Are We Even Allowed To Dream Of Rescue Anymore?

THE MISAPPROPRIATION OF LITTLE WHITE LIES CAN MAIM AND EVEN KILL - Jonathan Swift

How can anyone innocent of what Kurt Vonnegut once lampooned in "Breakfast of Champions" as "bad chemicals" in the brain?  I know I had no idea I was sick; all I knew was that something was wrong.  Yes, it was dark, deeply dark for me in 1983.  And like anyone in serious pain, anxiety and depression so deep the abyss seems the only possible home, I looked for help, anything, a beer, a friendship, a hope for love.  

Nothingness?  That panned out.  Like someone else's gold.  I was the gravel left to be washed away by the overflowing brook.  

Or that's how I felt.  In 1982, I recall, I attended a house party, all attendees artists.  I'd written one article for a tiny local magazine, Texas Arts Review, and stated a question: How does art transport a non-artist like me?  Non.  That became somewhat big in the smallish precincts of a consciousness fed in small doses by the remnants of the 1970s antiwar movement.  As in KNON.  Was that inspired by my essay about audience and the lack of audience?  On the bus or off the bus.  

We all should know by now:  Ignorance of intended or unintended meanings to framed or unframed artworks on white walls makes for this:  

Some pretty pictures.  

But as mentioned in a previous entry: pretty pictures--with supervision.  Self-appointed observers have some kind of needful lust to ensure no "kommies" are "drawin' wrong".  Stupid.  But also very Old South of them.  

Right, observers.  Let's all have a white wedding and give a rebel yell per Billy Idol, a perfect name for the bill that is apparently due for us to pay some losers who killed multitudes simply so they could enslave multitudes.  

Nevertheless, I met an interesting woman at the house party.  Let's call her Sue.  Sue was a medical student who used medical illustrations as inspiration for some awfully cosmic (and beautiful) paintings, prints, and illustrations.  

We chatted.  I felt an attraction between us.  However, Sue happened to be in a relationship with another artist, a fairly nice fellow with a yen for the outsiderism that seemed to be striking the city hard,  

Oh yeah.  Enter the observers.  After all, they don't wanna any of that there drawin' wrong.  Nah.  A word for men of letters only.  

Pursuers of "peaceniks".  So scary to see humans bid for peace.  

Anyway, after learning Sue was attached, I really didn't know what to do about that attraction.  Maybe I was on a one-way street.  Likely, I wasn't ready for primetime.  

Still, I developed a crush.  Even today, I believe a girlfriend could have helped.  But also--maybe not.  After all, the manic-depression plaguing me was only growing. Each episode a "little trauma", not over the wrong shirt at the store or the incorrect slip covers for a chair.  Nope.  Little traumas that interrupt one's consciousness to the point one is off-base, perhaps for months.  

One aspect of manic-depression of course is obsession.  I was obsessed.  I'd felt attraction.  That was something onto which I wanted to grab hold.  Whatever had happened that moment led me to simply leave the conversation after getting all stoked-up by "the wrong attraction".  As if attraction is ever wrong.  

Maybe in Dallas' observer-laden wartime all the time mentality, any "incorrect attraction" is marked for maybe Quentin Tarrantino's Death List.  You know: suspected "kommie", "kill it off".  

Paranoid fools, motivated by what is not even there at all.  The Old South.  White wedding.  Rebel yell.  And look!  The little observer machines miss the boat almost every single time. 

Ooops!  I'd written for "an incorrect magazine".  Was the editor of Texas Arts a "suspected kommie"?  Who knows, who cares, why bother?  Only infantile reactionaries are afraid of a political-economic order that cannot work at a state (statist) level.  No matter.  ERADICATE, ERADICATE, ERADICATE.

Then wonder where all the artist went to.  

But remember?  Dallas, 1983, was THE INTERNATIONAL CITY!  Wowie.  No one I know was even remotely impressed by that boosterism.  Dallas, in my opinion, even then, constituted the world's largest small town.  Only those qualified by big bucks qualify as citizens here.  The Old South: Is Dallas one of the Two Towers from Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring? 

A little sugar.  A whole lot of aspirin.  The hangover of losing so badly that, here we are, 160 years later, and damned fools want vengeance?  Pussies. 

My crush on Sue persisted.  She was pretty cute, a Slavic princess.  Had the big feet one might find among neolithic women who frequented bogs while in search of herbs and medicinal plants.  

With manic-depression, it could be said, the carrier of a hereditary syndrome is an automatic victim.  Bipolar 1--the possession.  Something to wear on a key-chain that rattles "really good" whenever its "kommie self" enters the room.  

At least to bruisers and losers.  Remember: Opinions that do not follow the reckless laws of "anarchy for the many, big money for a minuscule few" is going to be unwanted, especially here in a highly militaristic "super-giant tiny town".  

Maybe those observer types could have felt between their legs to find the Cold War. 

Ultimately, the crush on Sue brought me down in flames. I don't know whether to blame myself or not in terms of my obsession.  While I was summarily unaware of how a hereditary dysfunction was controlling my thoughts and actions and especially my ability to respond emotionally without the dysfunctional baggage that comes from "bad chemicals in the brain", perhaps "kommienizm" is the key to defeating the baggage.  What.  The fuck.  Ever.  

I went to a warehouse party.  It was a big shindig in Deep Ellum, an area that cradled most of the city's artists--cheap studio space, more room for things like supplies and possibly even some food for artists.  In 1983, the local arts community (The Dallas Morning News called it "a scene" because it could not resist trivializing whatever it is out there it cannot fully control) was small, closely-knit, and thus, "outlawed ideas" such as postmodernism and modernism and even neo-impressionism were spoken of in conversations as if such concepts were dangerous drugs that might "defeat" the Old South for a second time.  Or something equally necessary.  

Sue happened to be there.  As was her sculptor boyfriend.  I struggled around, tripping on all the conversations I could barely hear.  Some there, people suspicious of the fact that I'd somehow scored a few book reviews at DMN, didn't like the idea of "a journalist" in their midst.  As if I'd talk, or write, or even comprehend what was happening among a group where socializing was (and probably still is) writ in terminology.  

Oh!  What is this miniature battle scene with the battery-operated tanks with pole atop them so that, whenever one speeds beneath a hanging egg, the egg bursts!  KOMMIE!!!!!

Nah.  Maybe a gesture meant to generate something not considered important at all among the "leaders" of the smallest town of 800,000 that has ever existed this side of the Land of Oz: thought.  Food for thought.  

Nope.  "Not Happy Meal enough!"  

We must be positive!  No.  No logical positivism here.  There is no such thing as the categorical imperative or pure reason that cannot be conveniently instrumentalized by the Klan Of The Observers. 

Maybe that's how I felt that night.  I was confused.  My mind wasn't working well at all.  Stray thoughts.  Racing thoughts.  Out of kilter emotionality.  What was happening?  Then, the obsession.  A little like that dangling rope lurking just within reach of the straining hands of a drowning man.  

Something solid like a hand to hold.  

In some ways, a hand to hold is the essence of why artists bother to create.  Life is usually uncertainty for all of us.  Artists are brave enough to ask of uncertainty a little Truth and Beauty.  However, if not instrumentalized to support the Klan Of The Observers", even that is "incorrect in an ideological circus act that pretends to be real."  

Yes, I felt limitations that night.  When I saw Sue leaving the big party, I followed her outside, ostensibly to ask her for a ride home.  Sue had a brand new "good times van", a beautiful vehicle, shiny, attractive, roomy.  

"I'm sorry but I can't do that."  

Drunk and literally losing my mind, I tried crawling into the back of the van.  But was removed.  This is when I burst into tears, dysfunction and obsession for something solid all over my face.  I got drunk enough to get dizzy after that.  Self-medication: If I get euphoric, I'll lose the pain.  That's how that works.  

Dizzy.  Not exactly the old Tommy Roe song from the Sixties.  

Interestingly, a female stranger, a pretty platinum-leaning blonde rescued me.  I now understand she knew what I needed.  "I'll take you home," she said.  She took me to her apartment.  Took me to bed, and because she was self-aware enough to see I was stinkin' drunk, she simply held me in her arms.  

To be comforted as such was to lift me even if only a little.  

The next day, a sunny Saturday, the pretty blonde returned me to my minuscule efficiency at 201 McKinney Avenue, 1983.  

Rescue.  For some reason, the word reminds me of the William Golding novel, "Lord of the Flies".  We should all remember that novel's plot: children survivors of a shipwreck find an uninhabited island, work together for sake of survival, begin to thrive only a little, while meanwhile hoping for rescue.  Then the picture flips: animus and its consequent animosity emerges as "competition" hell-bent on "winning" a thing ends up as a blazing disaster.  Children die from the warlike slippage for which competition is almost never blamed.  

At least the fiery holocaust's smoke alerts kind soldiers who find the island, intervene, and return the children to the safety of actual civilization.  

Among Dallas's Klan Of The Observers, such forms of rescue are "ideologically incorrect" because the 160-year-old design of vengeance may suffer.  

Remember: after that counterclockwise wheel spins out of control, a much larger clockwise wheel begins its sweep, thereupon rendering the Lost Cause moot and even ridiculous as a burlesque of elephants like the ballet in Disney's Fantasia.  

I don't know what happened to Sue.  I'd heard many years later that, as yet another refugee in flight away from the Big Duh, she's thrived due to her ability to craft something apparently terribly frightening to the Big Shot movers in town: 

A-R-T