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sketchbook detail - '86

Mom hid this book under the bed when they came for me. Detail of the back page and cover. Procedural deconstruction: box cutter jabbed through dimple-covered cardboard-veiled wrist in quick successive jabs till the flood poured out from between the covers.

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This is an early conceptual 1:8 model of the exhibit installed in during Art Basel Miami that ensnared Scnabel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzvRS6inh7c

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At her apartment and bedside a hospice musician sitting in one of ma’s large reclining armchairs before a yamaha keyboard on a collapsable x-shaped stand was playing lilting and innocuous liminal tunes.

my peripatetic scourging stopped in her bedroom. I said goodbye, ended the phone call and witnessed silence. Ma’s rasping has stopped. Ma. I held her hand. I pressed my head to her chest. I put my cheek to her mouth. I tried to close it.

Later, sitting with my daughter in the balcony dining area overlooking the buffet from which she just selected her meal, I responded to her question of “How did she die?” with:

Well, she had lived a long time.  She had a stroke – and parts of her body stopped working. She could no longer eat or drink. The few words she spoke after I arrived were in my response to a story I told her about you. I told her about how you were concerned for me because I don’t believe in god. She moaned and groaned as she moved her legs under her covers. I said to your great grandmother; you don’t like this story do you, ma?

She looked at me for the first time since her stroke and said “NO.”

Because she wasn’t eating or drinking her body began to shut down. It slowly stopped working and she died. Lucy released a sigh of resignation and said “Ah…Entropy.”

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Sitting on his brother’s planted chest – his knees on lactic elbows quieted with pinioned resolve. Leaning over his face, and sliding his hands past either side of his brother’s confidently defiant face – fingers interlaced behind the back of his head. Lift up. Then release. Head suspends for a buoyant beat, and a recalcitrantly toothless grin, the younger brother eases head back to the grass. Undaunted, the older lifts repeats; bringing his brother’s chin up to touch his chest lift and release. Again, the head easily lowered back into the soft, barely itchy grass. After the XXth repetition, (exhausted) (neck muscles disobey) and cave to the craving to gravity’s occipitally thumping suck back to earth. Enough. Sovereignty transferred to a tremulously daunted will.

Neck and upper torso leveling my face near the reproaching fiber of her lips – then feign collapsing retreat of nonreciprocal strain. petal crushed stain of regret fed to the old, densely ceramic gods. While turning blurry vision towards the waxing interloping vacuousness vacuous interloper, the last of the hot coercion spills in rivulets of steam – staining my face – puddling in my ear.

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The missing link: people with faith.
Yes, the irrational requirement of dependence upon a “fantasy” given an absence of data to support it’s existence represents a link to the bicameral mind. Not requiring faith is an evolutionary adaptation that will benefit the survival of the species because we will be less prone to irrational solutions to disciplining our children. Again, please forgive if this offends – it usually does. I welcome any advice for how to share this without offending.
wow. wow. perhaps others on this list are correct. parenting should require a license. facebook can be a scary place. i have seen families torn apart by lazy parents – overly permissive and aggressively autocratic, but i’ve never seen such a concentration of unwarranted defense about their god-given right to inflict pain upon their children in the misbegotten attempt at control. I’m (weary of rhetoric devoid of even) one shred of evidence aside from an irrelevant anachronistic mythological volume. I would love to wake in a few hours, come back and be provided with any evidence supporting these claims of the efficacy of violence. Your claims of causality linking children’s actions to a deficit of pain seem wildly capricious, are perfectly untainted by reason. Your strongest argument for spanking: It works, stupid. Ya hit them, they stop and they remember. Well, may you not take it too far. May you blissfully perpetuate your violence insulated from reason, empathy and my children.

Facebook “Should God be taught in Public Schools” Poll Comment Excerpt:
Absolutely. Those who voted no are divorced from history. There is a very real danger to not teaching the evidence that people once depended upon fantasy to make decisions. The concept needs to be taught as a part of our evolutionary history. What a rich and variegated history it is. It’s time to move on. Without admitting that we were once powerless in our fear of the unknown and accepting that we once lived by irrational, maladaptive principles that nearly brought civilization to an end would be hubristic. We need to own up to our evolutionary recidivism to reduce the havoc it’s distortion has already wreaked upon our future. Shame on you who have voted for this attempt at historical revisionism! Shame. You should know better!

Facebook “Is there a god?” Poll Comment Excerpt:
I appreciate your investment! I slip through frustration into antogonism all too often. The potency of emotional responses to the topic of belief indicates that belief is integrated in our self-identity. In an anonymous public forum i find the “fight” response often predominates (over flight). I think it is very important to release control of my beliefs – to remove myself from what I think is in front of me in order to percieve it accurately. This comes from my discipline (how many people refer to their “work” at thier “discipline” – how pretentious can I get?). I’m an artist. My job is to observe and report. The one step I’m leaving out differentiates me from scientist. It’s omitted because that word has been vacillating between “augment” and “respond.” Observe, respond, share response. How do I respond to the concept of “god?” The same way I respond when I draw. I (attempt) remove all the signs – all the labels – and observe. I make marks that I see, not what I’ve been trained or told to see. I attempt to remove myself from the scenario – I go back an I check the marks I have made to see if they correspond to the relative proportions of value, and scale. I may make alterations that correct errors based upon assumptions, or lazy seeing. As the word “nose” only distorts my ability to percieve the constituent forms, hues and values that i am observing when i draw the “model” before me, so the word “god” only distorts my efforts to determine the plausible. While people can look at my drawings and say things like “GREAT NOSE!” (remember, i was not attempting to draw a “nose.”) They never* have said “great god!”

It prejudices my observation with what I think i know. In the case of the word “nose.” you might argue that you are ignoring a great history of shared observation. In the case of the word “god.” There is no case, only ravings.

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