Style is the Answer to Everything

Bukowski. Darrel Perkins. Linocut. 2017. 6x9"

Alan W. Watts Quotes

"In proving to ourselves that the universe is wholly explainable in terms of reason and logic,

we ourselves become anything but reasonable and logical."

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”

“This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. 

And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

"Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun."

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. 

For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. 

And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

Run

Illustration Exercise

A writer friend was over recently and we decided to make a game of exchanging text with painting.

I was given the following poem, which I interpreted as the above quick illustration.

"With rolling clouds and murmuring pools, 

summer caressed over spring,

just as quiet as breath drawn in, 

just as unnoticeable."

 

Lewis Carroll

"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."

This Sad Generation Doesn't Know When the Party Stops

Nan Goldin - Eat Your Heart Out (And Then Throw It Up)

A great article by Clive Martin at Vice illustrates the struggle our generation is having with growing up.

Says Martin: "They're an army of First World wasters trapped in an Escher maze of immaturity."

Tom Clark

Everybody here is good at what they do

Which is, in most cases, Nothing

Teach Your Daughter

Sophie Calle - Silence

Every time my mother passed the Bristol Hotel, she stopped, crossed herself, and told us to shut up.

"Silence!" she said, "This is where I lost my virginity."

Have A Drink For Saint Patrick

Dorothy Parker - Résumé

William S. Burroughs Quotes

If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive.

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.

No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.

How to...

Sophie Calle - The Tie

     I saw him for the first time in December 1985, at a lecture he was giving. I found him attractive, but one thing bothered me: he was wearing an ugly tie. The next day I anonymously sent him a thin brown tie. Later, I saw him in a restaurant; he was wearing it. Unfortunately, it clashed with his shirt. It was then that I decided to take on the task of dressing him from head to toe: I would send him one article of clothing every year at Christmas. In 1986, he received  pair of silk grey socks; in 1987, a black alpaca sweater; in 1988, a white shirt; in 1989, a pair of gold-plated cufflinks; in 1990, a pair of boxer shorts with a Christmas tree pattern; nothing in 1991; and in 1992, a pair of grey trousers. Someday, when he is fully dressed by me, I would like to be introduced to him.

By Sophie Calle, an excerpt from True Stories. Calle is currently exhibiting at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Illustration by Robert Longo.

John Cheever

"The idea is to get away from one place, but I never get away, I never reach another place.

I try to struggle with the things that bind me, but I forget the nature of the bonds.

I go to the movies. I get up at four and read until dawn. I do everything but the work I came here to do."

A Day with Hunter Thompson

Leave

We love the place we hate,

then hate the place we love,

We leave the place we love,

then spend a lifetime trying to regain it

Raymond Chandler

"I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin."

Dr. Seuss Quotes

Being crazy isn't enough.

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

If things start happening, don't worry, don't stew,

just go right along and you'll start happening too.

You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.

ASAP. Whatever that means. It must mean, 'Act swiftly awesome pacyderm!'

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.

The writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

nothing is going to get better. It's not.

In my world, everyone's a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies!

We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours,

we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.

Robert Louis Stevenson - My Bed Is A Boat