Facebook Politics

Mr. dd is a facebook slut. He has over 800 friends so I think he can't be very discriminating! Still...

This am I crank up my sizzling laptop (it really sizzles like its shorting out - please help(!) and I log into FB to discover a friend request from a once ubercool trustafarian* artist friend who has collaborated with Annie Sprinkle and who dated all the coolest dudes before she married, had a kid and moved to NYC or the Hamptons or wherever. Happy to know she is still kicking and that her daughter looks even more impish than her.

Mr. dd walks in the door and I ask "Guess who asked me to be their friend?" He answered immediately the name of another aquaintance who we've both been ignoring on FB due to their stranger than fiction and generally annoying character. And I said, no, not that person. And Mr. dd said well I just got another message from"THAT person" saying friendship is only "one click away!"

I laughed and laughed and laughed since this person we've been ignoring on FB truly has no boundaries (especially after their sex change operation)... and who will say anything to anybody regardless of the consequence. (a little too wreckless for my taste) so I continued laughing and almost became the FB friend of said aquaintance for giving me such a good laugh in the morning. Still something to consider.....

Then I said "No...so and so wants to be my friend(!) and is actually considering getting a real job" and Mr dd said "well that says something about the economy"... He's so funny. I guess that's why everyone wants to be Mr. dd's friend.

*trustafarian is Mr. dd's name for all the people we know who live off their trust funds. He said we should hire our trustafarian friend to clean our house and document it as a performance piece. Not a bad idea if we could pay her in books and art.... if only!

Its all in the timing

I've just returned home from the Delta. I can't stress how important it is for an artist to return home to their native land once in awhile... it isn't easy - but the payoff is always there if one is open to it.

Sources are so primordial. It all goes back to wandering in the cotton fields when I was so little they towered like trees above my head... and cicadas... and even mosquitoes! I spent a great deal of time dreaming about Bill and Sookie while heading up and down back roads that haven't changed much in close to 100 years.... certainly not in 50... and I wondered WHY am I so obsessed with these Charlaine Harris characters? I am not convinced in the power of pop culture, Dark Shadows and all that.... but still... when I read TODAY that Charlaine was born in 1951 in Tunica, MS, well - now I KNOW. She went to college at Rhodes in Memphis and it is one of the creepiest, surreal cities anywhere - that's not to say I don't love it, in a strange, comforting way... but it isn't American in many ways, anymore than Louisiana.

So, Charlaine, your characters feel like family to me... and now I know why. I thought I might be going through some close to mid-life obession but its just homesickness... and the strange life that an outsider lives amongst the natives. My mom reminded me of how horrible the mosquitoes were - (I had a recurring nightmare as a child that I was being crucified on a cross in that box of mosquites that was featured in the OFF commercials of the day...) so maybe my obsession with Bill the Vampire somehow relates to THAT??? An art historian or shrink could have a field day with that one.

The drawing above is a portrait of Mr dd. No, he doesn't look like Bill the Vampire but I realized recently that one of the first, most compelling things he professed to me during our passionate courting days: "I am Yours, You are Mine." That was a first.

I never waited tables but I always knew the score. I was never seriously interested in those Delta Boys because I think I feared they would take my life away, tie me down and I'd never see the world. Mr. dd and I met each other at the right time and the right place, otherwise, well, there is no telling what part of the world I'd be hanging my art in.

Now I go back and I cherish those Delta Haunts for their resonance... I wound up at Po-Monkey's last Saturday night... a place I visited with a bunch of girlfriends and nere-do-wells (sp?) afterhours way back in the mid 70's. I was maybe 16. I had no idea where we were or if I'd made a mistake hanging out with these night owls who only wanted to drink MORE beer with hopes of getting into our pants. Instead our car broke down and we sat in the dark on a gravel road singing pop songs all night.

I spent last Saturday with a view an the Indian Mound Bayou from my window and wishing Mr. dd was there to experience the wonder that is the Delta. A friend from my youth and I walked through the soybean fields and picked up pottery shards and I realized today they are likely made from the same clay that Lee McCarty has used for 50 years.

Are you the child of Tom Waits?

Tom Waits is touring this summer to promote his new CD "Glitter and Doom." I'll miss seeing him so I thought I'd post this to honor his journey from there to here.

wordiness

Many times over the past few weeks I've started sentences and been unable to finish them... particularly if I am talking. I've also reread a few things I've written and wondered if the same person who started these sentences was the same person who finished them...

Friends have said that there are no words.... but in my heart there is one thing I KNOW... words are as powerful and real as images... as the atoms we breath and are made of. The can be tonic, salve and toxin. They can change the way those same atoms resonate and respond to their environment. It is the closest thing to magic I know. Then there is the language barrier... or worse, the closed mind. Economy and simplicity can still win over these constraits with a few well chosen and thoughtful words, syllables of truth when all else fails. I do believe this is a truth that is self-evident... when I have faith in little else.

True Confessions

Where shall I begin? I had high hopes of printing my NY resolutions here... instead I've been spending far too much time on facebook hanging out with friends I never see. It is a much better swimming hole than MYSPACE - which I don't care for.

When I can tear myself away from the book I've been preparing for the new year and listening to the occassional primary debate. I thought the one tonite between the democratic three was better than I expected it to be. Hillary may sound good but a lot of people just hate her for reasons I think they didn't like Al Gore... she's right and she knows it. She's like Lucy in Peanuts... she has her charms but she annoys people who don't like strong women. I read surveys here and there and she pops up and still, it surprises me. Any of the three would be an improvement and that was something to celebrate. Mr. dd was disappointed that Dennis K. wasn't included but it wouldn't have seemed as serious even though I know he would have brought up some very good points. 

I'll be back soon. There have been too many things to take care and not enough clock.