Willoughby drawing, Chinese Ink on Vellum, ITIN ’05
Willoughby wakes up and Willoughby sits on the edge of the bed and Willoughby thinks again of suicide. There is a man in Canada who lit himself on fire in a Budget rent a van (you’d think for his final act he might have splurged a little on a Hertz…it would have certainly been more poetic…and the words of Bugs Bunny to Daffy Duck echo in the theater up to the gates of heaven: “Great act kid, but you can only do it once.”). Now I’d talked a lot of shit about lighting myself on fire on the steps ot the capital building in D.C. if Bush won…shades of Vietnamese Monks and Schadenfreude. But it was just talk, this guy meant it. The Canadians are as puzzled as anyone else…Maybe he was one of the few Americans who actally fled to Canada after the election, but then determined that wasn’t enough…or maybe his surtra was “I want to die” ? Or maybe we can blame the body. Maybe the happiness just went out of him.
To top off this sad stew Spalding Gray is on IFC doing his Soderberg directed Gray’s Anatomy. I’ve always found Spalding’s voice comforting and sad. Now it is even more so. You can look at a sample of my Self Portrait which was a ferry ride I took while Spalding was still lost at sea…presumably swimming back to Cambodia, or maybe Jerusalem Rhode Island.
Who was it who said: “I wake up every morning and ask myself; ‘Well do I wan’t to kill myself today?’ and if the answer is no, I get out of bed.”?
I like to think it was Sartre, because he died of old age, didn’t he? Camus went off the road like the James Dean of French Philosophy. Some one leave a comment and tell me.
Well Wlloughby decides to get out of bed, but it seems important to remember that the question is being asked.
There is a fine line between joy and despair.
The words “I don’t want to die” are the mirror image of “I want to die.”
Also, they are often followed by “So I will kill you instead.”
Willoughby wants to be passive in his despair, but finds violent action in his joy.
Who was the poet who sang: “It’s a thin line between love and hate” ?