“The devil lives in a double-shot”, Roman explains himself obscurely. “I got a great worm inside. Gnaws and gnaws. Every day I drown him and every day he gnaws. Help me drown the worm, fellas.”
― The Neon Wilderness
Denton, Texas
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”
― All the Pretty Horses
Repaired cracked mural, Denton, Texas
Even artworks… no, especially works of art… develop cracks and hopefully will be repaired. Is the art lessened by this? Or does it add a greater dimension, one of time, pain, and disaster – if not avoided, refurbished.
“I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.”
― The Collected Dorothy Parker
Recycled Books, Denton, Texas (taken a long time ago, obviously)
There was a time when we could go to bookstores. Especially big ol’ huge used bookstores (like Recycled Books) with rooms – a confused labyrinth of passages between towering shelves – that odd quiet of millions of sheets of paper adsorbing the sound – the slight smell of mold and ancient wisdom. I would stand in a place like that (or the library) and feel panic because I would never live long enough to read one percent of this – so much knowledge that I would never possess – haunted by the thought that somewhere in there – in that massive agglomeration – is the one book that would enlighten me and tell me exactly what I need to know and I don’t know enough to find it and wouldn’t know it if I saw it.
It feels like those days are so long in the past – it seemed like we could do anything (except smoke in the elevator) – the memories are fading – will those days ever come back again?
Recycled Books
Denton, Texas
Recycled Books Records CDs
Denton, Texas
(click to enlarge)
Recycled Books, Denton, Texas
“I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is ‘Disappear Here’ and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.”
― Less Than Zero
Pinstripe Skull, Car Show, Denton, Texas
“And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.”
― Spoon River Anthology
Fiddler, Denton Texas
“Why do things get weaker and worse? Why don’t they get better? Because we accept that they fall apart! But they don’t have to — they could last forever. Why do things get more expensive? Any fool can see that they should get cheaper as technology gets more efficient. It’s despair to accept the senility of obsolescence…”
― The Mosquito Coast
Recycled Books, Denton, Texas
I remember having a friend that tried to convince me to buy a Betamax.
I miss walking through the aisles of video rental store. The first ever Blockbuster Video store opened near where I lived. I remember going there and listening to some guy in a suit lecturing to a bunch of other guys in suits about how this was going to be the future. He was right… and so very, very wrong.
“It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
Creepy scene through a shop window, Denton, Texas
Oblique Strategy: Retrace your steps
Why do we all like creepy stuff? I think it is because to be scared of something creepy – which means odd, eerie, and macabre, without being overtly dangerous – implies that there is at least something else out there. There is something in this world beyond staff meetings, stuck in traffic, and idiotic talking heads blathering on the television.
Because if there is really nothing else – that is really frightening.
“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”
Plastic… asshole.”
― George Carlin
Plastic Food, Car Show, Denton, Texas
“…as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Birds and Other Stories
Car Show, Denton, Texas
From the Pistons and Paint Car Show in Denton, Texas
Hey, little girlie in the blue jeans so tight
Drivin’ alone through the Wisconsin night
You’re my last love baby you’re my last chance
Don’t let ’em take me to the Cadillac Ranch
—-Bruce Springsteen, Cadillac Ranch
A crude little sketch I did in watercolor pencil at the Cadillac Ranch west of Amarillo.
Old Guys Rule
Cadillac Ranch
Amarillo, Texas
Dallas Art Park, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 