Something troubles my spirit, O Angel. Something of the Art. The Way The Attitude interprets it, chews it up and spits it out like Beatle Nut in the Dirt Roads. "I Prefer this" one says. Or, "I think it would have been better this way" another says.

REason why I am telling you this is because tonight I have been working frantically on a wooden Object Sculpture, but I have been painting on the wood and writing on the wood my theories or ideas or spur of the moment words that will be the words in those who view it, like, "ART? GO AHEAD, JUDGE ME, IM ONLY WOOD AND PAINT AND SCRIBBLE, THE OBJECT OF ONE'S INSANITY"

Angel, friend, do you feel this that I am feeling? Do you feel this way at times or all the time? We Write, we write, we write, we WriTe, WE WRITE! We write the words of those things that we cannot explain, but those things that live in us and feed on us like a worm or a LEECH.

O do this be too slimy for the waLLS of some College? This work that WILL appear as a Threat, a DAngerous haunting hilarious joke, what was this boy behind his skin thinking, who does he think he is? This is the attitude, this is the mind, this is the way people Think. Do listen, do read, do try to understand. Is this just something I must deal with, like the closest thing to child labor for me, a man, a mortal man, cut and bruised by what I see and what I feel, I cannot help it my angel friend, I cannot ... my eyes they squint, and my hand is to my face, your so bright, your so Bright, white Light from your Soul.

Maybe I don’t know what I am saying or thinking, maybe I haven’t really found out yet. Maybe this is just Emotion oozing out of my pores, my teeth. MY hair turns gray, it falls out. I don’t know what I do or why ... Let it happen, I say to myself, pour it out, let the paint crack for you, let the nail bend the way it will bend, let the wood break if it wants to, and yes, curse to yourself if you feel the need to, whether or not you realize it. Step here and there and get nails in your feet if you have to, fall into the blanket of paint, stop nailing when your mother tells you to stop because she needs to sleep and get up for school tomorrow, and so the Son must stop and only paint, because he will wake up the entire family, open their eyelids and cause them to say, "That boy, WILL he ever put an end to it."

You know what I want, for some reason, I want my aRt to be slashed at, I want it to be stabbed, I want words to hit it ... but the words will already be there for them, Let all come and see, let all come and see, let all come and see ... the words will already be there in pencil symbols and marker lines, just lines, that is ART, Skeleton, blood, muscle, Tissue, MEmbrane, Cells, molecules, Atoms, of ART, that is what it is, LINE, let the line be! LEt the wood BE! LEt the Disorder and chaos and brokeness BE! Let the ILLOGICAL IMAGE BE! JUST LET IT BE!

This is what I see when I Look. This is how I believe we should all look. If you use your souL, we must let it be, and we must embrace the ART, we must breath in, we must walk up to it and take off our shoes and listen to the Artist ... Let it be we must say to ourselves, we must let it be what it is and accept that this is what it will be till the end of time, till it rests in the ground or sits in a GAllery till the gallery is bombed or run down or out of business. Let it BE.

GOOD ART, BAD ART, why can I not believe in such a thing? Maybe I believed in such a thing before ... I realize that this has been of debate over centuries time, but it is now, for me that is, that it comes up so strongly. I don’t know why.

We have the laws. The Fundamentals that we learn, and I do wish to learn them. But I believe ART is another thing. It has to be another thing. Angel, open your eyes to the worLd before you, let them open slowly, and let us Look for the beggars and the blind men and the mutes and the prostitutes and all of humanity, as one you say, and yes it is, and let us cry in the night, let us look upward and climb Jacob's Ladder, the Stairway to Heaven ... LORD, REACH INTO US!

Sitting outside on the porch just before a Thunder Storm hovers over, the windows shuddering, the boughs of trees swaying in all directions, and the little helicopters spinning down to the grass, moving to the spiral winds like a woman's hair to a blow dryer early in the morning just before work, the sound telling you almost time to start your day, too. Can you hear the rumbling in the distance? Are the angels bowling, like my father and mother have told me when I was a child, running into their bed in the middle of the night, freightened by these crashing sounds, and the green flickering of the Lightning that made me see claws and faces on my bedroom walls. What War was going on above the clouds? Angels and demons? What was this rushing through my mind, what is this, this Storm? O what is it about Storms?

I found a couch for my studio, at the curbside of a funeral home, a couch of tears and heavy bodies, maybe, but a clean couch, clean enough for a funeral home, for a place to either remember the life of one who passed or to mourn their death, I would prefer the mourning, maybe because that is the most human thing to do in time of death, to cry, to cry until we sting, until we choke and cough, the crying. Never have I lost somebody, a friend, a brother, a lover, never. But I know such days will come and I know I will cry, looking for any shoulder to rest my head against. I do remember one time when I was about 11 years old, my cousin who was 17 years old died in his sleep, some think it was a drug overdose, I do not really know, it does not really matter, I remember crying like I never cried before, I just looked at him in the coffin, in his Nike shirt and baseball hat, he liked sports, and I collapsed, death itself might have been the reason, the thought of death, of dieing, of not being with those you love, and to see it right there in front of me, not really understanding it, it came over me, it broke me as a little child, my father held me, and his holding made me cry too, my father never held me like he did on that day.

Last night was a feast with paint. Drew came and life shook in us and all around us, beauty of the earth and of small spaces that transform into vast halls, or so we believe and feel, the attic becomes our sanctuary where our souls collide and love and touch each other's cloaks, painted jeans, charcoal soles of our feet, like when Elizabeth and Mary met in the room and Jesus and wilderness man John touched each other, even in the wombs still, they knew each other, they felt the divinity, the holiness, the beauty, of it all ...

I wonder if Elizabeth and Mary had any idea the extreme lives they would live, willing to die, to suffer, but so that man may hope and love and praise in the corners of improbability and doubt, but that there might be salvation and joy and LIFE.

We are both after humanity.
Maybe to different extremes or approaches, or maybe in the same extreme, since who is to say one extreme differs from the other in essence or quality of the extreme, but in terms of style or vision or subject, maybe one can see not the difference because that sounds like one of us is an artist and another an architect, but rather another way of thinking of it or throwing your soul into it, like Joshua's 12 Stones in the middle of the Jordan River when God held it up, 12 were chosen to pick up each stone, not really different stones, just separated stones that happen to be one still, with one purpose, to house the Ark of God, and so it is with us, we pick up brushes that are separate, but the same still, one, with a hand that is its own, but with the same purpose and drive and love in mind that we strive for and believe with a mustard seed of faith, that the miracle will happen, that we paint to our death, and that we number our days, and be old men in studio space halls, or warehouses, where we will have thousands of paintings, this is what we hope for, these are the desires of our heart, and in faith, we believe it will happen.

Let the art extend into all, especially into those who see no use of it, the truth is, let us all be transformed and see the beauty in the ant that climbs the blade of grass or the baking work that finds its way to moist soil just in time.