heres to hugo ball...and i will too
heres to kurt schwietzer...and his "merz"
here's to marcel duchamp...and his "ready mades"
heres to all those dadas and MoMas, forerunners of conceptual and pop
who inspired me to be
the art that i am, with no misgivings.
i had no idea that what i was making was dada...until someone pointed that out to me;
and then later with having my collages labeled as "zen dada", i chose to let it stick.
while some read newspapers, i would rip them... magazines too, and just about anything
that appeared with words. i would then juxtapose an image or two (hardly more -
thats where "the zen" comes in) or sometimes just another word or two to twist the word
to cast another meaning...the more i would make the more profound were my findings:
like after finding an empty can washed up on the beach with "shell" printed on it, manifesting
the perfect fit of another can with "pearl" printed on it came just like that!
and now i am in the process of "letting it all go with god" (would just half do?)
i feel like i hit the jackpot today going through my fodder!!!
i found a photo of myself with my one time best friend skippy from 1972
when we were tripping in the graveyard of the old church in bergen (NL)
dating back to napoleon! (talk about being a bone apart with those betty davis eyes!!)
and then another one of me sneaking into view (posed of course)
in my rainbow coat created from my old drapes, with my blue velvet bell bottom
pants cut in half and sewn in for sleeves, sporting a colander on my head for a hat (i recall
doing that at the age of 6 even!)
to match mercury's , behind a bunch of navy guys who lived around the corner
from me and mama on 14 and 1/2 St in virginia beach...behind the miniature golf course
with the huge pink elephant that poked its nose into our bedroom too often for my taste!
{one must be very exact for what one wishes to manifest! i had projected the perfect position
by the water within a loving community. go know if i wasnt sent a job to be teaching art
to The Navy...never mind the possibly of going down with the ship - which wasnt that
unpleasant of a thought when matching up the word seamen to semen - but was everyone
on board, including the captain, pretending to be gay, or was all that just a result of all the LSD
the crew consumed on hand outs from the head nurse cum medicine man... who just for fun
one evening drove us up to the pentagon on a fast trip and then at the gate after flashing his
official pass, said, "oh, sorry, we must have made a wrong turn", and headed back home} go know,
years later if when i showed this photo to a friend who lived high in a 5th ave pent house, that
if the person next to me wasnt her son!
and the last - maybe 10 postcards of the girl with the pearl earring by vermeer,
purchased in den haag the same year i was part of "the experiment in international living"
and instead of living like a diplomat, went off to camp on the beach where i became the
head freak of "the monkey family" having our own experiment in cosmic living!
it was a special day i had there in the museum with her (tripping of course, as museums seemed
at that time to be my chosen place of "energy gathering and releasing" ) because her image presided
over the room above the crown supermarket in bridgeport where i first experienced "IT"
in the middle of our ongoing sensitivity group (c 1968) before ever doing any drugs!
i have just realized that although i have not yet dropped the body i am getting a head start
on my "life review"...and what could be more divine than to have the grateful dead, sly and
the family stone, rotary connection, and janice joplin all jamming away as i unjamed what i thought
i had been bred for?
mercy me, (merz,see me!) some things are just too good to give back to the rubbish!
love you got
