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kid / oil / canvas

he had walked by and dropped a piece of paper on the coffee table parallel to the couch as she was lying there reading a magazine. she found him in the kitchen drinking scotch out of a tumbler with some ice and he grimaced everytime he drank some down. she held the piece of paper in her hand half out as if she was presenting it to him:

well, whats this all about. and he shrugged, drank a little bit more and looked at her very seriously.

we've been robbed, he said. he drank again. we've been taken by a con artist. he shrugged. could happen to anyone. the clock in the kitchen read five thirty and she had already exercised and painted her nails and gone down to the library to return some books. she had been looking forward to dinner. and now they were done. just done. her mind frantically ran to her mother. but she was gone. passed away a little over a year ago and now she was by herself. it felt like that anyway. she tucked the piece of paper in her pocket and gave him a cool look. she looked at his glass, at the half empty bottle of scotch. she looked very hard at what he was wearing and she made a mental note of all of it. it made sense.

what do you want me to do, he asked. he took another drink and this time he made no face. he looked at her with deep eyes and she opened her mouth ready to say something.

they just stood around silently until the clock had moved almost ten minutes. he had filled his glass once in that time and the room was a bit cooler than before. her magazine was outside on the couch. what about all of it and her mind was moving too fast, with too much worry, and with a coming calm. it was always like this. she was used to being broken and picking it up. she knew how and knew that time was the way. she never knew how much but she could feel the solution, the picking up the pieces, as it approached. there was a small amount of anger and she was figuring the best way to use it. he had to get back what he had lost. without it life would be difficult and she would have more than her fill. she didn't want that.

i'm having a hard time with this. i hope you understand. i mean, i know you know. i just needed to say it, and he became hard and silent and looked both to the ground and up but not at her and drank slowly and it was slow enough to notice the ice slowly melting in the tumbler.

I

don't

care,

and she moved out of the kitchen and went back to the couch and to her magazine and to dinner. he had better fix it.

ninja /oil / wood panel

host / oil / wood panel

out into the night he stood facing the dark way, until so much time had passed that he grew more nervous and clutched his fingers in his palm leaving red finger marks on his skin; the moon was shadowed by thick clouds and it was warm and there was no sweat on his face or arms or chest. he moved into it. it was bleary, it was mush, the way was clouded by something thick and like eyeballs that had cried so much everything looked different. this was difficult and he would sometimes grind his teeth a little bit as he kept on moving, but that was the key, to be relentless and persistent sacrificing even the thought of preserving your life. he was afraid but the idea was stronger than the fear and so he was able to move forward.

there was a shrill song of bird as it lashed through the air and then again and again it dipped; the sound of screams inside, the beating drum faraway, the dull sound of fans that had been spinning forever from cause of the heat and toxic fumes. there was nowhere to turn and it was a bad feeling. something must be done to combat it, but what. endless lists were made in mind and they were almost solutions; but each thing was weak or not attractive enough, the desire for perfection was too great. it was a way of battle, and often times there was only losing. it was the chance for a perfect win though that made striving all the more maddening and relentless. like a gambler on a heater, knowing deep inside themselves that in any moment all would be lost. the human chance at greatness for some is unavoidable even in failure. some fall prey to it early, some seek it when time seems shorter. it is all the same. it is always the same. what good is there, what bad is there when it all becomes blurred when time is the best judge and sometimes there isn't enough life to see the outcome.

the morning started clear with kisses on the cheek on the left side of her face as she slept near the corner; the validity of this claim came that it produced a sense of ease and safeness. for one he had slept there before she had slept there and now she clutched the pillow and woke with big eyes moving along his own studying them for love. this was accrued and stored safely somewhere deep for when the nightmares were at their worst and in a dream she would hold out what she found powerful to defeat whatever there was threatening her. as the day followed it was spent in the production of art. smoke would curl out of the window at times, intervals of thought and kissing, the play of sunlight wound from one window to the next, feeding all the plants and at the end where we are not yet, it dipped below the mountains. there were intense moments of sex as she was languid and touched in all places with a great smile, content and pleased and he was able to become calm and painterly in each touch on soft skin then she would bite and claw in lust and they would move madly with resonance of each other; the pile of art grew in corners, on the floor there were spills from paint and water and oil that made the paint more liquid and it accrued on the bottom of their feets, and hands. the temples of her head were made to look like native american marks. they wore underwear and barely left the room. food was brought up on white plates: noodles, pineapple, bacon, eggs, toast, quesadillas, salads, and cheese sandwiches. beers collected on the desk, on the bookshelf, on the window ledge. the great way became apparent to him at least, and as he could never know for sure, he assumed she saw it as well. on the bed in places where love was not being made where neither would lay naked and it was a big bed there were magazines and cut outs and scraps of image. these were idea machines of the present time, and they were sorted to delight by the maker, her / him. in the evening the sound of music penetrated the rows of houses, street, grass & trees because the window was always open, and she made art and he made art and together they lapsed time with each other so that the anxiety of dying was gone and it was replaced by a beautiful calm that he had never known. there are points that mark life, and in these as time passes comes the slow realization that these things are important, that life can be marked by moments rather than what comes ahead or with what may come or a manipulation of how something will come. each moment to be cherished as much as possible. over time it may become immortal to whoever had experienced it and it may writhe and find new shape and new things. this play is intoxicating before sleep in the late of night especially alone and staring at nothing but the thoughts of the mind. when it finally came that they looked at each other and wanted each other the day had vanished and it was now them dreaming in sleep. but the art and what was made was all still there. they brought tears and so much.

the silence that follows is great. the books of the world show it well, and they are good tools in showing the power of silence. weaving between noise and quiet are the fingers. the taste of another human's lips and of their skin, and the way each one feels unique and different, and each smell and each way of looking and the way each one sips and gets drunk, and speaks; and their way is great.

in the dark at night amongst the bushes and wire grass strands and pots, the thrush sleeping in a tree, a stone carved demon idol vacantly muses on its condition. it stands upright until wind or a foot or tail knocks it down and then it gets to gaze at the sky and trees and at the color blue and maybe a tempest and sunlight beats into all its facets hammering on it.

wild thing / oil & acrylic / canvas

skull / oil / canvas

Brendan lott

universes / oil / canvas

sometimes you really want a word that's strong enough to encompass everything all at once. to represent the enormous complexity of what is going on with you so that anyone would be able to understand and then some sort of real communication would be going, communication that makes you feel like you are making some sort of headway into life. its a huge desire to make yourself less alone. most of the time finding what that would be is nigh impossible, and the complexity of what you are will always out shadow the ability of anyone else to ever understand. so then it becomes this awful visage of fumbling animals in the dark. its truly remarkable the tenacity of us as people, whatever is ingrained into our minds to propel us forward through this darkness.

i dont want to sound defeatist or lost or in some bad way, i just feel the need to emphasize the huge gap that exists between all of us. it just hurts when it feels like it is impossible to say what you feel because of the complexity of the feeling. this strange shifting thing like a color that wont stay just any color or the jungle; some mutating thing that transpires to move. and how terrible we can be with our forms of language. suggestive hand motions, eye movement, tone, mumbling / yelling, the distinct impression that someone isn't listening. i can't recall what the percentage of communication is body language but its high and so then if you are in a bad way even what you say will be corrupted by your state, the truth of your affairs almost impossible to hide with what you are spilling out. i get tired of hurting anything and in the same way i get tired of helping anything because neither actually seems to make a difference but thats despair creeping along my words and i know it all makes an impact its just hard in the void that is you and you alone. all i ever want to do is help; the flow of time is a dirty raging monster consuming. i feel the painful loss at night staring into whatever place i see, the loss of friendships the loss of love and none of it seems to mean as much as it did because of the monster, its way of slowly dimming what was there. how can all of this be said to anyone else, how can understanding be accomplished. what exactly is the goal of wanting to be understood. god it all just hurts so damn much sometimes that i have to close my eyes. i dont want to understand loss anymore.

i want there to be a successful mechanism that allows for all the anger & resentment and sadness and whatever else sits deep within the heart to spill out. if it were possible to really see what those things are manifested outside of the self then maybe it would be possible to better know them and make good headway to making yourself better. i dont know why i think that they need to be removed from the self but it seems impossible otherwise to be able to deal with them. but thats really not the case or the truth of the matter. the things have to exist within the self in order for them to hold any resonance. their power lies in the fact that they must be acknowledged as being part of you and only then can solution exist.

but it all gets mixed up with the complexity of being, of all your past and then everything happening at the present moment of your life. is it harder to deal as we get older, it seems that everything becomes more catastrophic, fragile, and being cut is not on anyone's order. i have witnessed the withdrawal of more than one beautiful mind, encamped in some space of safeness, away from the harm that it fears and it itself admonishes what lies out beyond the scope of this retreat. what happened to the will of great things and the desire to pursue them at whatever cost to you. we are children raised in a society that puts the wrong value on everything; we have become lost in what we find to want, and only know the fake price of everything. i do not understand why people sit in such frustration expecting the world to revolve in some new manner that will save them. there is nothing to be saved; it would mean that we are entitled and because of our transgressions i do not believe we deserve much of anything. we are cruel animals with moments of clarity grace and beauty but we have lost the will to evolve beyond such cruelty that sits deep in our minds and lashes out. and maybe i only see it in such light because of the ability to do very bad things is inside of me. to stop such things would mean a level of control i have yet to witness in any person. chaos is the enemy but there is too much scrambling of want to fight it effectively. and anyway chaos makes things interesting, a common strand among humanity, one of the key characteristics that allows us to continue our lives because we have the capacity to know and to know more, discovery being an all important device in satiating the lack of meaning that can surround us.

i really dont claim to know any of that what i have said, it only pours out and i have to see it to understand it more. like i was saying if it wasn't put down then it would only be vaguer in the mind because i can be lazy like anyone and this laziness can exist in thought and without the force of will to examine outside real movement cannot be made. the tendency to involve yourself in the idea that you dont know something is dangerous and good at the same time. it is very true that very little is actually known in a world where most things are not hard and true. i know that i am going to die and thats about it, but i do know that i can form ideas about what i know so that i can move forward to more knowing; even if these steps aren't actually real it allows me a greater area of movement and discovery than if i simply decree that i dont know and give up. that's where the danger and laziness lies in relativity because assuming that frame point your mind can automatically recoil at the will to discovery because it believes that its inherently not possible. i remember being much younger and having a hard time starting anything because it was never what it was when it left my head. when i tried drawing something it never appeared as i wished it, when i wrote something i got lost in tangents and daydreams. the same went for manual labor which would either intensify or require a new order of tools that were before unknown. it was the very nature of nature that required a will to do battle.

i get wary writing all of this down because it starts to become philosophizing or theorizing and i dont suggest that i have much of a balanced framework to make wide swept or even small claims as to the nature of what we live in, how we work as individuals and as a greater whole, morals, dictates, and whatever other words exist that mean to say what something is and whether it is true or not. usually i hate all that sort of thing. i really most often claim to know nothing, and that will almost always be the case. but in that same light i know quite a bit, it is only that i know it for myself and beyond it becomes weak and insubstantial or that is how it can appear. i just need a place to order thoughts and ideas. i am in a bad way. i love being in a good way, but it seems that most of what happens lately morphs into something that hurts and becomes lost in the damage that it did, and because of pain clarity in the reason for the action is never found even though it exists. i lack the understanding of why. very few people like to speak about themselves deeply and about what is going on with them. and then even fewer are able in any way to accurately describe it. even fewer are able to do it and are able to remove any prejudices they may have towards you that would corrupt the explanation. most people don't even care to get to the very basic steps of having a dialogue that includes a substantial amount of bridging the very large gap that is between each of us. and we cannot blame anyone for anything really, only hold very dearly to the small candle flame the has an urgency to extinguish itself that people can be hurting a lot and simply can't do what needs to be done to bridge the gap, or they aren't for you, or you for them, and the complexities keep rising. so much is going on within each individual human being and we lack the knowing of all that is going on with them that being mad or resenting them or hating them or anything that separates you and them further is a terrible thing to do because it only makes more gaps and more loneliness in a world that can be rife with pain and cold. you have to include the fact that entropy is going on as well and that's not really helping matters, not for us as humans anyway. but i doubt you can throw much fuss at this stage of technological matters towards one of the governing laws of the universe.

i want to sound more hopeful somehow. a recent memory of a friend who on the street after i told him i hated making promises i couldn't keep said it didnt matter and kissed my pinky finger saying that enjoyed false hope is better than none at all. i like that romantic idea, its dramatic nature in that if what was promised actually does come true, the strength of it is so much more. thats really the enticing nature about romance. it can but most often does not, be the ultimate weapon in a despairing mortal universe.

new friend / oil & acrylic / canvas

phalanx general / oil / panel

leviathan / oil, acrylic, oil pastel / canvas

smoke signal / oil, oil pastel / canvas

i hear the sound of wind. i am born. i hear the sound of rain and storm and i am born. gingerly with dexterity each log is placed in the fire and as it burns it is slowly turned. the greener branches boil on the inside and the smattering hiss of water delights dripping to the ground; when all hope is lost water can be gathered by placing a bucket at the end of the branch and letting the water drip into that. the coals collect like a tire mound and here across the vision where light extends out a flying bug goes past and then disappears again into the darkness. grab hold and be moved until the fire is extinguished.

midsummer / oil, pastel, oil stick / canvas

teardrop / oil & acrylic / wood board