Most of us have some memory of that one time in our childhood where we witnessed some kid get bullied. Many of us also stood there, watching, and despite knowing it was unjust, sat there quietly, stuck halfway between fearing we might be next and being secretly glad it wasn’t happening to us.
Or maybe you didn’t just stand there. Maybe you intervened. Perhaps when you did you ended up getting smacked down right along with them, or worse some adult came by and stupidly blamed you for being aggressive.
Did you ever see someone stand up and dare to say out loud what we were all thinking? Have you noticed when that happens that person is almost always met with eye rolls or scorn. Did you ever know someone who was amazingly talented, but you were uncomfortable around them because they seemed to be a lightening rod? You found yourself attracted to them, but at the same time kinda kept your distance?
Do you know people from your past who got in trouble all the time because they couldn’t stay quiet about injustice? I know I did. Sometimes that person was me, but most the time it was someone braver than me.
Our tribal instincts tend to make us take shelter behind where we imagine strength to be, but our problem is most of the time we shelter ourselves behind the wrong person. We misinterpret a show of force or dominance with shelter. Somewhere during our lifetime many of us have mistakenly stood behind the bully. The crowd where the jeers and criticism was coming seemed a safer place to be if you didn’t want to be singled out and humiliated. Even though, deep down, you knew something was wrong. That’s only human, right?
We’ve seen many people speak the truth when no one wanted to hear it. Maybe we were glad to hear it, and even more glad it was someone else who spoke it. Afterwards we go along with our life dealing with our own personal hardships that eventually cloud our memory from those who once drew fire on our behalf.
Sinéad O’Conner was our lightening rod, whether we liked it or not. She is the kid who stood up in class to speak an obvious truth out loud to authority while the rest of us laughed or hid our faces. She’s the kid we watched get bullied on the playground who picked herself up, dusted herself off, and walked away in silence.
I’ve been thinking about Sinéad over the last few days, but mostly I’ve been thinking about how much we haven’t been thinking about her for a long time until now. Right now if feels a bit disingenuous to stand up and praise her, because it’s honestly a day late and a dollar short. She deserves more than posthumous praise. What she deserved was to be supported in her lifetime. Even though she was absolutely not afraid to go it alone, because that was pretty much all she had ever known, while we all sat in the back of the classroom watching her take the heat.
If you want to honor Sinéad report child abuse, report domestic violence, hold everyone in authority accountable. Stand up for the least of these. And don’t be afraid when the bully turns his gaze towards you.
I woke up yesterday morning around 6:30am with the Queen song “39” going over and over in my head, so I couldn’t go back to sleep. “39” is on the short list of my very favorite songs from Queen. A lot of fair weather Queen fans may not even be familiar with the song as it was the B side to “You’re My Best Friend” as well as a deeper cut on “A Night at the Opera.”
When I first heard the song back in the mid-seventies I doubt I understood much about its story. I can remember being confused by the line, “In the land that our grandchildren knew.” The melody has a retro vibe to it like an old folk song. And with the title “39” I initially though it was singing about something that took place in 1939. That is until that line I mentioned popped up. As a teenager I just thought, wow, I guess there’s some kind of time travelly thing going on here.
I was way too young and stupid to think about things like time dilation and special relativity. But Brian May knew what he was talking about. Another cool thing is Brian May did not only write this song he is the one who sings it. When May wrote this song he had already graduated with honors from the Imperial College London with a degree in physics. He had begun his doctoral studies, but left once the band became successful just a year before he wrote this song.
So, needless to say, Sir Brian knew a thing or two about time dilation and special relativity. Which is exactly what the song “39” is about. He wrote this song nearly three decades before the movie “Interstellar” came out, which tells a similar story. In “39” an astronaut with his team of volunteers go on a space mission which for them lasts only one year, but for the people on Earth takes them 100 years. They return to Earth in the year of 39 one hundred years later with good news, but have to live with the reality that their loved ones are all gone and dead, as the astronaut laments in the land that our grandchildren knew.
Brian May has always been my number one favorite guitarist, and where he may be number 26 on the Rolling Stone list of 100 greatest guitarist, I can assure you none of the other 25 guitar players in front of him have an IQ of 180. Fortunately, May finished his doctorate and recently received the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication.
In short, the dude is a badass across the board. Go find the song and listen, but remember, that is not Freddy Mercury you hear singing, that is Brian May!
I’ve only just begun to embark on this project. It started only one month ago when Pam and I were sitting in our favorite coffee shop, Rivertown Coffee, here in Florence, Alabama. I had been puzzling over a subject or a theme to begin a series of paintings and was pretty much hitting a dead end. It was mid December so we were sitting inside. As I sat there over my coffee, staring out the window I couldn’t help but watch these two gentlemen who were sitting outside smoking these longish, Hobbit-like pipes.
The Third Pipe, Gouache on paper, 28cm x 35.5cm
The more I watched them the more intrigued I became. Probably a side effect of my decades of work as an art director, even their clothing began to feel very art directed to me. I began to sneak photos of…
It seems these days we see lots of memes and funny videos about the world of introverts. Most of my favorite people are introverts. We like to make jokes about the sticky situations introverts find themselves in when they are caught with their back to the wall in social situations. Often these memes give us insight on what is going on in their minds when it seems the outside world just doesn’t understand them.
While I’ve become very acquainted on living with an introvert, I am myself quite the extrovert. Sometimes we extroverts become the punch line of comedic situations involving our introvert friends, and it seems to me many people believe we extroverts are impervious to hurt feelings, embarrassment, or any number of other emotions that might come our way.
The truth is we extroverts deal with our own share of misconceptions, so here is a bit of my own story on what my childhood was like growing up as an extrovert. I was an active child full of laughter. I wasn’t afraid of much. I was at ease speaking my mind as I grew older, but I wasn’t always that way in my younger days. I was also a good kid. I got along with teachers even if they did think I talked too much in class. I was baptized when I was eight years old and took rather seriously the idea of my Christian identity. Consequently, I never spoke a single “cuss word” in my life until I was 16 years old. I believed in goodness, good guys, and doing the right thing, whatever that was.
But here’s the funny thing. Four or five moms of some of my friends thought I was a bad influence on their son when I hung out with them. I could name all these people, but I won’t. Some of these moms truly thought I would lead their little boys astray. I have no idea why they felt like that, but I was told this numerous times, by either my friends or their mom themselves. I didn’t really let it bother me, but I did find it peculiar. The irony, if this is the right word, is that over time at least three of these friends ended up actually dealing drugs. Sure, I did drugs back then like so many other teens in the seventies, but the last thing I would have ever done is actually DEAL drugs! I was never a ring leader the way some of these moms imagined me. I was just loud, happy and not afraid to be myself or speak my mind. Meanwhile, their boys were picking up drugs from dealers and selling them to all their peers in high school. Most of my so called “firsts” came from hanging out with some of these friends whose moms thought I was the bad influence on them. My first time ever smoking pot, or my first time sneaking out and drinking beer came from older friends who had access to these things when I didn’t. Yet somehow their mom thought I was the bad influence instead of the other way around. Even over friends that were older than me, if you can figure that one out.
What I’ve learned over the years is that we extroverts often get the brunt end of things when a situation goes sideways. Simply because we make ourselves a target. People become comfortable picking on us because they learn we can take it. Years later, when I was working for a major advertising agency I had a producer ask me once why I let so many of my co-workers talk to me the way they did. She said, “Dude, you’re a Vice President. You outrank every one of them. Why do you let them talk down to you the way they do?” That took me a little off guard, because I never really thought about it, but the truth is I am a very affable person most of the time. I can take a joke pretty well. And more often than once, professionally, I have stepped in to take the blame for things I didn’t do just so everyone would get their head out of their ass and get back to solving the problem at hand.
You see, these are just a few examples of what some of us extroverts do to move through life. I enjoy people. Every person I meet is a potential new friend, and I don’t want to lose any time trying to make that happen. That is how I enjoy life and I’m willing to be the fall guy if it keeps those around me feeling more at ease. I’ve also learned that kind of transparency can sometimes make people nervous. It can make them skeptical of you and in the end they will project upon you all the things they themselves fear. Just like my friends’ moms did back when I was 12 years old.
So, for my introverted friends, as always I have your back! I understand when your energy meter runs out and you have to flee the room to go recharge. I’ll entertain the crowd and give you cover. But remember, just because we are extroverts doesn’t make us dangerous. And it doesn’t mean life was easier for us. Party on y’all.
[Photo: The Ricktrovert in action entertaining the crowd at Carlos ‘n Charlie’s, Cozumel, MX on behalf of Diet Coke.]
How many of us take a moment to ask ourselves who we really are? Is who we were once who we really are now, or are we the person we are trying to become? Are we both? Are we neither? Maybe the only person we really are is in this exact moment. We are not who we were and we are not who we are about to become. Yet there is another reality we can consider.
Each one of us are hundreds, or even thousands of people. Last I checked I have approximately 1300 “friends” on Facebook. That is 1300 people who have some kind of idea who I am. This doesn’t count the multitude of people whom I have crossed paths with over the course of my life. To each of these people I am somebody. Some may feel they have sufficient information on what kind of person I am, some may only have encountered me for five minutes of their entire life. For better or worse we may have had a brief but impactful encounter with a stranger, and now we are forever a player in a story they have to tell. We are all a ghost in someone’s story.
I have encountered old friends who have been out of touch for decades and it’s funny how when you come back together you are still very much the person they knew 30 years ago. You know you have changed. You might even be ashamed of that person you were, but whether you like it or not you exist to them as a character you may feel you no longer play. We know who we are, or at least we think we do, but which person are we really? One day we will be gone. After that we will only exist as ghosts whose stories and character are contained in the memories of every person we have encountered.
I had a friend who was certain I was the living embodiment of Winnie the Pooh. Carla has passed on now, but she once told me that. It was during my years serving with her in the Church while I was in the discernment process for the priesthood. We worked together on committees and strategized on ways to stop domestic violence. She ran a well known shelter for abused women who needed a place of sanctuary. In Carla’s reality I was a lovable, affable companion seeking grace in a broken world. Am I that person? I don’t know, I suppose.
Likewise, I have a friend who sees me as the rebellious punk artist he first met in the 1970s. The guy who held wild parties and did hallucinogenic drugs. A loud person who wasn’t afraid to pick a fight in public with a racist old man in front of a K-Mart many years ago. The person I was then was certainly no Winnie the Pooh. Since I’m referencing the Hundred Acre Wood, I was probably more like Rabbit in this friend’s world.
Somewhere in Cincinnati there is a 46 year old woman who once baby sat for a couple back in 1989. It is my great regret that I take up space in her memory as the grumpy dad who called her up after I noticed she broke the latch on the baby bed and didn’t tell us. I didn’t yell at her, but I talked to her in that brooding adult voice designed to make a child take stock in what she did. I hate myself for that. If I could find her today I would apologize for darkening her evening that day with my petty comments, but there you have it. I am forever a ghost, a dark specter in a past story I truly hope she has forgotten. But that’s all I am to her and all I will ever be. Is that who I am? Well, that dark character lives inside of me to remind me to be humble. It reminds me that when I wish someone to be judged for their behavior, that I am not above the same judgement.
I have broken the hearts of people whom I love dearly. I have made the day for strangers and given them hope. Likewise, I have offended perfect strangers. I have visited lonely friends in prison. I have comforted memory care patients who had no idea who I was. Some people think of me as smart, some think me a fool. There are people who think I am the nicest person in the world. There are people who think I am full of shit. I am all of those things. I am a thousand ghosts.
If you want to be who you think you really are then it is up to you to act on those ideals before you take them to the grave. Because no matter how noble you imagine yourself to be, at the end of the day you are your works, not your words. Good intentions fills no one’s cup. Do your real self a favor, stop trying to be right and just try to be kind. What kind of ghosts will you leave behind?
12 December, the year of our Lord, two-thousand and twenty-two
Dear Diary,
I find myself on a strange voyage and I am uncertain of my destination. Honestly, I have no idea of what or where I might call home. I was born in Thailand into a British family, but it wasn’t long after that I was sold into captivity and trafficked to a holding camp in the United States to a place called Colorado. I cried for days having been split apart from my siblings, and though I am British I find English a difficult language. I had hopes I might be reunited with my cousin, Betty Brown who lives in Staffordshire, England, but alas I do not think this will come to pass.
A fortnight ago I was informed by my captor that a yank somewhere in the southern states had secured my release and I was to be sent to him. I fear this has been a ruse for I have been to many cities now and this person has yet to make himself known. My first stop was in a small town called Smyrna in Tennessee. The people there were nice, but they talked funny. I had heard they drink their tea over ice there and I became very afraid. The next day they moved me to a place in Tennessee called Memphis. It didn’t seem very Egyptian to me. They still talked funny. I heard they boil their tea in water with sugar already added and like the people of Smyrna pour it over ice before serving it. I began to cry uncontrollably.
The very next day they moved me yet again, this time to a place called Atlanta. This place was very confusing and there were way too many automobiles there. Everyone seemed so angry and burned out on political advertising. I have no clue what that even means, but I was praying to God to get out of there because they too practiced the worship of presweetened iced tea. Surely, I have been sent to die among Philistines! I even heard someone refer to me as a coffee pot. God save me.
I am overcome with road weariness, for they have now sent me to a place called Huntsville. There are spaceships everywhere and I am very afraid. They still talk funny, but apparently they can do math here. I saw an Asian man and it made me feel warm and hopeful, until I saw him pour a glass of iced tea from a clear pitcher into a tumbler full of ice. He drank it right in front of me and said, “Hey y’all, I’m fixin’ to go home, but there’s still plenty tea in the break room.” God have mercy on my soul, he talks just like the people in the strange land of Memphis that is not in Egypt!
I heard someone say I am supposed to be sent to Florence. This has gotten my hopes up because I think I will like Italy, but I worry this is too good to be true. I just don’t know anymore. It’s getting dark now and I have been on this odyssey for 13 days. When I was young I dreamt of PG Tips, Twinnings, or Taylor’s of Yorkshire, but I am losing hope. Say a prayer for me.
Sometimes just existing in the art world can take a lot of patience. There are no rules on how anyone may enter into the world of art and call themselves an “artist.” There is no baseline of talent required. From much of what I see, role playing as an artists is much more popular than trying to actually be an accomplished artist. I mostly blame the late 20th century university system on that dynamic.
First the Dadaists essentially murdered art in front of the world to make their great existential statement. That opened the door to Modern Art which eventually led to the dawn of Pop Art and the subsequent cult of personality that grew out of it. Thus, inspiring tens of thousands of college sophomores to begin to fancy themselves artists. Not because they could draw, paint, or sculpt, but because they were shown one only needs to pee in a jar or spill some paint to earn the title, and only then does their work begin to convince the world around them through dressing up and affecting all the right mannerisms that show how misunderstood they are that, because, you know, they’re an artist!
Sure, there are professional artists who illustrate for a living and lots of incredibly talented artists who show work in galleries and produce stunning work in animation, comic books, children’s storybooks, book covers, album covers, and on and on. But the academic art world has found a way to discredit nearly every one of them. God forbid drawing skills or craftsmanship be required to attain credibility. If we required that who would pay for the millions of useless liberal arts degrees that get handed out to the future jobless “artists” of society? Surely, if someone wants to be a real artist they should not rely on mundane things like drawing ability, or advanced visual craftsmanship. How pedestrian is that? We don’t want to shame that kid in the coffee shop with the goth makeup wearing a beret while drinking his double Frappuccino now, do we? Just because he has no sense of composition and can barely draw a stick figure doesn’t mean he’s not an artist. No, he doesn’t play a music instrument either, but he buys all the best records and reads the Village Voice. He’s even learned how to pronounce names like Ingres, Daumier, and Velásquez. He prefers to do “abstract paintings” over the tedious styles that trained artists have dedicated thousands of hours to over the centuries. We have cameras now if we want to see images that look like something. Besides, the great masters have already painted all the good stuff, so let’s be creative and express ourselves without judgement.
Okay, I’ll end the sarcastic rant, but this is a real thing. However, do not confuse what I’m saying as praise for the likes of Thomas Kinkade! I’ll take Frappuccino boy’s shitty stick figures over a Kinkade any day. I spent the first 8 years of my professional artist career doing crappy carney art. Thousands of caricatures, quick chalk portraits, copper etchings, paper silhouettes, blown glass, wooden signs, and finally tens of thousands of airbrushed t-shirts. So, I know what low brow, fast money art is all about. It takes one to know one, and I know that Thomas Kinkade is a carney artist. Bless his heart.
Now back to why I blame academia on turning its back on gifted artists who know how to draw. In his book “Mainstreams of Modern Art” John Canaday writes about the nineteenth century painter Ernest Meissonier. Meissonier was an incredibly meticulous painter who mostly painted Napoleonic military scenes. He was heavily praised by the snooty Salon elites at the height of his career and could arguably draw better than most any known painter in his day. About Meissonier Canaday writes:
One of the most successful painters of the day, Meissonier is the subject of more detailed comments later on in this book. He was a painter without technical limitations and equally without depth or sensitivity. (p 126)
Meissonier offered the new picture-buying public exactly what it wanted. In the first place, his pictures told little stories; they were easy to “understand.” And the little figures enacting these stories were laboriously and accurately detailed. The public demanded that a painting be something which had quite obviously been difficult to do, like a cathedral built from toothpicks. Not only did Meissonier put every tiniest highlight on every button, but it was even possible to identify a soldiers regiment from some of these buttons. What Meissonier lacked in imagination (which is to say, everything) he would have made up in meticulous execution, if such a void could have been filled by a device so meaningless. (p 143)
Before I go further let me say I don’t necessarily disagree with Canaday on his assessments of Meissonier. I think we could say that Meissonier was perhaps the Thomas Kinkade of his time. Meissonier by all historical accounts was an insufferable snob who bathed brazenly in his own celebrity, but let’s consider what happens when a well known art critic verbally destroys an artist for being “easy to understand,” or whose work is “quite obviously difficult to do” in a textbook. Canaday is not actually advocating bad drawing here, or even saying when something is drawn well that it sucks, and while he is demanding that better art be more imaginative he has opened the door for us to look down our noses at well drawn art. Which inevitably gives lazy wanna be artists all the excuse they need to piss in a jar and call it art.
Note: I didn’t know Mr. Kinkade. Though I don’t like his work he may or may not have been an insufferable snob, yet he was arguably a brilliant businessman, or as I say, carney.
Artists love to argue over stuff. Before the age of lithographic printing and illustration the nineteenth century Romantics loved to hate on the Neo-Classicists, the old fashioned Salon snobs loved to hate the Impressionists and the Impressionists loved to hate the Pre-Raphaelites. By the twentieth century so-called fine artists learned to hate the illustrators. NC Wyeth, JC Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell and the like were relegated to the world of picture books and pulp, never to be taken seriously by the emerging artist elite that considered illustration a sell-out and a lower art form. By the mid-century the chasm grew wider. By the 60s and 70s the Arte Contemporanea elite had all but purged the talented artists from their ranks, replacing them with one charlatan after the next.
Meanwhile, in the real world real artists persisted. Not just as illustrators, animators, cartoonists and the like, but also as fine artists. A rebirth of the atelier form of art instruction has come back around with incredible schools like the Florence Academy of Art, established in 1991, along with many other serious schools like the Academy of Realist Art Boston, Barcelona Academy of Art, and dozens more. All of these schools teach things you would never come across in university level instruction. And while our little Frappuccino drinking coffee shop groupie might do well to consider one of those fine schools, I kind of doubt he would make it past the second semester. Besides why work that hard to call your self an artist when you can just skate through with a liberal arts degree and wait tables for a living.
Postscript: This rant was brought on by looking through comments in an Artist Group on Facebook. I’ve been in a few of them, but usually leave after I’ve had enough. Invariably someone will post a very naive piece of art that shows they clearly need instruction and ask for the group to give them pointers. Then out of the woodwork comes scores of “experts” who post bad advice and often show their own dreadful work as examples. Even worse someone will post a beautiful piece of art and once again the self proclaimed art teachers chime in giving advice to someone who is clearly more advanced than they are. Recently a discussion broke out in this group over what makes a “real” artist. All I know is the designation “artist,” or “real artist” is worth less than a shitty Frappuccino.
25 November, the year of our Lord, two thousand and twenty-two.
Dear Diary,
I am blessed to be here to write this, for today I blew leaves across one quarter acre of hostile territory. I do thank my Lord and savior Jesus Christ that I did not die upon that patch of land today. Sitting here my arms weigh on me as heavy balloons filled with suffering. My wife, bless her soul, is in the other room doing Yoga with Adriene. I do not know this Adriene, or her downward dogs and such. I do worry she could be a cult leader, but this is another hill to be climbed once my war with Autumn has ended.
I have heard some men say they love yard work. My yankee friend John Jaeckel once told me he loved yard work. I don’t know what to think of such men and I have never pretended to understand the mutterings of carpetbaggers and such, but I do solemnly believe such men are of the devil. I deeply believe as the Good Book has taught me that yard work truly is the curse of Adam (Genesis 3:17-19). Surely our pride for trying to cultivate God’s wilderness into our own little patches of Versailles have caused us to struggle with the thorns and thistles whose wretched voices remind us that it is to dust that we shall return!
While in my struggle today I came across the detached wing of a bluejay. Its imagery was imbued with both beauty and sadness. I fear it was felled by one of the neighborhood cats, all three of whom wear coats of gray. I am sure that they felt it their duty to ground this member of the yankee Air Force. Perhaps one day bluejays and cats might get along, and one day too men shall cease to blow leaves across lawns.
How is it that I have become conscripted to this folly of land idolatry? Dear reader, should I fall before this work is done please convey to my loved ones that I resisted with full heart and enmity against this mission, and let no man believe for one moment that I had any lust in my heart for yard work. For my soul is pure and though my enemy is before me I shall look him in the eyes without fear until one of us shall fall.
I’ll be spending another Paschal Triduum at home this season. Perhaps I’ve gotten out of step thanks to the isolation of COVID. I can try and use that as an excuse, but it’s a weak one. I wouldn’t call how I feel right now a “crisis of faith,” but perhaps it is a crisis of identity. The last couple of years have shown me things about our society that have given me great pause. I have some more distance to travel before I can speak clearly about what it all means to me, but here on this Good Friday I have drifted into some reflection, perhaps simply as a habit of my faith.
There are messages within the events of Holy Week that transcend religion. It concerns me that these messages, which could well lead to the salvation of society as a whole, are lost on so many because the messenger has become a corrupt derelict. I ask you to forget for this moment the trappings of all religion and politics. Forget the messages shoved down our throats from leadership in every realm. Forget the arguments of dispensationalism, evangelism, atheism.
Consider only for a moment one single act of grace. It doesn’t matter who you are or from whom it comes, and it especially doesn’t matter if you, me, or any of us deserve it. I am not selling anything here. Neither am I giving anything away. Nothing in this belongs to me. This message from from this story is not something only to be understood by members of a particular cult, but should be understood by every living thing on this planet. Grace is available to everyone without exception. And grace finds it way into the world through us. The Good News is each of us has the super power to give grace to literally anyone we choose.
I submit to you this series of illustrations, and I suggest a time of reflection be spent on each, and each should, no must, be taken at equal value. The true and only path to peace on earth unfolds to us universally in the Paschal Triduum. Each and every one of us.
Like so many of us today, the first thing I thought when I heard the news of Betty White’s passing was sadness. Here on the last day of 2021 it seemed to be just one more stab in the gut from an already difficult year. But then I let some things sink in. Betty was only 18 days short of turning 100 years old. Few people are so lucky in life, not only to live so long, but to live that long and be fully present with your sense of humor solidly intact up until the very end.
The end of Betty White’s story is not the sad year end loss of yet another beloved personality. We owe her more than that. No, wait, we owe ourselves more than that. We are all stuck in this mortal coil. What more could we ever want for ourselves or anyone we love than to have a life like Betty did? This day does not mark Betty’s death, this day marks her victory.
We need to remember, death is not the failing of our bodies, or the end of things that could have been. It is the punctuation mark that merely concludes our story in the context of a life lived. But the story, her story, our stories, live beyond that hard stop we call death. In the public eye Betty’s life seemed to be almost perfect for most of us looking in on it from the outside. We all know she lived through highs and lows and hard times like any other human, but her public narrative was something we all quietly, or not so quietly aspired to.
When the fireworks (God help our poor pets) start going off tonight think of them as not just bringing in a new year, or ushering out an old one. Think not only that they could just as easily be celebrating a life so well lived like Betty’s, but as a celebration that you are still here and your story is not yet ended. New Years, new mornings, always mean second chances. Betty was and still is an inspiration to us all. Today marks her victory and ours. To quote Rob Schneider, “You can do it!” Happy New Year!
Letters From Nod 