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Back To: The Tyranny of Materiality
1981:
I'm boarding the plane that will take me to
Postcards I Sent My Father and Step-mother While in California
My Grandfather (left) and I [I don't know the guy on the right] . . . the shirt I'm wearing says: If Sex is contagious, let's have an epidemic . . . I think this was Christine's shirt, or I may be confusing it with the blue one that said: I'm watching everybody watch you staring at my CHEST . . . I had a crazy perm at the time . . . my self worth was completely entangled with the visual, the physical, the sexual . . . breasts affected other's perception of me: as illustrated in George's yearbook message from '81 . . . "from flat to fluffy . . . keep up the good work" . . .
Gordon and I at Easter time . . . our family was not religious at all . . . my mother would drag us to the Catholic mass on holidays . . . I was enrolled in Church School: either every or every other Wednesday we would be released from school to walk over to the church on Elm Street to receive religious instruction . . . I know this is cynical but my outstanding memory of Church School was stealing a Playboy magazine out of someone's mailbox when we were ringing doorbells and running away . . . I played the flute during grade / early high school . . . I enjoyed it though can say I wasn't much of a musician . . . at one point, I thought I lost my flute [we later found it on the floor of my father's car several months later] so I switched to the French Horn using a school owned instrument . . . I hated the French Horn . . . I quit band / music by the time I was fifteen . . . the Renoir print above has a chunk missing from the lower part of the woman's dress . . . I made some sign and taped it to the Renoir but ruined the print by tearing the sign off the painting . . . my mother was pissed . . .
"egos
drone
and pose alone
like black balloons
all banged and blown
on a backwoods river
the infidels shiver
in the stench of belief
i tell my momma i'm a hundred
years late
i'm over the rails
and out of the race
and the crippled psalms
of an age that won't thaw
are ringing in my ears"
Beck: Mutations:
"Bottle of Blues"