Beneficial Conflict

How much more of that "Hell, yeah!"  guy can you take?  I've been reading "Industrial Society and Its Future" by Ted Kaczynski, and the tragic thing is that such a brilliant mind never learned how to take advantage of the institutions he was revolting against.  I'm not quite half way through reading it, and you can feel his self-loathing and personal conflict in his projections of societal problems.  I don't want to detract too much from, what so far as my lame brain can tell is a frighteningly prophetic view of today's culture and problems from a few decades ago.  Although many artists question how to draw more attention to their views and exhibitions, I've never been so drastic in my views that I thought I needed to send mail bombs to express my views, or rather; obtain a larger audience.  From an artistic view point, blowing people up to gain notoriety is kind of slutty.  It’s like wearing the shortest pair of jogging shorts you can find to the mall.  It’s an attempt to spread as much seed as possible, which is what the selfish cell wants after all.  I wonder how big Ted’s balls really were/are.  I read in New Scientist the other day that the larger a man’s testicles are the more apt he is to cheat, or have multiple partners.  I guess a guy just doesn’t need to produce that many mini-hims if he is only concentrating on one person.   Makes you think about all sorts of colloquialisms about testes, doesn’t it? 

I remember in High School wearing a gray hoodie and sunglasses for Halloween.  I’m surprised I didn’t end up feeling like an ass like the time I wore a Ho-Chi Minh t-shirt to a party and a friend’s Dad’s friend was there and had served in Vietnam.  He started chanting the marches they used to do along the Ho-chi Minh trail . . . after he had me smoke the most potent joint on the east coast during the year of 1995. 

(Who needs Facebook for old embarrassing pictures when you have a blog?)The interesting thing is Ho-Chi Minh was out of power by 1950.  That’s only 6 years after WWII.  Right before the U.S. entered into WWI Ho-Chi Minh was living in Harlem, New York hanging out with Marcus Garvey.  Shortly after leaving the U.S. he ended up in France learning about Communism.   Thanks France, for the giant green patina statue in New York.  I’m not sarcastic here, I’m not going to do something lame and ask for freedom fries.  Besides, you gave us Duchamp.  I guess it’s only fair we keep off of Polanski too.  But I’ve digressed.  The Vietnam vet singing me chants from the Ho-Chi Minh trail knew something about beneficial conflict that Kaczynski either knew too well, or not well enough.  I haven’t decided yet.  Our government was set up on beneficial conflict; on checks and balances.  

The Child Ballad Show coming up is another example of beneficial conflict.  This is an argument of, and between, the past and present.  An argument as a conversation meant to evoke a devil’s advocating of tradition.  Tradition and rebellion have always been on the different sides of the same coin.  Some of our founding fathers wanted to make a tradition of rebellion.  Well, we still have fire-works; Ted’s still alive at ADX Florence.  Making tradition out of rebellion is Art Rosenbaum, who will be performing and exhibiting at The Child Ballad Show.  Art and his wife Margo have chronicled many of the Ballads for over 50 years as they appear in the present day by those who have learned them honestly.  No pirating or stealing of songs but passing them around from person to person like a potent herb. Their musical magnum opus can be found here at Arts website.  For those of you living outside of Baltimore or its surrounding states, you should make the effort to experience rebellion.  Art has a lust for life that is catching and comes through in his art work and Music.  A lust for life is the ultimate rebellion.  Who wants to be a rock when we

can roll?  So roll on down to the G-Spot on the 11^th of September.  And do I really need to mention that you can purchase the "Beneficial Conflict" print of Godzilla creeping up on the personification of civilization at my Etsy site?   Yes. Yes, I do.  And perhaps Ted didn't want to be self sufficient after all, but taken care of for the rest of his life away from the contact of other people.  And maybe not. You decide. 

Philadelphia Burning

With our recent trip to Japan I began to get used to all of these ancient land marks surrounding us. I began to wonder what we walk by everyday at home, in the U.S., and don’t even know or care is historic. We do live in Philadelphia, some big history for the country there, but what about our neighborhood? What do we have in our ‘hood that is similar in importance to what is in Motoko’s Parents in Japan? Is there anything? I drove around our neighborhood and tried to explore some areas that the local preservation group is trying to have deemed important for Philadelphia’s history. I was a nice day out so I brought along the camera to shot some photos for painting references, and sketched some as well. I started out at planphilly.com and looked through the points of interest, chose our driving path of least resistance, and hopped in the car/truck thing to go and breathe some fresh (questionably) air. It was fresh. The area we live in is up for, a name calling, debate. Things can get heated between city folk about where they are from and what neighborhood is what and authentic real estate agents will get into fisticuffs over it. Being a transplanted southern boy now living in the lowest part of the North’s denial, which it’s the same as the southeastern coast, I had to define again where I live and joined in on the fun. Technically we live in what was historically called Olde Richmond. It is now considered part of Fishtown (sigh of relief). So what is all this coming to? I can proudly stand up and say, “I have had a connection to my current neighborhood all my life!” If you are, not quite a person of a certain age, are a person of a certain age, or progeny of said people you too have this cosmic connection.

I’ll start at the beginning and we'll work our way to the cosmic connection by the end of the week.

My first stop was the music club The Barbary has been around since 1969 and is up for a nomination into the historical preservation society. Their page= www.myspace.com/thenewbarbary

That Music Venue that is so cool it is almost historical, but would never claim outright that it is because that - would be uncool.

According to wiki-travel it is “Hipster Heaven.” I can’t find any information about its importance to music except that it’s been around for a while. Someone let me know about that one please. Its name is interesting in context of the city considering this: the USS Philadelphia was lit aflame by its own people in the first Barbary war.

I will be posting a new Philadelphia 19125 painting every day over the next 5 days. You can purchase them off of my etsy site for $60.00 eachHERE. These paintings are mounted onto 6"x8" frames. Hey, even figure painters need to paint landscapes. After these it is on to the Child Ballad work, http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Child-Ballads-Show/127757983923416?ref=mf .