Day Job Story: Don the Ninety-Year-Old

I drive a taxi. I meet people I would probably not meet in my private life. These random encounters often change my perspective.

Yesterday morning was slow - because it was Sunday. I took a call out of my zone for somebody waiting in the emergency room at a hospital.

I found this frail man named Don dressed in white in a wheelchair sitting alone in the lobby. He told me he busted his shoulder when he slipped on some plastic packaging in the middle of the night and fell against the concrete wall. I wheelchaired him up to the cab and he climbed in.

We talked. I knew his mind was full of images, so I drew him out with lots of questions. He turned 90 February 28. He’s lived here all his life while ripening into a gentle intelligent nanogenarian. He told me about the forest that covered Beaverton when he was a kid. He told me about the Hudson dealership that folded in 1939. He told me about working downtown. I listened intently, because I love downtown. I love the ghosts that dwell there, and Don had been present to see many of them erected.
Don's never been married. He’s had time to do a lot of thinking. He understood me, I’m sure, better than I understood him. He survives while the rest of his people are gone. His layers of pretension have dissolved away and he appeared as we all will if we last long enough.

His spirit dwelling in his body was something like wind in a sailing ship's gauzy rigging.

We had a couple good laughs as we waited for his prescriptions to be filled. The pretty 24-year-old pharmacist was cranky at work that early Sunday morning. As she hammered her computer keyboard, I noticed how strong, agile, intelligent and bitter she was.

I dropped Don back at the concrete dwelling. He gave me a monster tip.

Day Job Story - Old Don

I drive a taxi. I see people I would probably not see in my regular life. These random encounters often change my perspective.

Yesterday morning was slow - because it was Sunday. I took a call out of my zone for somebody waiting in the Emergency Room at the hospital.

I found this frail man named Don dressed in white in a wheelchair sitting alone in the lobby. He turned 90 February 28 and has lived here all his life while ripening into a gentle intelligent nanogenarian. He told me he busted his shoulder when he slipped on some plastic packaging in the middle of the night and fell against the concrete wall.

I knew his mind was full of images, so I drew him out with lots of questions. He told me about the forest that covered our suburbs when he was a kid. He told me about the Hudson dealership that folded in 1939.
He's never been married. He is a survivor - the rest of his family is dead. His layers of pretension have dissolved away and he appeared, as we all will if we last long enough. His spirit dwelling in his body was something like wind in a sailing ship's gauzy rigging.
We had a couple good laughs as we waited for his prescriptions to be filled. The pretty 24-year-old pharmacist was cranky at work that early Sunday morning. As she hammered her computer keyboard, I noticed how strong, agile, intelligent and bitter she was.
I dropped Don back at the concrete dwelling. He gave me a monster tip.

I drive lots of oldsters in my taxi. When they jokingly quip, "Take it from me - don't get old!" and chuckle, I say, "Are you kidding? I can't Wait!"

The Desert Turtle

I am rediscovering myself with my art.

When I was a kid, art came easy. If it came so easy, I thought it must not be worth anything.
I almost dropped out of high school and went on to almost drop out of society. I believed that schools were fascist institutions that scrub the creativity out of the individual.

I was a cowboy – an individualist - an iconoclast – a rebel.
I was a musician and a poet. I wanted people to listen to me. They didn’t. After 20 years, I hated to pick up my guitar – I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t remember what I was looking for.
Rebellion got me on my knees, midlife, broken!

So I threw away the rebel. I got clean and sober. I remembered my art – it was all I had left that had any spark. I went to school to study art and studied hard. I sat in the front row and rarely missed a day. I wanted to find what I had missed. The instructors filled me up with instructions. Then I graduated – twice!
I got a studio and surrounded myself with my student art. I worked my day job. I was trapped again - stifled by the rules they taught me.
I got sick. I thought I was gonna die. I panicked! I threw lots of art away. I threw people away. I almost threw it all away.

Pouting without an audience I turned inward. I raged. I sang (silently). Twitching to life, I filled sketchbooks with lots of drawings - fast and ugly. It was like blowing up balloons – just making things that filled up space and didn’t matter. I didn’t show my drawings to anybody.

Then something amazing happened: drawing got easy again. Privately, silently ... one by one … I’ve discarded rules for art that school taught me. For instance:
• Never copy photographs.
• Limit your palette.
• Paintings shouldn’t be made in a “paint by numbers” style.
• Observe things closely.
• Develop a consistent style.
• Pay attention to the assignment.
• Credit your sources.
• Paint beautiful things.
• Use the input from your friends who are artists.
• Network as an artist, cultivating relationships.
• If people like something you make, make more art in that style.
• Pay attention to the market.
• Be aware of what you are doing.
• Wait to finish a painting until you know what you are trying to do.
• Read a lot.

I saw patterns emerging in my drawings. I saw motifs emerge from the end of my pen as if I were a spectator.
I realized that I was unleashing my subconscious! Unlashing, uncaging, releasing!
Nobody sees what I’m doing.
Okay, I’ll show you ONE drawing. Er, part of one drawing:

More Later.

The Duality of Beauty and Ugliness

I woke early this morning excited about drawing.
I immediately grabbed a book about the architect Frank Gehry, one of my new heroes.

In the book, Gehry cites the work of the architect Le Corbusier, in particular Le Corbusier’s building, Notre Dame du Haut (a church in built in 1955 in Rochamp, France), as an inspiration. I found this building a delightful distortion of black and white forms that seem to ignore the rigid rules of symmetry. I recognize in this building the same thing I like about my new drawings – distortion.

So much of what I draw comes out of me lively and unique, like a weed sprouting branches. Then my art school training asserts itself, and I feel obligated to lop off the distorted elements and plane the object back to a more photographic image. This self-censure has been tormenting me - making my art a chore rather than a joy.

So today, I am giving myself permission to distort! Distort! Distort!

Distorting things often seems to make them appear ugly to the uninitiated eye. Something about ugliness really attracts me – maybe because it shows me where my vision is limited. It shows me where I am blind.
Many things only seem ugly at first glance then yield great unique beauty. This is magic. I love to find beauty in ugly things. This is a central theme in my art. One might call this pairing of opposites Duality.

An example of such duality can be found in free-form modern jazz music that involves atonality and broken tempos. When I read that a musician is an acknowledged genius but find their music repulsive at first listen, I become curious. I realize that I must listen more to break their code. A purveyor of this duality is the pianist Cecil Taylor.



Freedom is another central theme in my art. I am in the process of freeing myself from the habits I have of self-censorship. I want to become myself.

This is also a theme in Frank Gehry’s work, and Gehry, in turn, responded to this tendency in Le Corbusier. While researching Le Corbusier online, in Wikipedia I read:

“In the first issue of the journal, in 1920, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret adopted, Le Corbusier, an altered form of his maternal grandfather's name, "Lecorbésier", as a pseudonym, reflecting his belief that anyone could reinvent oneself.”
-(Author Unknown) " Le Corbusier." Wikipedia 23 Oct. 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier

Even you.

Day One.

I am so inspired by the writing circulating in the do-it -yourself atmosphere of the Internet. I grab people by the lapels when they tell me they blog and ask them how they do it. One smart fellow just gave me the link and said, "Go!". I hesitated for 20 seconds, then thus begin.
Today, Monday, October 15, 2007, is a bit grey here in Portland, Oregon. With the shades drawn, I look through my electronic window on the world and wonder if anybody else might look in at me. I'm cautiously lowering the drawbridge, encouraged by all you out there that have plunged before me.
Hello.