EPIGRAMS TO DIE FOR AND LIVE BY
APHORISMS, PROVERBS, PROBES, BEEFS SHOTS
INTRODUCTION
WORDS MUSIC
SENSE
POISON
FRIEND AND OTHER
ENEMY
REACTION
DEEDS
INDIAN
UNDERWORLD
THIS LIFE/THAT LIFE
JUNIORISMS
NIGHT GOSPEL
RECORD OF LIGHT
METHOD
NOT A STANDPOINT
EPISTOMOLOGY OF CHANCE
RAIN
PICTURES
FIRST AND LAST
INTRODUCTION
THE SHOT FITS
What it is – I’m a picture man. Still, I did plenty before pictures. I got around to picking up a camera, and my aim was aboriginal. A method photographer, I got pinioned to the world of representations the same way a hermit is bound to society.
Like I said, I did enough before pictures ( during and after). Enough dirty work – that’s shit work for shit pay in shit places. Pictures never got me out, instead. . .
My beef with representation? Between what it’s like and what it is, lies all the difference in the world.
LAST DAYS
The practical worth of photography lies with a desire to preserve by recording. or shooting. My desire was to pump proof, and manufacture evidence – reactions to extinction. To record final things, would mean being at the boundary of disappearance.
Even as a ghetto morphed to meadow or industrial rot turned to toxic waste, I was there. Now, it’s gone.
LA MAL VITA
SULLAGE is an arrangement of lines salvaged between 1989 -1996, and, between the lines, pictures. Chiefly a collection of aphorisms, folk sayings and found street wisdoms, backed by corraborative pictures, SULLAGE is simple philosophy. Philosophy that just states beliefs – likes, dislikes, hatreds and loves – but with physical evidence.
SULLAGE is entirely specific. It’s my life in The Life – as a picture man. The seven years is a frame yanked from my dirty haunts – Brooklyn, 42nd Street and Times Square, Cleveland or Butte – their streets, lounges, waste sites and neighborhoods.
SULLAGE is the incriminating slag left from the mutagenic muddle where I live.
WISE LIGHT
Photography, simply, a record of light, while, philosophy, the very word is love. And love of wisdom, as a reaction to stupid, thoughtless function, on its way back to life and simple action, heralds hate. Hate, the reaction, that fueled the furnace.A camera – copy machine or meaning machine, certainly a memory machine. Photography can’t help but journalize and embalm. At its best, it builds monuments and rememberances or solid evidence.
Philosophy pushes clarity, definition, purpose, context.
There is a line, “Mortals should think mortal thoughts.” Claims remain continually in a reactive state to the sway of life as we know it. SULLAGE, all but a total reaction to the current culture of insignificance no one escapes, admits, the only meaningful action is now, silence.
Representation, an invention of science, was thought to preserve meaning. Recording, storage and sale alters meaning and destroys intentionality.
SULLAGE, a testament to specificity, recognizes, in the end, only dissolution.
Only heated words and pictures, one with life, throw light. Everything else is absorption.
Simple action is the objective of a unified theory.
I didn’t have to go far – it’s where I live. Because it’s the only place worh my time.
Sullage I is a certified Going Under project.
WORDS MUSIC
There are two sides to every story and twelve versions of a song.
Models. New ways to look at the same old things.
Capitalization of the sign – ownership, replication and storage.
A play of mirrors holds nothing.
First question of dealing with words, can I represent a thing beyond self or suppositions?
What is the worth of words? Descriptions ( degrees, variations, subtleties, proclamations.)
What is worthy of words? Something overcome.
Where and when would you speak? After the fact and the before opinions.
One mirror reflects accurately.
Truth, seldom heard, sometimes seen.
What is used to describe the truth? A version.
It’s either one truth, many interpretations or, no truth, many interpretations.
It takes just as long to write something, as nothing.
Words – spots, where, even the moon, could be a rumor.
Words serve opinions.
“Entitled to your opinions.” By nature, opinions, are not earned.
In reality your two cents worth it is only worth a penny.
Conversation is traffic.
Talk is postponement.
Words are carbonation.
Words are wind.
Words are one thing, deeds another.
The mouth should follow the feet.
Words are leaves that rely on the work of roots.
“The sands of the seashore, the drops of rain, the days of eternity; who can number these?” Sirach 1:
Words weighed, not counted.
I won’t count on words.
Words of plenty, sweet and chewy, are made to be eaten.
A small idea could require many words.
For the perceptive, a word is enough.
There are 272 words in the Gettysburg Address.
Words, the most convenient way to bias a bent.
There will never be enough time and energy to fight lies.
One lies by one moving one’s mouth.
It’s talk that makes us hypocrites.
What does it matter what you say about someone?
When all is said and done, what is done is remembered.
When all is said and done, you have done what you will.
A life force, the will, casts the shadows called words.
When words lose their power, there will be only violence to answer the nonsense
For words to live, they must be born.
The cemetery of metaphors is where were all headed.
I’m a god. I just read the Sunday New York Times.
Who are more blind, than writers.
Much music is cave music.
To write, a wall. To see, a window
.
The words put to music are useless.
Play it, don’t say it.
I play a sense organ.
One thing I like about music is listening.
Music is absolutely psychological.
The only music people like is the music they like.
Pop music is a sponge art.
If pop is so popular, why is it so pretentious?
Pop, the unity of the low and the highly senseless.
Pop, nursery rhymes for “adults.”
Yet an important message requires, but, a simple beat.
Initially rap was a party, then a message, a faith, an inner city blues, a life jabber
Rap, for every love song, a hate song.
Rap is often, first person.
Rap is aphoristic.
Rap was, literally, about method.
The rich-ass punk rappers should get down on their knees and kiss the ass of Howlin Wolf and Curtis Mayfield and..
Johnny Cash, the first popular rapper, and the first gangster rapper.
Rap needs a punk period.
Rap has yet to live up to its form for any period of time since 1995.
Enjoying good rap and good classical, does not mean reconcilability.
Music is no higher form.
Music is not a model for much, particularly, philosophy
Philosophy is not music.
Nutritional fact, philosophy is closer to a lamb chop, then a sonata
My admission – words and music are inadequate models for thought. I pursue another inadequate model. Light.
A difference between sound and light is the speed they travel.
Sound and light are reflected
Photography is not a model for anything. It’s a record of light.
A record of light is not music.
Music attempts to invoke an image.
Words, music, images lived, are proper models.
See, hear, touch, smell, taste, think, then, shut up.
The problem becomes the solution, life flows backward. . .”and the word became flesh.”
Language excludes deviance and the indescribable.
A hole is more honorable than a patch.
A word, ain’t nothin, but a word.
I’ll take nothing as an answer.
Underlife. Living below words.
Words are rootless.
The flesh should become word.
Music’s value, I drive and she sings.
SENSE
The senses are in service of sensitivity.
Truthful is the testimony of the senses.
Sense, intuition, the rest, is, aversion.
What does sagacity say? Don’t clog the senses.
“The eye is the body’s lamp. It follows that if your eye is clear, your whole body will be covered with life. If your eye is clouded your whole body will be shrouded in darkness .” – Matthew 6:22-23
With touch, the entire body is a sensorium.
The largest organ is the skin.
Head, portal to the world.
Fully 90% of what we sense is lost in our heads.
The only problem in sensing is letting your thoughts interfere.
A live dog is better than a drunk lion.
When you cut off the senses to kill pain, the numbness becomes worse than the pain.
If all are judged according to the flesh, then I judge no one.
“Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my fingers in place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” – John 20:24
We are virgins to ugliness, as with pleasure.
Life consumes itself.
Do you honestly know, what it means to be hungry?
Hunger is the question you must answer.
The hungry are unlike those who are not.
Hunger is a wanderer.
Through sensuous lips we feed.
When the ass received flowers, he ate them.
Fingers came before forks.
It’s always good to have help, except when eating.
I’m not mad. Primarily, I’m hungry.
The well fed and the famished will never understand one another.
Do you honestly know, what it means to be thirsty?
Thirst is the question you must answer.
Desire is the invention of hunger, thirst and exhaustion.
But desire only invents.
A tongue can’t help, but lie.
It’s not the eyes that lie, its the tongue.
“What the eyes see is better than what the desire wanders after. This is also vanity and a chase after wind.” – Ecc 6:9
It the eyes wouldn’t see, the hands wouldn’t take.
“If you were blind you would not have sin. But now that you say, “we see,” your sin remains.” John 9:41
Nerve impulse transposed to image. The eyes have it.
“How privileged your eyes because they see.” – Matthew 13:16
In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
If you cannot sense beauty in all of life, the problem is not life, but your senses.
“A wise man has eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.” – Ecc 2:14
To see or not to see. That is the question.
“Bring hear thy finger and see my hands; and bring here thy hand and put it into my side; and be not unbelieving, but beleiving.” – John 20:27
Believe nothing of what you hear, half of what you see, and all of what you sense.
Sense in, sense out.
Common sense is rare.
“All the rivers run into the sea, but the sea is not full.” – Ecc 1
Draw water from your own well, it’ll quench your thirst, twice.
Better hunger or thirst, than poison.
To know life, smell it.
Hunger is the best sauce.
Cut to new pictures, new sounds.
The one thing worthy of life, instincts.
Good spirits walk instincts’ highways.
Sense and instinct; destination – soul
POISON
Simulation of existence.
And the aesthetic ideal is its whore.
Emptiness is a horror.
Stupidity is evil.
Fear is the sensation of no power.
Everything about opinions is imaginary, especially their origins.
Castles in the sky have similar foundations.
The tools for self satisfaction: appearanceo, appropriation, patterns, morality, or, just plain jerk- poppin.
Cathedrals of comparisons are built to house only scriptures of speculation.
Reify the cosmos to deify the self.
Your sacred opinions, how firm the foundation?
Opinions, the invention of presumption.
Substantive thought is a concept.
The foundation principle is a story.
Consciousness is humanity’s distinctive freight, a picture that develops itself.
“. . . thou art beside thyself, much learning doth make thee mad.” – Acts 26:24
A desublimated form leaves nothing.
The subconscious is a landfill.
Nostalgia one thing, memory another.
Memory stands before forgetting.
Only deeds create proof.
Nothing is set right by criticism.
There are opposites and there are shades.
Ignorance comes in all colors.
Any appropriation is laziness.
The cynicism of experiencing against the cynicism of not experiencing.
What did one appropriationist say to the other? ” I find your work derivative.”
On the theft of anything original; I feel no need to rape any soul, let alone the soul of the whore.
Like raping a whore, appropriation isn’t a matter of humiliation, but theft.
The grass is always greener than your own spilt milk.
He who writes confessionally has a fool for a subject.
American trait, make the victim, victimizer.
Suffering should never lead to a payback on life.
Morality it is a token of degeneration.
Against any new nihilism.
Against any prejudgment.
The most fundamental human quality is not kindness, but, delusion.
Comparisons are odious.
Liquid is not solid.
ENEMY
It is the truth that makes a fool of you.
“. . . and your enemies live under your own roof.” – Matthew 10:36
First question of existence, which generation copy are you?
Would you know the distinction – descendant or derivative?
Virtually authentic still don’t make it.
Elaboration is for bull shit artists.
“You know how to read the sky, but can’t discern the signs of the times.” – Matthew 16:3
What you could see is precisely what you don’t get.
Telling you of your sins is like a victim testifying at the Colin Ferguson trial.
You speak with no shame, it confirms your distance from things.
You are full of the joy of almost living.
You have that certain nothing.
You are dreaming vegetables.
Take the sugar off your tongue.
Take your head out of the feedbag.
If you taste the good, then, taste the bad.
Your bellies are filled with every kind of compromise, and you are still hungry.
The fat will never know the lean.
Suffer from truth, prosper from falsehood.
You are idea whores.
You’re sublimation is theft.
Your self consciousness is an infection.
You whore your sorrow.
Your inspiration is sodomy .
A flatterer with fire in one hand, water in the other.
Would you discuss the color and consistency of my blood, or, wipe it.
It’s great to have the Nazis to blame.
Even when the housekeeper makes your bed, you sleep in it.
Your shoe fits your colonizing, spineless , sick, web-spun, mummy thoughts.
I’m not a paid performer in the arena, let alone the peanut gallery.
“Though your enemy has tears in his eyes, if given the chance, he will never have enough of your blood.” – Ecc 12:16
Emerson said, “Imitation is suicide.” It’s also homicide.
Adorno said, ” Life is the ideology of its own absence.”
Scarface said, “I follow no man, ’cause man be phoney.”
Second question of existence, who has gone to the source?
What you deem romantic, is the actual.
You stand outside of only the actual.
The sparrow that flies behind the hawk, thinks the hawk flees.
If my head were screwed on backwards, I’d see you.
Your head is up your ass.
You are the latest in a long line of fools who think they are the latest.
You’re never too old to find new ways to be stupid.
A witness does not appropriate.
Thou shall not copy.
No artist is worthy of my hate.
The third question of existence, who wears the robes?
Chicken shit speculation is one word.
You swear with your right hand to God, leaving your left hand free. . .
Only contradictions defies stereotypes.
If the noose fits, wear it.
If I recognized each moment of bull shit in the world, there wouldn’t be time to breathe.
People would fuck things up, before they have a chance to fuck things up.
The only reason for success is spite.
If there is any legitimacy to revenge, its respect.
Don’t spit in my well, you may have to drink from it later.
Folks who got, don’t know, gotta.
When you walk my street, you’ll do so as a vic.
If you call one wolf, you invite the pack.
When you call the worst of you, an animal, you belittle the animals.
The pig does not look up, to see, from where, the acorns fall.
Not only are you wrong, you’re not right.
There should be no middle ground, disagree with me, or, detest me.
All those opposed to my philosophy say, “I lie.”
Forget you.
FRIEND OTHER
Why is solitude a threat, and not an answer.
I’m as good as you are, as bad as I am.
If I ever get my hands on that number, two.
“Rightly has a friend been called, “the half of my soul.”- St. Augustine, CONFESSIONS
Even east, odd west.
First question of others, who says?
Show me your friends, show me who you are.
My friends, my fortune.
Power lies in people ties.
In times of need, the pig is called, ‘bro.
The bear and the salmon cannot strike a bargain.
Existence is violence.
Every head, a cosmos.
Human nature is comprised of all nature.
Predictable is not reliable.
He’s a lousy human being, but a great postal carrier.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
If you eat my fruit, try climbing my tree.
Between cat and monkey, most. Between wolf and dog, some.
A group of friends, a pack of starving dogs.
If we could only change the invariable, we’d be perfect.
I accuse everybody of doing the things everybody does.
It others have sense, it’s a sense of compromise .
Mere presence of others, ruins sincerity.
What is integrity? Different things to different people.
I trust, no trust.
True frienship is as rare as truth.
On strength and trust is a friendship poured.
Trust is found fast with the hard.
Both diamond and coal are fashioned from common carbon.
Friends and neighborhoods should be old.
Never sell the souls of living, or, dead friends.
Greed is a beggar.
A greedy country has thieves for citizens.
Give quickly – and give twice.
Giving – hazardous to your health.
Generosity killed the cat.
Fuck generosity.
Give the people a puddle and they’ll drown themselves.
Beautiful women, beautiful trouble.
First question of love, is it real?
Woman’s skill, to know how to appear.
It’s not the flesh but, what animates it .
Vanity is a bitch.
Fool yourself first, to fool others.
Marriage, the triumph of hope over experience.
Drug-free? Including love?
Too much praise is mockery.
If you do move on, it will be as a bridge, so, expect others to walk over you.
You’re insane. You’re asking others to treat you fairly.
People are no bargain.
It’s more practical to kill, than to be killed.
If you have to kill a snake, then kill it once and for all.
“Love your friends like your own soul. Protect them like you protect the pupil of your eye.” Thomas 25
With numbers, the twos have it.
With friends, less is more.
I call friends by the color of their hearts.
REACTION
What is human? Formation reaction.
Afterlife backlash, is there life before death?
“And they bind together heavy and oppressive burdens, and lay them on man’s shoulders.” – Matthew 23:4
The culture of nonsense signifies nothing, but its own insignificance .
The culture of insignificance creates the most beautiful resentment luxury ever accorded.
Insignificance breeds insignificance.
I cannot locate those ideas anywhere, but inside your head.
Thoughts are leisure, opinions are luxuries.
A new wave on an old beach.
Happy the one with no memory.
“I didn’t inhale.”
“A nigger did it.”
People aren’t bad, just, not strong.
The time to close the barn doors, is, not after the cows have escaped.
It’s hard to get the toothpaste back into the tube, after it’s been squeezed out.
What history has taught us, is, that we have learned nothing from it.
I’d rather be well, than well-read.
Some, would have the last word with an echo.
The hollowest nut cries to be cracked.
Why fight cliches with cliches?
Smack me, and, I’ll smack you back.
Close your door and keep your neighbor good.
Close your door keep and keep your neighbor safe.
Anger, the result of trespass.
A gold cage is one of many cages.
The executioner praises your cooperation.
Death pays all debts.
I won’t mock what life has made.
Feigning interest and interest are one and the same.
Broadcaster, “a man did the unspeakable today . . .”
Watching leads to staring.
Reaction, itself, is a forgetting.
The copy, now, is more prized than the original.
Reaction is more to carry.
The generalizations of scientists are not considered stereotypes.
Simplicity is not a reaction to complexity, it’s a way to ignore it.
If a bullfrog had wings it wouldn’t bump its butt.
I’ll take, no, for the answer.
Don’t spit against heaven, lest it fall into your face.
In an atmosphere of wingless birds, I prefer unlawful flight.
Accommodation, no.
Gut reaction – that’s my advice.
Always act, never react.
No contact. No reaction.
DEEDS
There is no purpose to life, but living.
Down with everything, up for anything.
Height is achieved by depth.
What is your perspective? Where you do.
What is your meaning? Why you do.
When are you real? When you do.
Who are you? What and how you do.
My only argument, deeds.
My best argument, deeds.
Life’s intent is struggle.
To conquer, endure.
Life is lived through.
Agree or disagree? Grow.
The worth of deeds – definition, purpose, identity.
Nothing would get done in a world of infinite possibilities.
To do, apply limits. To dream, remove them.
You want dreams to come true? Don’t sleep.
24 hours is a good schedule.
Time is loot.
Before the chicken and the egg, came evolution.
Your life becomes effective as soon as you do.
My formula for greatness? Empty your bucket.
Action is the proper fruit of knowledge.
The ripe fruit will not fall into your mouth.
Don’t sell the soul of the monkey that’s still in the tree.
Put your mouth where your deeds are.
If I put my thumb to the rail, at least it’s my thumb.
That chip on my shoulder has a name, experience.
Experience is the motherfucker of all wisdom.
Experience is a free education.
Experience is the most costly form of knowledge.
Wisdom is knowledge, sobered from the drunkenness of experience.
Character is worth all the world’s systems.
Deeds brand.
Useless trees are never cut.
Only deeds deserve respect.
Only diamond cuts diamond.
Simplicity cuts closer than complications.
The silk looked better on the spider.
I am the skin I live in.
If you look for trouble, you call my name.
A wolf remains a wolf, even if he just dreams about eating your sheep.
A hound’s worth is in its legs.
What is the path? The sway of life.
Your feet will bring you to where your heart is.
You compose a road by walking on it.
A discoverer has tales to tell.
What use is a competent head if its feet can’t carry it.
What does the old man say? Don’t hesitate.
Better to wear out, than rust out.
Work hard, sleep soundly.
Wake the giant.
Chase, hustle, hit.
Get it close to the nerve.
Only emotion imprints memory.
Put stock in the quick, of the nervous system.
Go! Go, to the source.
To be willing is to be able.
Truth waits, to be willed.
Source material is one word.
The proof is in the pudding.
To understand, experience.
Compassion is the most important spice in the humans stew.
An unusual accident, a thought.
Thoughts one thing, deeds another.
Deeds speak deeper than thoughts.
Get life, a philosophy will emerge on its own.
The thought architect speaks of deeds as the blind man speaks of colors.
“You’ll know who they are, by what they produce.” – Matthew 20
Deeds are dirty drops of gold.
What does the limbic region hold? The source of endless creativity and destruction.
Two reasons for deeds – damned if you do it, and damned if you don’t do it.
Life, no game, when winning and losing are useless.
Life is not property and, it follows, life is no argument.
On the day of execution, god is not dead.
Just living is rare enough.
Deeds, no two ways about it.
Exteriority to all things.
Today I proved all my theories.
How do I know that? I live. And, I live here.
INDIAN
My origin is America.
Is America the death of all that is indigenous?
First question of nationality, how much native instinct lies within?
“Road of ghosts,” Paiute expression for our galaxy .
Indians don’t discover.
The French call them Nez Perce, but they call themselves, Numipa, or, we, the people.
This Land is your land, only if you come in a sacred manner.
A land’s beliefs should be indigenous.
Lakota creation legend, the first man crawled from within the earth.
“One does not sell the earth upon which people walk.”
A land is never a colony.
Some have come to escape persecution, others have come to participate in it.
The world is always on the brink, only those whose hearts are pure and strong can save it.
It is hard to follow the path where the Thunders lead.
Why use the relics of any struggle as currency?
What does compromise mean to the man of integrity?
If you’re a drunk, how traditional can you be?
Pure is up for grabs.
An original can never be a copy is no longer true.
An Indian discovers America the same way fish discover water.
The monkeys said it was, they, who first discovered trees.
One man’s home is another’s new world.
The job of the Conquerer is not discovery.
In 1492, Americans discovered Europeans in their country.
The colonizers only rule the day.
I shall die in this time of darkness, but I will die, unafraid, and, as a man.
“Don’t fear those who kill the body and not the soul.” – Matthew 10:28
Expect shit and fight it.
Our history cannot be trusted.
Custer’s stand was a fall.
You made a zoo of this land.
Its paranoia, until it happens to you.
It’s great to have the Khmer Rouge to blame.
Don’t look further than yourself.
Animal fidelity, my name is the skin I live in.
Keep the tongue straight.
The question is not were they screwed, but, was it necessary?
You cannot achieve respect where nothing is respected.
Your future it is a thing of the past.
“Tough times make monkeys eat red peppers.” – Frank Costello
America was and is.
America is indian.
Let us see, is this real,
Let us see, is this real,
This life I am living?
You gods, who dwell everywhere,
Let us see, is this real,
This life I’m living?
– Pawnee poem
UNDERWORLD
“Those that seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed they will marvel and rule over all.” – Thomas 2
I’m the local antihero.
“I have been in the underworld and I’ve sacrificed more than dead animals to speak with the dead.” – Freud
The dead provide the rules.
It’s not life were expecting.
No peace to disturb.
Whatever the level of violence, it’s acceptable.
A chaotic attractor is the model most ignored, yet most pertinent to life.
Every city, a world.
Beneath this city, another city.
It’s harder to pull out, than in.
It’s lonely at the top and the bottom.
“He that is down fears no fall.” – PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
The outsider’s knowledge is linked to danger.
Angel, spirit, demon – you would have me draw lines?
Mix with waste.
Good can never know evil without becoming it.
Better the evil you know, than the evil you don’t know.
“I like a dirty slum, not because I’m actually unclean . . . but because I generally find a certain sediment of philosophy precipitated in its gutters.” – Fritz James O’Brien
I only know that beauty lives from seeing it die.
Flesh is illusion.
You buy land you by stones, you buy meat you buy bones.
It’s a business doing pleasure with you.
The hard way to make an easy living.
I’m against taking drugs, not selling them.
Drugs, product. Guns, survival.
Utility of the underworld – everything has a purpose.
What the mobs and the government control is the human nature business.
What the law and the lawless share, the city’s dirty secrets.
A good cat deserves a good rat.
If the only water is dirty, that’s what we drink.
Slaves, grow hardened by their discomfort, while the master decays from leisure.
Just as we ripen, we rot.
Weeds and vermin spring eternal.
Nature sends storms, proving it is the only shelter.
Hell’s not as bad as getting there.
The defeated have only their god.
It’s all means and ends and bloody truths.
Spots where blood buys freedom.
Sometimes, the way to heaven winds through hell.
I didn’t grow up in it as much as I grew down.
How deep? If I knew it wouldn’t be an abyss.
“G” is for gravity.
When I hit the street, I’m straight.
The likeliest path between two people is an angle.
I’m ethical as hell.
Saint, philosopher, artist? A fourth case would be the true outlaw.
If you can’t be good be safe.
As bad as I am, I’m as good as you are.
Bad man, best man.
“He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me.” – Luke 10:16
Battle fatigue, shell shock – more to digest, more to flip.
Out here post traumatic stress syndrome is sublimation.
What it offers – mystery, strangeness, virtue, context, purpose.
But America would light every dark corner.
The devil dances in empty pockets.
While others dance, I work for shoes.
Like the saints, the criminals die with their secrets.
Any journey for truth ends in darkness.
THIS LIFE/ THAT LIFE
You get deep into this life by letting it get deep into you.
“He who touches pitch, blackens the hands.” – Ecc 13:1
Grey matters, but the law is black and white.
Criminal lament, I may have broken the law, but I never did anything wrong.
Criminal irony, the law makes this life possible, prison makes this life profitable.
One rule, no rule.
Trouble man is one way of putting it.
I’m motivated by a need for people to dislike me.
“What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is missing cannot be supplied.” – Ecc 1:14
God made mankind straight, but men have recourse to many subtleties.
Gotti said, “This is who I am.” The Chin said, “This is, who I’m not.”
Disordered molecule, crooked thought.
What’s the crime, if it’s amongst friends?
Eggs have no business dancing with stones.
The polite thug is married to the virgin whore.
Itty ditty dotty, I don’t give a fuck about nobody.
I’m anti-idiot, not anti-social.
Nigger. At least they’ve got a name for you.
Can’t write “G” on a resume.
You say I’m insane. I say I’m unknown .
You can find it all in the street.
The street – it’s wild and it’s free.
The electric sewer.
God made the country, man made the city.
Neighborhood, velvet trap.
How we livin? Foul.
Nicely is no way to live.
The vic – kind, desperate, stupid.
You’re down or you’re done.
Death-obsessed, the way to live.
Life pulses, not reasons.
If it lives, it dies.
I’m suspicious of coincidence.
Life’s an accident.
A wolf in a zoo is not a wolf.
Outside art, inside life.
The crow may be caged, but his thoughts are in the cornfield.
God sends coca and poppy. The devil sends cooks.
When adults consent, it’s usually to do something childish.
“It’s a sin to go to bed the same day you got up.” – Jimmy Walker
I’ll be busy – sleeping.
What we all love – an ugly truth and a beautiful lie.
Truth slinger, “I’m not new to this, I’m true to this.”
Children and fools tell the truth. The third case would be the drunk.
Don’t judge the nut by the shell.
The people of Cleveland are no fools. It’s just that foolish things happen to them.
Aside from the discomfort, I like the weather here.
For a guy that doesn’t believe in happiness, I’m pretty happy.
I’m organic but I’m not fruit.
Don’t judge the fruit by the skin.
I din’t say you’re an idiot, I said you acted idioctically, but you’re right to assume that.
I’m pretty nice, considering who I am.
I’m a professional, I just don’t make a living at it.
I’m thinking about having an idea.
If you would of been there and seen it yourself, you would not have believed it.
It’s so big you can’t see it.
I’m religious as hell.
I would’ve been all right, if I would’ve stayed at home tonight.
Our time is halved by dark and light.
One lives between heaven and hell.
Our lives are twilight.
My hour, when the crows and bats change guard.
The hours of day are marked by shadows.
The hours of night are indivisible.
Night is the deepest sea.
The existence of the sea, means the existence of pirates.
“What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light.” – Matthew 10:27
The natural condition of all things is aphotic.
We’re all gray in the dark.
Pigmentation ain’t shit.
Old sins cast long shadows.
The dead know one thing – it’s no longer day.
The dead no longer need time.
I cry out of it inevitability.
You don’t bring the truth to light, you bring the light to truth.
There’s less to fear at night.
In night there is counsel.
The good news is – the soul is for the night.
EARTH
Credo – Be true to the earth.
Every fire turns to ashes.
Sediments, not sentiments.
“He who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and the earth he speaks.” John 3:31
“All that is earth returns to earth, and what is from above returns above…” Sirach 40 : 11 -15
“The central mountain is everywhere.” Lakota
Epigenesis has made me worship the ground I crawled on.
The Plains – one sees further of less than anywhere.
Earth deserves the best light.
The tree is not concerned with its fruit or flower, but its seed.
From root to seed and back is the journey.
To the earth be faithful.
“Our bodies earth, our minds clay.”
LIGHT
Blessed is the sun and moon. They go, but always return.
“The clear vault of the sky, it shines forth, like heaven itself; a vision of glory.” – Sirach 43:1
Landscape and everything in it is independent of the mind – only the light links mind and world.
What is true by lamp light is not always true by sunlight.
When the light is crooked, so is the shadow.
The visible is a reflection.
Only light permits vision.
A light, severe, as, clear.
“Light, even though it passes through pollution, is not polluted.” – St. Augustine
Light is pure.
Light is in inquiry.
Light is silent.
Light is all eye.
The eyes have it.
Let us see.
Earn light, learn light.
This Light/That Light:
Cockcrow/Cockshut
First Light/Last light
Dawn of Darkness/Dawn of Light
First Blue/Last Blue
First Black/Last Black
“. . . the greater light to rule the day, the smaller one to rule the night.” – Genesis 1:16
“You can’t be a slave to two masters, only one.” – Matthew 6:24
Dusk, between dog and wolf.
Good things happen at twilight.
There’s nothing new under the sun. What about the moon?
Would you light the far side of the moon?
The moon does not trouble itself with howling dogs, or anything else on earth.
Don’t light a fire if you’re hiding.
Why do wolves kill on full moon nights? They see better.
Tallow art, both light and food.
A candle lights it’s sphere by consuming itself.
Lighting everything is not enlightenment.
“And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness grabbed it not.” – John 1:5
I peddle midnight.
Even when the moon is full, it begins to wane.
A new moon is not visible.
How far this little candle throws its light.
In the dark, any light is good light.
“The light is sweet and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. As he enjoys all these days, let him remember the days of darkness will be many. All that is to come is vanity.” – Ecc 11:7
Outside myself I have one other belief – photons.
To believe in light is to pursue it.
That low sun yields gilt light.
Low light casts long shadows.
If I gotta have light, let it be low.
“. . . so that you become the sons of the light.” – John 12:36
Light needs no accompaniment.
Light come, light go.
You can’t lick light.
Right is light.
It’s all light.
METHOD
How say you?
It’s never a question of what, or when, but how.
In the beginning was the deed.
Opere et veritas.
I’ve added physical labor to the idea of philosophizing.
My job is context.
I don’t dig, my job is to bury.
Source material comes from one place.
The stream cannot rise above its source.
Staying down as an intellectual decision.
Here, not near, nor far.
The rival is within.
A root pleads, “be source not resource.”
In the beginning was the seed.
Memory is power.
The man who follows his own will is king.
Perspectives are never as true as the wills behind them.
Perspectives are measured against deeds.
Formula for truth – give a perspective and deny it.
Minima simularcra.
What is human? Delusion.
It is the corpus colosum that exists, not comparisons.
The human brain is peculiarly wired for self delusion.
Looking for meaning in the floorboards.
Put the left side on the map.
Deal in illusions, and know it.
De dirgibus non est disputuandum.
Physical features mean nothing.
The one exposable truth is the truth you are.
Know thyself.
Self-knowledge is the key code.
Be lock and key.
Be lawyer and client.
Conspirators are better than subjects.
Be living proof.
The value of art? It permits experience.
Art is a contact aesthetic.
Doing is never done.
Get credit when it’s do.
I’m associated with the movement of self.
Keep it on the bricks.
Move by heart, hustle and soul.
A heart and gut make more decisions than the mind.
I know not, unless I make the move.
Nostos, to return home. Algos, pain. I hear nothing about sentiments.
This work says, “I witness.”
Even one moment of realization is better than a life of contemplation.
Peace is work done.
Works, excretement of know how.
Force the dream . . .
Having is forceless, wanting is drama.
Integrity is responding to only motivations.
Consciousness and instincts our allies.
We lost a tail, but kept the memory.
Reflect with a ney spirit and an animal fidelity.
Praise by shame, sublimation through discomfort, exultation by degeneration, elation from ruination.
Life achievement, negative flipped positive.
At high tide the fish eat ants, at low tide the ants eat fish.
Fit to cut, cut to fit.
Sanctas Simplicatas!
Clarity is simplicity’s design.
Working simply is not easy.
Compression leadens work.
267 – the number of words in the Gettysburg address.
In creation your wealth is limits.
Know necessity, not needs.
Perfection is necessity’s design.
Originality has no intent.
Style has no conscious.
Singularity silences any chatter about originality.
“It goes without saying that nothing in art goes without saying.” – Adorno
Authenticity has no references.
If it ain’t broke, don’t break it.
The present fashions in thought, the use of forward prefixes, has it all backwards.
To be post-modern is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Why fight cliches with cliches?
Redundancy is a product of repetition and over-consumption.
Mechanical reproduction wants to save representation, but the price is meaninglessness.
To repeat is to mock.
When magic is shown to be a trick, there’s no magic.
Postmodernism, the unity of the high and the stupid.
All living things mimic.
To stop the echo, silence.
A version is just aversion.
Fur looks finer on four legs.
It ain’t true if you can’t live it.
No spectating.
The work of an artist is to see, not be seen.
Say nothing when you know nothing.
Say nothing when you know everything.
“I was there,” but can you speak with indifference to witnesses?
Art is a dictatorship.
If I’m in the public eye, be it as a cinder.
Carry tissue, not baggage.
“Sorrow is better than laughter, because, when the face is said, the heart grows wiser.” – Ecc 7:3
I’m too far gone. Go further.
Stress is the mess that works best.
The quickness, this is my business.
Plunge deep, into the nervous system.
Deep calleth unto deep.
Duc in altum.
Make it real, not realistic.
I have convictions the way others have vital organs.
Do nothing not vital.
The gut has its own mind.
Yes to storms.
I wish this was a mood.
A self-diagnosis – pseudo psychopathic schizophrenia.
You dig the hole that I will bury you in.
Drug-free? Does that include love?
I respect faith, but doubt gets you the education.
I’m so old school, I’m Old testament.
Faith fights fear.
Faith is difficult, but less difficult than hopelessness.
“I walk from faith, as much as sight.”- Corinthians 5:7
Little by little I go far.
A starting point begins immediately.
Laziness creates only regret.
Success is going from one failure to the other with enthusiasm.
The only reason for success is spite.
Break your own falls.
Own up, all away.
Death is the ultimate rule.
The last vestige is my subject.
“I have chosen you from the world so that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit shall remain.” – All Souls Day
Turn mud to gold.
Cause of action – love of soul.
There’s the ordered soul, and there’s nothing.
Do it for soul, or not all.
The care of your soul will depend on whether you rent or own.
A great asset, the ownership of the negatifive.
What’s got badly, goes badly.
Burn “no” into your soul.
Any other fulfillment is a broken promise.
There is no territory within my boundaries.
The horizon – a boundary, a definition.
You have to see a line to blur it.
I don’t beg to differ, I just differ.
Art, the lie of being true, too simple, only photography tells physical truths, thus, photography is not art.
The faithful look to the heavens, but my faith looks down.
Absolute attentiveness unlocks the spirit.
To represent is to believe, to repeat is to mock.
I’m live.
Prestressed.
The common are distinguished.
The plain is far from ordinary.
Raising baseness to an art form is American.
Art, the unity of the high and the low.
A method is founded on strength only.
The method is the message.
NOT A STANDPOINT
Life ain’t no attitude.
Why look for something that is not yet lost?
The amputee reaches with the hand that is not there.
Second-hand information is useless.
Observation with only sense perception is non-identity.
What you think is not matter.
A few right connections, the rest is hypostatization.
All knowledge is metaphor.
Certainty cuts talk.
Knowledge should not satiate, but make restless.
An artist should have a vision, not a version.
Edgar Allan Poe died of rabies, not booze, as if that changes anything.
If you’re inhabiting the space between the signifier and the signified, you’re not even born yet.
I am absolutely opposed to capital punishment, except, of course, for the person who harms my family.
When the music changes, so does the dance.
Necessity is justification.
“Don’t tell me cocaine is habit forming. I’ve been taking it for 17 years.”- Tallulah Bankhead
Tidal block is a good thing.
“A god does not change his ways.” – Tertullian
I won’t tell you what time will.
I know what it’s not.
Fashion aspires to a perfection that does not exist.
True ideas are not opinions.
Tell the truth and you’ll be in the vanguard.
Samuel Beckett does not appear on Jay Leno.
Imitating stupidity and stupidity are one in the same.
A fool cannot conceal his wisdom.
Existence is violence.
This quality of life shit is killing me.
Life and injustice remain comparable.
The best advice, it comes with the territory.
The end of the world is a temporary situation.
Evolution absorbs speculation.
Prefigure it out.
There’s no blame in biology.
It’s not for our sake that the cat purs.
You can’t unexplode a detonation.
It’s all there, in the blood.
Maturity is acceptance.
Never say never? Never.
Where I am, I’m that.
Convergence is the only standpoint.
EPISTOMOLOGY OF CHANCE
Faith ends with fate.
Fate, the highest creed.
Coincidence, a cruel innocence.
Possibilities are limited.
What will be, will be.
It doesn’t have to be probable, only possible.
What might be, will be.
The impossible remains probable.
Infinite possibilities clog fate.
Possibilities enlarge losing.
Perfection exaggerates flaws.
Failure is a mystery, not a problem.
I’m a failure, yes, but, I’m no loser.
A person afraid of bad luck, will never know good.
I don’t have bad luck, I have bad friends.
There is luck in odd numbers.
The odd will get even.
There are 206 bones in the human body.
There are 2,588,960 poker hands.
Even the hairs on your head are numbered.
Anything can happen, once, or more.
Life is a gamble and a sure bet.
I laugh at all and nothing fate has shaped.
The comedy of the soul is produced by fate.
The mind is a monkey.
Money buys all, but better fate.
Fate is loaned, honed, but not owned.
To pay fate, is, only, to ask for more.
New day, new fate.
I believe in coincidence, about as much as, innocence.
Coincidence is, by definition, accidental.
Fate, pure unintention.
God is love, fate is another matter.
Fate is a motherfucker.
Go-ahead peep my hole card.
Fate, the highest creed.
RAIN
Forecast for a millennium – I’ll pay you to restore my faith in mankind.
Storms, antynomous collision.
Your strength is also your weakness.
Rain is elemental to life – and experience.
The healthy can do nothing for the sick.
Drought and flood are not choices.
There are two teams and one ball.
And trouble rains on those already wet.
Jump in the water to escape the rain.
“He sendth rain on the just and the unjust.” – Matthew 5:45
The unjust can afford shelter.
Morality whines, “Dirty water won’t quench fire or thirst.”
The sky is there – to be watched.
Downburst – a threat and a promise.
Rain has one choice – to fall.
People ask rain to come and go. I’d like it to stay.
Rain is discomfort.
Rain is life.
Rain is home.
Right as rain,
thick as thieves.
Let’s make it rain.
PICTURES
I am a picture man.
Here to represent.
One answer to a dead – souled world.
Without tastes, smells or sounds.
An act of worship.
Just the next best thing . . .
Pictures, work songs.
Relics of a fight.
It chose me.
But I picked the fight.
Picture-taking? Or, picture-giving?
Colonizing or truth seeking?
Photography’s truest exposure is your connection to life.
Expose my film, expose myself.
Candid, sneaky. Direct, not sneaky.
Slow film and a tripod keeps me honest.
Camera lessons: light sensitivity, depth perception, resolving power, reciprocity.
It requires one good eye and two good feet.
Only familiarity aids the shot.
Hurry up and wait, to be ready. The rest is luck.
Pictures, snares for unwary creatures.
In carnivores, long distance vision is essential.
Many sports require aim and movement.
The memorable shots are the ones that got away.
Memorable, forgetful, measure of value.
Loss imprints memory.
Only memory makes the bad old days look good.
“It’s never safe to be nostalgic about something, until you’re absolutely certain there’s no chance of it coming back.” – Bill Vaughn
We seldom remember dreams, photography won’t let us forget them.
It’s not experience we savor, but it’s memory.
Photography loves the illusion of permanence.
Music heralds the future, photography heralds what has passed.
Modern architecture will make lousy ruins.
Picture, monuments.
What was, still is.
Why photography? Necrolatry.
“My friend, why should you shorten my life by taking from me, my shadow spirit? – Crazy Horse
To say I was there.
Memory, a ghost.
Recollection, a power.
A camera, a clock.
Camera, a memory machine.
Pictures are routinely used as evidence.
Photography lends itself to journalism.
Documenntary, residue of deeds.
News, instrument of moral outrage.
“Every image of man is ideology except the negative ones.” – Adorno
Pictures, punctures.
In Japanese, it means, to copy the truth.
In the West, a record of light.
Playful things, useful things, or, truthful things.
A search for pockets of sincerity and truth.
A search for soul.
You call my subjects marginal, you call my mission marginal.
See, how I mean.
Photography is a verb.
Pictures on a wall is not photography.
A picture is worth the thousand deeds it took to capture it.
You will the shot.
Cultivate, plant, watch the sky, harvest – who wills who?
Measure and judge a little and a lot because there’s only one cut.
It takes luck.
Resistance, endurance, surrender.
Soul witness – please your eyes, plague your heart.
Hawks see more than pigs.
It’s hard to hold a great vision.
FIRST AND LAST
I may not be the first method artist, but I might be the last.
It’s not for nothing, that I believe in myself.
Be all things to yourself, and one thing to others.
Faith is light. Earth is truth. Being is believing.
Outslicking nihilism by an act of creation is the best con.
A productive life is my only argument.
Burn the right bridges.
Hawks and crows – hunters don’t fly with scavengers because they don’t think like scavengers.
God should have given us claws.
One can live outside a swarm, herd or pack only with discipline, stealth and the right weapons.
In this age the artist with the most integrity could create only silence.
“But when they deliver you up, do not be anxious for for how or what you are to speak; for what you are to speak will be given to you in that hour. . . ” – Matthew 10:19
It’s done when it’s time to walk another street.
Real is how.
And how deep is real? Soul deep.
It’s about what’s left after you lose something.
Reality has no references.