The Other Side of the Road Too much of the time And far too frequently My feelings are the squirrel Who tried unsuccessfully To make it to the Other side of the road

How to Draw a Chair The flint pathways of the Jardin du Luxembourg provide a seemingly endless drawing surface for the numerous chairs which abound in the park. This is a superb place in which to learn how to draw a chair. The chairs are all painted the same pea greenish color. There are several types, some with arm rests, some designed for sunning or napping, all are constructed of hollow metal tubing with slats to sit upon. These slats while not designed for this purpose, also collect pigeon poop. The chairs make delightful drawing gadgets. Unlike a pen or pencil that deposits a single line upon paper, the chairs may make four marks simultaneously with their four legs on the “sketchbook” of the flinty paths. One can draw, aka “drag” a chair with one or both hands, most frequently grasping the back rest. One should avoid lifting a chair to reposition it, one should always drag these chairs to incise or “plow” grooves, cut furrows, into the dust of the path. While drawing ...

It is True, What John Cage Said John Cage said that that there is no reason to wait for inspiration. There is no time for it. Writers write, painters paint, and composers compose because that is what they do, it is who they are. It is what we do. Unwind, relax as seven paintings, each fifteen feet wide, ever so slowly reveal themselves.

In Praise of Ephemeral Glory There is a simple, and unpoetic I suppose, answer to why the first of my Geometric Kimono Suite was named A Morning Glory . No one has asked, perhaps because the flat disks do not look much like Ipomea purpurea, the common morning glory. The inspiration is that growing up the flowers I most admired were both blue. One could be gathered and brought indoors, Centaurea cyanus, the bachelor button, also called cornflower. They were humble flowers found even in vacant lots. I would often gather a fistful of bachelor buttons to present to my mother who would arrange them in an empty milk bottle. The little blue flowers looked lovely, lasting for days. My other favorite, the brilliant blue morning glories, could not be put into a vase. They had no stems. The cornflower and the morning glory are beautiful, simple flowers, but represented opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to fragility. As an adult I grew both flowers near my studio, how coul...

Where Do You Find Your Muse? For me, a muse is a bang on the ear that dumps fermented apple juice into my brain. Or, if not apple juice, dopamine buzzing like a bad ballast in a flickering fluorescent lamp. In this simile, the urge to paint or write are triggered not by furrowing my brow in deep thought, but by that promise or inkling of a hormone rush that is evoked by an uncommon event. That event may manifest itself through any of my senses. A smell or sound can suggest more than hunger or a desire to dance. I have been disarmed by smiles and frowns, scowls and sighs, or a cluster of startling words, often misread. The beauty of inspiration is that it pumps a taste of the pleasure reward directly into the brain, and a flood of it after the act of creation. Now, there is where the similarity to sexual stimulation and the blessing of orgasm make the comparison credible and not judgmental. I find muses everywhere, or maybe not everywhere, but I have learned to pay attentio...

That Which Lasts a Day Sometimes the ephemeral is the truest reflection of life Everything is fleeting when you think about it Celebrate beauty while you can

Something Andy Warhol Said I spent my fifteen minutes on handmade paper kimonos and fans shown at galleries run by men who would fall in the first round of a new and deadly affliction. Other galleries also shut their doors long ago, for other reasons. So, my quarter hour slipped away, as it does any way, leaving ghosts of the handmade paper kimonos and fans in the odd museum or on eBay. The art, in small letters, remains in drawers, as old VHS tapes upon a closet shelf. I am transferring my tapes to the Cloud and onto large old-fashioned canvas. Perhaps some curious curator will open a drawer at the Met, or Brooklyn Museum, where my prints snore. There is no iron clad rule that we get but one fifteen minute time slot. It was only something Andy Warhol put into words in 1968.

The Three Muses of Poetry Sometimes he sits quite motionless Blankly pensive trancelike And yet nothing happens Or too much comes all at once And there is no bucket large enough To catch it all In either case, he can always Blame the Muses of Poetry He draws a blank on their names But the really good muse of poetry Carries the attribute of a lyre Which hints at the reciting of poems Rather than their reading Flat on a page in a book The muse of erotic poetry Also carries a lyre, but bigger And more erect This muse and he have fun The muse of short poems hides Behind trees and carries a cell phone Years back she carried a boom box Today there is a shortage of Real authentic muses Or possibly a glut Still nothing interesting Sexy or humorous is destined To be written down this day It was the muse of painting That had him by the balls Again this morning ...

Wood Butcher I butcher words with all the flare and thoughtlessness of a concrete worker setting wooden forms slathered with steric acid, release goo that separates the wood from the concrete as it mutates chemically from a fluid to a solid. My father was a carpenter whose skill spanned the spectrum of activities of that class of worker who builds forms for the foundation of an ice arena to cutting dovetail joints for jewelry boxes made from a hickory tree he’d harvested. His collection of saws and hammers were never displayed on pegboard like trophies or some hobby workshop other dads would vanish into on weekends. Dad’s tools were jumbled in a toolbox he’d made out of scrap lumber. All his tools bore the scars of use and the abuse of being hauled in the back of an old pickup truck on a bare metal bed, bouncing over dirt roads to a job site, which is not to say he didn’t care for them, he just worked the hell out of them. Dad’s hammers made it clear to me as a kid ...