Note: I wrote this awhile back while drunk. I've edited and updated it but most of it is kept in its original form. Some of it is redundant but I liked the ideas portrayed. I really have issues with Frida Kahlo, as I feel she is about the biggest example of tokenism in art as you get. I touched on a bit of this here, before segwaying into some of my more personal notions about art. I dont feel quite as frantic about getting my ideas out there as I did. I found a job I like that lets me make my own schedule, so now I have as much time to create as I allow myself...but I feel the writing and ideas in the essay could be insightful and interesting to some, so I decided to put it up...
 

I'm listening to the tape my friend Nate Dryden made me. Lately I don't have the words to tell him what is going on in my life. I'm not sure why. I should send him a letter. It just seems so all or nothing, if I don't give every little nuance or detail I'm being a cheat. We've been friends for a long time and it seems those emails are as close as we come to sitting in a coffeehouse and talking for hours about our lives. Nate is an old friend who still lives in Tucson.
 Rob is watching a television show about volcanoes. I just finished painting. I've decided that I want a show. I'm going to try very hard to get one. I'll finish this series and take slides and look at suitable galleries.
 I'm reading a book on Diego Rivera. I've decided I hate Frida Kahlo. She was a self absorbed twit. She only painted herself and she tried her damndest to smear Diego's reputation. Yet, if you look at them as artists, Diego had so much more depth and talent than she did. His frescoes are utterly amazing. He lived and breathed art, near as I could tell, she rode on his coattails all the while resenting him for the fact that art was more important to him than it was to her. It was the primary driving force in his life, according to family members and ex wives. It shows in his work.
 Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get these things out. Sometimes it is the only thing that really seems real to me, these ideas. All I know is that anything has to be secondary. My art, my writing, my comics. It's hard to explain. When you have something in your head that nags at you night and day. When you're at work. When you're at the bar. When you're watching television. Some beast screaming at you to create. But it's more than that. It's static in your head and the only way to stop the static is to create. Sometimes you can have fun. Sometimes there are people and places that inspire and teach, rather than distract. It is their rarity that makes them so precious. My biggest fear is that I will die with works still in progress. That I won't get all these thoughts, feelings, images out of my mind into a form that fully expresses them and turns them into something concrete, something I can see and touch and comprehend. It is the driving force in my life.
 I saw my father this past weekend. He told me of his trips to Europe. I need to get out of this country if only for a week. I need to see new things, get new experiences. Break out of my usual way of thinking.Travels always seem to inspire me and teach me things, and I've seen about all there is worth seeing in the United States. Rob and I have discussed going to Brazil. We also have discussed flying out to Cuernavaca for a week and see more of Diego Rivera's frescoes. I also have always wanted to See the Day of the Dead festivities so I could have a multi purpose trip, if we went over those few days.We also want to go to Europe, see Italy and Germany. There are some cheap flights into London, so we may go to Europe in the summer before we go to Mexico in the fall...
Maybe I'll see if Nate wants to come with us on one of the trips...

 pontifications