Black Paintings X

At odd moments. During hard times. We’re all a little crazier than we let on. Here I stand beside The Bitterman at the end of a recent show, wondering what happened to the ten year old Niel that tried to eat a nerf football. [perhaps I would have been as tall as The Bitterman?]

Best to you in 2009.

“He has no talent at all, that boy! You, who are his friend, tell him, please, to give up painting.” – Manet to Monet, on Renoir

This won’t last long — for a free mp3 of me and my friend David performing “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” Live on WUNC, simply click here.

I was very fortunate to do a small tour of shows (as an homage to Woody Guthrie) this year, and so it seems only fitting that I will become the character of Bob Dylan for New Years Eve at the Warehouse Theatre. I was hoping to be the ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ era Dylan, in whiteface and gypsy spangles, but the show will span many decades.

History revision in Beaufort, SC
St. Helena’s Church

I am reminded that history is written by the winners of wars.

Once sacred land in the barrier islands.

Bull Island

Live your life that the fear of death
can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about his religion.
Respect others in their views
and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life,
beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long
and of service to your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day
when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting
or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.
When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light,
for your life, for your strength.
Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason to give thanks,
the fault lies in yourself.
Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes
wise ones turn to fools and robs their spirit of its vision.
When your time comes to die, be not like those
whose hearts are filled with fear of death,
so that when their time comes they weep and pray
for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
– Tecumseh

“I’ll just be a minute,” begged my friend, Kirsten.

“Fine,” I said… rather miffed that I had been brought to the mall in the first place. Kirsten had called me not two hours before and asked if I’d like to accompany her to the bookstore. And, of course, I said yes, thinking she meant a proper book store and not the miniature mall version – much less the churchy mall bookstore, with their lizard skin bound New Testaments and cross shaped candies at the counter.

“You can’t even buy ‘Grapes Of Wrath’ in this place,” I complained. “Much less ‘Naked Lunch’, because HEAVEN-FORBID someone uses a mechanical device to PLEASURE THEMSELVES,” I was intoning over the absurd Christian shopping music.

“Psshhtt!! Stop it already,” Kirsten begged. “Oh look, ‘A Purpose Driven Christmas!’”

To be honest, it wasn’t the bookstore that tormented me for the rest of the weekend. Nay, it was something much worse, much more sinister, much more in-your-face than the sparking Nunzilla (which caused quite a conversation on the way home – are these people fond of the Nunzilla or are they making fun of Catholicism… or are they just making a dollar on anything they can?), something much more … capitalistically blatant.

We walked for about a half-mile, changed floors three times, and past several perfectly homogenized gift stores with initials in their names before coming to the outer ring of Hell’s ninth circle: a store so vile in its outer décor that I imagined Liberace wincing at its gilded mall doors.

All around the entrance were wreaths made of jagged green plastic leaves and tiny red Styrofoam berries. There were mechanical statuettes of Joseph and Mary waving at two wise men and a cow, while the third wise man, having read the heavens of an entirely different star, was clearly headed in the direction of The Gap. Not an angel in the scene.

We were making innocent small talk about this holy crèche mismanagement, when… as if ordained by King Herod himself, I was stricken by the tonnage of the air from Yankee Candle – our destination.

I politely waited in the car.

Dear Yankee Candle, I hate you. Please go the way of Lehman. Follow your yonder star…

Here’s lookin’ at choo, kid.