Did you like that picture? I sent it
to you not to show off. I sent it to you to remind you of the
god-damned man-made majestic beauty of our world. Of this perfectly
primary-colored edge of our world, edge of our country. The perfect
golden-red; the cocksure azure water, crisp as the air that breathes
ocean mist onto my skin; the typical colored sand: because we no
longer need to describe what color sand is (unless it's atypical),
because I think about how much sharper writers of the past had to be
with their words. But now, we all experience everything from the
seats of our desks, and what we used to seek at the top of the world,
we seek at the top of our laps. So: typical is what this sand remains.
I remember being impressed by Kerouac
for painting the entirety of America in one simple pamphlet-tome. Now
I am the one, within a span of a few months, who has ventured from
statues of freedom, arches of note, and finally this bridge, the
summation of this country, the end and the beginning of this country,
our country, our world. I've heard the blues in Memphis, I've heard
the blues in Chicago, I've heard the blues in Austin. And I've seen
the blues in all these cities and I see the blues before me: the sky,
the waves, my shoes. And I hope this picture finds you back home to
help you escape your blues.
I am wearing a shirt that portrays a
sketch of a sewer, a Chicago manhole cover. Our art is about the
dirt, the filth, the overlooked, the dispirited, the dispossessed,
the disposed, the disks that cover up our dirt, our filth, our waste. Our
city works. Our workers make it work. Our civic pride is tied into
the fabric of where we deposit our waste, our filth. We recognize the
beauty of the sewer system and we're not ashamed to put our names on
it.
