Late Night Quotations No.7

"Learn to dream when thou dost wake.
Learn to wake when thou dost sleep."

-Francis Thompson


"Work is everything. Work is the entire thing."

-Andy Warhol

Big Time Questions No.3

What made you decide to go to Savannah College of Art and Design?

Ah the Savannah decision is an interesting one. Honestly I was lured in by that idea of the "art industry." I had always planned on going to the big state school where I'm from (IU, Indiana), to do what, I have no idea, but just assumed I would go there. One day a pamphlet from SCAD showed up in my mail and that was that. Their facilities looked amazing. At the time I didn't even know you could go to school for stuff like animation, and illustration. I didn't even really think much of art in high-school. I drew all the time when I was bored in class, and did very well in my art classes, but I thought character design for movies, or video games or something was where it was at. You know, I wanted to do something "cool". So I shipped off to Savannah (thankfully! everyone else I knew ended up at IU, and I have Savannah to thank for getting me the hell out of Indiana if nothing else). I wanted to pursue illustration, via animation, and do concept art. I did quite well, but my entire idea about what I wanted to do with myself, and what I felt art was changed about halfway through school. I hate to give any one thing this much credit, but I think a lot of it has to do with reading this book called Pranks by this publishing company called RE/Search (who I went out and worked for for a summer in San Francisco) at this particular time in my life. It's this incredible book that is just a collection of interviews with all these amazing artists, musicians, and creative people, that express their ideas through creative pranksterism. People like: Joey Skaggs, Joe Coleman, Boyd Rice, Jeffrey Vallance, Mark Pauline, Paul Krassner, Mal Sharpe, Abbie Hoffman, Jello Biafra. You know, mostly people no normal person has ever heard of. It completely blew open my eyes to this whole other way of doing things. I had actually had the book for years. My older cousin had gotten it for me in the throes of my hardcore punk youth. I read the Biafra and Rollins interviews, and that was pretty much that. I really think that certain things work at certain times of your life. That book worked when I read it. I don't think I had any frame of experience to put it into when I was younger. It's like when you hear certain bands for the first time and you just don't get it. And then you hear them again years down the road, and those sounds have been bouncing around and multiplying in your head for those years and they suddenly sound like the most brilliant music you've ever heard; like the kind of sounds you've been waiting your whole life for. It's the same reason that if you don't read Catcher in the Rye when you're a teenager, I don't think you can really read it. It stops working past a certain point. I read Pranks at the right time, and I lost all sight of everything I had wanted to do previously. I broke up with my girlfriend who I had been with for a year and a half at that point, and the world seemed like a different place. I stuck it through school because I knew that they weren't teaching anything that I wanted to learn in any school, and it was too late to really switch majors ( to Art History), so I just stuck with animation. They didn't really know what to make of me, so we kind of left each other alone. I did all these weird projects that the professors shrugged off, and was left pretty much to my own devices. Somehow I actually graduated cum laude despite the fact that for the last two years school was only taking up about 10-15% of my energy.

Late Night Quotations No.6

"Nothing can satisfy but what confounds
Nothing but what astonishes is true."

-Edward Young


"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

-Neitzche

Big Time Questions No.2

I really enjoy your gallery work. I am assuming it is all computer graphic work? What is your favorite program and where do you find insirpation for your unique style?


You are correct, most of my visual work in the past has been done on the computer (mostly Photoshop, which is a very accessible and open-ended program), but I frankly enjoy doing collage with tape and scissors most of all. I would work in traditional means more frequently if A.) I could afford to, and B.) if I had more of a space to work. That is the other good thing about computers, you can construct a HUGE file/ image in the corner of your tiny cluttered room. With collage, or painting, or what have you, you really need a decent space to spread out in and work. I like the limitations of collage though. I like how you only have so much that you can pull from and you have to make it work. The computer is very wide-open, and seems more arbitrary. Although these days I feel most visual art is rather arbitrary. I work in a print studio one day a week with an actual Artist (whose big in the Chicago Pop Art scene), who collages large silk screen images, like Warhol, but with more images piled up on top of one another. In fact the whole set-up is very similar to "the Factory." Myself and a few others pick out a lot of the screens and compositions for these pieces of Art that will sell in New York for thousands of dollars. There is some direction and intent there, but by and large it's a very serendipitous process. Generally the results are exciting and pleasing, and whichever one you like better is all up to personal taste. And this is like "ART" art, which seems like nothing more than an excuse for people that have more money than they should to give it away.

As far as my style is concerned, I think it comes out of number of areas. I've always liked harsher imagery, and been attracted to harsher sounds. Much of my progression through art in general (this includes film, music, and books as well) has been an ongoing search for extremes. It's like I've always been looking for stuff that would upset me. I have a very high threshold for the startling and grotesque. I don't know why either. I was a very shy and nervous little kid, but was always fascinated with monsters and "darker" stuff. I was brought up on movies like "Young Frankenstein" and "Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolfman" until I could stomach actual "scary" movies. Maybe because of that I don't really scare anymore, which is a shame, because, damn I've tried. I've read practically every short ghost story I could get my hands on, expired the whole list of horror movies, and never found anything. But I still love all that stuff. It's just fun to me. As soon as anything scary happens I think, "this is great!" So a lot of my "art" has to do with that. Horrors. Not, obviously, in the sense that I draw monsters and stuff, but in the sense that I am trying to pursue some sort of really viscerally startling imagery, more for myself I think than anyone else. I don't think I've really succeeded yet, so in the meantime, I just make harsh stuff that I think, at least, looks interesting.

Late Night Quotations No.5

"Progress is merely an enormous pretension on our part."

-Marcel Duchamp


"I just think any picture you take is a good picture."

-Andy Warhol


"That which is falling should also be pushed; that which is crawling should also be crushed."

-Boyd Rice

Big Time Question 1

To highlight the fact that I am a big well-know artist who was one of the interview subjects for some college students report on artists, which came about by my ability to respond to a craigslist post, and resulted (will result) in me receiving a 12 pack of Coke, I have decided to make available the questions and responses covered in the interview so that my message can reach past the walls of this girls classroom.

Without further ado:

It looks from your website you are chained to the computer. I see you have many different outlets for your art. Which one is your favorite outlet?

It's true that I do have many outlets, and a great deal of those require that I am in front of my computer a fair amount of time. On the computer end of things, I primarily use the computer because the only limitation in the digital realm is time. You can do everything on a computer for next to nothing cost-wise, but you can produce work that is indistinguishable from "professional material." The Internet is a great equalizer (which poses it's own set of problems) but anyone can have a great looking site. Some 13 year old kid in Kentucky can make a better looking site than some multi-million dollar company (and they do!). The problem with this is that, weather or not that kid has anything interesting to stay is still completely up in the air. I am still working on that aspect of it. Trying to back up the presentation with content. That is the reason for having so many different outlets (getting back on track). I strongly feel that each project should be focused, and exist on it's own right. That's why I have so many different websites. I don't want to be just another person putting up any and every thing that I find in a day. There's no focus, and therefore lacking in impact. I would much rather just have another project that slips through one of the many gaps in the web than just have another "stuff I think is cool" page. If you do that it seems like your whole life is slipping through those holes rather than just a single idea you had.

To be continued...

Late Night Quotations No. 4

"Anything that cannot or will not gain acceptance if presented seriously will ALWAYS be accepted if properly presented as a joke."

-Anton LaVey, The Compleat Witch


"The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes."

-Paul Feyerabend, Against Method

PodThreat

My new radio show which is part of the PodThreat Network. "Getting good music to good people by any means necessary." Subverting copyright by not caring about it whatsoever. Really, how is it harmful to share music and information that is A.) Already available, and B.) Important to you. We need to come out from under the rocks of fear and just share things with each other. This is what I have to share: music that I have grown up listening to and loving. No artists were hurt in the making of this podcast.
Link

Late Night Quotations No.3

"If rape or arson, poison or the knife,
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
Of this drab canvas we accept as life-
It is because we are not bold enough!"

-Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil

Shockwave Cannon Plug

This is merely a plug for the video of me and two of my good friends getting blasted by Mark Pauline of SRL's "shockwave cannon" from a segment on the History Channel's Weird Weapons of WWII. Link.

The Afternoon Drawing

I have absolutely no desire to return to an earlier point in my life or time. I do, however, wish that I could return to earlier states of mind. I find that, above all else, the mind changes. The world stays the same, but you are always different. I miss some of the past versions of myself despite the feeling that I am on the whole an improved being.

I wish that I could spend the afternoon drawing still. I wish that I could still envision scenes in my head, and I wish that transcribing them was not hindered by the skill that I have accumulated and calcified in my lifetime thus far. I wish that I had not seen as many movies as I have, and I wish that I had not heard as many sounds. I wish that I had read more books, but I want to know less. I wish that I could still be scared, and I wish that I cared as much as I once did. I'm happy to be rid of the horrors of socialization, and I'm happy to be who I am and where I am, but I still wish I could spend the afternoon drawing.

Maybe one of me will get to be all of these things again.

Late Night Quotations No.2

"In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom"
- J.G. Ballard

"Every year is an adventure."
- Will Durant

Late Night Quotations

"I replace melancholy with courage, doubt with certainty, despair with hope, wickidness with good, complaints with duty, skepticism with faith, sophisms with indifference of calm, and arrogance with modesty."

- Opening to Poesies by Comte de Lautreamont author of Maldoror. Died at age 24.

It's fucking nice in Chiacgo

...therefore, I have not been thinking much. Sorry.

Expertise

Due to the hyper-availability of information, generality must be practiced. The benefits of expertise, although easily reaped, are hardly economical. The primary product of specialization is waste. It may, in that sense be beneficial to strive to be an expert in vaguery; understanding the principles and practices of specialization, but unbound by precisions high demands. Understanding the "why" then becomes more valuable then the "what". This is a debate to be fought by engineers and philosophers. I am not about to try and suggest that specialization is wholly unnecessary, quite the contrary, merely that, having missed the boat myself on expertise, I must instead strive to understand.

Reading, writing

It's all a matter of chance. Creative forms require a lifetime to ingest these days, if you miss the boat, you've got no other choice. We have to be choosy how we spend our lives, or we have to leave it all up to chance. Let arbitrary movement determine our interests and the paths our lives take. Life is not a collection of stories, each lifetime is a story. A story that is reciprocally footnoted and cross referenced by all parallel stories around it. We can edit our stories, and add appendices, and start new ones, but they all end up chapters recorded in the central story. You don't have time to live other stories, you've got your own to write. That's probably why no one bothers to read this stuff. You've got your own stuff to do, right? Well so do I. I'm gonna go read.

Imagineer It! *sic

The mind is our only frontier of absolute freedom. We may have limited control of the bodies those minds occupy, but those bodies are subject to invasion by harmful viruses, they may break down, they may be riddled with genetic disease, and they will eventually, if given the chance, become old. But the mind is made of the same stuff. The mind just as susceptible to damager, disease, and wear as the rest of the body. Maybe even more so. But not the physical make-up of the mind, and certainly not anything as airy as the "soul". No, our horizons lay at the boundaries of our imaginations. We can create the worlds we inhabit in our minds. This must be practiced with care, for this is considered a mark of insanity, but where else have we to turn if we want something other than the world outside? What other options have we? We can't travel to a distant planet. We can't live under the sea. We can't simply vanish. But we can and do everyday. Daydream, and play in your mind while the world isn't doing much of interest. Travel wherever you want. Punch your boss in the face. Make love to that beautiful woman you saw on the street last week. I imagine this is a pretty trite exercise I have undertaken here, but my enjoyment of my imagination does not hing on its originality; merely on it's existence.

Small Questions

If a thought isn't recorded, is it gone forever? Can you count on someone else to pick it up? Should we concern ourselves more with the occurrence of ideas, or the ownership of them. Would you rather they find a cure for cancer or you find the cure for cancer? Would you rather have written this thought down? Could you have? How about all those thoughts that dance through my head before I fall asleep; too tired (or lazy?) to reach for the pen again and jot down the phrase to access the information in the morning. They are like dreams. If you can't remember your dreams, they might as well have never happened. They are non. Ideas, I think, are the same way. If you don't remember them, you might as well have never had them. What was I talking about?

Me an' My Buddy Matt: Crappy Readings Series No.1

powered by ODEO
This is the first installment of a new "Crappy Readings Series, which I don't know if will be hosted as part of {firebreather} or will necessitate it's own home, but either way, we are putting way to much effort into sub-bad fiction.

This particular story was written by 28 year old Patrick Finnigan of New Pallantine Indiana. He's dead so you can't write to him and complain.

UPDATE: It actually has necessitated it's own site: Idiot Fiction so, check it out and don't blame me.

Blood from Water

I now know something that I had spent my life ignoring. Punk Rock did not create new people. Staggering, I know, but to my best efforts, the truth. I think there is a common perception that any new form of music turns all of these other people into metal fans, or techno enthusiasts, or goth kids, or punks. It is now my humble opinion that this is a patently false assumption. The various forms of music succeed because they connect with people in need. Everyone who fell into that initial wave of punk was already a punk before the Sex Pistols first single came out, or the Dead Boys played their first show. They were mutant rock and rollers with nowhere to turn. New music is people up against the ropes needing some form of release desperately, but not knowing what it is.

This realization came after years of disenchantment with the state of things - after going to show after show of people standing around with their arms crossed; after watching bootlegged video after bootlegged video of old Dead Kennedys or Germs shows where they are playing to seething crowds of lunatics with bleeding wounds and sweat covering every exposed surface in the venue - the need for physical music and the desire for a sense of involvement with a certain type of revolution.

Where have all the mutants gone? The terminal thing about the here and now of underground music is that there is no underground. As far as we all know, any itch can be instantaneously scratched from any number of sources. There is no more extreme. There is nothing (musically anyway) to rebel against anymore. All the other exciting music breakthroughs in history have come about from the fact that popular music sucked. Now everything is just a degree of popular on a sliding scale of preference, and a lot of it’s good! How can we get pissed off and do something about it if there’s a thousand different sounds that we’ve never heard at our fingertips at any second of any day no matter where you live? Metal has burnt out, punk has been chewed up and spit out, noise is getting acceptable, hip-hop supports the status-quo, and indie is popular. What are we to do? I don’t even know what different sounds sound like anymore. It’s all fair game, and it’s a damn shame. If only we had a common enemy like Disco again, but we must always look to the future. What do those new sounds sound like? Movements are over, it’s just moving now; shifting about in a constant state of overwhelmed confusion.

You can’t demand people be interested in your music. You can’t force conviction, and you can’t create punk rock fans. What do we want? What do we need? Our generation needs to connect with something; otherwise we’ll have to settle for everything, which is the point we’re at now. But maybe that’s why today is more exciting than any that have come before.

also published on Thirsty Media as A Riot of My Own.