watching the movies. We just thought, “Holy crap, this is incredible.” So many years had passed that I was able to see them almost as these archetypes and not members of my family. I guess that was the thing. When you are seeing somebody from so long ago and I realized that my own daughter is eight years older than my mom was when she had me. Seeing these old movies of them and she is 21-years-old and completely carefree you realize they are just babies (laughs). They didn’t know anything. You don’t always get to experience that because you are constantly growing older with them. But it was a way to see them before I was even born (…) and just this simple joy. There are so many great things from their wedding and honeymoon (…) and they were just goofy kids.

S: When you had written me, you explained that you chose artists who have shown a strong interest in figurative work and also those who are “seduced by nostalgia,” and I love that phrase. And I suffer from nostalgia. Personally I feel like it is a complicated emotion since it is really based on longing. When it hits me (…) for example, every time I listen to the Sonic Youth record “Sister” I feel nostalgia; I’m 15-years-old again. But it’s kind of a sad feeling. Yet I still listen to that record all of the time (laughs). Not unlike denial, nostalgia can be a memory that is kind of codified and compartmentalized by each person (…) it’s like plural realities. You know (…) we go to London and I would say, “Oh, London was great” and you might say, “London sucked.” It’s so personal.

J.S.: Right. There is no reality. It is something that we make ourselves.

S: Since the show seems kind of fueled somewhat by nostalgia, in your own experience did you have, for lack of a better word, an “awakening” in seeing these films?

J.S.: Well yeah, it’s certainly a part of it. But that’s the thing, this show is complicated. It’s complicated for me, personally, because I have had to examine my role, my place, my memories of my own family, my memories of myself within that family (…) originally the show was a purely objective (…) when I originally went through all of those films and picked out those image stills, what I was saying was, “Which of these images or compositions is a stand-alone?  You can look at this as its own kind of piece and it works.”

S: So what were your criteria in deciding that – because that is a lot of images to cull through? Why did you pick these specific images? (…)  because you were kind of picking the inspiration for the artists (…) or at least the initial idea.

J.S.: Well, it had to work as a composition. The colors (…) I was especially attracted to images where one of the people in the frame would have his or her back to the camera. I felt like when people are facing the camera, there is an automatic distance created between the viewer and the people in the film. But as soon as someone had their back turned, you are now looking over their shoulder at what’s going on and you’re actually sucked into it. So you’ll find many things like that which crop up in the images. I also enjoyed any image where people are oblivious to what is going on around them and looking directly into the camera as kind of a connection to that past and this present. That they seem to be aware that they are on film (…) we kind of touched on that idea earlier (…) this knowledge that they are communicating with the future.

S: So it seems like you were trying to pick images in their own right that were immersive to the viewer (…) and let alone, direct them towards visual artists who are usually willing to walk into those types of moments or ideas.

J.S.: Exactly.

S: Looking through the images and finished pieces, it’s interesting to me (…) how many times in contemporary art (…) and maybe it’s fading because of the tide of visual art shifting (…)  but there has been the use of these terms and concepts like “reappropriating” or “repurposing” images and materials. But with imagery in particular, some artists use found images and the artist has no real personal connection with it (…) other than maybe just liking the image and thinking that it’s funny or weird or some extinct part of the past. But in Our Shared Past all of the artists involved do have one united connection: and that is you. They might not know anyone in your family, but I would say out of the majority of the 34 artists, they all know you. Were the artists curious about the backstory or context of the image they selected; or did they prefer to stay “in the dark” and just imprint their own narrative onto the photo?

J.S.: It’s all over the place. Some artists didn’t want to know anything beyond selecting the actual picture so they could imagine it themselves. Other artists, like Overstreet for example, came over and we sat for a couple of hours and he just wanted to know, who is this; what’s their story, what was this person’s story? And his piece reflects that (…) he really delves into my whole family tree (…) and he comes away with this fairly weird and I would almost say, misguided view (laughs) (…) he didn’t take a lot of notes and I think a lot of it was that after he left his memory was almost jumbled, but that is really okay because that is really how it exactly works for all of us. We don’t take notes in life and our memories get jumbled. And his piece is fantastic. Some artists thought that image was about a certain thing, or they thought that the person in it was a particular family member and through our conversations I might have pointed out to them that it was not that way, that was not the story (…) and that made a big difference to them. They then said, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to use this image anymore” or “Knowing that completely changes what I am doing.” So it was helpful for some and completely unsettling for others as they were working through their own interpretations.

S: I respect the artists decisions to not want to know the story, but to me it almost seems impossible to look at a family photo or photo album and not have any questions (…) maybe not impossible but odd. You know just looking at a picture: “Who in the hell is this? What was happening here? Why is there a donkey (laughs) in this picture?” I want to get into the actual construction or strategy behind assembling the show. You are the curator of the show as well. I interviewed Holly Keris from the Cummer and it seems like she was pretty “hands off” and they kind of gave you carte blanche in curating this exhibit. I know that as co-curator of nullspace gallery, it seems as if you deliberately have stayed out of the way of each artist’s approach. However, I imagine with Our Shared Past you were obligated in being more directly involved; not in dictating what the artists would make but rather in a greater sense of coordinating and corralling 34 different artists. How has that experience been? As a curator, it seems like it would be a very different experience from your work at nullspace.

J.S.: Well yeah, the administration of this project is not something that I would, uh, recommend (laughs). Trying to get 34 artists to work to deadlines and there were just so many requirements from the Cummer (…) you know, we spent a lot of time interviewing each of the artists which turned out to be a tremendous experience for us, actually. We didn’t realize how important that was going to be. We actually thought that it was going to be very important for the show and thought we were going to use those interviews somehow (…) maybe produce a documentary film from them or (…) anyway, use that footage for something. We thought that we would at least use it for something in the catalog but it turns out we didn’t end up using it at all. The interviews were so long that they were beyond the amount of time I had to start editing them.

S: So what did you glean from those interviews?

J.S.:  What we got of it is was how personal the voyage was for each of the artists. They didn’t just pick any image at random and then knock out a piece and turn it in. They went through all of those images and really agonized over which one to pick, which one spoke to them. And then they had their own internal debate in how to use the image, how to use their own body of work in such a way to make it clear that it was them who did it (…) and yet kind of play along with the rules of the game and sticking with this source material. A lot of things about their own families came out in these interviews (…) many that were emotional. Some of the artists had so much trouble working with their piece that they had real breakthroughs on a personal level from working through them. The connection I had with all of the people in this show is like a family. Which is something I love (…) thinking about how this show starts with one family and kind of wraps around into another family and kind of closes the circle. My brother is coming up, my parents will be there and they don’t come to Jacksonville all that often so it’s going to be (…) very touching.

S: You get have this kind of blended reunion of blood relatives and this new family of artists.

J.S.: Yeah.

S: So comparing this experience with nullspace (…) did you ever feel like stepping back even more, since the idea of nullspace seems to be that the gallery is the canvas.  So did you feel any kind of inner friction? “Should I step in here? Should I not say this?”

J.S.: I guess in this case it feels to me like the artists were definitely free to do what they wanted and I picked particular artists in the show because I felt like they would “get it” (…) you know what I mean?

S: Right.

J.S.: So right there I was starting with kind of an unknown entity (…) but curating kind of takes place with me as to what are all of the various elements of this show and trying to identify them and pull them out (…) how much do we reveal of the original films? What do we do with the original stills? How do we display those with the finished work; or do we? How do we create this catalog so it ties all of that together and give the person reading it the sense of (…) the travels that I went through in understanding the show. It took me a long time to understand what the show was about. Which is weird, because you would think, “Okay, whatever, it’s a painting show. It’s a bunch of my friends and we’re doing this show.” But it’s not.

S: You know we’re less than two weeks away from it opening, so today, after going through this whole process with the artists, what is your understanding of the show?

J.S.: The show is much more about family than I intended it to be. I started out trying to make a show about painting and along the way I was making a show about manipulation (…) of manipulating the people in those films by splicing them up the way that I did and pulling out images that were not representational of what was going on in the scene. I was doing the converse; I was pulling out images that were misleading on purpose of what was happening there, to create a story and see how you could create a false story using real images from life (…) and eventually over the course of doing all of those interviews and trying to figure out what was my problem with those films, what was the lack of connection that I felt (…) and watching the artists grappling with their own pasts in creating the work, it became much more of a human endeavor and much less of an aesthetic one.

S: I was really intrigued how some of the artists seemed to break away from their better-known or at least more-familiar approaches to render these pieces; Christina Foard and Leslie Robison (…) and definitely Jim Draper in particular come to mind. Were you surprised at some of the results that came back? Did you feel like you had any expectations, in the sense of “Well, this artist is surely going to paint this in a familiar way”?

J.S.: Of course. Absolutely; and even after they picked the image, I thought “Of course, that makes perfect sense.” In some ways (…) like with Jim Draper, I don’t think anyone would look at that piece and think, “Oh – Jim Draper.” That’s a real departure and he plucked that scene out of an image that is a pure Jim Draper image. When he picked that, I thought, “Of course!” There’s this lush, green background and it’s one of the only original images that has kind of this idyllic, outdoors scene which is what he’s known for. He didn’t paint any of that. And that’s so interesting. Now Christina on the other hand, I feel like her piece really is in character. It’s a little less abstract than what she normally does but there are so many elements where you could tell it is one of her paintings.

S: In the background she really tapped into what she’s known for in creating these great abstractions, but for me just seeing this obvious figure lounging in front of this kind of moving background seemed to me like she shifted gears. That was fascinating to me.

J.S.: Yeah.

S: I was really impressed at the [Nov. 26] artist’s talk at the Cummer. I try to be impartial to some degree, as I imagine you have been with this exhibit, but I consider many of these friends to be friends (…) or at least allies (laughs) but at the presentation (…) in particular Christie Holechek her candor in speaking about what she has gone through and channeling that through this and seeing her piece, which I think is fucking amazing (…) where she took the image and produced this (…) memory in shrapnel.

J.S.:  Yes; just shards of glass (…) and that was one of the interviews where it was just (…) there were tears shed. It was such a great experience for us to get a chance to sit down with each of these artists (…) usually, the interviews average about two hours but some went longer (…) and to talk about everything that is personal to these artists about why they are artists. What is their work about? Why did they want to be in this show? Why did they pick this image? What about their own past and what was coming up? It was an amazing opportunity.

S: Well, at the talk Jeff Whipple wondered aloud, “Why don’t artists do this more often and get together and just talk?” So it seemed like the exhibit became a whole different vehicle for that to happen by bringing everyone together with this central idea. And then all of these other ideas spiral out of this source idea. So I want to ask about this: all of these artists did the work for free, right?

J.S.: That’s right.

S: So along with emerging artists the exhibit features artists whose work commands a pretty a good price. It seems like a pretty audacious request, especially for someone who is used to getting something for their work. You had a pool of artists in mind, but did you have any artists decline on the grounds of not being compensated for their time or work? And that seems like a reasonable question since artists surely want to sell their work.

J.S.: Right. But no (…) not a single artist; but what I did have is artists I didn’t originally think of coming to me and saying, “Please let me be in this show.” That’s the thing: the generosity of this arts community in Jacksonville is (…) amazing. It really is. The generosity of spirit (…) and the time and effort they put into this for no money (…) just out of love. And you can feel it.

S: You had sent me notes about the exhibit featuring an environment that kind of reenacts a 1970s living room.

J.S.: Yeah, that’s going to be installed on Monday.

S: So what are some of the other similar elements that will be featured along with the finished pieces?

J.S.: In addition to the imagery, we are going to have this room and in this room there is going to be a projector and it’s going to be a 70s-style living room where everyone has kind of just finished watching the movies. So you’ll see that there are these remnants of a family gathering (…) there’s no one left in the room. And the films are playing, but the films are excerpts of the original, uncut versions. What Jon [filmmaker Jonathan Shepard] is doing is taking scenes that surround the still images that I picked out (…) and when you get to that still image in this film, he’s inserting the image of the finished work of the artist. So he’s really going to tie the past with the present and what was portrayed in the sixties and what it has become through all of these different filters between my parents actually shooting the film, to me selecting out the images to the artists, their painting that image for certain reasons, and producing their finished work in a certain way. A big point of the show is that progression and putting together appropriation. In these artist interviews, we talked a lot about adding layers of meaning; every time someone touches these events, another layer of meaning is added. And so you’ll see that even the clause next to each piece in the show will have the title that I gave the still and the title that the artist gave their piece. In some cases they’re the same; in some cases they’re not. But that was an opportunity to talk about and show how many different layers of meaning have been added along the way. A second thing we will be doing of that major installation piece, which will be right in the entry way (…) when you come in you’ll be able to see the films from outside the gallery (…) is I took the still images and I made Viewmaster reels out of them. So the only way that you’ll get to see the original that the artist was working from will be to look through these Viewmasters that we will have.

S: That’s fantastic. How involved was that, creating those Viewmaster reels?

J.S.: I think it adds a lot and for me it took a long time to figure out, “What do we do with the original images? Do we show them? Do we not show them?” How big are they? Where do we put them? Should it be in a separate area?” And that idea came to me and it seemed just perfect; it really puts the timeframe front and center

S: Just talking to you and looking at the work (…) and I’m already getting answers back via e-mail from the artists (…) but it seems like it started out as this exploration of nostalgia and memory and as you said, it really wound up becoming about family. But personally, do you think now with the culmination of this project (…) it seems like there has been an element of you confronting yourself and your own views (…) do you think you were looking for some kind of closure or reconciliation with your own past?

J.S.: I don’t think that I was looking for that and I don’t even know if I am getting that. I don’t know if it is closure but what I think I am getting is insight. I certainly didn’t start out with (…) I didn’t even plan on watching the films (laughs). My childhood was fine and I’m sure if you asked me I’d say, “Yeah, it was pretty happy.” I could probably tell you a couple of happy events. But my memories of the past are very few. I have very few actual memories (…) it’s weird.

S: Why is that? Why do you think that is; just over time and aging?

J.S.: I don’t think it was important for me to hold onto them. I really don’t have a large collection of photos from my childhood in my personal collection. I think I have zero photos. I don’t have a single photo album. I mean, most people have something like that. I moved a lot, I moved around the world, and when you do that you don’t really wind up keeping a lot of your possessions. I have very few things that remind of me of the past. It might have been a conscious effort, or maybe even an unconscious one, just to move on. I am the kind of person who doesn’t like to repeat things. Even if I get lost (laughs) I don’t like to turn around. I start trying to find some other way to get there (laughs).

Brianna Angelakis

["Looking Back"]

["The Wedding Night," oil on canvas, 30 x 48; 2013.]

Brianna Angelakis: I selected the photo “Looking Back” because of the engaging female figure dressing for her wedding. Of course, she’s simply making eye contact with the camera; however, her stare is exceptionally powerful in this particular moment. She looks over her shoulder with a sense of knowing. Disregarding the woman dressing her only makes the bride’s stare stronger. It’s truly a photograph that was just pleading to be made into a painting. The second I came across the image of the bride, I knew I had to paint her.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

B.A.: I actually made an entirely different painting for the show with the same photo reference prior to the painting I completed for the exhibit. I used a combination of several figures from different photographs as well as a room from one of the photos provided; however, the painting just wasn’t working for me.

Several months later I decided to make an entirely new painting with the same female figure. I wanted to create a “mirror moment” which is a common element in both literature and painting. A “mirror moment” usually represents a moment where a woman (sometimes a man) looks into a mirror and recognizes a change within herself. Other times she may not recognize the change; however, the reader or onlooker can decipher this moment. The wedding day (or in this case – “The Wedding Night”) is certainly a prime example of change for a person. To create this moment, I combined a number of small pieces (wine bottle, framed family photos, etc…) from several other photos provided. I also referenced photos from my own life such as the lower half of the bride’s gown which my sister wore on her wedding day. The bride’s face is also a composite of the bride’s face and my own. Her arm and hand are also my own. Whenever I’m working on a painting, I always utilize a number of different images to create a composition. This painting in particular really exploits my process as I combined at least fifteen different photographs to create the finished painting.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

B.A.: The bride adorned in her wedding dress definitely brought back memories of my sister’s wedding which had taken place several months prior to the start of my second painting attempt. The completed bride also reminded me of looking through my grandmother’s wedding photos when I was very young. Somehow the combination of my facial features with the bride’s features and hairstyle managed to create a woman much similar to a young version of my grandmother on her wedding day. This recognition caused me to age the space the bride resided within such as the walls and mirror.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

B.A.: These past few months I have been working toward my first solo exhibition which will be held at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, CA in May of 2014. I’m trying to keep details regarding my solo show under wraps, but expect lots of whimsical female figures combined with magical realism. I also have a number of group exhibitions in 2014 in cities including Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; Leeds, United Kingdom; and Frankfurt, Germany. It’s going to be a very exciting year!

briannaangelakis.com

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Thony Aiuppy

["Ghostly Baby"]

["Reticent Slumber (an Effigy)," oil on three panels, 29 x 32; 2013.]

Thony Aiuppy: I chose to work with the photograph “Ghostly Baby.” This image is of a child in a carriage. The particular image is an interesting one for me. As my wife and I are in a season of growing our family and we have similar images stored in our phones, in family albums, and there are some that we have had printed and hang throughout our house. It’s perhaps one of the more quiet images in Jefree’s collection and I had an instant affinity towards it. The composition and pale color palette add to the somber quality of a moment long past and therefore becomes a moment in time worth remembering.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

T.A.: It took some time before I could grapple with how to represent this in a painting. I wanted to sustain the ambiguous solitude of a 1/16th of a second. When I began painting I allowed the work to build on top of previously laid color. I wanted the brushstrokes to have a memory of their own because that’s what these images are really all about: memory and their preservation thereof. The process of painting on top of older layers that had already begun to dry offered to me a sensation of time passing by while being still at the same time. (Please refer to my artist statement for more detail about the process.)

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

T.A.: To go further with what I addressed I addressed in your first question, memory and family life are intricately connected in the works produced for this exhibition. coming into this project as a participating artist only allowed me to embed my own personal history into the image that is not my own,  giving way to creating a new, original memory that otherwise could never have occurred. It is interesting that this collection of works will be seen by individuals in the gallery space who will then be able to participate in creating meaning and memories for themselves.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

T.A.: I have a solo exhibition in the North Gallery at CoRK Arts District. The opening reception is held on December 27 and will run into the New Year.

thonyaiuppy.com

Jessie Barnes

["Haunting"]

["Haunting," oil on canvas, 24 x 30; 2013.]

Jessie Barnes: For this project, I chose the photograph entitled “Haunting.” Though the image was simple in composition, featuring a centrally placed figure and vague abstract background, it is powerful in interpretation. For one split second, literally, the world seems to revolve around this woman pictured, who happens to be a young and newly married version of Jefree’s mother, I later found out. What she was doing in that moment is unclear, but she seems undeniably determined about it. Before I chose this image, I had narrowed the several hundred pictures provided down to three, this image being one of them. I ended up looking at each of the images several times a day until I felt certain about one of them. During that time, when I viewed “Haunting,” the woman’s gaze appeared distinctly different on each occasion. Sometimes she seemed as if she were caught in mid-sentence, other times she looked angry, seductive, happy, and any number of other emotions. That one-seemingly-insignificant documentation of time could become so visceral and relatable was truly fascinating to me. There’s something so compelling about the notion of being stared at by a person of another time. It’s almost as if this young woman is sizing you up; watching you watch art. We, the viewers, become her victims. And so, “Haunting” became the one.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

J.B.: When beginning the painting, I certainly pondered the size. Being part of a very open and subjective exhibition was a thrill, because I had so many options. At that time, I had typically been working at a larger scale, but this one didn’t seem to fit somehow. Eventually, I decided to take a literal direction. The composition was transferred onto canvas and built up in thin glaze layers of oil paint – a very traditional approach. The finished painting is based in realism, which is where my training lies. It is directly proportional to its original photographic format, and relatively small, but the image feels large in terms of pictorial space. Not only does the woman’s aura fill her own composition, but her stare begins to invade our space as well.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

J.B.: As an artist who was already working with notions of time and memory as evidenced by photography, I was curious about how this painting would impact me. Being a young artist, I dare say that I don’t have the same types of memories as one who’s lived during the era of these images. I don’t have a connection to this time period. In fact, I feel very removed from it. But I do have a sense of reverence for the tangible – in part, I believe, because I am so disconnected from it. Don’t get me wrong – my parents’ home is filled with old photographs and scrapbooks, and in my own work, I use these images as sources. But there is a distinct difference in the memories that I hold. They are filled with the omnipresent and often quite menacing interference of technology. My painting for this exhibition depicts a subject who is embedded in this collective sense of past – one that I render but was never a part of. It’s honest yet mysterious, just like our own personal memories, regardless of time.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

J.B.: I am pleased to announce that I and another local artist and recent B.F.A. graduate, Franklin Ratliff, will be participating in a duo exhibition at CoRK in February. The show is set to open on Friday, February 21st, and seeks to encompass themes of a similar nature as Our Shared Past. The works will visually deal with the idea of a generational split, and how memory, the passage of time, and inclusion of technology has indeed separated us from our past.

jessiekbarnes.tumblr.com

Shannon Estlund

["Blue Danny"]

["Distance I," mixed media on canvas, 24 x 24; 2013.]

["Distance II," mixed media on canvas, 24 x 24; 2013.]

Shannon Estlund: I was drawn to the mysteriousness of the image; the blue color and light quality make me think of twilight or an underwater image. Also, there was flexibility to the image with all the negative space, and few environmental clues about time and place. This allowed me a degree of license as an artist, and at the same time the image held a nostalgic potency for me.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

S.E.: I had a few ideas, and so I decided to do two variations on the image. In both paintings, the figure is reaching out, trying to make a personal connection. One painting shows the phases of the moon for a span of several years overlapping one another. The other painting has a galaxy of glitter overhead, and the figure himself is made of black and silver glitter. The use of glitter refers to childhood imagination and wonder. Both paintings function in a similar way: there is a vast environment of space and time surrounding the figure, which alludes both to the figure’s expansive/imaginative point of view, and also his vulnerable position in a tumultuous world. I considered choosing one of the two paintings for the exhibition, and in the end decided to show them both for the way that they reverberate with one another. By showing them together, they suggest a strange relationship to time: are the images simultaneous or in sequence? Are they separate people or the same person in two different situations? I think this speaks to the subjectivity of experience, and also how reality and memory are never fixed truths.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

S.E.: Initially, this image reminded me of my younger brother from the time when we were both kids – something about the particular age of the boy and the style of his haircut. As I worked on the paintings, I became more sensitive to the gesture he is making, how he seems to be reaching out to the person holding the camera, and I started to relate to the child in the image from more of a parental perspective. In this way I experienced a shift; from empathy with the figure from a child’s perspective to responding to the figure in a maternal, protective way. I tried to include both of these perspectives in the paintings: both the vulnerability of childhood and the experience of an expansive imagination.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

S.E.: I am living in the Twin Cities with my husband Mark Estlund, and we currently both have outdoor sculptures on display at Silverwood Park, Minneapolis, Minnesota. I have work in a group show currently on display at Rosalux Gallery in Minneapolis. Also, from August to November of 2014 I will have paintings up in the Specialty Clinic at the Hudson Hospital & Clinics in Hudson, Wisconsin in conjunction with the Phipps Center for the Arts. And September 2014 I will be showing paintings in one of Silverwood Park’s gallery spaces.

shannonestlund.com

Christiana Foard

["Picnic in the Trees"]

["The Stacked Wait," oil on canvas, 48 x 60; 2013.]

Christiana Foard: I chose this picnic image because I felt it could tap into a personal memory from a childhood camping scene in the early 70s in Northern California. Additionally, I liked the stacked shapes near the female figure in the background. They were a strange assemblage and felt sculptural and quirky, like I could have an adventure in and around those shapes.

S.: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

C.F.: While I entered into this painting with an intention, I did not achieve my own goals. I wanted to paint the essence of this scene and find my own voice and my own emotions within the image. To do that, it had to feel personal and relevant. My work generally is driven by vague memories and imaginary structures and my most abstracted pieces attempt to evoke a sensation within that memory. (For example, I found snorkeling with my family last summer truly blissful. I was so moved by the sensations underwater that a series of abstracted paintings resulted which attempted to recreate the quiet, the movement, the seaweed tangles, and the shimmering light hitting an object on the sea floor.) I wanted to avoid “replicating” this picnic image in a straight-forward way. Ultimately, despite four different iterations, I began to reveal my quirky, painterly voice, but not within the allotted time frame. The painting I submitted for this exhibition was my 3^rd of 4 paintings. The final painting, which hadn’t found full resolution by the deadline, was certainly the most authentic and personal of the paintings.

I learned a great deal about myself in the course of this struggle, and as with all obstacles, found the growth immensely helpful for my long-term evolution as a painter. Often, it takes me a while to relax my brain and lose the mental clutter of my past – the painters I admire whose masterful work intimidates me,  the critical comments in my past which try to tear down my ideas, and even the cloudy pressure created by my own paintings. Once these noisy thoughts depart my creative space, another more relaxed, more intuitive realm emerges; which opens to playfulness, risk-taking, and innovation. For this project, I entered into this realm too late. It may amuse you to know that my painted variations included a female in the foreground, who morphed into a man, then a boy, then back to a businessman. The female figure in the middle ground kept changing clothes and at one point was nude. On the foreground table, I had red stripes, then dark green flowers, a pie, figs, wine glasses, a cake. It all moved and shifted as my paintings often do. It’s the changing ideas and the willingness to try them out which builds the painted history behind my work and its surface textures. I enjoyed adding imaginative components to a photographic subject. And as with any project that includes a great idea and talented people, I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this exhibition.

S.: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

C.F.: My second painting of 4 dealt with family history. This attempt was a convergence of Jefree’s image and another image from my family past overlayed, in an effort to find a more personal impact, which was not happening with the picnic scene on its own. The image I added, an image of a 7-year-old girl having just caught a fish, was of a deceased and important family member. It was painted tenderly and it became so powerful emotionally, that I could not paint into it. I could take no risks. Its spiritual impact paralyzed me. Eventually I opted to set it aside and start over.

S:  Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

C.F.: Yes! I am painting compiled memories of people who are dying in a long-term project that is designed in collaboration with a leading photographer and friend. Spending time with those who take nothing for granted and cherishes each opportunity to share their life’s meaning, is nothing short of divine and beautiful. I would like to do this throughout the remainder of my artist life, if possible. I found the Our Shared Past project particularly helpful to resolve some of the challenges I face between the perceived reality of their appearances and my own language to develop their painted essence.

cfoard.otherpeoplespixels.com

Margete Griffin

["Debbie Sue"]

["Running Down a Dream," acrylic on wood panel, 36 x 28; 2013.]

Margete Griffin: I chose the image Debbie Sue instantly. A little girl in a plaid wool coat, running in a park in NYC. Why? Initially, I thought it was the running. Running away to NYC. I ran away to NYC once. I was trying to find my way on an art journey, much to the dismay of my family, without much explanation. Running free, after a long period of helping my parents in their last years.  Life is short…I felt I’d better go quick or I may never have the chance again. Funny how the urgency hits you suddenly and you just take off like a child…no real plan, just run like the wind. My work always carries symbolic elements and this perfectly mirrored my actions. Secondly, the image was nicely suited to my style with strong graphic appeal, simple color, and the composition framed perfectly with its bold diagonal line, beckoning you into the scene.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

M.G.: Pacing in the wee hours of the morning is my usual approach, and this time the answer came easily…I stumped my toe on this old frame in a dark hall. It had been setting there for months. When I was a child, it was my dresser mirror in my bedroom. It couldn’t find its place when I moved to my parent’s home after they passed. It was painted lime green in the late 60’s and I always meant to repaint it. It waited for the perfect night to remind me, there in the dusty darkness. By sunrise I had made a template to cut the wood I would paint on. Once you start, it’s a matter of obsession until completion. With every painting you build a relationship with it along the way.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

M.G.: As I began to draw in the figure, memories of my own child had me laughing almost to tears, as I recalled when he was almost that age and took off running on a cold winter day at the duck pond. Throwing caution to the wind and ignoring my warnings, he ran right along the bulkhead, and then …the predictable splash, and of course I jumped in to get him! Freezing tears and dripping wet we shivered on home, lesson learned. At another point, in painting the background, I decided to insert my own memories into the shadows; the bare branches casting long arms, coming out of the somewhat scary path and leading to a future unknown. The building’s shadows are those from Washington Square, where I stayed in Greenwich Village. Upon my arrival there, I first took off in the park and surprised the birds who took flight with my excited pace. After painting that night, I laid down and was thinking how at each age, there is a break away moment where it’s inevitable that you go your own way… find your own path. I raised a neighborhood of boys. There were five boys, and girls too, but the boys were the constant companions of my son. As I laid there wide awake, I thought about the men they had become, each on their different journey yet still connected like brothers. I bolted upright and ran back to the painting to add in some symbology of this thought, only to realize I had already added them. I had painted five birds, flying high to reach their goals. At that moment I acknowledged that role had changed from the running child, to the mother watching her flock disappear into the distance without looking back… a reality that was in the moment for myself. I would like to say I planned it that way, but no one was more surprised than me that these realizations occurred during the project. Lastly, after the painting was done and delivered, I was looking for reference on my next job and came across my mother’s photo album. I discovered a shot of me in a plaid wool coat, just the age of little Debbie Sue…same coat on a winter’s day in Columbus, Georgia. As different as I thought our backgrounds must be from NYC to the Deep South, I found also my mother picnicking in the woods, and looking out from a barn, and feeding deer at an animal park. Instead of a ride in a clown’s car, I had a pony ride that came by the house. There were boys making faces and old folks I don’t remember at family milestones, much like Jefree’s. There was my mother in her wedding dress, my father playing games. We really do share snapshots of common moments, frozen in time.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

M.G.: I will be having another screen print show on Friday, Feb. 14, 2014 on Valentine’s Day evening at Rain Dogs, 1045 Park St. in in Riverside. I am making hand-printed valentines with a dash of twisted humor, some new larger sized limited edition screen prints, and a few surprises that will be released that night. It will be up for a month. More projects are also in the preliminary stage as well. Check out my Facebook Artists page, Griffin House Studio, for photos of other work and show updates.

facebook.com/GriffinHouseStudio

Rebecca Hoadley

["Bathers"]

["Courage," oil on canvas, 36 x 40; 2013.]

["Picnic Table"]

["Picnic," oil on canvas, 24 x 36; 2013.]

["Afternoon," oil on canvas, 24 x 36; 2013.]

Rebecca Hoadley: One of the fantastic things about a collaboration painting lies in what both parties can bring to the table. Jeffery Shalev supplied intimate photos from his personal history, and in transferring them to the canvas, I was allowed to do the same. His family gatherings sparked memories from my own history, and while painting, I enjoyed reminiscing on the ties that bind our respective histories together. I worked on Afternoon and Picnic simultaneously, but found that Courage evoked a stronger attachment between the siblings portrayed and mine. While mixing colors for Courage, I was reminded of vacations at the beach and early memories of learning to swim. It is my hope that the title will apply to the viewer in the same way, and they feel a kinship between the figures on the canvas.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

R.H.: My ultimate goal was to successfully incorporate my painting style while honoring the content of the original photos from the collection. I am proud that the individuals in the final paintings represent the simple moments I sought to capture, while representing myself and the figures on the canvas. These paintings now have a history of their own. I have become fond of the final layers that have resulted on the canvas. I feel they encompass more than a history; they have a balance of nondescript and detail to tie to the original photo.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

R.H.: When initially thinking about this project, I did not realize how closely the themes presented would relate with my own inspirations. My inspiration for a painting arises from the seemingly mundane moments we interact upon within our respective settings, such as spending time together and caring for one another through conversation and companionship. The common and typical interactions one can easily dismiss often become poignant examples for recollection; they exist in the very moment I was able to capture in Courage, and one I feel the entire collection represents. These paintings capture the beauty in our ‘daily routine’ and highlight the responsibilities we feel pull us away from the important moments in life. Looking at these demands as opportunities for inspiration requires one to slow down and examine the mundane in a new light. This process allows me to emphasize the concept of community, and create a product that represents the value of gathering together with the ones we love. There is a passage in the book of James that also parallels the feelings I had while working on this project. In James 4:13-14 it says “…You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes…” This verse further serves to emphasize the importance of the brief moments we partake in during the demands of our responsibilities and interests, pointing the reader to reflect and enjoy the community we occupy.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

R.H.: I recently submitted a piece for a participatory art, nature, and history project created by Miami artist Xavier Cortada to commemorate Florida’s quincentennial in 2013. The description of the project is quoted from the site:  “The project marks the importance of the moment when the history of our state changed forever and gives us a glimpse of what its landscape was like 500 years ago. A team of scientists selected the 500 native flowers – the same ones that grew in our state when Juan Ponce de Leon landed in 1513 and named it “La Florida”–from “flor,” the Spanish word for flower. Five hundred Floridians were then invited to depict 500 native wildflowers. The artwork, along with information about each flower, will be posted on the project website. A team of historians selected individuals who helped shape Florida history.  Florida schools and libraries (across the 67 counties and 8 regions) are encouraged to plant 500 wildflower gardens, dedicating them to one of 500 important Floridians selected by a team of historians. These 500 new native habitats will help support Florida’s biodiversity.”

rebeccahoadley.com

Rebeccahoadley.tumblr.com

Jason John

["Donkey"]

["With the Donkey," oil on canvas, 42 x 30; 2013.]

Jason John: The image I choose is so fascinating. I mean (all of the images) are fascinating, but I was really drawn to the images with the human/animal dichotomy. I did not want to know much about the history of the image. I really wanted to interpret the image cold and clinical. I wanted to let my inner-psyche read the image instead of attempting a matter-of-fact re-exploration of little Jimmy at the petting zoo. The photo brought to mind the many interpretations of St. Jerome with the Lion, but instead of a lion the beast was a donkey and the saint was a child. This relationship is absurd. Another great difference between this particular image and St. Jerome depictions is the strange isolation and removal of the child from the Donkey. The child was so removed from the donkey, making the whole scene read as very artificial and staged, and I am sure it was. There is a kind of absurdity to how I was reading this image. I am almost ashamed to see such an innocent scene in this way, but the artist’s interpretation is what made this project so fun.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

J.J.: For a few months I had a few of the Our Shared Past images on my studio wall. I kept coming back to the image with the child and donkey. I feel that the process of making my personal work is so analytical that I really wanted to go with intuition on this piece. I wanted to paint Jefree without his shirt, standing in as the child in the family photo. The more I thought this is a terrible idea, the more I wanted this to be my piece. I called Jefree and asked if he would model for me. He agreed. The rest was history.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

J.J.: I don’t think anyone looks back at these kinds of images (old family photos) with a full recollection of the where and who. The entire experience is full of disbelief and mental slippage. Recently, my family happened by some old images.  As a third generation out, looking at our family images, I can recognize close family but left questioning who most of the people in the photos are. This is one reason I did not want Jefree to share the history of the images with me.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

J.J.: I have a piece at Gauntlet Gallery’s winter exhibition; the gallery is located in San Francisco, California.  I will be having a solo exhibition at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio in January.

jasonjohnart.com

Rachel Levanger

["Boys 2"]

["My Coming of Age: Boys," acrylic and latex on canvas, 20 x 32 (two canvases at 16 x20 each); 2013.]

Rachel Levanger: The image I ended up using for the show actually chose me.  I initially picked a different one, and when I told Jefree my concept, he urged me to choose an additional photograph to work with. As I looked through the collection of photos over the next week or so for a second option, the image I ended up painting would resonate and bring something up from my subconscious each time I saw it, but due to the charged nature of the personal content of the image it took a couple of glasses of wine for that urge to manifest itself as the click of a mouse and me impulsively claiming it as my own. The next morning I honestly wondered if I would regret going down the path that was this painting, but I forged ahead, knowing that the work needed to be done, and knowing that I had to tell this story.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?
R.L.: The seed for my initial idea actually came from working on a different image.  The idea was to address this gap between our imagined, anticipated, or recalled experience and the often rather mundane feeling that comes from the actual experience itself. Although it was beautiful, the sketch I worked up was at odds with what I was reading at the time about painting and the problem of clichés in works of art: the image came too easily, too quickly. It felt obvious and safe and I wanted to break through this clichéd representation of the concept and deny such an obvious play on the nostalgia of the project. To do this, I read through David Joselit’s “American Art Since 1945” to reacquaint myself with traditions in modern and contemporary art and further investigated themes in pop art by reading Lucy R. Lippard’s treatment of the subject.

[Rachel Levanger’s initial idea for the piece: “It Was Supposed to be Fun.”]

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

R.L.: I’m not sure I had many realizations about my past, per se, but I did find some connections where I had not anticipated. For example, my use of the grid was initially a nod to Warhol’s use of the repeated image as a way to disarm it, but as I recalled my own past experiences with boys and men throughout my coming of age, I recalled a time when I used to imagine them (the boys) all lined up in front of me, or arranged in a grid like soldiers. Perhaps this imagery at the time served to distance me from my own experiences, or to maybe corral and collect them all up so I could view them all at the same time. On this vein, through creating this work I tried to recount all of my past experiences with boys (now men, of course) and the creation of this work seemed to collect up all of these experiences, collapsing the narrative of the unfolding of time.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

R.L.: Since I am currently in a graduate program for mathematics, I would like to find a way to use mathematical ideas to inform my painting.  I really have no idea what this will lead to, but I’m excited to find out!

rachellevanger.com

Denise Liberi

["Backstraps"]

["Backstraps," mixed media, 7 x 5 x 4; 2013.]

[Depth shot of "Backstraps."]

["Bathers"]

["Bathers," mixed media, 7 x 5 x 4; 2013.]

[Depth shot of "Bathers."]

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

D.L.: When Jefree asked me to be part of this collaborative project, I was on a cross-country road trip from Jacksonville to my new home of Oakland, California. Having no studio space and limited access to art supplies, it was apparent that I needed to create something small to work on throughout my travels. I consider myself foremost a painter, but had also recently been making a number of three-dimensional diorama structures. During the process, I allowed myself to add to and subtract from the original images to create the resulting works for Our Shared Past.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

D.L.: I wouldn’t say that the experience brought up any realizations or memories from my own family. A more general sense of the past was, however, something that I thought about a lot while making these works. What makes old photographs so enchanting is their ability as objects to transcend time and place.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

D.L.: Currently, I am working with the Museum of Children’s Arts to create a drop-in studio-space for urban youth and families in downtown Oakland. It is truly a blend of my passions – art making and teaching.

deniseliberi.wordpress.com

mocha.org/about/staff-ta/

Patrick Moser

["Revolutionary"]

["Lindy for Lois," still from video performance; 2013.]

Patrick Moser: Thanks so much for having me and special thanks to Jefree Shalev for making this all possible. I chose a still titled, Revolutionary, in which Jefree’s mother Lois is captured in mid-stride in front of an old cannon. I like the way she moves without regard for the camera. Since the image is an 8mm still, extracted from a pre-existing narrative, I thought her gesture expressed an aliveness beyond the trappings of a photograph. In other words, I tried to find an image that offered some room to play.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

P.M.: The stills Jefree made available to us are quite beautiful and from the beginning I was never wholly convinced they needed to be turned into paint. I made a number of paintings of Lois in her amazing pants but the results were never vital for me. After speaking with Jefree and learning that Lois was alive and planning to attend the exhibit I contacted her directly, at which point the piece became a collaboration. Lois was very receptive and we began an email correspondence in which I learned more about her and her family. Thankfully, Jefree was open to the idea of a video performance so I asked Lois directly what she wanted to do. After a few exchanges she mentioned the Lindy Hop and I knew then what the work would be. I learned the basic nine-count steps and practiced through the fall. I wanted to invite Lois to dance with me but space and time made that impossible. I was seeking out a dance partner when my wife suggested I invite my own mother to participate, which made sense and seemed to express the nature of this entire project perfectly. My mother was game, as I knew she would be, and she began to practice on her own in North Carolina. We eventually recorded a performance in the Solarium here at Flagler College in late October. We danced the Lindy Hop, as best we could, to fantastic original music composed by one of our BFA students, Kevin Mahoney.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

P.M.: I suppose I should be completely honest here and admit that the general themes involving family memories and nostalgia are simply not that compelling to me. Don’t get me wrong, reflection is essential; I just couldn’t get excited until I moved beyond those general notions. Perhaps old family images are so ubiquitous in our culture that they have lost their power to me. There is almost no intimacy or privacy in them any longer. It’s difficult for me to locate anything beyond a kind of surface sentimentality. I stumbled along and eventually used the image Jefree provided to contrive a new experience. He shared his family with me and I reciprocated, because sharing the present is more exhilarating than sharing the past.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

P.M.: Currently, I’m making work for an exhibit at the Florida Mining gallery in the spring, which should be fun and may involve more dancing.

patrickmoserpaintings.com

Sara Pedigo

["Floating"]

["Swimmer," oil on canvas, 12 x 16; 2013.]

["What's for Dinner"]

[“In the Night Kitchen," oil on canvas, 5 x 7; 2013.]

Sara Pedigo: I chose to recreate two of the film stills as paintings for this project; I will just talk about one of them. The first image that I selected was of Jefree’s mother in a pool, floating very close to the surface in a white bathing cap. I was initially drawn to many of the images in the collection, but kept coming back to “Floating”. This picture had a very strong quality of contemplation. There is intrinsically something that attracts me to images of people in water. The image deeply connected to my own experiences of floating just below the surface, water lapping against my skin and the sun’s warmth on my face. I am also visually drawn to how water breaks up and reveals the body in unusual ways

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

S.P.: Through the act of painting I attempted to stay very close to the original source image’s composition and inherent beauty. The only significant change was the coloration; the source photo’s colors were muted. Through the act of painting I worked to create colors that carried the same intensity that would have appeared on the day the film was created, resulting in an image with higher saturation.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

S.P.: Since 2005, my own painting practice has incorporated snap-shots of my family that range from the early 1940′s through the1980′s. I am frequently drawn to photos of relatives that I have no personal connection to. I see a deep sense of shared humanity in the evidence of lives and moments caught in photographs. I initially began working with the photos because they featured images of my mother’s youth and health; she passed away in 2006 from a long battle with cancer. I deeply understand the power that accompanies seeing youthful images of one’s mother. I saw the opportunity for participating in this show as a way to recognize this power, and capture the beauty present in another person’s family. I am also very thrilled at the prospect of Jefree’s mother seeing all of the artworks. It seems like it will be a magical moment!  I plan to vicariously live through Jefree sharing all of the works with her, since my mother has never seen any of the paintings I have created for her.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

S.P.: Yes, thank you for asking. One of my paintings, Blue Eyes When, is currently featured at Blue Mountain Gallery, located in the Chelsea Gallery District in New York. The juror for the exhibition was Andrea Wells of Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

Additionally, several of my paintings are part of the Ponte Vedra Cultural Center’s Small Objects Show, which runs during the month of December. All artworks in the show are under $350 for the holiday shopping season.

Lastly, I have paintings at Plum Contemporary Gallery, located at Nine Aviles Street in St. Augustine, through January.

bluemountaingallery.org

ccpvb.org/current-exhibition.html

plumartgallery.com

sarapedigo.com

Kurt Polkey

["Bite Size Pieces"]

["Little Boy," marker, white out, pencil, and glitter on paper and oil on panel, 46 x 46; 2013.]

["Watching Dad Hit"]

["National Pastime," marker, white out, pencil, and glitter on paper and oil on panel, 24 x 24; 2013.]

Kurt Polkey: I’d forgotten that my dad played softball. When I was a little kid I would go with him to the ballpark on game nights. Sometimes I would find a group of kids to play with and sometimes I would hang out in the dugout with the players and watch the game. When I saw the picture from Our Shared Past of a son watching his father play baseball, I knew instantly that that would be my image.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

K.P.: But how can I make a painting that could convey the freedom that belongs only to a child who thinks his dad is a giant who will live forever? I can’t. And that was a source of great frustration for me in this process.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

K.P.: I don’t feel like I conveyed any insight into my painting. Because I had such a personal response to the image and because the image doesn’t belong to me, but to someone else who has an even deeper personal attachment, I didn’t feel able to alter it too much. I was never able to make the image mine. My painting turned out to be just a copy of someone else’s photograph.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

K.P.: I’m a co-founder of nullspace projects, an experimental curatorial team in Jax. We are currently working with Florida Mining Gallery. Our next exhibit is a pre-career retrospective for Los Angeles based artist David De Boer.

polkey.wix.com/kurt-polkey-ii

kurt-polkey.squarespace.com

nullspaceprojects.com

Leslie Robison

["Boys"]

[“Periphery," oil on wood panel, 18 x 24; 2013.]

["A Landing Stuck"]

[“Rush," oil on wood panel, 18 x 24; 2013.]

Leslie Robison: The first image I chose was Boys 1.And I think what attracted me was its focus on blankness, or the unknown space between people. Perhaps this is because my own work tends to use plenty of isolating space around the figures and the words that I paint or draw. When I completed this piece, titled Periphery, I began looking for another image that encompassed a sense of isolation – A Landing Stuck does this in a different way – the figure is concentrating on her own action, she does not look at the viewer, and she is also relegated to a separate space in the image from the cars. (And the cars also contain encapsulated people.)

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

L.R.: Another aspect of these images that attracted me was their lack of clarity, or crisp outline. Since Jefree captured the images from a video, the sense of the moving image persists even though we, as viewers, read them as photographic. When I chose these images and began painting them, I knew I wanted to create a softness, or lack of definition around the forms as much as I could. This was much easier with the second image I chose (A Landing Stuck, renamed Rush in my painting) because the movement of the figure and the cars in the background create a blur of movement. In the other image, the lack of clarity is a result of the photographer panning across a gathering.  I built the paintings differently to achieve this – Periphery contains a lot of glazed layers while Rush has some layering but is painted more directly.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

L.R.: What was compelling for me in this process, and a little difficult, was the fact that I was revisiting my own past as an artist. I spent about ten years making paintings and drawings from other people’s found photographs as a way of contemplating lost moments of time. For me, this activity was laden with mourning – even though I didn’t know the subjects pictured, the photographs were always about loss. Our Shared Past is a little bit about this for me again. Because the subjects I painted for this project do not make eye contact with the viewer, I was able to avoid the memento mori connotations of the photograph that haunted my old work.

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

L.R.: Currently, I have work online as a part of Xavier Cortada’s participatory project, FLOR500, and I am acting as this region’s curator for the project.

leslierobison.us

leslierobisonart.blogspot.com

Chip Southworth

["Split Screen"]

["Rise of the Matriarch," mixed media (acrylic, graphite, ink, and carbon) on wood panels, 80 x 108; 2013.]

[Detail from "Rise of the Matriarch."]

Chip Southworth: I chose this image of Jefree’s mother getting ready (dressed) before her wedding… I loved the image instantly; it really worked for me … I thought she was thinking “Can you believe that we finally reached this day” however, it turns out it was probably closer to “Wholly shit! We are actually doing this?”  They had only known each other six weeks or something like that…true love.

S: Could you describe your approach and process in turning the source photograph into your completed work for the exhibit?

C.S.: The scale of my work is daunting… First I start out by projecting a rough outline image. Then I begin my real work by developing the drawing, playing with curves, and shading with graphite sticks, then I burn sections with a blow torch, then comes the ink, then the paint… I use large brushes and knives for the most part, but do occasionally call on a normal sized brush. I burn more sections that have been painted; now, repeat the process several times… before deciding a piece is completed.

S: Our Shared Past seems to address universal themes of family, memory, nostalgia, the passing of time, etc…During this experience, did working with your particular chosen image and the process of creating seem to bring up any specific personal realizations or memories from your own family and sense of the past? If so, what were they and how were these insights conveyed into your finished piece?

C.S.: Pure Nostalgia!  I looked back at lots of the images often during the three months that I worked on this piece. They mirrored much of my childhood.  My father was the consummate tourist; my mom was a bit of adventurer with a penchant for the beach… Roadside motel pools are some of my fondest memories as a young boy. We didn’t have much money, but we still traveled a good deal…visiting cousins and friends speckled across the southeast stopping at every attraction along the way from six-gun territory to the Land of Oz,

S: Do you have any other current or upcoming projects?

C.S.: I just returned from Art Basel Miami Beach. I had five large new pieces that just showed at North of Modern (#NOMO). They are large scale pieces that delve into the controversy of breast cancer awareness. The images have been well received by many and kinda shunned at the same time, maybe for their stark reality; maybe for the questions they pose… The images are strong and everything that I wanted them to be… including painterly. Tuesday, the Our Shared Past show opens at the Cummer, I plan to be at as many events as possible while the show runs… Other than that I am just gonna keep painting like this might keep taking off… I am pretty vested in this current series, I need another six or seven pieces. I have a few commissions that I have to work on, and I am hoping to take more art into the streets in 2014. In short, I am busy, but hope to paint throughout the next year producing new and provoking work.

chipsouthworth.com

ARTIST IMAGES FROM OUR SHARED PAST

Mark Creegan

["Too Sensitive," 32 minute loop of all 175 original source images, SD video; 2013.]

["She's 21"]

["Vermeer, Vermeer," colored pencil, graphite, found frame, gold leaf, and vellum, 27 x 23; 2013.]

["Family Tree," mixed media piece based on many of the original images, 62 x 90; 2013.]

["Fuck! A Deer!"]

["Fuck! A Deer!"; wood, fabric, acrylic, vinyl, paper, thread/embroidery (machine and hand stitched) framed in cypress wood, 21 x 27; 2013.]

["Bobbing"]

["Bobbing," acrylic and aerosol on corrugated plastic, 24 x 26; 2013.]

["The Pledge"]

["The Pledge," watercolor on paper, 45 x 53; 2013.]

["Looking Glass"]

["Something Blew," mixed media on canvas, 60 x 48; 2013.]

["Dark"]

["Dark," mixed media (acrylic, ink, wallpaper paste, butcher paper, stain, and lacquer on wood), 22 x 34; 2013.]

["White Shawl"]

["A Night to Remember," wall paper, checks, marble dust, oil, acrylic, gold leaf, tissue paper, cards, lace, cigarette paper, blue print, postage stamp, acrylic polymer medium, etc... on canvas, 48 x 60; 2013.]

["The Dive"]

[“The Return,” oil on canvas, 15 x 20; 2013.]

["Dancing"]

[“Dancing,” oil on canvas, 30 x 36; 2013.]

["Posture 1"]

[“Imagining Relativity {idealized deviation 1}”; pencil on paper with flashe paint, watercolor, and spray paint, 44 x 61; 2013.]

["Why Pay More?"]

[“Where Did Grandma Go?”; acrylic and ink on canvas, 34 x 42; 2013.]

["You Can Count Every Rib"]

["Playground Virility," acrylic and polycrylic varnish on canvas, 36 x 42; 2013.]

["Pastel Pool"]

["Only Lonely When I’m Not Alone," oil on panel, 32 x 40; 2013.]

["See Saw Fun"]

["Now You See, Now You Saw," (detail) paint, ink, digital media, video, canvas, and wood, 81 x 24; 2013.]

["Riding With Bobo"]

[“Clown Parade with Cowboy Attack - Shirt Tucked, Gun Loaded, Ready Let’s Go,” mixed media on mahogany, 72 x 108; 2013.]

["Brooklyn"]

[“Bridesmaids and Bouquets," oil and mixed media on canvas, 42 x 54; 2013.]

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

A pair of SoCal artists invade CoRK with Interlopers

Jennie Cotterill’s One For Each: “Roughly 16 x25 x4; Acrylic on wood and mixed media; light, velvet, gold leaf, and polymer clay, etc…”

 The Artist in Residence program at CoRK Arts District has produced a successful series of exhibits by both established and emerging artists. Previous AIR participants Rachel Rossin, Casey Brown, and the Estlunds (Mark, Shannon, and Phillip) have all used CoRK’s large gallery spaces to great advantage.

Now California-based artists Jennie Cotterill and Aaron Brown are presenting their exhibit Interlopers, a collection of new two-dimensional and three-dimensional multimedia pieces. The pair was invited to CoRK by Crystal Floyd, an impressive multimedia artist in her own right, and well-respected presence on the Northeast Florida arts scene.

The opening reception for Interlopers: Works by Jennie Cotterill & Aaron Brown is held from 6-10 p.m. on Friday, February 21 at CoRK Arts District’s East Gallery, 2689 Rosselle Street in Riverside.

I interviewed Floyd and Cotterill via e-mail. What follows are transcriptions of their replies. Cotterill was generous enough to provide commentaries for certain pieces, which I posted as well.

Crystal Floyd

 Starehouse: I know that CoRK Arts District has a fairly open and egalitarian approach to hosting art exhibits and various events. But as the space’s Events Coordinator, and now with coordinating the Artist-in-Residence program, you have taken on double duty while also making time to devote to your own visual arts projects. I’m interested in the responsibilities that come with those two titles and also how you find a balance between working “for” CoRK and working in your studio “at” CoRK?

Crystal Floyd: Well, as you know, Aaron Garvey had been coordinating the artists for the Artist in Residence program and has since moved to Savannah. I had facilitated the Estlunds as artists in residence and now Jennie and Aaron, but this will probably be the last installment of that as a formal program. I will be coordinating with regional artists in the future to bring them to CoRK for shows, but it will not be as extensive as it has been in the past. As far as my role as event coordinator, I saw a need for organization to keep things running smoothly and given my admin background, thought I would be well-suited to do so. It is pretty laid back but I just wanted to make sure everyone had an opportunity to do what they want without stepping on each other’s toes. Helen Cowart and I created a unified calendar and basic Tumblr page for CoRK as a type of directory for the artists and a place where we can post upcoming events, but we are doing so just to help everyone out as far as publicity goes and ease in finding contact info for the artists at CoRK. It helps to have one contact point when there is such a large group of artists in once space and I kind of funnel the information as it comes. As far as how that balances with my own artwork, it has been difficult. We have scaled back our events to keep everything mostly art related and are no longer renting it out for private events unless they benefit the artists in CoRK and are community based or art related. That has freed up a lot of the time that was being taken away from my private work. I am currently working on pieces that will hang in Bold Bean Coffee during the months of April and May and other private commissions, I have an installation with David Montgomery downtown as part of the Looking Lab project, and have a piece in the Our Shared Past at the Cummer Museum.

S: Why did you invite Jennie Cotterill and Aaron Brown? How did you become familiar with their work? What did you find so exciting about their art?

C.F.: I met Jennie while accompanying Shaun on a mural trip to Cocoa Beach for Hurley, the company that Jennie works for as Community Outreach Artist Coordinator. She and Shaun [Thurston] collaborated on a mural together. I immediately liked her and was impressed by her motivation and attitude and when I saw her work, was impressed even more. She is a powerhouse and can do anything she sets her mind to and she had mentioned being interested in having a solo show, or partnering with her beau Aaron (a manager at Giant Robot and sculptor/artist himself) to see what they could put together. I told Dolf [James] about her and was able to get them in as the last installment of the residency program. I know that she will present a complete package of the vision that she and Aaron have in mind, and I am confident in their taste/skill to put on something interesting and fun for Jacksonville. Jennie’s work is magical and fun and conveys her wonderful sense of humor and taste level and Aaron is a great compliment to that, with his awesome organic sculptures and characters.

Jennie Cotterill

“The Coffin is about 6 x 3 x 3; it is mixed media , acrylic, paper clay, polymer clay, satin, and gold leaf; 2012. I was misled about the exhibition of this piece. Allegedly part of an Easter Egg style ‘Coffin Hunt’ in L.A., it ended up being listed on eBay with a starting bid of $10…never exhibited or hidden. Super shady. I was so disappointed. My mom secretly bid on it (and paid too much) and won it. She gave it back to me at Christmas. She is the best.”

 Starehouse: You are originally from Michigan. When is your birthday and in what city or town of that fine state were you born in? Do you believe in astrology? I don’t either.

Jennie Cotterill: Ha ha; I was actually born in Spencer, Iowa. We lived there for about a minute before moving to Hendersonville, North Carolina. And from there my family bounced around Michigan a few times. I half believe in astrology. My birthday is September 4, 1982; so that makes me a bossy, neurotic, stubborn Virgo. (All true. Not neat though. That stereotype is false.)

S: I know you are also a musician with the band Bad Cop/Bad Cop (which I will come back to in a later). When you were growing up, were you a Midwestern freak/punk rock art brat? Or were you volunteering as the church youth choir director assistant? I believe that both paths can lead to the same outcome.

J.C.: I was a difficult teenager. Nothing terrible, but very interested in doing what I wanted to do (which was generally smoking and making out with boys.) I went to shows with my brother and my friends but never had a band until later, though. I wore really embarrassing and obnoxious clothes and had a stupid haircut. I was grounded a lot.

S: What was your upbringing like? Did your family encourage your artistic leanings or did they fight you tooth-and-nail for surrendering to one of the most rewarding, poverty-guaranteed, and sometimes-unforgiving life choices on this planet?

J.C.: My family was extremely supportive of my creative leanings. They all have a good balance of creativity and practicality. My dad is an engineer who builds furniture and my mom is a writer who draws. I think if they were born to different circumstances, they would be great artists. My brother is an IS&T (Information and Services Technology) designer at Apple and an outstanding graphic designer. The entire household was a sort of brain trust for school projects. My parents enrolled me in summer art classes, and gave me my first guitar.

They were pretty worried when I decided to pursue art as a career, though. They’re very Midwestern. We didn’t know any working artists. It was like telling them “I’m moving to Mars.” I understand their position, and they are starting to see that this was the right thing to do. They often make the point that it’s near impossible to be a “rock star.” But there is a lot of territory between here and there. Yes, I’m busy all the time, but my professional life and my creative life are one and the same. In this way, there are no “extra-curricular” activities, and no time is wasted.

S: Michigan has produced a great lineage of art-music melds; in the past 15-20 years you had Wolf Eyes and this orbiting noise/experimental/cassette-only scene, which was heavily fueled by visual art as it was by music. In the seventies, the straight-up brilliant art/music aggregation Destroy All Monsters had a band line-up that included visual artists Mike Kelley, Niagara, and Jim Shaw. Did you grow up seeking out similar kinds of blended environments of visual art/music or did you pursue art and music in separate ways altogether?

J.C.: As a kid, I never thought I would put art and music to work. I knew I loved them both. But careers are not made of fun, right? There is a persistent, Midwestern, nagging internal voice that tells me I’m too old for things, and tells me I can’t do this or that. I’m learning to tune it out.

The idea to just let art and music become one stream of creativity is pretty new for me. I never talked to art people about my music and never about my art with music people. It turns out the overlap on those crowds is tremendous. There’s usually at least one artist in every band. And talking about what you’re doing is a great way to meet other secret artists.

S: You have been living in Southern California for more than a decade; coming from Michigan, was it hard to assimilate into that new culture?

J.C.: YES, it was —partly because the Midwest is very different from Southern California and partly because I was not yet fully formed as a person. So it was two periods of large-scale personal growth, overlapping one another.

S: In an interview with ART4T, you had commented on the disparity in music and visual art with the following observation: “I am a huge proponent of girls helping girls. I play music with girls. I feel like art and music are still very much boys clubs. Many people have tried to talk me out of that, but they are all men. So I’m not quite convinced. I think a lot of that sentiment has to do with being taught to control your ego as a woman, while successful men are often unchecked, loud-mouthed blowhards who would rather talk about how great they are than actually make work that says the same thing.  I’ve never met a female artist who is fat, lazy and resting on her laurels. And for me, that raises a lot of questions.  Not least: where are our laurels?” I totally agree, so I am surely not trying to talk you out of that observation! Ha ha! But it seems like this is really a systemic prejudice or oppression that just permeates everything. In the business world, those same aforementioned “successful men” that “are often unchecked, loud-mouthed blowhards” are considered corporate kings while women that are equally successful, focused, and driven can be considered, and please pardon the expression, “bitchy” and viewed with suspicion or even disdain. But conversely, do you see changes or more encouraging signs of unity, specifically in visual arts and music, where that glass ceiling can be fully and finally shattered? It seems that the greatest launch pad for equality to even permeate other parts of society would be created in the arts.

J.C.: I do see change! And the only way to make change is to be change. It all adds up. Most of my close friends happen to be women busting their asses in their fields. They often have supportive partners. I think the obsession with the Nuclear Family is wearing off; people’s priorities are shifting away from home ownership and parenthood.

Regarding “Bitchy,” I’ve stopped taking offense to the term. I’ve come to see it as a label given to women in the workplace who are effective and direct. It wasn’t until I started working with a lot of middle-aged men that I began to get sidelined about my “attitude.” It was never a problem before that. At best, “bitchy” is used by people who are un-self-aware. At worst, it’s used by misogynists. If someone is using it like that, you’re a dinosaur. Thanks for the petroleum, see you in the history books.

“Best Hair Class of ’62: acrylic on skateboard, 2012. Ryan Hurley bought this for his daughter and called it ‘that Berenstain Bear thing,’ which I love. I have since given his daughter a tiny, rainbow drum kit.”

S: I love the work of S. Clay Wilson and Robert Crumb yet personally know more than one person who thinks that they are both just sheer sleazebags. And I am not blind to why they would think that. I get it. But I am unapologetic in loving both their respective work and life stories. Are there any male artists whose work you find patently sexist and even misogynist? Would you be willing to call them out in this interview and point out why you feel that they are insulting to women?

J.C.: Um … I know a lot of male artists who are just sexist people. They tend to be older. If their work reveals any of that, it is generally unintentional and deep-seated. In a way, I pity these men. Deliberate exclusion of others only reflects their insecurity and ignorance. I would say male artists under 34 have a harder time pulling that shit. Because they are young enough to know better and are aware of the way the world is making room for everybody’s rights and are not threatened by it.

S: Do you think it is as much where girls seek, or are directed towards, their role models? I’ll focus on music. In the past fifteen years of current popular culture, there has been an arc of female performers from Britney Spears/Jessica Simpson to Lady Gaga/Miley Cyrus that actively celebrate surface sheen and glitzy nothingness. The early nineties had a pretty potent scene of very confrontational female-led bands and performers but then a kind of nullifying amnesia seemed to kick in. I think that Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, and Kim Gordon are the de facto elders of feminist rock; but their inherent attractiveness is really that they are complex, brilliant, fearless, and highly-vocal women. How do you think some of this can be rectified? Do you feel like you are directly aligned with fourth wave feminism? If so, do you have any criticisms of that movement? I hope I didn’t get on your nerves with these questions. I just think this is a valid subject and I am especially interested hearing the perspective of a creative person.

J.C.: I’m gonna be honest: my feminism is intuitive and not studied. That being said, there will always be superficial role models. Our culture (as most) is fascinated with youth and beauty. Those are remarkable, coveted things that will always be celebrated and recognized. It’s just the way it is.

The only solution I have is to continue doing what we are doing and in that, offering an alternative. Before I met (Bad Cop/Bad Cop) our lead singer, Stacey Dee, I saw her one of her other bands.  She literally gave me chills. This is a woman in her mid-30s, wearing what she wants, playing the shit out of her guitar and producing an incredible voice. She wasn’t flirting with the crowd or tossing her hair around. She was rocking the fuck out. She’s out there doing this every week, and people are witnessing it. And it inspires other women to just go for it.  Crystal Floyd is doing the same thing. The woman is essentially the Art Mayor of Jacksonville, Florida. She’s out there, seven days a week, taking care of business, and making things happen.

S: Looking at your work online, it seems that many, if not most of it, has an undercurrent of menace. It looks like it toggles these signifiers of “cute”/ “vicious.” Your piece “Unisaw” is a rainbow-colored handsaw with a smiling unicorn as its handle. It seems more like weaponry than a wall hanging. “Lollisaw” turns a pinwheel lollipop into another blade. Why do you like to push these types of opposing ideas together? They are visually striking but I imagine there is more behind these pieces than just the finished outcome of the way that they look.

J.C.: Ha ha!  Oh shit. I don’t think I realized that. The saw pieces were for a Lisa Frank-themed art show. I personally was not into that stuff as a kid, but as an adult I think embracing “girly” things is an important part of feminism. (Just because something is “girly” does not mean it sucks.) I wanted to make these pieces that were non-traditional toys for girls, in the manner of Lisa Frank: lots of rainbows, glitter, animals, etc…

I can appreciate cuteness, but without another layer of meaning it seems flimsy. That’s why I loooooooove Nancy Chiu’s work. Everything she makes is breathtakingly lovely and often very cute. There is always, ALWAYS a second read. Sometimes funny, scary, and gross…whether it’s tiny little razor teeth or an animal’s butthole facing you, there are rewards for lingering on her pieces.

S: You are currently working as the community outreach artist coordinator for Hurley, curating and installing art shows and painting murals throughout Orange County. That seems like a cool, service-based job. How did you score that gig and what does it entail? Do you work solely with other visual artists or does Hurley also work directly in conjunction with non-profit organizations like The United Way or similar groups that do grassroots, volunteer-based arts education or urban renewal projects?

J.C.: My job is super cool. I started painting murals and hanging art shows for Hurley freelance. I told my boss-to-be that I had some teaching experience and when this position opened up, they gave me a call. Hurley lists art as one of its four core pillars. There are people in the company who deal with famous artists, but my job is to engage art and artists on a community-level. I work with schools and local artists, painting murals, and putting together art shows. We sometimes work with The Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano. The job changes constantly. It’s very refreshing.

S: Why are you so fascinated with sloths?

J.C.: I’m not actually. I never even drew a sloth until the Black Fag mural project. They really are amazing creatures, though. And I believe they are Aaron’s spirit animal: likeable, funny, and slow moving. Those are great qualities.

“Sloth Full is referred to as the ‘Sloth Sanctuary’ by the owners/commissioners of the piece. Friends of mine in an INCREDIBLE cover band called Black Fag – “An Absolutely Fabulous Tribute to Black Flag” – live in this great house in Los Angeles. They built a saltwater pool shaped like the Black Flag logo, and decided they needed a giant mural to go with it. This was their concept. I was not familiar with the “Live Slow, Die Whenever” meme, but they sent me a bunch of those and some sloths they liked. We worked the design up together. I can take no credit for the genius behind it, only the image. It’s probably 12’x 26’; Aaron helped me paint it. We used house paint. Summer of 2013.”

S: Let’s jump on over to Bad Cop/Bad Cop. When did the band start? Listening to the band’s music online, it seems like is straight-up punk/hard rock – a style that I strongly like. Considering I am nearly deaf from playing music and honestly had a hard time deciphering your lyrics, let alone 99.9% of all other bands’ lyrics, does Bad Cop/Bad Cop have any kind of socio-political agenda other than rocking the fuck out?

J.C.: Thank you! Our band is about three years old. We had a bass player change-up a couple years ago and really took off from there. The songs we write fit into a few categories: catharsis, sarcasm, encouragement, and love songs.

S: How long have you been playing guitar? Have you considered switching to the electric bass? I can assure you from personal experience that it is a far superior instrument and expands one’s consciousness in a way that still makes me marvel.

J.C.: I got my first guitar when I was 12 or 13. So I should probably be able to shred by now, but I can’t. Getting better all the time though! Switching to bass would be completely pointless because Linh Le is literally the most rippin’ bass player I’ve ever met. Maybe if a shark bit both of her hands off and she wanted to play lap guitar with her feet…

S: Who are the five greatest bands of all time, in order of supremacy and why?

J.C.: Ohhhh. Well, I have a strong preference for “other” so my list is probably pretty out of line; for ME they would be: The Pixies, Elvis Costello, Sam Cooke, Swingin’ Utters, and Screeching Weasel — and yes, I know that Ben (Screeching Weasel frontman Ben Weasel) punched a girl.

S: At the upcoming CoRK show Interlopers, you are joining forces with fellow artist and boyfriend, Aaron Brown. Is there a theme to this show or is it more a collection of separate, unrelated pieces by each artist? It seems as if Crystal told me that you and Aaron would be collaborating as well. Is this true or did I imagine this?

J.C.: Aaron Brown is the funniest, weirdest person I have ever met and his art exudes exactly that. Our focus while at CoRK is on creating work for Interlopers. I’m here scavenging and building armatures and priming things for a week. Aaron will join me this weekend. We are developing the story of two characters: “The Lady Wrestler” and “The Hunter.” There will be some painting and sculpture on this theme. Interlopers features new work, some of it collaborative, from me and Aaron. We are exploring the relationship between two characters. Expect to see some diorama, painting, sculpture, and maybe some drawing. In addition, we each shipped some small pre-existing works to show separately; sculptures and diorama that are priced to move! HA! (But really— priced to move; we don’t want to ship things back.)

S: You have done work, and continue to work, as an animator, painter, sculptor, illustrator, and muralist. Would you consider becoming an arts educator? What would you like to accomplish in the next decade? Do you set those kinds of finite goals or do you just work on the task at hand and let that dictate the next move?

J.C.: Actually, I originally wanted to teach art. While I was in grad school I did, but was probably not ready for that; maybe later. Confidence is a huge factor as a teacher. It’s also hard to say “no” to the fruit of peoples’ creative labor. If I teach again, I’d like it to be outside of academia.

My goals are loose and wide open. In this, I have been rewarded with the opportunity to try and learn a lot of different things. It’s all relevant. It all makes you a better artist and a better person. Lots of young artists talk to me about their disinterest in peripheral opportunity (actually they say “That’s just not what I want to be doing. I just know that it’s not what I want to do.”) That’s a huge missed opportunity and a shame to make that mistake. Being closed minded when you’re young is a waste. Wait until your knees don’t work to pass on an adventure.

Top and Below: Two pieces by Aaron Brown for Interlopers; title, media, and dimensions unknown.

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Krishna Das offers locals a “chants” encounter with a night of devotional music

Song, spirituality, and celebration converge in the concerts of Krishna Das.In the past two decades, Krishna Das has been leading crowds around the world in kirtans, a call-and-response experience that is one part religious revival and one part cosmic sing-along. Accompanied by simple instrumentation, Krishna Das (or as his fans call him, KD) begins a chant and the crowd then responds in kind. While KD is the undeniable flashpoint of his kirtans, the collective joy and energy of the attending audience soon detonates the experience into one of melodic and mystical unity. KD’s repertoire ranges from “Hare Krishna” to “Amazing Grace,” merging the Ganges River with the Mississippi Delta over a drone of harmonium and the echoing chorus of the crowd.

The artist formerly known as Jeffrey Kagel adopted the name Krishna Das (literally, “Servant of Krishna”) after encountering Neem Karoli Baba in the early seventies in the foothills of the Himalayas. Simply known as Maharaj-ji to his followers, in 1973 KD’s beloved guru left the body but his teachings altered the lives of a myriad of fellow seekers including Ram Dass, Seva Foundation founder Dr. Larry Brilliant, and Stephen Levine. In a weird Hollywood moment, actress Julia Roberts became a devotee of Maharaj-ji. While on location in India, Roberts adopted Maharaj-ji as her spiritual guide after seeing his photograph during the production of the 2010 film, Eat Pray Love.

The Grammy-nominated KD has released a stream of well-received albums and has worked with fellow musicians including Rick Rubin, Sting, The Beastie Boys Mike D., and Walter Becker of Steely Dan.

KD’s 2010 memoir, Chants of a Lifetime: Searching for a Heart of Gold, is surely one of the better titles that have flooded the New Age/Spirituality market in the past two decades. The book’s strengths come from KD’s candid sharing of his experiences woven into his non-bullshit and practical views towards spirituality. Cringing from any sage-like limelight, if KD has a recurring teaching it is one based on humility, surrender, and the ineffable power of music.

I interviewed Krishna Das on March 13 via telephone while sitting in my car during my lunch break, terrified. Folio Weekly was kind enough to accept my pitch and publish the story which can be read here. However, due to the reality of the word count, only a fraction of our conversation was published. What follows is the rest of our talk. I am grateful for Krishna Das’ time, patience, and humor in answering my rambling questions.

Bliss Yoga, Midnight Sun, Yoga Den, and Yoga Mix joined forces to present “An Evening of Sacred Sound: Kirtan with Krishna Das” at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 4 at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum, 101 W. 1st Street, in Springfield. Advance tickets are $30 and are available at krishnadas.com. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $40 (cash only). 514-0097.

Starehouse: Hey, Krishna Das.

Krishna Das: That’s me (laughs).

S: Can I call you KD or would you prefer Baba or Master (laughs)?

K.D.: KD is fine, Master would just freak me out (laughing).

S: I wanna apologize in advance. You see, I wrote these questions originally for an e-mail interview and they are really long. So if you feel like you are taking the SATs, please forgive me.

K.D.: That’s fine. All is forgiven (laughs). Fire away.

S: Ok. I’ll jump right in. While you are perhaps best known for focusing on Hindu, or at least Eastern-driven, chants and songs in both their lyrics and instrumentation, with your latest album, Kirtan Wallah, you really added some more Western touches in both a greater use of American instrument and the songs i.e. the blending of East/West with “Sri Argala Stotram (Selected Verses) / Show Me Love”. What compelled you to move in this direction for your newest record?

K.D.: It’s something that I’ve been doing for a long time really (…) you kind of go into this space with music and chanting where stuff will come through. I was just playing a new melody over and over again and from somewhere deep in my unconsciousness that song came up and I just started singing it. And I went oh, that’s nice. I think. Don’t give me too much credit, alright? (laughs) But I’ve always tried to use some Western instruments with my music.

S: I think you will dig the venue that you will be performing at here in Jacksonville. The Karpeles was a Christian Science church in the late 19^th-Century and just has incredible vibes and acoustics.

K.D.: Cool.

S: So how long have you been chanting and leading kirtans?

K.D.: I started singing with people in ’94, which is 21 years since I came back from India.

S: So look – I’m out of music questions. The rest of my questions are pretty much about God and your journey with God. Is that alright with you?

K.D.: (laughs) Yeah.

S: In Chants of a Lifetime, you explain that you believe even as a child you were “seeking” something. Do you think this search for wholeness or intimacy with something is a universal human desire? Even though surrender to some spiritual practice is definitely a decision not everyone will make. Do you feel that seekers are born (or reborn) or propelled by circumstances and events in their lives?

K.D.: You know, I was originally going to call my book Memoir of a Failed Life. The idea was that I had failed in my attempts to become someone else, you know? (laughs)

S: Well, that title would have grabbed my attention at the bookstore.

K.D. Me too! (laughs) But getting back to your question, I don’t think those are two separate things. I think being born and reborn is being propelled by circumstance and according to our karmas we land in a particular time, place, and culture, with our particular parents. We have certain experiences in our lives that affect us in certain ways. I don’t believe we show up here with a clean slate, by any means. We are all works in progress. Each life we continue to fine tune our search. But the issue of reincarnation is a very deep and subtle thing to talk about. It’s not something simple. It’s very complicated and very subtle. But I am definitely on that side of the line you could say; I believe that there is some kind of reincarnation.

S: In many instances, particularly with the mystics, it seems that there is a collective precursor to their awakening that is actually born of pain or despair (…) and with Ramana Maharshi it seemed like his awakening began with a kind of near death experience. Why is this an element of spirituality? Some people seem to fall into God.

K.D.: Well I think some recognition of the dissatisfaction and inability of daily life to fulfill us is required. Some suffering is always there. If we ignore it and just keep trying to pile stuff on top of it, that doesn’t work. I think for different people it takes different things to wake them up. With Buddha, all he had to do was see a sick and old person and he said, “What is that?” Because he had been protected from seeing anything that wasn’t beautiful, young, and auspicious (…) so then he snuck out of the palace and he saw real life and that was it. Just one shot and he was gone. So it’s a requirement. Now, you mentioned Ramana Maharshi, however I have to say that in everything I have read, and I have read a lot about him, what you called his “near death experience” was not painful in any way. There was no pain involved. It was a recognition that he existed beyond and without a body. But it wasn’t painful to him at all. That’s another thing, he was so light as a being coming into this life that he didn’t have to experience the kind of suffering that most of us do every day.

S: Man, he got the Express Pass when he was just a teenager. Class dismissed.

K.D.: Well, I think the point is that everybody has experienced everything, or will experience everything, in the course of their journey. Some beings are older I guess and some beings are younger (…) you know, it’s inexplicable. For instance, they say there is ultimate reality and relative reality. Right?

S: Right.

K.D.: When you are at the level of relative reality, you are in the forest and all you can see is trees, right? But when you are on the level of ultimate reality, you are above the forest and can see above the trees and beyond the forest. So you have a different context for everything that happens to you. So like many of us, Ramana Maharshi was in relative reality as a boy. But as soon as he entered ultimate reality, there was a complete reversal, so to speak. As far as the storylines go, in relative reality it seems like a level of suffering is needed to wake us up.

S: Do you feel like what you call seeing “beyond the forest” is realization of the ultimate reality, what The Upanishads and the Gita would call Brahman?

K.D.: Possibly. Even though I have been in India for half of my life, all of these words can be – and are – defined differently. They are defined differently by certain sects and philosophies. Brahman for one person is not Brahman for another person. It’s tricky. But it’s a great trick (laughs).

S: Philip Goldberg’s American Veda really provides an eloquent and concise account of how Hinduism organically enmeshed itself into American culture. In fact, his book makes it sound inevitable. Why do you think our spiritual light bulb changed from 40-watt to 60-watt?

K.D.: Well, my guru never made us Hindus or initiated us. But in Hinduism, I found a tremendous wealth of joy and substance. But I also find that in Buddhism, Sufism and in Jesus Christ, although not necessarily in what is considered Christianity. I think when we came into contact with the so-called “Mystical East,” it seemed to have a much more inclusive context of why we are alive and what we should be doing with our lives. It just hits you strongly. There are people living a different way on this planet who are not just watching TV, drinking beer, and then dying. There’s a whole other thing going.

S: In your autobiography, Memoir of a Failed Life …

K.D.: (laughs) Right!

S: …you describe with great candor how you wandered away from your spiritual practice and into darker terrain. You eventually re-surrendered. That being said, my question to you is this: since then, when you have walked through momentary darkness or experienced a crisis in faith, how do you move forward?

K.D.: There are two things; first of all, if you’re doing some kind of regular practice, whatever that means to you, what happens over time is that you spend less and less time in negative states of mind. You may not notice that. It’s very difficult to notice. When you feel negative, part of the strength of negativity is you believe that it is going to last forever. When you are not in that state, you are just “being” and you might not even notice that you’re not in that deep, horrible place. Over time those karmic states arrive less and less; they don’t last as long and take you as deeply into the darkness. The work you do every day has a tremendous effect on your daily life.

S: But when they happen in your daily life, what can you do?

K.D.: Well, when you are feeling these feelings and trying to practice whatever you do spiritually, you’re making a very big statement: “This is not who I am. I am experiencing this and it is unpleasant.” When trying to meditate or chant or whatever you do, you are saying, “this is not who I am and I want out.” But again, it’s not necessarily going to happen right away. But sooner or later, it blows away. You don’t know why it came; you don’t know why it went. The way we live everyday has a lot to do with what comes through into our daily lives. You know, another thing that Ramana Maharshi said, which is a very difficult thing to understand (…) he said that everything that’s going to happen to us is written from the day we are born. And the only freedom we have is how we meet each moment; where we are in our consciousness as each moment in our life arises and falls away. This is our only freedom. We have no option over what is going to happen: if the tree is going to fall on our house, if somebody is going to hit our car. This is out of our power. But where we do have a choice, where we do have freedom and options, is where our consciousness is at the moment. How we are living each moment? Are we just completely asleep, moving from one stupid reaction to the next? Or are we trying to remember in some way? Are we making that kind of effort to be in the presence and in the silence within ourselves. So the more you are making those efforts the less those things have the power to overtake us.

S: So it’s really just about “showing up”?

K.D.: Showing up is the whole deal.

S: Do you do a daily meditation practice?

K.D.: Yeah.

S: What do you do?

K.D.: I do all kinds of things. I do Samatha, which is based on concentration and watching the breath. Sometimes I do that with mantra or chanting. I chant the Hanuman Chalisa every day. I do those kinds of things every day. They ain’t fucking working, but I’m doing them (laughs). Do you have a practice?

S: Yeah. Every morning I pray and then meditate.

K.D.: What meditation practice?

S: I did TM for a minute but I felt “tethered” if that makes sense.

K.D.: Absolutely. I’ve felt tethered to practices.

S: So now I practice my “God-Infused” form of Vipassana. I just believe that the “observer” of my thoughts is God.

K.D.: (laughs) That works, too!

S: I would probably be a Buddhist, but I am certain there is a God. I mean, not in a dickhead and self-righteous kind of way.

K.D.: Listen, what you said is interesting. You see, Buddhists don’t say that there’s not a God; theoretically. Buddha never said there wasn’t a God. He just didn’t answer the question.

S: Yeah. For me Buddhism can be as confusing and fragmented as Christianity. There’s so much going on.

K.D.: Oh yeah, forget it. It’s way beyond (…) oh God, it’s unbelievable. Buddha was dealing with right now. He didn’t ask you to believe anything. And true religion, or any religion that is going to work, asks you to believe in something on blind faith. They ask you to try it out and see if it works. In Christianity, you have to believe that Jesus died and went into heaven; which is the resurrection. If you don’t believe in the resurrection, you really can’t consider yourself a Christian (…) at least according to orthodox Christianity. Personally I believe that Christ is an avatar and is God, just like Krishna, Hanuman, and Ram and all of the rest are God. But I personally don’t think many Christians understand what that means.

S: I believe that Gnosticism is just flat-out Vedanta from the Egyptian desert. But then if you believe in that you wind up a heretic once again.

K.D.: Yeah (laughing) once again.

S: Sri Rama Tirtha delivered one of my favorite God one-liners: “A God defined is a God confined.” And in my own life, I belief this to be true; it’s a shifting occurrence. Yet in hindsight the experiences seem like they are all simply synonymous manifestations of the same deal.

K.D.: Yes and that’s true with all of it. Even with chanting and mantra, for instance. Maharaj-ji used to say, “Go ahead, sing your lying, false, ‘Ram Ram Ram’ — one of these days you will say it right once.” (laughs) And in the same way, Jewish people say that you cannot say the name of God; because God is beyond any form. But the Hindus also say that the name of God and God are not different. And through the repetition of the name, you move yourself towards that place in your own being. Where God is; which is your own true nature. So they are a little bit more forgiving about stupidity than some of the other religious traditions.

S: In your memoir, you offer the following: “Devotion is a disease we catch from those who are already infected with it…I pray that it is terminal.” How do you suggest fellow seekers remain sick with God? What’s the prescription to remain ill with The Supreme Lord?

K.D.: Well the thing is, the longing is the infection. If you have that longing, it is all you need. There’s nothing else you need to do. You just need to be with that longing and recognize that longing. Embrace it and follow where it takes you.

Maharaj-ji and Krishna Das; 1971 (Photo by Chaitanya).

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

I finally finished reading William Hjortsberg’s “Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan.” It is surely the most exhaustive (and exhausting) biography ever written about Richard Brautigan and one of the most brutal pieces of literary hagiography my eyes have ever peeped upon. Since undertaking this task, maybe late last winter, I wound up reading many books while “inside” of this book. This was probably inevitable because I am easily distracted – oh, listen to that washing machine whirl away! – but it was also a much-needed form of therapy as “Jubilee” was a colossal undertaking and I needed some “breather reads” to reserve my concentration; for lo, I am a burnout. The size of a miniature phone book, “Jubilee Hitchhiker” weighs around 4.5 pounds and measures approximately 10” x 7” x 2.” When I was in the earliest days of reading it, the book felt so heavy, that, as I was lying in bed with the giant paperback on my chest, it was crushing my sternum. I would have to roll on my side to breath and then roll again on my back to keep reading. It was a physical commitment.
Admittedly, I have posted many Brautigan quips/posts on a memoir piece here and on Facebook, where I have swooned on and on about my pre-adolescent discovery of his writing; a revelation that is radical at twelve yet quite-possibly-embarrassing-and-mawkish at 42. Oh well. Of course, stumbling upon someone like Brautigan when you are a confused kid is about as original as a sunburn or chickenpox. But that doesn’t make that long ago experience any less resonant for me.
Brautigan is surely best known for his 1967 book, “Trout Fishing in America,” and is mistaken for being a “hippie writer,” even though he was really a part of the Beat-era scene. During the San Francisco psychedelic heyday, Brautigan dodged the incoming horde of hippies and instead aligned himself with the “everything should be free” street socialism of Emmett Grogan and the hoodlums-turned-Robin-Hoods known as The Diggers. Brautigan hated sixties drug use (although he drank like a, uh, fish), and abhorred the mandatory and sometimes-aimlessly stoned defiance of the middle class flower children who apparently sidestepped the brutal poverty he had endured as a child. Brautigan’s lifelong obsession with fishing stemmed from the fact that it was one of the ways he avoided starvation when he was a boy.
His childhood in Oregon was populated with a series of stepfathers, some loving, others abusive. One of them, a short order cook, was left to watch his blond-headed stepson but needed to go to work. His solution? He tied the-then-four-year-old Brautigan to a bedpost with a length of rope. Years later, Brautigan recalled that he had just enough slack to walk to the bathroom, and, most importantly, stare out the window at the street below. Brautigan spent half his youth roaming the woods with fishing rod in hand; the other half was devoted to reading and trying to figure out how to write.
Increasingly moody and erratic, in his early adulthood he threw a brick through a police station window, a senseless act that landed him in a state mental hospital where he was rewarded with a series of electro-shock treatments. Brautigan eventually scrambled down to San Francisco. In the course of a decade, he honed his writing skills and established himself in that literary and bohemian scene.
For all of his eccentricities, Brautigan was a disciplined writer and spent long hours narrowing down his poems, stories, and novels into tightly edited works. After the publication of “Trout Fishing,” he enjoyed an immediate success that went directly to his head and liver. His drinking increased as did his sense of self-importance, two factors that would seemingly destroy him.
From the beginning of the tale, Brautigan comes across as being hard-wired from birth and totally programmed for a life of complete awkwardness. Maybe spending so much time alone as a youth simply spilled over into his inability to be around other people; he had little, if any, socialization skills. An undercurrent of loneliness, paranoia, and eventual misanthropy seemed to direct his every move and possibly explains his ability to capture such somber and poignant realizations about life, particularly in his short stories. Brautigan was, if nothing else, a master of exploring the sensorial and interior experience of being alone. He was a keen observer since he failed in participation.
Regardless of his questionable approach to relationships — a cadre of lovers and “best friends” suddenly arrive in the narrative and are dismissed just as quickly, moving to the “enemy” column of the page — he attracted a fascinating group of acquaintances that reads like a roster of twentieth century creative types and fellow loose screws. This list includes (in no particular order): Thomas and Becky McGuane, Robert and Bobbie Creeley, Lenore Kandel, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Rip Torn, Bruce Conner, The Hell’s Angels, Russell Chatham, a handful of contemporary Japanese novelists I am completely unfamiliar with, various publishing figures from that era, Allen Ginsberg, Jeff Bridges, Peter Fonda, Philip Whalen, Sam Peckinpah…just a stream of unrelated cameos that zip in and out of Brautigan’s life. By the end of the book, Brautigan was severing ties with everyone. Many later paragraphs end with: “After they met in ___, this was this last time ___ would ever see Brautigan.”
Alcoholism was a constant companion. Calvados and bourbon are served up straight and drench nearly every page. Some of Brautigan’s drunken hijinks were based on Dadaist playfulness, like toting around a paper-mache bird called Willard; others, including leveling a shotgun at a hapless Wim Wenders, are downright horrifying. While the quarts of whiskey never seemed to diminish Brautigan’s writing, the booze surely helped transform him into one ornery sonofabitch and delusional egomaniac.
During the late seventies and early eighties, Brautigan’s arc as a literary star plummeted but he continued to write albeit with bizarre results. An obsessive scribbler in journals, Brautigan would document the world around him, sometimes in his brief poems, at other times writing out the minutiae of the items populating his hotel rooms. A magazine assignment about super models in Japan became the 179 stream-of-consciousness-screed, “The Fate of a West German Model in Tokyo.” It remains unpublished. A treatment for a surreal television pilot, titled “Timber Wolves,” precedes David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” by fifteen years for what would have surely been the most fucked up thing ever aired on the small screen.
Brautigan punctuated his life with a shotgun blast in his home in Bolinas, California. The house was rumored to be haunted by the ghost by a young Chinese girl so she might have acquired an unwanted guest. Hjortsberg actually begins the book with the mop up and aftermath of the 49-year-old writer’s suicide, so for the uninitiated this becomes the ultimate spoiler alert as to the unavoidable path of “Jubilee.”
In a journal entry written near the end of his life, Brautigan acknowledged, “My chief character flaws have been alcoholism, insomnia, and eternal desire.” Whether this was a moment of humble clarity or a justification for decades of daredevil writing jags, enigmatic observations about reality, and crashing mood swings is probably on the shoulders of the reader.
I have read other reminiscences and works about Brautigan, some penned by friends, others by scholars. His daughter Ianthe Brautigan’s memoir, “You Can’t Catch Death,” is surely both a heartfelt and disturbing remembrance and the best place to start. While Brautigan is surely a heroic figure in my own pantheon of nutty people, I knocked him off the pedestal years ago. I’m too agitated for prolonged worship. Hjortsberg’s book reminds me why I held him in such grand regard as well as the subsequent removal of the crotchety author from my shrine. Without question, I still think Brautigan is one of the greatest short story writers of the 20th century and invented a style that is hermetically-sealed; to write like Brautigan draws an instant comparison to him. Which might be another sort of epitaph and possible finish line for his drunken, sleepless, “eternal desire” to find rest.
His influence is great enough that I have written three previous book reviews, all of them published, yet felt compelled to write this fourth “review” in a mad, hurried dash for no apparent reason other than to maybe brag that I finished reading this gargantuan fucking book.

Daniel A Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Songwriter Frank Lindamood keeps moving forward by traveling along the roots of old time American music

(Frank Lindamood performing at the Florida Folk Festival. All photos by Erica La Spada.)

Located roughly 50 miles south of Tallahassee, Florida sits the town of Sopchoppy. Embedded in the ancient expanse of the Apalachicola National Forest, cursory research on Sopchoppy reveals that the population tops out at around 400. The place is also known for something called the Worm Grunting Festival, a kind of celebration based on divining worms from the ground. Between the surrounding forest and seclusion, lack of other humans, and an ongoing vestigial, possibly pagan rite exulting annelids, Sopchoppy sounds like my kind of place. The fact that it’s also the longtime home of one of the surely best regional folk-songwriters in the Southeast only sweetens the deal. It’s also the current home of Frank Lindamood.

For most people, Lindamood’s name won’t appear in the pop cultural canon or the blinding, distracted social media feed.Hell, he’s probably not a celebrity in Sopchoppy. But Lindamood is undoubtedly one of the most enigmatic, and original, songwriters working in what could be described as the contemporary folk scene.

My girlfriend, Erica, first introduced me to Lindamood’s music three or four years ago. She gave me little if any preamble before hitting play on her iPod, other than that the guy’s music was pretty damn intense and was somehow tied in to “Florida Folk.” Admittedly, my genetic level of knee-jerk cynicism was steeled for the sound of some wavering voice commemorating an unforgettable mid-‘70s coastal sunset or a baleful threnody about our lack of recycling. Instead, I was met by the sound of a rolling steel guitar, all esoteric chords rippling across minor keys, and a deep, almost-baritone voice recounting stories of murder, loss, and spiritual themes that were more dark night of the soul than days of holy glory.

If Lindamood has a musical lineage, it is surely in the moody ancestry of Skip James or Robert Pete Williams, mysterious bluesmen who might sing to you about the crossroads but sure as hell weren’t going to show you the way. Equally adept on banjo as he is guitar, Lindamood’s three-finger style maintains the same kind of hypnotic menace as Dock Boggs, devoted to a roiling propulsion of the lyrics and in service to the song, with no side tours into showboat, bluegrass virtuosity.

In 2013, Erica took me to the Florida Folk Festival out in White Springs for the first time. She had been a longtime repeat customer but I can’t say if I’d ever really heard of the thing. Since 1953, this annual event has turned Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park into a kind of Memorial Day Weekend shrine for lovers of regional folk music, Florida folklore, crafts, soul food, and things all in between. Spontaneous jams prevail. There have been times where I would stop to catch some shade under a tree or simply light a cigarette and suddenly a guitar and banjo would fire up beside me, as two possible-strangers would break out into song. It is an environment where the type of DIY punk ethos promoting performer/audience blurs supreme. The demographic runs from old timers and families to hippie survivors and crafts-vendor types. There’s a high propensity for wearing bib overalls, always a plus for my Kentucky heritage. And this is the place where I first saw Frank Lindamood play.

Dressed in a work shirt and pants, hat brim pulled down over his eyes, Lindamood stood at the side of the stage, watching the current group play. When they were done, he set up his instruments quickly, and laid into it. I wouldn’t go as far as to say as being mesmerized – but I was convinced. In the past two years since, Lindamood remains our priority to see first once we walk through the gates of the park and into the festival grounds. And my conversion has definitely, at times, been moved to mesmerization.

While the now 67-year-old Lindamood began playing music early in his life, he didn’t release his first album, Hewed from the Rock, (30.26) until 2010. Two years later, he released To Be as Gods. Both albums are on the Gatorbone Records label and both are fairly brief affairs. Each record contains eight tracks, and each album just barely cracks the half hour mark. Well into the 21^st century, where multimedia, promotional bombardment for most artists is generally the rule, not the exception, at the surface Lindamood’s “model for end goals” can seem as inscrutable as his mystical, ruminative dirges.

Four years after To Be as Gods, comes Songs from the OTHER Great American Songbook. A collaboration between Lindamood, Mike Koppy, and Dan Simberloff, along with illustrations by Robert Crumb, Songs is a 17-track CD-and-book release of some of Lindamood’s favorite earliest American songs, with accompanying essays where he delves into the songs’ histories and explains his attendant fascination with what he calls, “old time music.”

While Erica and I had made small talk with Lindamood in the previous years, at last year’s festival I approached him and wondered if he’d be interested in doing an interview for my blog. He agreed and handed me his card with all of his contact info. A year goes by, and within less than a week before the 2016 Florida Folk Fest is about to start, I frantically – and manically – stagger into action. Thankfully, with the direct (and quick!) help of Grant Peeples and Donna Mavity, I tracked Lindamood down and he had a nice, rambling 90-minute talk. What follows is a transcription of most of our conversation.

Starehouse: You know, last year at the festival I spoke to you I had kind of said, “Hey man, I want to interview for my arts blog.” And so, typically, a year goes by and I wait like five days before this year’s festival. But thanks for agreeing to this. And I’m glad I found you. Your website and liner notes for Hewed from the Rock, explain that you can be reached by telegraph to the Western Union office nearest Sopchoppy, Florida. You had given me your phone number but it was disconnected. So I was literally going do that [laughs] – and then I discovered that Western Union ended their telegraph service more than 10 years ago.

Frank Lindamood: Yeah, that’s one of the great tragedies of my life: that you can’t get a telegraph [laughs]. I long for the days of the little guy riding up on a bicycle with the message in his hand.

That’s a bygone era; like “email 1961.” I’m curious. You know, I’ve lived here in Florida for the better part of 36 of my 44 years, but I’ve never heard of your current home of Sopchoppy. Did you kind of “move there” or “wind up” there? You know what I mean?

I made an effort to move here at one point. I’m a native of Jacksonville.

Are you really?

Yes. I graduated from Forrest High School [originally named Nathan B. Forrest High School, in 2014 the school’s name was changed to Westside High School]. I was in the original class at Forrest High School. There were originally grades 7-12 and I went to school there in the seventh grade. Then by the next year they had a junior high they’d just opened up, and of course they named that after yet another Confederate officer named Jeb Stuart [laughs]. He had the distinction of, unlike Forrest, not being a wizard of the Klan [laughs]. Sometime when you have the time though, read about Forrest. He’s an amazing character. At the very end of his life, he became one of the most progressive people of the South. It’s very bizarre.

Maybe he had that “Amazing Grace” moment, you know?

Yeah, he did. I think the “moment” was four years in the saddle, fighting the Union army. That was the beginning of it, anyway. But anyhow, I left there in ’66 and went to Tallahassee to go to school. I was at the ripe old age of 17 and then I never left this area, because I saw so many bad changes in Jacksonville.

What kind of changes? Like resistance to integration and Civil Rights?

No, not really that. I lived in an area originally called Wesconnett and then we moved to Jacksonville Heights, which is over near Cecil Field. I mean, there were people bustin’ up stills almost in our backyard, after we moved over there, abandoning cars…I never had a problem with none of those guys, I went to school with a lot of them.

So what year did you graduate again, ’66?

Yes.

So were you around playing music at this point?

I’d just started a year or so before that. My father played and from the time I was a little kid I’d heard him play and I was very impressed by what he could do with a guitar. And he sang and played a lot of those old Carter Family tunes. He’s from West Virginia, you see. And that’s what got me really interested, and at a certain point in my life I said, “I can do this.” And I tried it when I was about 16. It took me a while but I got to where I could play harmonica and guitar a bit, and the banjo.

Yeah. So were seeing bands in Jacksonville back then? I know like Duane and Gregg Allman were playing around here as the Allman Joys. There was a pretty decent scene of young bands playing around here. Were you checking out any rock stuff back then?

I wasn’t interested in rock and roll and I didn’t do anything during my high school years but go hunt and fish around my Daddy’s place. I’d come home and get off the bus, put on my hunting and fishing clothes, and I’d do that until it got dark.

Well, that’s probably a healthy extracurricular activity for a teenager.

Well, we went out and raised a little hell on the weekends, but you know, out of my crowd there were only one or two guys that ever drank. The rest of us were drinking soda pop and doing crazy shit. But we were really kind of innocent, in a sense. We didn’t get into any kind of trouble like kids do now [laughs]. There were no drugs to speak of. Every once and awhile some young girl would get knocked up and have to get married. Because that’s what happened in those days; if a girl got knocked up she pretty much had to get married. But that was a freakish thing. That was almost unheard of.

So why did you head out to FSU? What were you looking to do?

I was going to go into chemistry and they had a very good chemistry program and also I’d been to Gainesville in ’65 at the National Science Fair Summer Camp. There were like 30 of us, and each one of us worked with a professor; I worked with a guy who was an air pollution guy. But at any rate, I really loved Gainesville. But most of my friends were going to FSU, and there were a lot more girls there. Gainesville was 3-to-1 male then; and whereas FSU was actually more women than men at that time.

Easy math for a young dude — you were somewhat guided by a different kind of science: biology.

Yes [laughs]. But chemistry was very strong there.

So did you complete the degree?

No, I went undecided. But I went into chemistry lab and that pretty much turned me off from me. I went into physics. So yeah, I got my actual degree in physics. And then I went from there right into construction work [laughs]. You know, I was married and had a kid on the way. I needed to work and make some money. So grad school was not an option.

I guess it was hard to find a physicist gig in Tallahassee, Florida in 1970.

No, I got an offer to go up to Pennsylvania and do one [graduate studies] but I just didn’t really want to do it. I probably should have.

I gotcha. And that was the end of your science career, once you started a family?

Pretty much. The only time I ever used that degree in the forty-some-odd years I was working, was at the health department for a year in Wakulla County. They required a degree in some science. It didn’t have to be physics; they preferred biology or environmental studies. But that was it. The rest of the time it was construction work and I worked in the theatre for many years.

I know you were bustin’ you ass in school, but were you playing in Tallahassee as well? Were you already performing live at that point?

Yeah. I found people to play music with while I was an undergraduate. We went to the Florida Folk Festival, or White Springs. We called it White Springs in those days and we really had a good time.

So what was the first year you went to the fest?

I think it was ’67. It might’ve been ’68. And I had a very wonderful experience. I think it was sort of a prophetic thing in a sense. Gamble Rogers and Paul Champion were playing on stage. They were both pretty young then, too. And they were just tearin’ it up. They were two of the best I’d ever heard. And I wanted to play with them but I knew I couldn’t go up on stage, so I kind of sat off by the side and I had a harmonica I played this kind of pseudo-Charlie-McCoy harmonica. And they heard me and called me up on the stage. I mean, I was a good ways off. I didn’t really want them to hear me [laughs]; I was just trying to play along. They called me up and I played three songs with them onstage. I couldn’t believe it, because I didn’t really know anything.

How did that feel? Did you just try to stay in the moment and not freak out?

No, you know I really connected with those guys. I knew that I was in over my head. And they were very kind and they wanted somebody to play harmonica. And I also knew when it was time to get off the stage. Somehow I knew. They didn’t say, “Okay boy, that’s enough out of you.” It wasn’t like that at all. And I remember thinking, “These must be two of the nicest guys in the world.” Because here they were two of the most terrific musicians I’d ever heard and they were kind to me. And I knew I didn’t belong on the stage with them. That was sort of the standard to me, of what this music is all about: people like them that are so great, and so down to earth. It’s just like Ella Fitzgerald. I worked at the Ruby Diamond [concert hall at FSU] for 12 years as a lighting and soundman. I worked with all kinds of people in there. And the people like Ella Fitzgerald and Hal Holbrook were like the kindest people in the world. No ego at all, because they didn’t have to prove anything. They were the best there was.

Yeah, it’s surely a lack of insecurity towards your art. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone because you can back it up. I think a lot of phonies rise out of that kind greasy ego at play.

Absolutely.

I want to talk some more about Gamble, too, and I think he was indicative of this. Folk music is truly a “strong” genre music, in the same way as delta blues or traditional jazz, but the folk scene seems like it’s surely based on two things: its inclusive…you know, the jam session. Like what happened with you and Gamble and Champion. And secondly, it’s always acknowledging the past. Today, not too many people would have the balls to walk onstage and play a Skip James song and claim it as their own. It seems like folk music is perpetually reinforcing the lineage, and that very same, ongoing reverence protects its survival. You know what I mean? And pop music has never done this, and never will, because they don’t give a shit. And the music remains shit.

Absolutely. Folk music is almost by definition “non-exploitive.”

But people do get their careers of out folk, especially with this stupid Americana tag; a term that just infuriates me. Among other songwriters and roots-conscious players, I’ve interviewed Dan Hicks and Jorma Kaukonen and asked about their feelings about this, and now you. Those two seemed indifferent or bemused by the tag, although Hicks conceded that maybe he had finally found a category [laughs]. But I need to let this Americana anger go [laughs]. But it just grates on my nerves with. Americana could be everything from Bo Carter to the Holy Modal Rounders to Fred Neil to Karen Dalton…I mean, it’s ultimately insulting to the artists; I think it compartmentalizes as much as it’s dismissive. It’s a marketing thing: “They’ve got a mandolin? It’s Americana.” Folk music is traditional, not sequestered. Americana is killing folk music more than it’s curating.

[Laughs]. No argument here. I hate the Americana label, too, because it sounds like a style of furniture. [Laughs]. It sounds like something a sophisticated yuppie might buy to put some downhome quality in their house. “We’re going Americana this year.”

All right – rant over [laughs]. Sorry. But I’m kind of relieved we’re on the same page [laughs]. But you you’ve been doing this for decades, so my overly rambling question [laughs] is – do you still get the sense of that egalitarian, “bring your guitar with you” vibe with folk music?

I still very much do. I’ll give you an example of that. The thing about the old music is that it’s timeless. We call it “old time” but it’s really timeless music. This new release I worked on with Mike Koppy, and Dan Simberloff who wrote the foreword, is called Songs from the OTHER Great American Songbook. The book deals with this and the three of us touch upon this idea that we have to go back. Koppy makes some very distinct and almost-abrasive statements about Tin Pan Alley and how they exploited old folk music and rip it off. A lot of guys have stolen those songs, done pretty bad versions of them, made a lot of money off them, and won’t even acknowledge that it was somebody like Robert Wilkins and Skip James that wrote the damn song. And among what I call the songwriters; and I don’t like the term singer-songwriters. That’s another label I can’t stand – it’s cumbersome. I’ll tell you another funny story about that from a guy named Jack Williams, you may have heard of, here’s a terrific player and performer out of South Carolina. But in 2011, I was playing for this 30A thing [30A Songwriters Festival in South Walton, Florida], in all of those ritzy, hotsy-totsy, so-called beach communities from Panama City and all the way over to Destin and that area. And I was asked to play with three other guys, and we’re all about the same age, and one of them, Effron White, had won the 2011 Billboard contest for best song. So we did our round, we did about four songs each. And when I got done, I went to meet my son who’d come to visit me, and we’re having supper. And Effron came up to me and started talking to me. He said, “Man, I’m really glad that I got to hear you and play up there with you, you’ve got some great songs.” And I said, “So do you, man. That one that won the contest? That’s a terrific song.” He said, “Listen if you’d been in that contest you would’ve won that contest.” And that’s how these songwriters generally are. I don’t know if he has any insecurity, I sure didn’t sense it about him, but he’s not a big star, he’s not a big name. But I think that’s how great songwriters generally are. They’re not defensive; they’re not guarded about their work. There’s no jealousy of other people’s success. I don’t see much of that in this scene. That’s one of things I really like about it.

Yeah, I think that’s somehow a common quality of, for lack of a better word, legitimate artists. Like we touched on earlier. Any doubts, and we all have them, are kind of dissolved in the process of making the work.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Tell me some more about this Songs from the OTHER Great American Songbook.

Well, Michael wanted to originally call it The Real American Songbook. I thought that was a pretty good title but then Lis Williamson pointed out to me that it was sort of an affront to the Great American Songbook. And jazz players always go to that book.

Yeah, kind of like The Fake Book – with all those standards and chord changes.

Yeah. And I have a tremendous respect for those guys: Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, etc. Some of those guys wrote Tin Pan Alley stuff but they also wrote some really great music. And I didn’t want to begin with the first thing you see is the title that could be almost an insult. So we changed it to Songs from the OTHER Great American Songbook. And that title really explains it since we’re talking about stuff that, for the most part, is not written down and often doesn’t have a pedigree; or something like “Goodnight, Irene,” whose background is pretty murky, and the guy who made it famous was a three-time convicted felon [laughs].

Yeah, Leadbelly was probably considered one of the original outlaw artists.

Yeah [laughs], but also a true American musical genius. Dan Simberloff sent me this thing just a few months ago. The Wall Street Journal did a tribute to Leadbelly. And there was a statement from, I believe it was John Lennon, which essentially said: “No Leadbelly, no Beatles.” And I do think the Beatles, out of many of the rock bands, did pay homage to people. I really respect those guys. Chuck Berry, Elvis…and they credited Leadbelly. I think he was one of the first great rock and rollers.

So along with Leadbelly, how many artists or songs in total are on this new release?

There are 17 songs.

And is that 17 artists as well, one artist per song?

Yes. Now there are songs that have been done by the same artists. In other words, Doc Watson’s probably done four or five songs out of that group. And Doc’s a real authentic folk guy, probably one of the best. But all in all, the versions that I drew from, or that I referred to, are generally one particular artist. Now some songs, like “Old Paint,” I didn’t pick an artist at all. I just love the song; it’s an old cowboy song. Well, “Goodnight, Irene,” apparently there’s a song written very much like it around the turn of the century by Gussie Davis. But Leadbelly put his indelible stamp on his songs. And I have to say he wrote them. I can’t say it any other way.

So who are some of the other artists on this that you think are notable?

Well, for instance with “Lonesome Road Blues,” my father was the guy I first heard play it. The definitive version is probably Woody Guthrie. The song called “The Year of Jubilo,” which is about emancipation, the only person I’ve ever actually heard play it has been at sessions; I’ve never heard a recording of it, except I paid tribute to the guy who wrote it: Henry Clay Work. “Old Abe,” which is another song, that is based on the tune, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” but the words are totally different. It apparently came from soldiers from east Tennessee who, more or less defected from Tennessee, and joined the Union army, and it was passed down through a great folk artist named Frank Proffitt.

And you somehow got R. Crumb illustrations for this thing. That’s pretty damn impressive. How did that all come about?

Very interesting story. The illustrations are from his deck of cards [Heroes of the Blues Trading Cards]. And he did, I believe 52. But here’s how we got permission to use them. I’ve played music with Dan Simberloff since I was a sophomore in college. He is, I believe, the foremost ecologist in the world. But Dan is a serious student of old time music. He was there in Greenwich Village when all hell broke loose and they had the “great folk scare” and all that. And he played with Doc Watson from time to time and with Bill Monroe here and there. Anyway, he was in France on sabbatical, in Montpellier, I believe. And he was trying to find someone to play old time music with. Well, someone connected him with Crumb, who plays old time music just as good as anybody could.

Yeah, man. R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders.

[Laughs]. Yeah, that’s the guys, man. So R. Crumb was near enough, where Dan called him and said, “Hey man, I wanna play some music with you…I play old time music, I play some guitar, mandolin.” And Crumb said, “Well man, come on up.” And Dan said they really had a lot of fun. And he knows about a million songs, and every song he played, Crumb could play really strong accompaniment. So when we started doing this album thing, I’d told Michael this Crumb story and he said, “You know, why don’t you get Dan to contact Crumb and see if we can use some of his pictures?” And a really funny thing happened. Dan finally got through to him. He had to go through his wife, and apparently that’s not so easy.

Yeah, Aline Kominsky. She seems like a real character in her own right.

She’s the manager from hell I guess [laughs]. So Dan finally got through to Crumb and he said, “Hell use anything you want, man. I don’t care.” So Crumb gave us the go ahead to use his illustrations, Michael said “We need to rewrite these essays so we can use more of these Crumb drawings” [Laughs].

Hell yeah. Crumb’s a true blue.

Oh man, he’s great.

In a way, this reminds me of a kind of variation on Harry Smith’s The Anthology of American Folk Music. And Smith is my kind of Americana [laughs]. You know Smith was a follower of Aleister Crowley and the artwork in the Anthology is mired in this esoteric occult and alchemy imagery.

Oh really? Well, I didn’t know all of that [laughs]. That’s kind of wild, man.

Was this release in anyway inspired by Smith’s anthology? Because for many, that Anthology is considered like the main codex for much of this stuff.

No. I would say that the way this thing came about is kind of typical in our, quote “folk process.” Michael Koppy and I toured the West Coast in 2013. We started out in Bellingham, Washington and then wound up in San Diego, and then flew over to Hawaii, where he was living at the time. And when Michael puts a tour together, you play every night. At the end of the tour, one of these young girls he calls his stepdaughters…they’re really daughters of women that he’d dated for a long time. Both of the girls are of African origin. One of them came to visit us for a few days when we were in Hawaii. And then I met his other daughter Keisha, who is living in Dar es Salaam. And Keisha is fluent in English and African dialects. And I had nothing to really do, so I just began playing these old songs for Keisha, as much to maybe let her hear some of these African cultural and musical influences in some of the very oldest American songs. And while I was playing and we were talking, I was saying, “This what the African people created when they had nothing. Nothing.” Africans were denied their own music, denied their own language. We took them from their homes and stripped them of everything. And yet they came here and brought us the banjo and all of this incredible music, and they took our music and made into something else that was, in some ways, greater. And after we finished the tour, Michael said, “We’ve gotta make a record of those songs, man. I didn’t know you knew all of that stuff.” I must’ve played for two hours, none of it originals. He had already made a record called Ashmore’s Store, which centers around a store in Frenchtown, the old black business district in Tallahassee, run by a white guy, from Sopchoppy: Rob Roy Ashmore. And Michael kind of grew up there and Ashmore took him under his wing. It’s case of when you’re a young kid and somebody takes you under their wing and teaches you about life. It’s usually not your mom and dad; it’s really usually somebody else. So Michael released this album, which is just a great collection of really great songs, and he released it with a book, about Ashmore’s Store. So he said, “Let’s do what I did with Ashmore’s Store. Let’s do a book about the music. You record the music and we’ll issue a companion book.”

Yeah, let me touch on that. With these essays, are they as much a historical overview or based more on your own relationship with the tunes?

You know, it’s funny. I started out with the idea that I was just going to write a very brief statement of how I learned the song, what it meant to me, and some of the people, in many cases personal friends of mine, who’d taught me about the song. But it got to a point where I realized that these songs are emblematic of our culture. When I wrote the essay for “Old Paint,” I wrote several pages about the cowboy life. I have a friend named Joe Hutto who’s a working cowboy in Wyoming. And he’s also written three incredible books. And to me, there’s something emblematic about cowboy music. I studied martial arts in Japan for a year, and for me there’s a sense that the cowboy and the samurai are very similar. Except that American heroes are very individualistic, whereas Japanese heroes are generally part of a group. But otherwise, in every other regard, the virtues and the strengths of a cowboy are very much like the virtues and the strengths of a samurai. And I thought that this was a case of how we see how mythology function in a nation. And it works the same way for the Japanese as it does for us. In a slightly different way, but it does the same type of thing. It requires the same sort of cultural structure. And so I often wrote stuff like that. I wrote about the life of Skip James and how was a very complex character, and just a remarkable, pioneering musician.

Yeah, that Stephen Calt book about James [I’d Rather Be the Devil: Skip James and the Blues] is one of my favorite books about any musician. Skip James is my guy. He’s my favorite blues musician.

Yeah, he was a fascinating person. James was a pimp. But he was also a preacher. You know it’s funny, there’s a guy named Vgo – I don’t know if you’ve met him, he plays at White Springs every year – and he knows so much about this old stuff. He’s a little older than I am, and he was a kid up in New York when all of this stuff was breaking loose. And he played music onstage with Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt when they were touring together. He says all of the rumors about those two and of Skip James are not true. Skip James was a very decent and engaging man and he just loved John Hurt. And it’s known that John Hurt was just in awe of Skip James.

Even though in the forty or so decades there’s been a really deep study and appreciation of country blues, I still wonder how much of the actual true history was so “racialized” to the point that now we’ll never really know the true stories of some of these musicians. And nearly all of the histories invariably describe them as being constantly ripped off and brutalized, sometimes even after they were successful.

I touched on this a bit with my essay on Leadbelly. When he was just becoming known to the wider world, there was an article in LIFE magazine, with a color photograph at the time, which was very unusual. I want to say it was 1937 or ’36, I could be wrong. And the title of the article was “Bad N****r Makes Good Minstrel.” I’m not lying – LIFE magazine. And what I wrote was, “then as now, let’s scare people a little bit.” And I pointed out that Leadbelly had gotten himself into some scrapes, and he was not a man to tangle with. But he also knew more children’s songs than he knew jailhouse songs. He was a musical genius. And fortunately, he didn’t get famous from that [LIFE feature] – the whole thing got obscured by WWII and the Depression. But when he came into his own, after the war, there in the folk scene in New York, he was a much more respected man. So his career was not that of some “boogie man.” His legacy has lived way beyond those hateful words of LIFE magazine.

He still is known as much for being this criminal, but hell, I don’t think any of the greatest musicians are always early for choir practice.

[Laughs]. That’s right.

You know, all of these songs on your new album obviously have had a major impact on your life. But I’m curious about this, because I think everyone has some kind of resonant, if not defining, moments in his or her life, at times based on music. But when you were a kid, and it maybe it was something your dad sang, was there a particular song that you heard, and that moment…you know, where it borders on the mystical.

Absolutely. Yeah, there were several things that happened in that early period from the time I started playing when I was 16 or 17. Hell, I started playing a ukulele but at night I would get up when everybody was asleep in the house, and I’ve always been the kind of person who stays up late, and I’d sneak in the den where daddy kept this old Gibson and I would try to play “John Henry” on it. That was a huge thing for me. That was the first song I ever tried to play in a guitar. And I would also take his harmonica and go out in the woods and play it, where nobody could hear me. I’m sure he knew I was doing it. And my father…he was a dark soul, man. Tough guy. If you want to know how I saw him, and the way I see myself, and also my kids to some extent, my song “Stearman” is about him. But he was great as a mentor in music. He never tried to force anything one me. He knew that I loved the old stuff the best, the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers tunes, the early Hank Williams…that’s what I really liked. And he played a lot of that but also might play some pop tune from that time like, “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue.” He told me the story about my great-uncle Chase murdering that man in West Virginia and I thought, “Is this one of this apocryphal family stories, like an urban myth?” And I looked it up on the Internet; yes he did.

Is this “Mr. Graves”?

Yeah, “Mr. Graves.”

I love that tune. That’s one of the ones that hooked me when I first saw you play. That one’s coming straight up from that Dock Boggs lineage, just a stone Murder Ballad.

Oh yeah.

I got that one line written down, because I wanted to touch on this: “I don’t remember drawing that little .32/but I emptied that revolver and every shot went through/You cried “Lord, have mercy, it ain’t my time to go/well, you should’ve called on someone that you know.” Man, that’s a fierce lyric.

That’s something people would say up there, and something I’d heard. But I saw it actually in a Cormac McCarthy book: The Orchard Keeper. Where the guy tries to hit him with his tire jack. And he gets the better of him, got him on the ground and starts to choke him to death, and the guy cries “Lord have mercy,” and he says, “You better call on somebody you know.” [Laughs]. I need to acknowledge that.

So you have two previous albums, and the first, Hewed from the Rock, just came out in 2010. You’ve been playing music for so long that I’d say you’ve been calculated [laughs] in releasing your work. Most musicians these days are trying to shit out a new boxed set every other week. Why did you wait so long to release any albums?

Well, I never wrote anything until about 2009. You now, everybody writes a song sooner or later and I wrote a couple in the early days of college. And I didn’t really know whether they were any good or not and I just lost them; they weren’t much to speak of. I did write a song for a dance production because I couldn’t find anything that worked in the old time repertoire that worked for the particular dance. And I was sort of proud of it at the time, but looking back on it, it was a good song while they were dancing. [Laughs]. But outside of that…[laughs]. The piece featured two very beautiful young dancers, a young black man and an Irish girl and they were just great dancers and it was just a beautiful scene. More of a romantic couples dance, not very suggestive, and it was easy to write it for them. But when I was back home, playing it without the dance, I realized it kind of lost its magic. So starting in 2009 I really began; and I write them very slowly. If I write a song fast, it’s unusual that I want to keep it. I’ve got notebooks full of songs that I haven’t recorded. I might have one song with ten pages of lyrics.

So since you work that methodically have you ever tried shifting the writing towards something like short stories or long form poems?

What I’ve really found out is that I kind of write two kinds of songs. One is a song, which you hear it, like “Mr. Graves” or “Going to Florida” – you may not know that I wrote it. You may not know it’s not a hundred years old.

Which is an art.

It is. And I’m not trying to steal from the old style, but that’s what’s in my head. I didn’t listen to much rock and roll when I was growing up. I listened to the Beatles when I got into college. We’d get stoned and listen to Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper’s. I loved the Beatles. But I gotta tell you, when times got really tough, and I was really having a hard time…and we all go through these times…it was the old time music, blues and hillbilly music, and also Beethoven. His “heroic” period and the German Romantics, people like Puccini…and Champion Jack Dupree, the great blues pianist. He was terrific. Man. He got me through a lot of bad times.

Lemme ask you a bit more about some of the specific songs. That “Sailor’s Farewell,” melody has that nice major and minor chord shifting with that sweet dominant 7^th chord dropped in there…it all just really rolls along really well. Who was Van Lewis, who inspired this great tune?

What inspired the tune was more his wife and his daughters. Van was a person who was a descendant of the Lewises of Tallahassee that established the first bank in Florida. He was “the third generation.” You know the thing about the third generation. The first generation was sort of like the Rockefellers; they made a bunch of money and made investments. And then the second generation sustains it. And then by the third generation, things have to change and the wealth becomes sort of dissipated. And in a lot of cases in the South they end up being land poor, because they have land but not any liquid cash. Van lived in a beach house. He was a very eccentric guy who was a Scientologist for a while, but we forgave him for that [laughs]. And he had one kick he would never let go of, and that was, he was anti-circumcision. He was just a fanatic about not circumcising children.

That’s not a bad campaign, considering it’s an Abrahamic holdover from thousands of years ago [laughs.]

I know, but we don’t sacrifice animals on the stone anymore, you know what I’m saying? Yeah, I certainly got circumcised at birth.

Oh sure. Me too. I’m in the “welcome to life” club [laughs]. I’m waiting for that class action suit, brother.

[Laughs]. Yeah, let’s get ‘em. But Van wasn’t interested in money. He had a place in St. Teresa Beach, very nice place. His wife Mary Balthrop was an amazing woman, who managed the FSU London program. Which you can imagine, riding herd on a bunch of college kids in London, England…what kind of a person she is. She was the manager at the marine lab where I worked, the last job that I had before I retired. And his daughters are two incredible young women. The love he had for them and vice versa was just such a beautiful thing to see. When he got pancreatic cancer, he only lasted about four months. But at the times that I saw him, and it wasn’t that many, he always carried himself with the most magnificent grace. He actually seemed concerned more for other people than he was for himself. I was just so moved by the way he handled himself and the way he passed away. And that love for his daughters and his wife. And I wrote that song as much for Mary, because she grieved terribly; 30 years they were married. When she met him [laughs], he was playing the conch shell in a band at Harvard University, when he was going to law school. By the way, the man was brilliant. His IQ was probably immeasurable. But what he did for a living was raising clams out in the gulf [laughs]. You know?

Let me talk about this, and if you don’t feel comfortable, we’ll move on, but in the liner notes of Hewed from the Rock, you describe yourself as a “recovering Catholic.” But for me, some of my favorite songs of yours are the ones that allude to God and faith; like “Gethsemane” and “Towers of Babel”… “Mother of Eve.” And in the liner notes, they all feature scriptural quotes next to their titles in the track listing. All of this – God, faith, and spirituality – fascinates me, personally. I have my own set of benign, non-artillery based, spiritual beliefs. But your songs never come across pious, like you’re proselytizing. But do you feel like your music and life are kind of guided by spiritual beliefs, or a higher power?

Well, yes…and I think [pauses] I suppose that’s probably a fair thing to say. I don’t believe the way that Christians do, for the most part. I’ve studied Islam to an extent, I’ve read The Life of Muhammad, and I’ve read some readings of Islam, and I think that also is a truly amazing religion, particularly when you get away from some of the fanatics that are running around loose now.

Like much of current Christianity [laughs].

Yeah, like Christianity [laughs]. Judaism is an extremely interesting and powerful faith except that among the Jews the diversity of opinion of people who call themselves Jews is outrageous; for a relatively small religion, compared to the other ones. But I’d like to explain that the titles of those [first two] albums which weren’t necessarily a plan, but what came across after I’d assembled with eight songs for each one of them. The titles come from the scriptures and they are indicative of the songs themselves for the most part. Hewed from the Rock was a description of Jesus’s tomb. It’s also a perfectly good description of a railroad tunnel, which really did become John Henry’s grave as well. Here’s the thing about Hewed from the Rock. When you read it in the bible, it’s only mentioned in one of the gospels, but what happened was, either after the crucifixion or right before, a good friend of Jesus’s…and I’d have to go back and read it, I don’t remember his name…he said, “I have a place to bury him. I know of a place to bury him.” And there was a place in the mountainside, which was hewed from the rock, which means to me, it wasn’t natural; it was man made. Somebody came along, at some point in the past, and made this tomb. As if they knew, as if they were privy to some prophecy, that there would be somebody who would need to be buried there. And so the meaning of that, to me, was fate. And all of those songs, except “Going to Florida,” are obviously about faith, and about destiny.

I’ve seen you perform more than once, and so I know from firsthand experience that you’re not flinging bibles into the crowd [laughs]…just for the sake of our readers here.

[Laughs] no, no.

But I think that in these particular songs, there’s an anger and confusion in the spirituality, as much as any comfort or reassurance. I don’t know. I think once the Christians killed off the Gnostics – they blew it [laughs].

Yeah, exactly. That was not a good move.

Let’s talk about your actual playing and instruments. When I’ve seen you perform, you’ve played mainly Dobro and banjo.

Yeah. The guitar is actually a Tricone Resonator. The strings are lower on this; the Dobros are usually jacked up high enough that you have to play them like a steel guitar.

So why do you prefer those two instruments?

Well, it’s a funny thing. Most of the songs I’ve written have been with the Resonator, and it’s a strange process. You know, I think if I had never got that guitar I wouldn’t have written hardly anything. It’s strange. I bought it from Morty Beckman, a good friend of mine, when he had a guitar store up in Tallahassee and he sold blemished guitars. He sold them for a fraction of their original cost. And he also sold some imports, some from French Canadians, and some from China. And this is a Chinese-built guitar. So I started playing it and I wanted to get the other style, which has a single resonator in the front. But this one sounded so good, I decided to buy it. When I took it home and began playing it, I was disappointed. Not in the guitar, but the fact that I couldn’t seem to get the potential sound out of it I wanted. And the reason was that I was playing in the standard guitar tuning. And drawing from my knowledge of the banjo, I began to play open tunings. Then, when you play in an open tuning, all of the old ruts that you fall into fall away. Because your left hand has to find its way. So I would use the left hand in ways that I was accustom to, but in doing so I would find totally different sounds.

Sure. Many of those country blues artists played solely in those alternate tunings, like “open D.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with the rock band Sonic Youth but their entire sound was based on alternate tunings. You can really get some impossible sonorities out of a guitar with those tunings you’d never get from standard tuning. Even these like trippy, Gamelan-type sounds.

Yeah, you can’t reach those sounds. That’s what I did. Some tunings were adaptations from banjo tunings that I already knew that were pretty weird; I mean, those mountain people, they know hundreds of tunings. The others, I actually sat down and figured out how to make a tuning do what I wanted to do. The best example on my records is probably “Eden.” Which is the same tuning I use for “Towers of Babel.” But I could never have dreamed up those chord changes on standard tuning. I never would’ve been able to do it; I don’t know any music theory. I kind of blundered into it. But those things also guide your song. I don’t care what anybody says, no matter how important lyrics are – and they are very important – but really, you get started, with sound. So without that guitar, and the open tunings, I probably wouldn’t have written a whole lot of songs.

Kind of shifting gears here, you know when artists have liner notes on their albums its another way for connecting to their audience. And for someone who has written predominately dark songs, your liner notes almost read like a John Fahey record or like they were penned by Tom Robbins; like, “he allegedly began arcane studies with a shadowy figure known only as Turpentine Willie.” A lot of musicians will use the liner notes on their albums to really plume out their feathers or issue the group’s manifesto. Why do you take such a playful approach with the liner notes?

I do it because the music’s so dark; I have to have a counterpoint. And I don’t write funny songs.

[Laughs] I’ve noticed.

Yeah [laughs] so if I can tease them a little bit, the liner notes help. A lot of times I’ll play an old time song to break up the set, because they’re not so heavy. I’ve been writing in a lighter vein in recent times, but I’m certainly not as prolific that way. I can make people laugh when I talk to them. But I can’t make people laugh when I sing to them. I’d like for them to laugh and then I’ll do a murder song [laughs]. Then I’ll make a joke about murder songs, and then make a banjo player joke, then I’ll play them a song about the Civil War, and you know… that’s a fun topic [laughs].

So man, it sounds like you’ve got a lot going on. The folk fest is coming up, this new release…what else is happening? Any touring?

Well, now I’ve got three records out and I’m working on a fourth one. And I don’t know where it’s going to go. My theory is that’s going to be called Kingdom Spread Across the Earth. That’s the statement of Jesus to the Apostle Thomas; an apocryphal book. It’s a very interesting statement. I discovered it from reading Joseph Campbell. Anyway, Jesus is telling them, “People think that the Father’s kingdom is a place you can go to. And they think it’s apart from us, somewhere far away. But it’s not: the kingdom of the Father is spread across the earth. And men do not see it.” And I think that’s something that every Christian in the world ought to read.

Absolutely. That’s a very Gnostic vision and image. That sounds like it could be from the Gospel of Thomas.

It’s an apocryphal book, I do know that. Maybe it’s just called the Book of Thomas. But it could be. But with this I don’t know how much more obvious Jesus could get. Even in the gospel, he said, “The kingdom of Heaven is in the hearts of men.” It’s not a place you go. It’s a place you find.

Yeah. You wake up to the experience. It’s what in Vedanta they call the Atman. We have this ember of God within us.

Absolutely. And this whole thing is kind of an organizing principle. I don’t just write an album without some sense that there’s something going on there. That people can unify with. Like in To Be as Gods, everybody is making a decision between right and wrong in that album. The most poignant is Robert E. Lee trying to figure out what the hell he should do after the battle of Gettysburg. It’s really a vision. It’s the same sort of thing that we all have to find at some point in our lives. Even if it’s at the very end – maybe he discovers what the war was all about.

Frank, man, I have truly enjoyed talking to you.

Yeah, same here. It’s been a real pleasure.

I feel like I’ve learned a lot from you here. I’m pretty much out of the loop on present day folk music. I mean, I obviously like your stuff [laughs], but I mainly listen to the really old stuff, what you all “old time music.” And for me, folk music is as much like The Holy Modal Rounders and The Fugs [laughs].

[Laughs]. Man, I saw the Fugs perform live in Greenwich Village.

Oh, man! […with embarrassing excitement] When?!

I only went to New York twice in my life. And the first time was us four hicks from Florida that hitchhiked up there [laughs]. And we’re wandering around Greenwich Village and we had all memorized the Fugs songs when we were in high school. And so there they were. We all go inside this club and sit down. There’s a sign that says you have to be 21. Well, none of us are 21; we were 18, 19 years old. The Fugs are playing, all of this crazy stuff is going onstage and around us, we’re laughing our asses off, and there are these two cops standing behind us. So now we’re getting a little nervous, because we’re worried if they’re going to start checking IDs. So these cops walk up to about three rows in front of us and they grab these two kids and just pitch ‘em out the door. And I turned over to this New York hippie dude sitting next to me and I said, “Hey, what was that all about? Are they ID’ing people in here?” And he said, “Nah. They threw them out ‘cause they couldn’t hear the band. They were making too much noise.” [Laughs].

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

The Florida Folk Festival takes place May 27-29 at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park, 11016 Lillian Sanders Dr. in White Springs. $25 per day; $50 for weekend pass, (877) 635-3655, floridastateparks.org/folkfest

 Frank Lindamood performs at 4:30 p.m. on May 28 at the Under the Oaks stage.

 Lindamood also performs at 11 a.m. at the Old Marble stage and presents a Three Finger Old Time Style Banjo workshop at 4 p.m. at the Workshop II stage on May 29.