16 January 2018

Patron Saints of Art: The Current Pantheon

3515A.
The lapel of my rather-battered jacket tells a story, or at least I try to have it entertain all comers.

Right now, it's got merely five autos-da-fe. They are, as follows:

Saint Thomas Pynchon. The quitessential Great American Novelist, wrote towering books mapping the angst and banality of male American life of the 2nd half of the 20th century into a odd world that exists on the edge of reality but can still be plainly seen. It's in your face but it isn't really there; it's the glimpse of reality you get in the flash of a atomic explosion that dazzles your eyes then fades away.

Saint Patrick McGoohan. Individuality as freedom and prison all at the same time: six degrees of freedom is also six degrees of imprisonment. And we all have our reasons for wanting to break free, and maybe you believe them or maybe you don't. It takes a Village, as they say.

Saint Andrew Warhola. You might be the brightest star in the firmament, son, but your time will be oh, so, fleeting. You will then be absorbed into the MCP of pop culture, program ... but only if you do it right.

San Salvador Dali. He not only did art, he was art. Last, year, to settle a paternity case by someone claiming to be an heir, his body was exhumed. His mustache was as perfect as it was when he was interred. He not only has immortality through his art, he has immortality as his art. If he were alive, he would definitely approved.

Saint Jake Richmond. Tells the story of an outsider not of their own doing, does the hard work, every day, work of the hands head and heart. He's not the only web comicker I admire, but he is Portland's.

Last night, when going to werk, I got Olivia a drink at the Chevron station, she was parched and wasn't going to carry me much farther. The pump jock asked me about my buttons and I told him about my current patron saints and told him about The Prisoner and reading Pynchon and he thought that he might try some of that out.

"Are you a teacher," he asked?

"No," I said, "I just like smart shit."

And so it goes.

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