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Art & DickCheese

Art, that storage device of creativity. I've written about Alan Moore's idea of the connection between magic, art, and it's effect on people, so I will not tread that ground again today. Instead I want to ponder why more people don't incorporate it into their lives.

When I was a child I thought my father was the last person on earth to enjoy art. Then I unearthed paintings, watched him help my sister paint for college, he read me poetry, introduced me to books, I even found out he had a soft spot for old school books from little one room school days. Then one day it hit me: This is all art. So after what feels like a million art books later, it's something me and old man have in common. It's something he gave to me weather he wanted to or not, now I can't pic up a book of impressionists or Robert Frost poetry without thinking of him.

This is the reason for art: It outlives us. We know who Van Gogh, Homer, and those french cavemen are, simply because of their want(need?) to create. Art is that mirror that we look through to understand the world and possibly achieve some sort of immortality. Because the Lumire Brothers invented film, they will never be forgotten.

Life is better for art and anybody with some high level brain functions seem to like it. (Koko the sign language gorilla loved to paint and apparently could see in color because she said, "Where's my red sweater? I want to wear my read sweater!" and then tore apart a closet looking for it. KOKO RAWKS.) You don't see ants writing a communist manifesto do you? Art is another one of those things humans "just seem to do", like hoping, like dreaming, like art. Cavemen had no need to draw themselves killing a buffalo, but for whatever reason they did. They wished to record that experience (damn I'm good at tying this shit together). So, as I have done all week, I request of you something: Go forth and make Art! Paint, write, shit on a umbrella and throw it at grandma (that's performance art).

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Because today's subject is art, I drew a new DickCheese comic for you all to enjoy!

Experiances & STD Phone Call

Gaining experience is a strange thing, not enough and you're scared, too much and you become world weary. It is strangely exactly like a role playing game: Once you've leveled out, what's left to do? And was those last 10 levels you blazed through any fun? From this I think we can conclude the idea of being cool: Sticking around just long enough to enjoy it and leaving before it gets boring. You show up late and leave early, just like the Fonz.

If the Fonz is the gold standard for this achievement then the two extremes is The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and the hooker (sticking with the accidental 70's theme). The Boy in the Plastic Bubble screams when he's ejected from his polymer prison. Why? Because like the caveman throwing spears at a helicopter he doesn't understand. One should also be careful not to fall into the hooker's role: starting out doing it for fun or money and then eventually doing because that's all you know to do. Nothing's sadder than a hooker with no other skills.

"I need to do my laundry.... maybe I suck that guy off at the laundry mat..."

Getting whiter whites shouldn't involve swallowing.

Experiences are also another one of those things that make us human. A deer, walking by the road. Sees his friend blown to bits by a passing coal truck simply relates to story to others, "Did you see what happened to Frank?! He was eaten by that big metal worm with stars on it!" Humans, with the ability to dream (I told you it would come back) have an experience, say a bear eats grandma. A human then thinks, "If a bear ate grandma, can a bear eat me?" Then man is scared shitless because of an existential nightmare. Humans, what fatalistic creatures. However, to keep this from happening to him he keeps a stick nearby, he builds fires at the front of the cave and sleeps in the back, with grandpa in front of him. Even the cavemen knew he just had to outrun the other food.

Lastly, at the very core of art is the experience. I saw a portrait Van Gogh painted once. It was just some dude. I almost cried. Now you'd like to experiance that right? People come walking out of a theater:

"Hey pal, that movie any good?"
"While this chick is blowing a wolverine a guy feeds it a grenade!"

That's the kinda movie you wanna see. That's an experience you want to have. It's the artist's job not only to express something, but to give the experience of that expression. That's where the ring of truth comes from and that's what makes it powerful.

Experiences help us plan for the future and they let us know we're alive now. They're the stories we tell each other and they're the glue of relationships. Experiences are the spice of life, so go out and have one! Tell me what happens!

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Because it became a pain to tag two posts, I'll be making single posts with both the essay and the art for the rest of the week.

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One of my favorite experiences is making prank phone calls in my dorm. Below is a video with some terrible animation of one such phone call. I also think I heard this guy on the radio recently. This phone call was made to the CDC STD 24 hour hotline and I didn't hear the whole radio story, but a guy sounding much like this guy was talking on behalf of the CDC. Whoops.



(if it doesn't show up go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8TuCV2O4bs )

Aileen Wuornos

Speaking of dreams, here is a lady who dreamed of killing all the mens and having her lady love. Here is my ode to Aileen Wuornos:



P.S.: You may download the song here.

Dreams

Dreams are possibly the most important thing that makes us human. The ability to mentally place ourselves somewhere else, perhaps even as a different person, is essential to life. Hope is the hotbed for dreams. Moreover, I believe it's important to listen to that other type of dream: the nightly ones the come to do whatever it is that they do. I'll relate a recent dream well, a snippet, the whole dream might cause homeland security to put me on lockdown:

I'm following Howard Stern through the World Trade Center. I'm confused because I'm well aware of what happened in the past. He leads me to this giant sheet of glass that makes a bridge between the two towers and asks me to cross it with him. I then scream, "Who the fuck do you think I am? Indiana Jones?" I turn to leave and as I exit the building I see Mrs. Doubtfire selling a book called: "The Art of Knitting" to which she then says, "This isn't the art of turning down Russians."

What have we learned? I possibly need medication and where else could this randomness have occurred. I don't think of things like this in my waking life. All dreams are the Chinese Whispers that make life palatable. Holocaust survivors talk about they kept hope alive. They dreamed of being free. A dream is a hope made real for yourself. So I extend this to you. Over the next few days dreams will directly relate to the other parts of this challenge. So I wish you good luck and the ability to catch your dreams.

Challange Week

Thanks to everyone's comments and motivation I will be posting one original article everyday this week. M-F. Five Articles. The theme will be what I consider important components of life. I will be posting these on my blog: BudhaCronX.com which will also auto-feed to my facebook profile. Feel free to comment, raise questions, et c. I will also post a song, a snippet of script, a short story, et c. each day. So, hopefully this will be a fun week for you all, and a very trying week for myself.

Does the concept of swear words exist in every language?

In his book 'The Dragons of Eden', Carl Sagan tells the story of a chimp that had been taught sign-language, signing to a human, in a moment of annoyance, "You green shit". Swearing -- or at least the mechanism by which it arises -- seems to be older than ourselves. I'm sure every language has its swear words.

DW, Bracknell

Does the concept of swear words exist in every language? | Notes and Queries | guardian.co.uk

Andy Warhol Interviews Steven Spielberg

Honestly, I don't care much for Spielberg, but this interview clip is interesting to ANYBODY. I'm serious. By interesting, I mean weird.

Andy Warhol Interviews Steven Spielberg | /Film