Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Writing Tips from Silent Mic (aka Spottless Marxx)
Saturday, July 4, 2020
Happy Birthday To Me
ABOUT ME:
As I figured out how to cope and adapt to poverty and loneliness in a yuppie paradise, I also became concerned with the social and political cause of other underdogs. Today I’m the reluctant champion to the bitches, freaks, psychotics, bums, thugs and junkies of the world. This focus has exposed me to many of the deep rooted contradictions and injustices imbedded in our corporate capitalist culture. Believing in the promise of technology to level the playing field, I’ve immersed myself in every digital craze to come along since the arrival of desktop computers. My latest quest is to master Phone Apps & filters in what I call “at a glance” cinema.This, combined with the opportunity offered to me by the pandemic to work at home, I’m currently 50 cards into a life long dream of making an animated, experiential, Tarot Deck.
While I may draw inspiration from the per-historic cave painters, alchemists and even real shaman and mystics living today, the harsh reality is that most of my creative energy & enthusiasm has been tapped from working full-time since I was a teenager just to keep a roof over the head of my wife (who I met when I was 18 and she was 17) and I and food on our plates. I barely know who I am. I don't have a cave, a tribe or artifacts to inform and define me. So, with the precious energy I have kept for myself, I create my own. The Internet is my fountain, computer my archive and the smart phone my tool and the local copy store my laboratory.
Spottless Marxx
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
2020 HINDSIGHT
... ' |
Tomás @Piqself on .
As I write this, I’m heading into what seems (at least right now)to be a very important year, 2020. While there are many things worth reflecting on, both in my neighborhood and the world at large, I have chosen (as usual) to discuss myself! More specifically my art.
|
One of my most vivid popular culture moments growing up was watching Bevis and Butthead on MTV back in the hay-day of music videos. They were mocking a video exclaiming in disgust “this video tells a story. Stories suck!” I agreed with them in previous episodes that “work”, “manners,” “customers” and of course “hell’ all sucked. But "stories" gave me pause. It felt wrong. Very wrong. I probably remember this moment so vividly not only because I was one of those “tell me a story” kids growing up, I was (at that exact moment) also learning about scholars like Joseph Campbell and Claude Lévi-Strauss who have made a strong case that stories are not just escapist entertainment but the very fabric of human civilization.
I can also still remember, though, that I understood what Beavis and Butthead were saying. I too disliked music videos with a storyline. As I sat there with my bleached blond hair, dangling inverted cross earring, black eyeliner and leather jacket I painted myself with a bold Anarchy symbol on the back and the band name “Sucicidal Tendencies” (not a typo… that's how I wrote it and I learned the hard way that Punks, unlike me, take spelling very seriously) I wondered if we were on the verge of civilization, as I knew it, unraveling.
High School Self-Portrait |
Even I, the founder of The At A Glance Film Society, must admit that there is something sad about having plenty of time for endless Dos Equis and “The Most Interesting Man is the World” memes but no time for fine wine, painting and poetry. Perhaps we will be the ones who finally forget Plutarch's lesson: “Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks.” Easy enough for me to predict now, as there’s every reason to believe it’s already true. Hindsight IS the year 2020 in soooo many ways. The exact origin of the expression “hindsight is 2020” (by the way) is unclear , but it probably began sometime around the first arm-chair quarterback in the mid-1900’s. We may be losing poetry and painting but I won’t be surprised if memes are how we’ll all be remembered. Let’s make them with gusto ⚡️🎬⚡️