Jona8than Green Art and Other Things

"And sometime around 2 AM you end up taking advantage of yourself. Ain't no way around that. Making a scene with a magazine."

Tom Waits, Nighthawks at the Diner 1975

And sometimes around 2 weeks you end up taking advantage of yourself and others. Ain't no way around that. making a scene with an art magazine

It's 2am, I'll probably be up for another two hours, if not more. Been reading Ralph Steadman's The Joke's Over, a book about him and his relationship as artist to Hunter S. Thompson, and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. Two madman perhaps. Also been reading the latest Border Crossing, a Canadian art magazine, fuck, been reading all the copies I have of Border Crossing. Looking for something, finding tons of things, I have everything really; some talent and skill, a decent enough mind, paper, supplies, even some ideas and sketches for Goya's sake, no distractions of girls or drinkin' distractions [though I'd love a little bit of both...], and the only things against that are few. Lack of space and no courage.
And I do have a lack of space, I don't have the grandiose space of the fourth year space in school. I got a wall in the bedroom for drawing and a small space out in the shed for painting or wood. The weather affects the shed, and it has been miserable. The room wall works though.

I just don't have the courage to draw or make art here. I have before, the summer past, but for some reason I don't want to do stuff in front of the folks. Have always been private around them, but as my art gets more introspective at times, I don't want to explain it to them. Shit, I don't want to explain anything. Isn't that lame? The being inside all day does not help either, this cabin fever. And without that courage to explain, or least lie, I can't draw. Can't draw without courage, won't be art, be demoralizing to use Nietzsche even. Would bring about the downturn or further downturn of humanity. It's an unfortunate excuse, but it the excuse.
Have all this talk about changing my ways in the previous post, but am I? I don't sleep at night because when I lie down, with nothing distracting, all the baggage enters, all the questions and worries.
Listening to Kanye helps, but not enough.

"despite any odds"...

Been letting the odds stack against me, and can't say I have done anything to stop them. Just complain about it really, let it keep me lazing round the house all day. I know it has only been two weeks since I left Corner Brook, but just as well be a month or three, it feels like that. No one has been really doing much else, but that hardly consoles me. I complain about the lack of space here, because I don't have a studio, I don't have a room of ones own; a place I can close the door and keep it close so no one looks in. I am having a problem even getting something to draw, a lack of inspiration that many artists would scoff at. Inspiration? The rest of come in here and work from 9-5 everyday, to paraphrase Chuck Close. And he's almost a quadriplegic.

In one sense, I think I put a few bodies of work out this past year in school. They're not done, but maybe done for now. Not sure what to do next. I have said I think I need to "live" a little, need something to make art about. But "live" how? Go on an adventure? Maybe it's me, but adventure seem to need least a little cash. Maybe thats an excuse from the non-adventuring type. I don't know. Really, I have no idea what I meant by "live". A cliche I grabbed really. I would say Bukowski "lived", but all he did was drink, hang with whores and freaks, etc. Cohen did the same, in his own sense, really very few of the writers and artists I admire have really done anything besides their normal living. They just used it better.

A change of pace is good in one sense, and I am moving to St. Johns, but is that much a change? Lived there last summer, went to school, interned at St. M's, but really didn't do a whole lot different than what I'm doing now. Never made any good art. Not really sure when I'll get a real external change, I'll apply for some things and see what happens there. Got to get some things in order for that.
There is internal change, and I have always thought that is a way to things. The problem is of course what to change, perhaps the outlook, think outside the box, or take a knife to the box and cut it to pieces.

Got change something here, get a solution to something, I don't enjoy my idleness as much as I should.