04 April 2012

St. Louis Week: Life's Interesting Dramas

Here's a Kickstarter project that might interest afficionados of outsider art, or social workers apt to call the cops on parents who make their kids read Daddy's poetry on YouTube. It's a reversal of the usual, "Lemme read you this goofy thing my kid wrote."

Aww, Daaaad...

The author's poetry not only rhymes, but it resonates with contemporary debates about the growing inequality of wealth in the US:
Never forget who controls all wealth,
Your life breath, your possessions and your health.
For all the silver and gold passing through many hands,
Vast and innumerable as the oceans and sands,
Belong to The Maker who created this world,
When the ugliness of hunger and homelessness is unfurled.
Call me insensitive to poetic impulses, but I don't find the speaker's claims reassuring--but this Blog Post isn't about me or my Desire to expropriate the rich. This is about the Poet, and his random Capitalization, which I can only hope is as unpredictable in Life's Interesting Dramas as it is on the Kickstarter page that describes said anthology as "the Book of Poetry with 100 of my very best poems covering a variety of Topics."

The project goes beyond poetry. The book includes paintings by the author.

"I got the [painting], a ménage à trois/ Musta broke those Frenchies' laws..."

I must admit that while I don't know much about painting, I sure like this one. See, I like to imagine I'm the one in that room, and the painting is what I'm seeing, because that naked lady is giving me the "Paint me, Big Boy" eyes. Furthermore, the lady with the deltoids and the cleavage is giving me the "I can't believe you're going to paint her while I'm in the room... yet I find the prospect thrilling" eyes. (It must be the wine.) It seems we're in Paris, where people are classy and drink wine and put things on pedestals. My presence here suggests I'm on vacation, and able to afford to go to abroad on vacation. If I were really in that room, I'd turn the portrait of the epaulette-wearing guy to the wall and show Miss Nude France how we paint 'em in the U. S. A.

(Then again, the painting also makes me want to call the Missouri Department of Social Services' Child Abuse hotline.)

Yet the artist's ambition does not end here. Life's Interesting Dramas is to comprise not only the book, but an "animated movie." Is this the "Classical Movie" of the Kickstarter page's title? I am curious to see how the artist realizes his "classical" vision in animation.

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