We are becoming slowly aware and perhaps suspicious that the notion of the Sincere Self  in fact laid the pitfall for kitsch, and the ready-made feeling.  This sensibility that Phillip K. Dick describes so well in the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or that Holden Caulfield dismisses as phony. In our culture we have come past the point where an idealization of truth has led to the  permission of immoral behavior. If you have met a devotee of Osho you know what I mean. “I betrayed you by sleeping with my sister because that was my truth.”

And yet what is real is not formed of whole cloth. Real is made, real is haptic. The way Michelangelo is wonderfully modern and hand-made and his characters Brechtian. H.C. Westerman made the real out of hick bottlecaps and wood. He made his own body. He deserves his own face. Not the face we are given at 20, but the face we earn at 50.

Norm ran the talk show circuit a while back deconstructing what it is to go to a play. It is a perfect example of his genius. On a bit you can see him practicing on Youtube in a number of different venues.

It’s called Norm MacDonald hates Broadway plays.

He sets up the bit by explaining that he likes living in the city, but sometimes his mom from the boonies of Ottawa comes down to visit.  “She’s not big city people like us, Dave.”  He play acts as a big city guy taking his hick mom to Broadway to appeal to her petite bourgeois sensibility. He describes the polite fictions we are asked to believe about theatre that a table and chair is an office and a little picture with a moon behind it must mean we are in the nighttime. “But it’s not really night time, Dave.” And then he says, and this demonstrates his surgical thinking “I was just sitting there wondering what it would really look like on the tv.”

With this fell swoop we are lost and at sea in a world of truth. What is truth now?  What is real? Isn’t the TV a more real experience of a thing then our actual encounter? What is actual?

He, as the Brahmins will teach you, is born country. He transcends caste, born to power, to Kshatriya. And yet, he pursues Art, and the art of Hick sincerely. 

He pursues the artist merchant class within the 18 substratum of Vaishya sincerely. His pretense as a Waylon Jennings devotee is complete, sincere, and believable. We as the viewer, the society, suspend belief before the spectacle of Colter Wall’s great sodden vibrating Voice.  Just ask Baba on “Mid-Morning-Mojo” (CKUA Radio Network in Edmonton, Alberta) might say, “Oh yes, Colter Wall is truuly great.”

Here in American Gothic there is an interesting syncretic between material and style and intention. These motherfuckers, this Mennonite farming twain look severe. These appear to be unforgiving, unpleasured, ascetics - the trinity of his pitchfork, a reminder of the Lord’s constant judgment. The surface is dry like encaustic or egg tempura...

A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's Punk?'.

So I kick over a garbage can and say 'That's punk!'.

So he kicks over the garbage can and says 'That's Punk?',

and I say

 'No, that's trendy.'

Billie Jo Armstrong of Green Day

Of course the evolute of the anti-punk is Trumpism.

Trumpists believe themselves to be the ‘ultimate disrupters’ of our decrepit systems, when in fact they are just trendy.  

Aging Hippies ultimately find in their self-interest and self-indulgence and punk attitude that the needs of the individual outweigh the responsibilities of the individual to the State, the Social Contract, or the surrounding Community.  However, as much we obviously need roads, emergency responders, affordable healthcare and good public education: “Death to Taxes” screams the aging American Baby-Boomer-Hippie Trumpist…

Basquiat seems to (and has suggested as such) be heavily influenced by a second generation AbEx painter Cy Twombley.  This makes for an extraordinary kismet…

Basquiat, as an extremely well educated, though homeless, Haitian youth could easily distill and was excellently positioned to absorb Twombley’s gesture into a personal street style. 

I would like to talk about Jean Michel Basquiat. Specifically I would like to talk about Hollywood Africans, a painting by Basquiat from 1983… this essay, in four parts, asked a series of questions in the title. “Is Basquiat a punk?” 

A title like this… (Hollywood Africans) immediately reminds me of the genius Aries Spears and his virtuosic impersonation of Paul Mooney in his comedy album Hollywood, Look I’m smiling…

We turned the corner of the Central Staff Office in St. Petersburg, Russia and I saw it right away. And, I knew it was wrong.

Here in front of us (a yoga tour group, only here as a testament to our great stamina, grit, and drive to see every last museum in Russia) now, this Degas painting suddenly manifested… Years ago I idly thumbed through my Hardcover Overview on Degas. The complete book. Listed here in my Abrams hardcover it says: The Place de la Concorde.  “Lost in the blitzkrieg.”

The greatest of draughtsman. The worst human being imaginable (more on anti-Semitism later) Degas -- gleefully combing his La Libra Parole for its horrid little tales of Jewish punishment narratives. What is the inverse of erotica? Sadista, perhaps. Grotesques…

Some “no shit shiela” in Queensland told her pot-bellied ex-surfer husband to finally get rid of that old crap photo. The one of Byron Bay with the crappy wood frame. The chippy bogan melted with chagrin as he placed it in a box in the front yard. My friend, Ben Pontè stopped by the boot sale one afternoon and saw where he could improve upon nature and Man. He pulled a pound coin out of his pocket; threw it on the card table, and walked the Tondo home under his arm, his beneficent confidence radiating out of his ruddy grin.  If you’ve ever met Ben, then you know exactly what I mean…