A frank discuassion of the state of mental healthcare in the U.S.  Solutions sought.  All solutions, not just solutions of chemicals, but solutions of word, deed, experience and change.

Avoide the Red hooks… are these distractions or sacrafices?  Or just the area of Brooklyn known as Red Hook.  Is it the police? Or theAliens.

Burnt offerings and the temple mount.  Is this a good idea?

Tell the Hemmingwayesque story of Cash and the 99 bottles of beer on the wall.  All of them lost but for the ones Most Def took as brackets to hold his negotiation with nothing.  Bad form and areal no no, but all the reast lost to a theif only the stolen remain.  THe key to the bank (Banks Key is Becks in bippty boppty talk)  The case of Canada one could drink a case of and thanks to three xxx it looks like a kaws dead Mingus 3 smiley Alien.  Prince to Joni.  Purple to blue queen.  Heart is given not sold.

Gearing up to start a Residency at 17 frost from Nov, thru Jan.  Most of the work will be of a narrative and more or less figurative nature, so I’ve been drawing abstracts in the spirit of contrariness.  I’ve never shown a lot of my abstract work, but I never stop making it.  I guess I’m afraid that even the best abstract paintings (like Kline and DeKooning and Twombly) sort of end up as decorations/trophies for rich idiots.  They can sort of drift into the background and be ignored.  I guess you can ignore Mozart too, so it shouldn’t matter,  but then I never wanted to be Mozart, I wanted to scream and rock.  Still abstraction is my first love and my favorite work to look at or make

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More thoughts on cog sculptures

I was coming home in the taxi when I called you and you were already home and getting ready for bed and so I hung up and asked the cab driver where he was from originally and he said, “Egypt” and so we spoke of pyramids, and the Old Testament, and Islam, and Israel and Palestine and terrorism and when we’d exhausted all that we spoke of dogs.  He said his pit bull was having a bad allergic reaction to something in the Autumn air, or ground.  His skin was all inflamed and the dog took to licking its paws to try and stop the itch.  The dog’s paws were now a bloody mess and he’d scratched his belly raw in great spasms of back leg sharp claw digging.  They had to put the  dog’s head in a huge plastic cone.

“Space Dog,”  I said

“Yes, like a space dog, exactly.”

It was nice to agree on something and we whisked through the Brooklyn night home to where I pet the dogs and checked their paws just to be on the safe side.

double_u UU sends cards for dead Mexican Kings my way and it made me think how much I’m playing cards these days.  I’ve been spending a lot of time editing Cage with Dave S. and that feels like a poker game half the time.  I’ve also been trying to storyboard Willoughby which feels like a card game too, in the sense of discreet rectangle pictures laid out like solitaire.  More hands to come!