Stuff and more stuff...

Three of my studio walls are filled with shelves crammed with all sorts of interesting things and parts of things. It makes for a creepy place late at night, but whenever I look up from whatever I’m working on, I see something with an idea attached to it. My brain is like this too, just with a lot more shelves--closets too-- and a dark, secret basement. As in the studio, I have to rearrange things occasionally and add something new, or else the view gets too familiar and becomes invisible.
Creative types tend to bury themselves, thinking that it’s okay to live in our heads. We can forget that we have to put stuff IN, in order to bring stuff OUT. You can’t make something from nothing.
So yesterday was for putting stuff in. Some of the stuff I went looking for, other bits just fell in accidentally, like the argument.
There are a number of intense, articulate people around here, so the fireworks can be spectacular.
It’s funny how all arguments can end up being the same fight. Somebody starts by deciding to make a point. Some observation about something external or some personal gripe begins in earnest, with (maybe) good intentions. You intend to be rational, calm and persuasive. Right. Depending on the subject matter, and more importantly, prior arguments, things can go from calm to insane with quantum speed. Suddenly a discussion about one specific thing is an all-out war about EVERYTHING, and nothing. It’s a vortex, pulling stuff in from all directions, including temporal. You know what I’m talking about ---stuff from ten years ago. Stuff from first grade. Stuff your mother made you eat. Internal stuff, external stuff. Stuff that hasn’t happened but might.
You think you’ve got things under control and the next thing you know you’re a monkey and something’s gonna get broken.
If you’ve ever had the slightest doubt about evolution, watch someone who’s really pissed-off. You know what I’m talking about. Apes are hooting in your head and you want to smash.
And suddenly everything is a candidate for smashing.
The furniture taunts me---
“C’mon” it whispers.
Especially that massive glass display case with the Cerebus and Babylon 5 stuff, the 50‘s devil figurines, and those fucking Rumph mugs chanting “Break Vader! He’s the crappy one!”
We regress. Not so far as to hit someone, (hopefully), but far back enough that we want to substitute something. Kick the trash can, slam the door, mutilate the stuffed parrot, rip up the paper, throw the cell phone, squash the poor, innocent banana and my favorite, throw the sculpture out the window. Ahhh, if only we could see ourselves…
We do, evidently, as this is usually the moment we realize how ridiculous we are and how distant the “point” has become.

If we’re lucky, this happens before something gets broken.

If we decide to, we can retrain ourselves. If we want it enough.
If we want it enough.
If we want it enough.


The other ‘stuff’ from yesterday I sought. I saw Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby’. It did not disappoint. I’m not going to write a movie review. There are way too many people out there who are infinitely better at that than I, including Pete.
But I brought a lot of stuff out of there. There is a lot of stuff in there. Go get some stuff.
It’s good for you.



G’night