DIE OLD AND LEAVE A MESS

 Forget dying young and leaving a good looking corpse. When you get to be my age the bag of bones you leave behind (even if I checked out tomorrow) is analogous to the vehicles I've strewn in my wake - plagued with rusting undercarriages, bald tires and burning pistons. I never drove a muscle car (either in reality or metaphorically speaking) but the body I wake up with in the morning has to be sent down the hill and the clutch popped if I want to make it 'til lunch. It's more like a Model A than a Camaro.

     Not to be morbid, but death has been front and center on my mind lately. Everything that lives (even Mother Earth) will die. Humans have seen to that. It's natural. Death is a gift (like birth) something you have absolutely no control over. Of course there are widely varying stretches of time and quality of life in between cradle and grave. From that partial-birth abortion stab in the back of the noggin with a pair of scissors - described so vividly by perverse politicians - to the old fuck that was lucky enough to survive four concentration camps during WWII only to die in Putin's invasion of Ukraine, when your time is up......see ya.

    And with this looming mortality comes a bit of anxiety. Putting aside all the loving relationships I've enjoyed in my 69+ years on the planet, I still have some unfinished business. You see, my career as an artist has not exactly gone as planned. In many ways this has been a great gift. Never having known the success of gallery representation, museum exhibitions, and market acceptance I've had to create my own context as well as content. It's been challenging and a helluva lot of fun. I've also been gifted (cursed?) with a lot to say. I'm prolific, producing thousands of works of art. These include, but are not limited to drawings, collages, paintings, prints, sculptures, songs, conceptual works, non-fiction, columns and blogs. With the invention of the internet much of this work is now available to be viewed online. There is only one catch in my so-called practice as an artist. I'm broke.

     Except for a short period of time in the 80's and a minute post-9/11 I never even tried to make money from my work. I started a church that burns dollar bills fer Christsake. Those two time periods when I dipped my toe in capitalism never produced results either. In fact I failed miserably. I spent money to try to make money and ended up losing money. I was worse off than when I started in any attempt to make money off my art. I learned my lesson....sort of. I'll never spend any of my social security check on an attempt to sell work, but that's not to say I can't be bought. Pay Me Motherfucker!

    Forget being famous. I'm plenty famous. What I want is cash money. In the time I have left I want to get rid of at least some of the body of work I've produced in over fifty years and spend my last years flush. I also don't want to leave the dumpster rentals to Shewho. I want to be a CAPITALIST goddammit! Ok, I admit I have no more idea how to do this than I did fifty years ago. I also recognize that avenues that were open to me as a young up and comer artist are now closed. There's no way I can contact a gallery or museum or even a potential collector on my own. The door won't even open a crack. I'd be lucky not to get the cops called on me. How about behind the scenes? you ask. Way more successful artist friends are also out of the question. Emails remain unanswered. Rich neighbors? Forget it. I've tried. So where does this leave me? I'll tell you: On my couch, WFMU on the box, Cheeky at my side, 222 drawings into the new War Suite, the Virus Suite complete at 1000 drawings, a pre-show trip to S.F. planned for mid-April and my palm itching for some folding money. I'm cranking the shit out so fast you'd think I had a market. In my remaining years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, or seconds I have left I'm putting up the For Sale sign. It's all gotta go. I'm selling out. All we have to do is settle on a price. I can be bought cheap.