I have never shown this piece, mostly because I only rediscovered it recently. I painted it from life, in a life drawing session, from a gurl posing that almost made me pass out with lust when she took her clothes off. I had to stand directly behind my easel in order to not publicly embarrass myself.
After I had quit drinking (I have't had the smallest droplet of ethanol in my system since the end of '98), I realised that 99% of the sexual encounters I had had were at least initiated whilst drunk. And the 1% that weren’t were when I was by myself. So I had NO IDEA how to ask a woman out. Masturbation I remembered.

The first time I did actually ask someone out, I tried to scratch my eyebrow with my paintbrush. It still had paint in it and I got some not only in my eyebrow itself but also in my eye. It was oil paint, and I was so nervous that I just kept talking and tried to pretend that it had not happened, even though there was now a big purple smear over my face and I was actually CRYING because it hurt so much.
This painting comes from third year at uni where my work was pretty much continually insulted and I was, more than anything else, an object of ridicule.

BLAME

Watercolours, 40 cms x 25

Available for sale.

I’m thinking of bringing out my own aftershave, maybe eau de turp’s, or cologne de cadmium, For men, when having a pencil in you’re hand isn’t enough…
(Am I invisible? I think I’m invisible. Am I? I’d better check my reflection. I do seem to be casting one. Hmm. I was sure I was invisible for a couple of days there. Maybe I’m just an alien. That must be it. I am an alien who is actually invisible and yet somehow casts a reflection. Yep. Thought so.)
I watched the Australind rattle past in a cloud of deisel and a patronage of yokels. I love yokels. The idea of disappearing forever under the locked screaming wheels of a mass transit sytem has never appealed to my sense of romance, but there is something in the weight, the presence and inevitable power of such things. It's like the thrill of walking along the edge of a cliff or swimming in a storm amongst the breakers and the ozone. You can close your eyes and feel it move your bones as it careens passed you. I always do. Always.
When someone asks how it is that you are miserable, look at Johnny, he's got cancer and both his parents have just died and have you smelled his breath? it's tragic. How can you be sad, look at your life, you have everything? I have always thought, well, I'm sad for Johnny too now. And I'm guilty, that's for sure. And I'm sad for the kid I taught when I was on teaching prac' that was so wrapped up in autism she couldn't even fucking see, and I'm sad for the old woman I saw all covered in makeup and perfume for NOONE and I'm sad for the aboriginal kid I saw today, who's father's shattered alcoholic face was buried in her sweet golden hair.

I finished some work (paintings? drawings? anyone?), recorded some new tunes I had written and wrote some more of my book.
Expiation, catharsis, oh hell yes, but what at its end? its TERMINATION???

Well exactly.

This mixed state has yes differing ingredients: though I am still high a deal of the time, or at least energetic alacritic fucking vivacious full of verve and nerve.
The dread increases and now has pieces of real despair scattered around like petals at a wedding or confetti at a funeral.

I couldn't sleep, no sleep. No sleep. Wrote more considered painting but did not want to get paint on my roger ramjet jammies. No sleep. I have read stuff on neuropsyche by fucking Francis Crick (him and Watson discovered the dna double helix in 1953. he has since dedicated his enourmous mind to neuropsyche.) At one point he jumps around saying "you can't even prove I’m conscious!! I can't even prove YOU'RE conscious!"

There is no answer!!!!!
Give me something to make it go the fuck away!!! Just for a respite a little sanity holiday where I could paint a white picket fence and mow a lawn without being so INTENSELY aware of it and its innate true and ultimate futility.

Do i sound depressed??? desperate? the word desperate for those with etymological inclinations has been corrupted by contemporary vernacular: it is an affix tacked on to despair. despair-ate.

It is not even from self-loathing. I LIKE myself. I think I am COOL.

"Can you stop him?"
"I don't know.
"With these weapons?
"I don't know."

Um this is a quote from terminator one, Reese says it to Sarah Connor in the car in the car park. it felt appropriate. AND THERE IS THIS STUPID FUCKING BIRD WITH OWL ENVY THAT SITS OUTSIDE MY WINDOW AND SINGS ALL NIGHT!!!@! I want to kill it so bad so bad someone give me a ranged weapon of some sort gonna tape it/ staple it/nail it to my speakers for a few weeks during the DAY when IT SLEEPS. DO YOU like METALLICA BIRDY??????

to take meds or NOT TO. ok - one of the best examples is Dostoevsky. a great deal of this great man's work is intensely dark - he often used suffering to torture his characters, but his work is extraordinary and powerful. Van Gogh is another really good example, as with edvard munch (the scream is his most famous work.)
There are many. Toulouse lautrec, BOSCH for god's sake.
Here is the MED QUANDRY.

If these ppl had had access to modern pharmacology, if Dostoyevsky had been able to make it out of his room. If t.s. Eliot had gone to a lot more parties and got laid by beautiful young girls and gone boating and played a lot of cricket. Then we would not have these great works - they would never have been created because the illnesses that drove them (primarily depression, though historically it is very hard to tell) - would have, well, CHEERED THE FUCKERS UP!!

Poor old Dostoevsky might have said to himself - man, look at all this suffering in the world; in my country. but HEY i feel GREAT. Fuck it i am going to go out and build a snowman.

And his work may never have happened.

But these are all extraordinary ppl. Not only that, but here is the central and inevitable point that keeps me taking my meds and trying to sleep while my head races around trying to deconstruct the world.

If modern pharmaceuticals save ONE LIFE, just one life, then all these things, these great works, really mean very little in comparison.