For the concern of All

It is only from the outside one can tell the size and movement of something.

I grew up learning this lesson. Daily. From mid elementary years starting on occasion, and then beginning in the 7th grade until graduation from high school I did not know one day where I wasn’t bullied and harassed from classmates for being what they considered a fag. The worst of this was from teammates on my basketball, track, and cross country running teams, and perhaps the most difficult to handle. Imagine striving for your best as those running alongside you taunted and teased. A living metaphor isn’t it? But what is the metaphor, and does it signify anything? Then there was the day I was physically attacked in a shopping mall and punched in the face as the attacker yelled, “fag,” knocking me into the wall as he walked away from me.

After time one has to question the toll psychologically, emotionally, and psychically what this does. 

For me I found my best defense in an ever increasing sense of the space around me and the inhabitants. A constant scanning and screening of those, near and far. An ability to see a room in its entirety in a flash, searching out danger. I would do everything in my power to avoid confrontation and attacks. Going to school was for me a nightmare I suffered with daily. Despite this, and perhaps because of this, I had to find those who I felt safe with. I searched places I could survive and be friended. I relied on these safe havens. A Peregrin nesting aside a church steeple. Sanctuary.

I knew I had to get through those years, somehow. I knew once I was older, I could leave home and move to a big city. A city large enough I could disappear into, and find those like me. Safety in numbers. Safety in the mix of difference.

Difference, the great equalizer.

I took with me an ability to scan a space. I discovered a psychic awareness, a doppler effect which stayed with me all the many years post high school trauma. It helped me in my work, this ability to see into something or someone quickly, evaluate, and respond. It takes an enormous amount of energy, this constant surveillance, and please do not mistake it for paranoia, but it worked for me and I thrived. It also allowed me to tap into a considerable creative flow. I found sensing, searching, viewing, also had side benefits of inspiration. It would come to me nearly constantly, and this I also sift through continually. It is as if a radio is on all the time, and hearing this ceaselessly I tune it out until a thing catches my attention. Then I zero in on it, reading and watching and listening, gathering information to distill, for art. 

I can’t locate the numbers for the lottery, or find my missing keys, but then I didn’t tune my awareness for this, and I guess this was not one of the side effects. I tuned it for protection. I sat on the side of the pond, from a safe space, and watched. Watched the ripples in the pond, learning their many meanings, and began to listen. I remained on the edge of the pond all the years once I was put there. Not swimming in the depths, lazing on my back staring into the nothingness of space, dumb to what lay below. I was on the edge, the perimeter, the outside. It is only from here one can see the size of a thing and how it is, or maybe isn’t, moving. 

I wonder now in this later stage of my life, with partner and daughter to care for and protect, how the times we have entered will effect our lives. I note I am suddenly sitting up again. Watching. Concerned and curious if I, if we, if our daughter, are safe. I don’t know that we are. I am aware now when we go out together, a little family, we are different. I am aware of others noting us, two men with a child, and considering us differently. I am not wrong in this. I know this territory well. It isn’t something I can mistake. I am an old tree. My roots are deep, and my branches have grown to reach out far as I have been a still and silent witness to many, many things. I am aware now of old feelings, from childhood years ago when I first learned them. It is very possible my nest is not as safe as it once was. I have with me now something I have not felt in the cities I have lived in for the last 30 years, New York and Los Angeles. Cities I always felt safe in. This something I thought I had left behind to the small town I grew up in. This something you could not possibly understand unless you were also on the outside, the perimeter, the edge, looking in.  

But you can trust those of us who are. We are your family members. We are your friends. We are your neighbors. We are your co-workers. We have seen this before and though time has passed since it was incredibly bad, it is now here again but it isn’t just our safety at stake, it is yours too. It is this country’s, and as this world grows small there are those who would give up their populations to have what America has, this place. If you want to take over something, simply undermine their internal relations, separate them one from another like chaff from wheat. Take the spoils, and harvest what remains. 

If we don’t stick together, if we don’t protect one another, if we don’t value what is different we will lose everything. 

I know this because I am on the outside. I know the size of the thing and how fast it is moving. I invite you to join me here, where it is safe, where we can all watch together and see through for the concern of All.

We Are Story-Tellers

So here is a story I haven't told.

It is about birds. It is about communication. It is about things that go bump. It contains no answers. It has no ending.

Mike Clelland is on UnknownCountry speaking with Whitley Strieber, and for me the summation of his September 16, 2016 Dreamland interview was; "...we are storytellers," to paraphrase their conversation. And so I considered a story I have to offer, and because of Mr. Clelland's candid example, I want to now share this one.
Much like the stories of Mr. Strieber, Mr. Clelland, and so many others, it doesn't have an ending. It is made of moments. These moments when strung together in a Life perhaps cause a consideration of beginning, middle, and end. And perhaps they are all just beginnings.
To me they are all constellations. We peer at them from great distances on dark nights, and back to us they twinkle. Still shining with their wonder and light.

I was at work with my friend Ann when she told me of this woman who channels the Visitors, and before she finished her various facts of who this person is, how she knows of her, and other entails, I interrupted Ann with, "I'm in."

Once I gave Ann room to finish the story she started, I glibly informed her I would refer to this channeler, her friend of a friend of a friend (Ann has a very large network of friends of friends across the U.S., who like her and myself are conscious explorers, and open), as, "The Birdlady," due to Ann's description of what she sounds like when she channels. "It's like birds I was told. A Birdlike staccato. A fast, chirpy sound."

I think of Kate Bush, and her recordings of Blackbirds. Of Kate singing along with their beautiful, shrill communication. I think of the myth Laurie Anderson shares about birds. When there was no earth, no land. Birds flying through space ceaselessly, no place to rest. Birds swarming vast endless collective reaches; their sound, their call, deafening.

I learn the Birdlady is extremely private, and does not want her identity disclosed. She does not work with just anyone. I am to add my name to a proverbial, "hat," from which the Birdlady reads a list of names and then chooses who she feels right about connecting with, and ultimately, for. She does not do this everyday. She does not offer this work with any routine or regularity. She does not charge, but accepts donations if you so choose. She has had this ability since a little girl, and wants to help, but is very careful about when and how she does this. She seeks no publicity for this work. In all actuality Ann and I may never hear back from her.

A number of days pass when unexpectedly Ann tells me the Birdlady has accepted me, and I need to e-mail her friend, this liaison for the Birdlady, my cell phone number, and a date and time will be given for when the Birdlady will call.

I am more than excited. I enjoy intrigue, and it reminds me of when I received my first tattoo. That plot involved me having to call from a pay-phone on a street corner just off St. Mark's Place, so I could be seen in full view from a window of the as-yet-hidden address of the underground tattoo parlor. This was back in 1992 when tattoo parlors were illegal in New York City, and so, apparently, such secure measures were needed in order to protect the parlor from cops looking to bust the artists who permanently inked their work.

Within the week I received a reply to my e-mail directing me to an upcoming morning session with the Birdlady. I was informed it would be thirty minutes in length, more or less depending, and to simply wait for the phone call on the scheduled time and date.

Of course I was enthused, as well as skeptical. I was concerned when the Birdlady began to channel, I would laugh from nervousness, and just the grand silliness of it all. I would laugh mostly at myself, for enlisting such Shirley MacLaine shenanigans.  In spite of this I also wanted to be open. Open to exploring something new and costumed randomly from other events in my life. I hoped for an experience expanding a sense of who I am and how I fit in the scheme of it all.

The morning of our appointment I gathered the few things I wanted ready; my cell phone with earplugs and mic attached, and a journal-tablet and pen for which to write any notes from the session.

Shortly after 9:30 AM my phone rings. I answer with a slow, even, flat, "hello," which rises just slightly in pitch toward the end of the "o," as if to offer not just a proper greeting, but also to imply a sense of concerned curiousity. I do after all know who is calling, but don't know what to expect. I try to imply a sense I am ready for what is to happen, but not entirely trusting or offering carte blanche to her of my good nature. This isn't my first Miller Lite I want to intone.

She is reservedly friendly as she introduces herself to me. I get the feeling she is setting boundaries for the work she is about to do, which I find I respect greatly, as it allows me to know how I should respond. Her inflection informs very clearly she is going to do the work. This gives me room to be open to her in a way I find organically disarms me, and I am soon receptive to the possibility of what just a few weeks ago began as a silly exchange between me and my friend, Ann.

Working with the Birdlady was, I have to say, remarkable. After initial greetings, and informal directions as to what was to occur, I soon recognized the weight and density of air around me, and specifically in front of me, was full. She informed me the Beings were here with me, and yes, the atmosphere of being surrounding then was evident in not just my minds eye, but also in my peripheral senses. I felt my skin tighten as if electrified down the length of my arms. My spine naturally straightened and telescoping, seemed to reach beyond the confines of my body, heightening toward incoming messages. She spoke to me in her own voice, and then immediately switched and a sound of fast, brilliant, percussive vibrational trembles began to arise out of her, as if she stepped aside momentarily, and another picked up the call and interrupted. I did immediately have to suppress a childish need to giggle when she began to, and I have no other means to describe this, "chirp," but only out of the newness and abrupt shock of difference I was hearing.
It isn't important to share what was dispelled through this being who channeled Others. As she spoke I received glimpses of who she was, and correctly identified her as a doctor of animals. Horses to be exact, and when she told me horses were, "dolphins incarnated," all I could think was, "of course they are." It all made sense, in this incredibly abstract phone call. It was all perfect, and unusually clear.

Later I shared the experience with my dear friend Liza, and also with Ann when I got to work. It seemed like it was an event not needing dissection, and mostly I outlined details of what is was like. The parameters. The abstractness of it. How I had to initially suppress a nervous instinct to giggle, and then the natural and immediate connection I felt with her. How it was evident, even in the bright morning sunlight, I was greeted, and communicated with, the Other.

Several days went by, and I began to think back on my phone call. Did this really happen? Did what Ann say would take place, exist in its space? Did this women I most likely will never know or meet in person, channel a bird-like cadence, interpreting for me what the Others shared?

I was leaving work. It was just past 11 PM, and as I pulled onto the 101 in downtown Los Angeles, I felt myself relax after the long day. I made my way as I always do to the fast lane, on the outside far left. I merged in front of what turned out to be a highway patrol car and checking my speed, made sure I wasn't driving too fast. The patrol car followed immediately behind me and as traffic was fairly heavy even at this hour, remained there, not having the availability to change lanes unless necessary. I soon lost myself in my thoughts, and felt an odd sadness of the possibility my morning phone call from days ago was a goof. I was foolish to consider the real of it, nor would I ever have any kind of confirmation either supporting or denying this.

Sometimes, when lost in routine, much like I was late that evening driving home from work, a bolt strikes in the middle of life's repetitive meditation. On the dark highway I sped down now, this was my experience. Striking with shocking force and flash, a jarring report exploded above my head sharpening my wandering thoughts instantly into focus. This was a noise so loud I could picture nothing other than a sledge hammer inexplicably being brought down on the roof of my Ford Escape. I looked in my rear view mirror to see the patrol car continuing as it had been behind me. There were no signs of anything out of the ordinary. The cars to my immediate right had not moved over, or suddenly swerved as if to miss a random, interjecting object. I looked around the open stretch of highway we all were on. We were not near any bridges or open embankments from which one could have tossed a brick or small boulder, the kind frequently found along the base of steep inclines in Los Angeles. This particular stretch of road leaving downtown and moving north is free of any such steep inclines or hills. It is very open, until you get closer to Hollywood. I could not find a group of crazed teenagers tossing rocks or cans of beer onto traffic, as my mind formed a picture of likely culprits. It was late, cars rushed along the highway. There were no pedestrians anywhere. It caused me to think I had momentarily imagined the entire effect when the noise and shock of bang happened a second time immediately above my head.

Now the hairs on my neck and down my arms were standing straight up. I was scared and took my foot off the gas, forcing the patrol car behind me to slow. The car to my right passed me, but all three of us were in the same basic position from moments before, unmoved from any sudden actual emergency on the highway. Nothing was in the road. No debris or remains of a previous wreck. We were not under a bridge. We were not next to anything from which a heavy object could be tossed entirely across four previous lanes of highway traffic, or from the five lanes of oncoming traffic to my left, just beyond the Jersey barrier I was speeding close to.

I sat up high in my seat and accelerated so as not to arouse the attention of the officer behind me, and then it happened again.

A third and nearly deafening report slammed onto the roof of my car and this time I was brought to an alertness I am not sure I had previously experienced. I may have stated out loud, "Oh my God!" and perhaps, "What?" I looked behind me and for the slightest moment, nearly imperceptible, I thought I may have seen a tall thin figure sitting. But then again, maybe I didn't. I did know a few things. I knew I was completely present. I knew where I was. I knew no one or no thing was on the roof of my car. At least nothing I could identify from this world. I knew nothing had been thrown onto my car hitting it with such force as to cause those three loud shocking sounds. I remembered what I had just been thinking seconds before the first crash separated me from my wandering mind and the present state, "I wonder if what happened between me and the Birdlady was real, or just plain foolishness?"

A twinkling had passed between this thought and the concurrent reports hitting my roof, which were maybe three seconds apart. All in all, the whole drama played out in under ten seconds I could gather, but induced a long stretch of; experience, thoughts, questions, searching, and wonder.

I wasn't afraid. I was alone in my car, but alone was the furthest feeling from what I then felt. The radio station I play when I drive home, SiriusXM Spa continued to gently sooth the atmosphere with dulcet sounds. I was glistening now in the dark interior, lit softly with the blue-green glow of my dashboard.

I continued on my drive home, white hot with a composure of conscious alertness nothing could informally induce. The patrol car signaled and then pulled into the consecutive right lanes, making its way to the Santa Monica Boulevard exit. More cars seemed to slowly fade away from me, and soon the 101 wound its way past the Scientology Celebrity Centre, and then between the Capitol Records Building and the Hollywood Tower. I was a seemingly lone driver turning with the curves on the road home. I passed in between the enormous white cross illuminating the dark from atop a hill and the Hollywood Bowl; past Universal City, the Vivid Video building, and then staying in the left lane, I merged onto the 170 toward the quiet Valley.

The highway turned into surface streets, and then the street on which I live. I pulled slowly into the drive of my home, grateful to slow to a stop and sit for a moment. I turned off the engine and sat in silence, collecting myself. The outside motion security lights mounted onto my garage and porch beamed bright announcing I was home. I opened my door trepidatiously, and stepped onto the floor board standing up so I could see onto my roof. Here I witnessed nothing but weeks of dust and grime Los Angeles had settled, mapping the time since my car was last cleaned. No grain or speck of particle was disturbed. No print of rock, brick, or can left a mark, or printed an index. The roof of my Ford Escape was perfectly and evenly smoothed with the dust and minute debris displaying many days piled one upon the other. Reminding me how badly I needed to visit the carwash.

As with other unexplainable's in my life, I add the wonderful Birdlady, and along with the rest consider this night from time to time. Searching for something forgotten, for its truth, its meaning, its need to evidence, what? It fills my night sky so beautifully, and alights a map of my soul. Like lace it is delicately woven and reminds me of who I am, a conscious being among so many Others, searching my way. Experiencing my story as it unfolds in the River of Time.

Of course, the number three is remarkable. It is definite and indifferent to other numbers because it contains two opposing sides, married and grounded by a third, causing the Other to be defined by what it is not.

This experience has neither moral nor ending. It is not from what I can decipher a parable, but might be a metaphor. It may be an abstract thing representative of something else. For or of what, I am still unsure. It is free of anything from which I can get stability, or conscious understanding. We all look for and need the explained, but when confronted by the inexplicable, often cower or dismiss, and thereby lose what I believe to be the magic, the point of it all. The wonder of God.

http://www.unknowncountry.com/dreamland/latest

http://hiddenexperience.blogspot.com/2016/09/interview-with-whitley-strieber-on.html

The Sovereignty of Canvas

In consideration of the tools of the artist, I have found myself at perhaps the base of it all. The canvas. The foundation upon which most modern era art works have been realized. In this I mean paintings created since the turn of the previous century-thereabouts; Cezanne, Monet, Matisse, and Picasso.

The work as movable object became tangible during the Renaissance. Previous to this artists earned their way busily fresco-ing churches and domes, ceilings, and walls, etc. Basically buildings of the corporate or individual rich; the Church, the Medici’s, and so on. If you had a private church or chapel on your property chances are you had a wall painted with a scene of religious contemplation. It was Sovereign. Art was not yet a painted canvas, hung on a wall...that would soon change.

So then what of the person who had a more subtle domain, and not the riches affording them a painted wall? When canvas was stretched upon a frame and artists began to paint scenes of; familial study, or landscapes, or still lifes, or friend such as Mona Lisa, they did so toward a personal aim. The focus changed from religious contemplation, to the quotidian. It turned inward. Man was Sovereign. Sovereignty was brought into the work through the artist, it was not searched for in a pictorial emulation of the Holy. The needed outlet of sharing this Enlightenment, through a visual medium, was transformed. This then could be transported from one location to another, and the birth of Art as commerce, personal gain for pleasure or otherwise, grew.

The second most considerable advent was tin tubes. The painter could then contain their colors in travel size, handleable containers, and go afield to work. Think Van Gogh in the countryside, or seashore.

And then there was the photograph. Why would one have any need to render in paint for future times a mother and daughter, a king or pet, home or tree grove? A photograph can do it for you in the click of a shutter, capturing the bounced light from the scene before it on film. The film is developed, making a negative. The negative has light projected through it onto a photographic plate; paper or other, and through a chemical bath, is brought forth in two dimensional life. I distill this here, even though superficially simply, to illustrate how a photograph actually works. This illustration becomes important to the work I am currently invested in. 

When a person living today, the 21st Century, makes a picture with most likely a device also used for phone calls, internet use, and textual sharing, they are capturing an image in digital form; zero’s and one’s, and not taking a photograph. They are taking an image. The only similarity this has to a photograph resides in what they choose to include, and not, in the two dimensional frame of the image captured. What they include when cropping the image, and what they do not include when they aim the phone. Most do not consider they are creating based on what they decide to not include in this picture, but nonetheless, it is a choice unconscious or otherwise. The Photographer is aware of this, however, and what you don’t see when looking upon their photographs, is as large a part of what is created as what you see.

So now we are here, in the year 2016. The unending present. The continual present which began at the turn of the 1900’s, and sped up during the time from I would specifically like to argue, the 1950’s, to now.

Other than technology, what has changed since the 1950’s in Art? In our Theatre, our Books, our Music, our Movies? The means to continue to express something ineffable through differing media has remained unchanged since artists began to make works, so why take another photograph? Why throw another pot, write a drama, film a movie, record a song, choreograph a dance? What new is the artist, the composer, the potter, the painter, the writer, the actor, the choreographer, bringing to the table?

We are now back to the tools of the artist. What new can one create using the same tools? Here for me, the paint, the brush, the canvas, are my basic tools. In 2014 I began to wonder of the everyday object. The quotidian. The average. The still life of objects in our homes, workplace, mall. Having no need to capture in a photograph (it has already been done), a painting (it has already been done), a story (it has already been done), I wondered what could I bring to the table, anew? I turned to my tools, and was most drawn to the canvas. Canvas is incredible. It is sturdy, it is nearly non-colored, but oh so beautiful in its color, and it is malleable. I began to make everyday objects using just canvas, sculpting into a three dimensional form; a designer shopping bag, a McDonald’s Meal, a pair of sneakers (including the box containing them), a tissue box, specific books, a wind-chime. In their silence and form they are small wonders. They are all usable. One can pick them up, fill them, carry them, turn their pages, gently push their stems creating a chime specific to itself, and in doing so take an object, created from the innumerable quotidian, and see the special, the specific, the one of a kind. The machine Andy Warhol created has here been denied. The two dimensional plane Matisse worked so diligently to transpose has been lifted and brought into the space the body lives within. 

I read the critical theories of Dave Hickey (The Invisible Dragon), John Roberts (Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde), Thierry de Duve (Kant After Duchamp), Rosalind E. Krauss (The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths), Susan Sontag (Against Interpretation and Other Essays), Michele Foucault (Manet and the Object of Painting, and several essays), Jacques Ranciere (The Future of the Image), and essays by Kathy Acker, Jean Baudrillard, Thomas Lawson, Douglas Crimp, Hal Foster, Clement Greenberg, and most notable, Walter Benjamin. For me though, the most significant work was brought through the ideas of de Duve. It was here I was able to re-consider the canvas. Most notably, the Blank Canvas. The Blank Canvas, which hung upon a Wall, could cause one to re-propose, beginning with I would argue Matisse, in his 1918 painting, The Black Shawl, through Duchamp’s, Fountain, and finishing with, let’s say Lucifer, by Jackson Pollock. 

Matisse indicated the three separate fields he was rendering. The Wall, the Floor, and a form in between these two. Upon the Floor, a woman rests. Behind the woman is a Wall. These make up three dimensions of space, in real life. But in a painting, Matisse bisects all three points, and allows the two dimensional field of the canvas stretched over a wood frame, to be just that. A flat space where all three points collide. The viewer creates the remainder. 

Duchamp dismissed all before him entirely in his work Fountain. Instead he focused his eye on the working of the art world. The Gallery, the Committee, the Museum, the Media, i.e., the Papers. Through manipulation of these, he pointed his finger, and through choice, deemed a machine produced, mass-created urinal, and turning it upside down he signed it, creating Fountain. 

Jackson Pollock, although certainly not the first to do so, allowed paint to be the subject, but perhaps most famously so in his drip paintings. The casualty; literally I mean casual and its recourse; movement of his hand holding a paint-full brush, over the canvas laid upon the floor, put into object action the work of Matisse. He evidenced most fluidly, the subject was paint, and made it exciting. 

And so where am I? How do I bring myself to this table? What do I have to offer? Who am I?

Our images are created and socially-mediated, perhaps millions of times a second through Instagram, to name just one such avenue. Our televisions, previously having taken up an enormous amount of three dimensional space in the home, now flatten themselves and are hung on the wall. The Wall previously saved for painting. A painting one could move from place to place, and not have need for what riches would provide in a personal chapel’s frescoed walls, within privately-owned lands. Everyone could hang a painting, or photograph, on their Wall. 

Today, with HD flat-screened images Netflixed 24-7 on an expanse of Wall for viewers contemplation, through bingeing of regurgitated images and stories, none of them original in any manner, where is the painting?

I was a student of fashion. I majored in Women’s Fashion Design at F.I.T., where I learned to drape on dress-form in muslin (the slighter cousin of canvas), three dimensionally. I had to think about this as I wondered on the painting, the blank canvas which I loved so much, and all the giant flat televisions people watched, and hand-held devices of images they scrolled through.

It seemed almost easy to me, the creative impulse then, to form three dimensionally, canvas, using the wood frame as base, and re-place it upon the Wall. It allowed me to conclude and bring to the Table of Art, and all its History, something new. Something when hung upon a Wall, took up space. Rendered images, abstract or otherwise, with; blank canvas, shadow, highlight, depth, projection, the unseen, and the seen. Something to be contemplated. Not unlike a religious scene on a frescoed wall. An attempt to create a three dimensional image from a two dimensional one, an abstract. All of them, containing Sovereignty.

Michael Gardner

Canvas #8

25" x 29" x 14"

2016