State Side

Andy and I have been talking about going back to the states in a while for a while and it's starting to get under my skin already. I'm not even there yet and I'm already getting tired of it. Watching “Californication” isn't helping either. Everyone cheats, everyone lies, everyone uses hip excuses to validate their runaway train of fucked up and delusional. We've watched maybe half a season and I”m starting to be able to smell it again, my memory is rushing back to me and my stomach is starting to turn.

I like watching Californication but that's due to the dialogue and acting. I think if you took those same writers, actors and director and threw them in Oregon, I'd still dig it.

The show itself is darkly funny with a good mix of high brow and vulgar humor and the acting is stellar.

It's California that's eating at me. I left that place with no intention of ever going back. Nearly ten years of looking California in the face got me to the point where I recognize and detest every pock marked inch of it. Its only saving grace is from those family members and friends that refuse to find a new location and keep calling LA home.

David raves about LA, and reminisces about how when he first got there most of the town was farms separated with a few dirt and gravel roads. Well things have changed gramps. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but LA's not exactly farm country anymore. I think he likes what it's become, really appreciates it for what it is. I get the whole “smell of the glove” romanticism he argues for LA if you've lived there long enough to want to defend the place you've dulled out so many of your years for, but it wreaks of shit. I guess he saw it grow up, slowly breaking away from it's innocent farmers daughter ways and into the slut he's become so accustomed to fucking him.

LA is a living creature, feasting on the lives of those who stay and live within it. When you come to LA, it wraps it's arms around you and tries to hold you in, showing you that nothing lives beyond it's streets, that it's the same everywhere; the whole world is LA, so you might as well just make yourself cozy and settle in. Put it any way you like; LA likes to hold people there, whether it's holding you up, back or down; it's got it's hands around your most valuables and it won't let go.

It sure has my most valuables. Except for Andy, all my family and the few remaining people I call friends are there to this day. I thought some of them would have moved on by now.

It's a weird phenomenon. When you're there, people talk about other places like it's on another planet. Traveling is for paid vacations, and permanently taking up residence in some other part of the world goes against common sense and sanity. Maybe people don't talk about it exactly in this way, but it gets through. According to people in LA, there's nowhere else to be, either because it's the cats ass, or the blood sucking vulture that's got you trapped, piggy banking your tips to roll over the late rent until that elusive day you can pack it all in and start fresh.

My clear affintiy for the place I think shows just how much I'm looking forward to it.

When we first started talking about it, I was excited. I miss my family and I'm looking forward to finding all the artistic people I can and surrounding myself with them so I can soak in some creativity for a while. I just want to feel inspiration and original thought bouncing back at me sometimes and not always coming from me and hitting shinny blunt doorknobs.

I still want that and I'm still excited about it, but the pit of my stomach has gone away and I'm dreading mixing with the crowd that invariably surfaces in LA.

We agreed to stay away from LA from the start of the idea, look for places an hour or so away, but we're starting to wonder how fanciful the notion of a one hour saftey wall is. It'll find it's way in, and I”m not sure if we can fight it back enough that it doesn't end up getting its mess all over our lives and soaking into my gray matter.

Am I too judgmental, have I been gone too long? Will I find the same things in Portland, Seattle or Phoenix? It can't be as strong as LA. You can't find a town free of assholes and idiots, but you can at least tip the scale in your favor.

I don't know. The advantages are working with people we love and whom we like to “palaver” with for a while. Making movies, painting with other artists, jamming with some of the many musician friends in every corner of the city, relaxing a little. We need it. We've worked really hard these last two years and stopped having fun with it a while ago. All that work and so much of it siphoned away from our own shit. It's a shame really, but we got what we wanted out of it and we're better off for it, but we're tired of the marathon and we want to chill out for a while. Doing that around friends is the best route, working on some projects we care about or don't, trying to have a good time and getting a reprieve from the race to.. I don't know what... the race perfectionists run themselves into the ground with.

But should we do that in California? Would it be worth it? Would we get to relax at all before it started tightening it's grip again?

Didn't I run away from you years ago? Do I really want to walk right back in? My brain tells me that it will be different this time. I've changed quite a bit since I was last in it's clutches and it might not have the same effect on me. I don't want the same things, need the same things or fear the same things anymore, so would it find it's way to me...or am I safe from it? Maybe it won't recognize me and decide I'm not it's type. Maybe it doesn't want to gulp down someone who it's already spit out.

Maybe I worry too much and really do need to take a fucking break and see what happens.

Fish Into Fish

It didn't take long to get used to the severed heads, piles of curled feet and three-piece-alligators.

I soon expected to see Sheep heads piled next to fresh meat at the outdoor markets but was still amazed every time I went into the major grocery chains and saw an alligator sitting next to the fish selection, cut into three or four large pieces, it's head very much intact. I even started trying to remember to bring a camera when shopping for groceries, but I invariably forgot. To this day, all I have pictures of are three lightly skinned Lamb head s with their eyes staring fixedly at me. Why is it that whenever I first catch sight of their heads, they're always positioned to be staring at me?

Food preparation and display remains one of the starkest differences here from back home. In America you can buy meat and walk away with the mystery of which animal you're holding: it's all nicely plastic wrapped and bleach white, or the color of your choice. In China, education is still low, and the last generation in the south are still having trouble understanding their own language. Fish head and Chicken feet are a common staple in the Chinese diet, but I've never seen anyone walk away with a sheep's head for dinner, so I've come to the conclusion that the head is there as a sign for the illiterate

"This is Lamb".

After two years of living here I've become quite accustomed to these oddities and am not squemish to see what is now the norm, but the other day Andy and I were stopped dead in our tracks.

We often feel lonely out here, with no one to talk to about ideas, politics, theology, theory, the world and even common understandings of electricity or government. It's worse too that the wide majority of people we meet lack a certain creativity so that conversations invariably fall short whenever broached with anything intangible or not easily known. I do not in any way feel superior; but I do feel alone out here and sometimes a bit frightened.

At the schools I taught at, I had to have two weeks focus on imagination just to get the kids to tell me what they wanted to be, and this was to Children. These kids couldn't make up dreams about flying, super powers or greatness beyond being businessmen and women. I used all the Chinese translations I could find: this wasn't a language barrior problem, it was the concept.

There are also major differences in skill, education and naivety, and I'm not talking about the kids anymore. Sometimes I can't help but see large portions of this country as very young children, who will fight information for fear of showing that they do not already know.
I only bring this up to help explain the expression that was associated with the thing that stopped Andy and I in our tracks.

I should also mention that animal care is not considered here. The other week I helped a stray cat find a home which is a story in itself, but while doing it I had to go through the run down with a grown women on why cats don't dig it when you pick them up by wrapping your hand around their neck (like strangling) and hold them up like a harvest chicken. In the end, she was very happy to see the cat's response with rubbing up against her, purring and being...well...cat like. She named him XiaoHei (small black) and carried him home with her with him cozy on her chest. I do think the cat has a better life now, but this women was not a rarity: people don't know how to handle animals here. Very very few people have pets and those that do usually treat them very much like that woman did, holding dogs up by their ears as way of affection, neglecting them and ignoring or hurting them. There is not much value on these animals and I feel that they don't believe that they feel pain, fear or love. If they do, then it makes the following scene even worse.

When walking up the first few steps of the market to go up to the vegetable and pork section, we looked down at a women on the fish floor who was entertaining a young boy of about nine. On the counter was a very large fish head that was still seemingly gasping for breath, little water bubbles trickling down the sides of it's huge bloody head. Behind the wooden table, the vender held up a large piece of that same fish and slowly slipped it into the mouth of the fish head who kept opening and closing it's mouth. She slowly slid it down until it touched bottom, smiled and quietly and excitedly said something to the boy. The boy watched fixidly, mouth open, eyes wide and slack. The woman had the same expression on her face, dull and amazed. The woman slowly pulled the fish's own meat back out and slid it back in again. They looked like zombies, dumb childlike things caught in rapture and awe at a new and amusing toy. If you set up a camera in front of her and darkened the background, this would be a scene for a horror movie where someone is trying to traumatize a small child or hostage.

I didn't have a camera with me, so I did a little watercolor of the image that won't quit.
It was their expression that made it so eerie. They did not react to anyone around them, they were in their own little world, fascinated by the giant fish head eating itself as it convulsed into what looked like hungry little bites.

Fish into Water

Life in China does not afford many opportunities to meet with Artists, in fact in all my time here, I have met too few to count for fear of depressing myself. Art school was once a dream of mine, and like many dreams, like dreams of a balanced media or dreams of an afterlife, I realized it was a fallacy. The face of art school appealed to me but the fact of art school repelled me. I don't think I actually need to explain the flaws of art school as any artist already knows them and any observer can see from a safe distance the pretentious hoax which drains many a hopeful artist's pockets.
There was one aspect of "art school" in any sense that attracted me, and that was the artists that I would be surrounded with while attending the school. I ended up having that anyway when I was in the states, in fact I had it for years before college became a road half traveled. Many of my friends were artists and when they were too busy, I had my art community in town. The most valuable lessons you can get from any art class, you usually find through one of the other artists in the class, bouncing ideas off each other and offering each other your trial and error experience. It was this way to such a degree in my college art class that I wondered why we artists pay to go to college at all rather than just meeting up in large groups and do as we would in class. I have learned more from other artists than I have ever begun to learn in any class or from any book, and when around artists, it compels you to paint more and to reach new heights. I had this opportunity many times with friends and with great groups like California Artists for Humanity. Drawing (or whatever your poison may be) with a fellow artist offers you something no book or teacher can get you. Perhaps this is why Van Gough and Gauguin spent so much time together. Other than them both being artists, they had next to nothing in common; one was an antisocial insecure catastrophe and the other an insatiable glutton for women and booze and was finally taken down by a hooker in France by way of syphilis (of course, Van Gough was pretty much vicariously taken down by the same: story has it he cut off his ear to give to the prostitute he had fallen in love with after his buddy Gauguin took her for a ride one Christmas which gave him that nasty infection that took him down).

I didn't know how much I missed being around artists. I haven't sat down and drawn with another artist since I moved here and rarely get an opportunity to talk art/concept/what have you, besides going through ideas with Andy. Last weekend I was asked to come draw with this photographer, Li Jiang, which if I have the right characters means "inside river" or "into river" which is hysterically fitting. A Chinese euphemism for sex is to say "fish into water", and from what I can see, Li Jiang isn't his given name but more likely his art name.
Li Jiang was apparently looking for an American artist and model to go on a three month tour around China in a mobile home, taking pictures of said model in various beautiful places around China. He also wanted to do some sort of art exhibit featuring beautiful nude Chinese women, which is kind of my area of expertise (most of my best art is female nudes). My friend, Sue, had shown him my art and he wanted to get a vibe for me, so I came on down. A few hours drawing sounded like a welcomed break anyway, so I packed up my little easel and headed down.
As it turns out, he's a big fan of primarily two kinds of art: traditional and nude. His favorite photographer is Spencer Tunic, whose known for his elaborate public nudes. While we waited for Sue to show up, he showed me all of his favorite art and some of his travels around the world and we talked about what we liked about the artists and paintings (mind you we did this almost entirely in Chinese which I was pretty amazed went as well as it did.. At this point, I can have a pretty long conversation in Chinese with a few clarifications to new words here and there.). Pretty early on, I got the gist for him. He's a moderately successful photographer with traditional art training who probably got into drawing so he could have a good excuse to have women take their clothes off for him, not that I'm criticizing the man, lord knows I took full advantage of my artist rights in my time, but his attention to nudity is a bit overwhelming at times which is why I think his chosen name is so fitting.
Li Jiang hasn't drawn in nine years due to being so busy but was very vocal about how I had no excuse to not draw every day of my life. I tried to show him the hypocritical nature of that statement, but he didn't seem to get it. He says artists should learn from Van Gough and forget about money or jobs and paint every day of their life. I told him that every artist wishes they could paint every day but few can because they have to live, eat and make enough money for the next canvas. I also pointed out that Van Gough sold a total of one painting in his entire life to his dentist and wasn't appreciated until after his death.
All in all, I had a great time. The Infamous Doc posed for us for an hour or so, and tried not to let his head fall too much when he kept falling asleep. I say infamous because Doc has received an ungodly amount of attention out here. Every time we meet with photographers, they just can't keep their hands off him. I'm sure it's great for his ego, but before all this, Doc was pretty well set there, and talks of being a king with dreams of people bowing to him. Well, he'll finally have a shrine in his honor to some degree. This month, there will be a billboard in Zhongshan, China bearing Doc's image. A freaking billboard.

In the studio, Li Jiang told me that we would draw Doc's upper body, so I got to work on my small sheet of paper on my portable easel that I swiped from the Canton fair two years ago, and he started on his giant piece of paper. He ended up only drawing doc's face and focused on the detail. Seeing his drawing showed me why all these people keep wanting to photograph Doc; they see a different man than I do. Maybe they see what Doc wants them to see, maybe they see what Doc wants to become. Either way, their view of him is not my own, and I think that shows.
























Next weekend, I'm planning on going back to the studio to draw my friend, Emilia with Li Jiang again. He also said he wants to draw and photograph me, which is kinda new to me. I've had plenty of models before but I haven't done a lot of modeling for another artist. He also keeps trying to convince his way into nude photographs of me but I'm just not doing that. Sue assures me that it doesn't have to be nude but being that it keeps being brought up I think I'll have to nip this in the but my own way. Sue is naive and far too nice with business people and she sees Li Jiang as business, so if I want anything really clarified, I have to do it myself. She sort of assumes people will just pay the deserved amount without talking about it, people will just be honest without questioning it and that people won't do harm; not Chinese people anyway. After the Zhanghe and GouYan sittuation, I don't know how she still believes that, but I know I'm not about to head off that problem again now. I've learned to not let her keep the reigns with these things. She's a great friend and we've become close, but you just don't mix Sue and business, because Sue has patterns she can't seem to break and I've lost enough friends at this point that I'm not giving her the chance to mess this one up again. Besides, I know her intentions are good, she's just misguided.
Here are some pictures of Li Jiang and I drawing.


I don't usually sloutch like this. That's better.