December 31, 2020
A horrendous and ridiculous year deserves some much needed context and hilarity at the very least, and at the very end. Here are selected highlights from my six sketchbooks of 2020. These are not in order, but, just like the year in question, it does get heavy AND hilarious in equal doses.
June 11, 2020
My sketchbook notes, above, about Kathy being at the burn unit in San Diego. The start of a very surreal summer. Then there were the statues and the riots.
"There is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one."
—Rhett Butler
"No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong."
—Francois de la Rochefoucaud
"Learning is not compulsory and neither is survival."
—W. Edwards Deming
"One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a congress."
—John Adams
"Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves."
—D. H. Lawrence
"The difference between stupidiy and genius is that genius has its limits."
—Albert Einstein
"The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to forget is the happiest."
—Old Vaquero Saying
"The problem with government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is the people."
—Harry Caesar Nipple
"Irony is when someone writes 'your an idiot.'"
—Squibe Nish
"Everything is funny eventually."
—David Sedaris
• The present is starting to look a lot like the past.
• You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
"Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings."
—John Baldessari
"Don't bore people with the facts."
—David Mamet
"Silver like tearing sequins sliced through their blousy shirt-sleeves and turned their hats into colanders."
—Paulette Stiles, "News of The World," page 117
• Wife confident husband's band too shitty for groupies.
"We're all here to walk each other home."
—Anne Lamont, Ted Talk
• Most of my wives think I am a Mormon.
"A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have."
—Tim Ferriss
"Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide."
—D. W. Winnicott
"To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at."
—Claude Monet
"In the fight between you and the world, back the world."
—Frans Kafka
"Feel for the slightest try. Try for the lightest touch. Soften when you feel the sigh. Let him know he's done enough."
—Juni Fisher, "Ride With Your Heart Open"
• When you finally learn that a person's behavior has more to do with their internal struggle than it ever did with you. . .you learn grace.
"There is no truth, there is no history, there is only the way the story is told."
—Richard Avedon
"So much of writing is trying to avoid facing it."
—Robert Towne
• After I say "That's crazy" twice, please wrap up your story.
"Some people are so poor, all they have is money."
—Bob Marley
March 13, 2020
First day of quarantine. Finally some good news: the Coronavirus has halted the release of new Cardi B music.
After years of wanting to thoroughly clean my studio but lacking the time, this week I discovered that wasn't the reason.
"We may be done with the pandemic, but the pandemic is not done with us."
—Dr. Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Institute
• When I grow up, I want to be an artist.
Well, son, you have to decide. You can't do both.
"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change."
—Mary Shelley, 1818
That's enough for today. The last half of 2020 tomorrow.
“I got a paper cut from writing my suicide note......it’s a start.”
—Steven Wright
You need to come to Mulege. There is much to learn here.
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