Veering Off Temporarily...

This post is going to veer off, at least temporarily, in a different direction than normal.
In fact, I have some doubts about whether these thoughts are even appropriate for this blog, but I decided a long time ago to just make this blog about my life and thoughts. Plus, there's a chance that this could all end up being relevant to my artwork...

Not long ago I was waiting impatiently for my biography of Caravaggio to arrive in the mail, when Christina suggested I start reading a book called 'Sapiens,' which is a short history of humanity on earth. The writing is great (very engaging and smooth) and although I was skeptical that such a book would hold my interest, I found that I didn't want to put it down.

Well I am the kind of guy who likes horror movies and finds serial killers fascinating, but about 100 pages into Sapiens I read something which left me genuinely shaken, and I've been afraid to pick up that book ever since. What I read was that every time homo sapiens has colonized a new land mass (such as, notably, Australia) we have decimated the animals we found there. Before people landed in Australia there were 22 species of megafauna (big animals), including a marsupial lion! We promptly made 21 of those go extinct.

This bit of history doesn't sound that devastating, right? But it thoroughly undercut my naive understanding of things. I'd always imagined that aboriginal populations around the globe had intuitively lived in harmony with nature, and that the current crisis of the environment was a byproduct of our modernized, technological way of life. If we could just get back to the wisdom of pre-tech cultures, I thought, we could get things back in balance. But guess what? We are a destructive force. Those "idyllic" pre-tech cultures were also excellent at killing everything they found, just in slightly different ways than we do now.

Are you aware that in the last 50 years, populations of wild animals the world over have decreased, on average, by 60%? Are you aware that if things continue in that direction, it will be extremely bad for humans also? It takes a real skill... the skill of disassociating oneself from reality... to NOT care about that. (Take a few minutes to watch this video. It's a David Attenborough project, so it's even-handed, and not alarmist or partisan. If you like the video, there are more great ones on that page. These videos have informed this blog post even more than Sapiens.)

I'd like to be optimistic about this situation, but I'm not. I think my generation, those of us in our 40's and 50's, are like lobsters in a slowly boiling pot. We didn't have to think about this stuff when we were young, and we didn't learn how to think about it. The younger generations do give me hope. They seem to think things can improve. I hope they are right. 

A few posts ago I wrote about the short-term thinking and selfishness that motivate and define conservative thinking. The situation facing our planet right now demands leadership and unity. How can we have leadership when this country actually elects dangerous idiots like that fuckface in the White House? How can we have unity when the principal criteria for liking a policy in this political environment is that the other guys don't like it?

The modus operandi of the political right is so transparent. They desire power and money above all else, but the only way to maintain it is to stay in office. How do you stay in office when your positions and policies are so obviously disadvantageous for the vast majority of the populace.. the very people whose votes you need? You stir up fear... fear of gays, fear of muslims, fear of Mexicans, fear of abortion, fear of change. Get the people afraid, and they will vote for you... because you will protect them from all that stuff which threatens their "way of life." If you succeed and get elected, then... great! Now it's time to rape the environment and the lower classes for all they've got, so that you and your buddies can keep living in luxury. The selfishness and short-term vision is astonishing. It's disgusting. Rich people who don't give a shit about anyone else's welfare are the ONLY segment of the population who can honestly vote Republican; everyone else is being tricked into voting against their own interests. And an undereducated populace is an advantage to the Right, because dumb voters won't see all this quite as clearly.

But the Right is the party who decided that the USA will withdraw from the Paris Accords, and who keeps loosening regulations on industry, and who is gutting our environmental agencies, and who is authorizing drilling in natural preserves, and running pipelines through Native American lands without their permission, and and and... so this is not all just political games; there are real ramifications for the earth. They either can't see, or simply don't care, that this attitude will hasten the degradation of our planet.

I think that if I didn't have a kid, it would be a lot easier for me to assume an ironic distance from these concerns and think "Oh well, what the fuck. The earth is going to go down in flames and there's not much to do about it." But I do have a kid, and my ability to distance myself from all of this has been hobbled. The fact that I do care makes me angry at the people who are dragging down the planet for their own selfish reasons. How can a person who thinks and feels vote for the right? How is it possible? I don't understand it.

I believe that in the long term, we humans will probably snuff ourselves out, and that the planet will be better off without us. Something else will come to take our place. Hopefully that something else will do a better job of stewarding their home. Or, maybe, a small percentage of humanity will survive... and maybe they will learn the lesson. Maybe they will be the "wise elder" version of humanity. It's too bad that it's probably going to take an apocalypse to wake us up.

When all of this hit me a few days ago, I had to stop reading the news for a few days; it was just too depressing. They say that activism is one cure for this kind of unblinkered vision of just how bad things are. Maybe I should try that. In the meantime Christina and I are committed to finishing the installation of the solar electricity system for our home and to buying an electric car. It doesn't seem like much, but we want to do what we can... and it's important to show our son that these small steps can and should be taken. 

All this puts ENDGAME into a new light. Not really a different light... maybe just a brighter one.

I've actually started my first painting since "educating" myself through Mark Carder's site. It's not technically my first painting, but it's the first one in which I sort of feel like I know what I'm doing. It's a practice run for my big painting and I think it's coming out well.
I find that I am daydreaming about how to combine this vision of the coming apocalypse with the female form... in a painting. Blade Runner 2049 and Mad Max Fury Road are two films that come to mind that did a nice job with this combo. The very last two episodes of Wicked Wanda also ventured into similar territory. (If you click the Wanda link, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the last two stories for a tongue-in-cheek look at a post-apocalyptic future.)

OK, I know that this sort of post is not everybody's cup of tea. Some readers will not agree with what I've written above (discussing politics is so effective at dividing people!) and others will just think that discussing politics is boring or uncouth. Personally, I think that discussing politics is divisive, boring, and uncouth, so we're on the same page. I would like to promise you that I won't discuss that sort of thing again, but... I can't. What I can say is that I'm ready to switch gears now.

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I had an interesting (though brief) discussion with my mom the other day which started out with her asking me "Why do you like Caravaggio so much?" What I realized, and what I've been pondering ever since, is that I am drawn to certain artists because of a mixture of interest in both their work and their lives, their biographies. And... the ways that the work and the biography influence each other.

The three artists which come to mind who fit neatly into what I am getting at here are Francis Bacon, Alexander McQueen, and Caravaggio. While I genuinely like the work produced by all three of these guys, what elevates my appreciation of the work even higher is an appreciation of their life stories. All three were gay, as I pointed out previously (actually it seems Caravaggio was bisexual) but what's really quite a bit more important is that all three were complicated, tortured individuals, and all three were major iconoclasts. Each one found a way to channel his personal angst into an art that was totally original, totally personal, and that totally broke with his contemporaries. Each of them created darker and more challenging work in difficult times of their lives. To some degree it begs the question: Do you have to be tortured and maladjusted to create lasting work of genius?

If I had to hazard a guess to the above question, I would say "No, but it doesn't hurt."

Joy Division, whose fame only seems to grow over time, comes to mind here too. 

Well, I said I'd started my first "real" painting. 

I took this picture this morning, and then painted all day (which was really fun!) and so I'm quite a bit farther on it now than when this photo was taken. Thanks, Oswald, for making me a real easel.

In the next few weeks I have a ton of Hand of Man related work to do, so finding time to paint might be hard... but I will try.

If you made it this far, 

Cheers