Waiting...

Well the mighty stream of thoughts and ideas seems to be reduced to a dry riverbed this summer.
The public is waiting patiently as ever.....
(Are they hungry, thirsty for NEW art??? hm....)
But see what drama is behind these faces!!!

This one was on holiday on a camping with too many children...

This one was given a really bad cappuccino for too many euro's...

This one gave a tip of 10 percent but the waiter thought it was not enough...

This one has visited a museum, nothing more to add...

This one became trapped in a traffic jam, while going to the beach and eventually decided to go home and read "The Great Gatsby", which didn't cheer him up either...

Showing the way: how dangerously german!

Tilman's theme:
showing the way,
guiding
leading
be the leader, be my leader - translate that in german! (Oh no! Das Geschick der Geschichte...)


but no no, showing the way is not being the leader...

Tilman loves this theme "the way", not only he proposed already "the way back", but also he is busy doing a project "showing (an czech artist) the way to the sea in Bremen".

so probably this instigated him to introduce this theme.

Do i want to show the way? NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i am alone, i live alone, i cannot help anybody, everybody is in his own prison, how can my prison be helpful to others? Do they want two prisons, their own, and mine included?

PARADOX!!!!!!!!!! Look at this, i am showing the way all the time.....(terrible, everybody can see my way is not "the right" way, if anything is curved, bended twisted then it is my way - the whole notion of "way" is wrong anyway.....)

we are directly in the middle of a personality question.
but that is where art serves a purpose, not in a gallery where it is just "an object sold".
this is where art is at its best, or should be.

in my third existence i found myself being a teacher.
as a teacher you are asked, (i didn't ask to teach, they asked me-) you have to show the way to students.
But i don't want to show the way, not my way...never take my way...
I want the students to ... to show themselves their own way...only this way, their own way, carries the energy necessary to sustain them as valuable persons in life.

So maybe i have something to teach after all, conveying how to explore for yourself, how to find your internal energy sources...

The only solution (for me - not you!) is to develop thinking during class, during the courses given.
That means rethinking the course subject from the start.
That means i (re-)develop my own way too.
I have to be careful not to find "a solution".
By showing them that i redevelop my own way, i hope to show the students this showing themselves their own way...


There is a german writer (the name of which i forgot, H... or something???) who writes at the start of one of his text: the way is more important than reaching your goal, when developing the way, we are closer to the goal then by reaching the end, also he writes just after this: don't mind the words, try to follow the ideas.....
Ha - and then you have to pay really very close attention to his german words, as close as possible. For instance he is talking of the human as "the being sent on his way by-", das Geschick (in german: fate, schicken, the verb in it, means to send), and - as this 'being sent on his own way' - making Geschichte (german for history, Geschick - Geschikte, Geschichte). He even states: the human is identical with his fate.

So the writer is sending you on a way and taking you by the nose at the same time.
Yes this text is in german, we cannot make these beautiful etymological inferences in other languages than german...that is why this writer (i met his texts by chance(!) wanted 'to live in the house of the (german) language'. Sometimes he admitted greek as a possible language too...

As speaking the dutch language (related to german) i am able to get a bit into the german of this text. Germans, of course have all the access of their own language to this text (Die Frage der Technik). But do they read this text? No of course not. They dont like the writer! (Ha, irony, irony!)

Of course you can ask- so the german language has the truth built into it? Of course not! But the chemical process between this writer and his german has taught me a lot, his messages are corroborated by my experience of life (which are not the same as yours!). About existence, it has "shown me ways", it has shown me how to develop my own way, not forcing other to follow this particular way of my own. (Please dont!)

Fate has put me on a road...
Fate, das Geschick, is sending me,

Following a small road of this fate, and i ended up in Tilman's webite: http://www.tilmanrothermel.de/data_sub/bis2008/tepl_II/ungeg/htm/david_und_goliath.htm
David and Goliath...big and small
those were the days, 1000 BC, great kingdoms then were not bigger than the smallest village in Europe now. And if you wrote a book about the history of your enormous kingdom, you were practically writing the first book (imagine), and this book had a chance to be called the book of books.....that is showing a - the way!

David the small and agile beat the big, the brutal, the enormous. Has Tilman's drawing anything to do with this drawing?


i thought of this image, used in the contribution about the local, for the Tilmanesque theme of showing the way. This is brutal though, not heroic like David beating the bad guy Goliath.

showing a way, be creative, but you see, this small nasty artist, knowing his way (in) destroyed the nice peaceful shell. Creativity is destruction at the same time.

No passaran! (Hemos passado!)
Revolucion!
The village beats town, the artist beats big industry... (forget it!)

In the early days you were certainly killed by the mighty having these dreams. Nowadays you are simply ignored. Very efficient, and less bloodshed. (The artist will destroy themselves, using the ego - inflation, see the last blog...)

Nowadays in case the mighty or the rich have a crisis you are just asked to contribute to restore their amounts of money. Asked? Obliged!
That is the real showing the way! Just stating there is no other way than giving them more money!
....
why i always end up here? Talking about this so called crisis media illusion?
because i think it is marvellous! The directors of banks are not only rich, they are brilliant! Nothing and nobody is (was) irreplaceable, but they have made themselves just that! The have conquered the world and - without an army, without brutalities, without war crimes!!!
The rich have made themselves gods! Better still - because gods can be forgotten or changed around. Also Gods never answer, this is part of dialectics. The rich - these übergods - do indeed interfere...give me your money or the system, and you with it, will be over! Wow and everybody believes them, governments, scientists!

And nobody, no historian, no philosopher, no mathematician, saw that coming!!!

Indeed i must bring them my money quick! And build a cathedral for them!

Sorry, i was distracted, carried away by genious people.

I did do my duty and made another drawing. It had to be expressive, so i used the manual of expressivity of Tilman in his blog about the german drawing.

See what happens in this drawing......





The next theme of the month: "be my guest!"
but i think this line will be broken.
we can go on forever following this way, but we won't. Fate interfered. Tilman asked for a more serious approach.
i am curious what will happen next, i have always been rather serious....

Happy Birth Month dear Tilman

I always forget about birth days, probably because i never celebrate mine (already 62 years now, good tradition!), although all friends are welcome in my studio the fifth of December, where we have a Sint Nikolaas party in Holland. Nobody comes of course, because everyone has this party with his family and children. This means i can eat the cake myself!
Cunning these dutch artists :-)!

But i know Tilman has his birthday somewhere around now! I made a series of drawings for him about my ego. (not that of Tilman!) Artist have to compensate their complete failure by inflating their ego. This is done easily in this splendid artistic isolation! The more you fail as an artist, the more you get isolated, the more you can think yourself to be the biggest artist in the world! Especially the systems of "give a prize to each other" in the art world works fine to stimulate this ego building. So every artist becomes a refined ego builder. To celebrate birth days of artists in general i made these five small modest drawings about me measuring my ego. Of course somebody taught me perspective, and somebody else the hypothesis of Pythagoras, so putting these two together i succeeded not only in discovering new techniques of ego measurements (mine is bigger than yours) but also in proving my measurements, which is the only thing that counts in ego science.

this is without the math.....

this is with math, you see the difference!

this last drawing is an extra, instigated by a comment of Mr Schmon....

.

jungle in the head

after my poem from yesterday night - drunk and tired -, I must admit, that this time I am really late. But ”city jungle” is sort of an odd theme. And to think that a jungle is something coming out of a flowerpot is almost ridiculous. You are really in your dreams. I start of my contribution with an Idea that I had already during the last theme. A town as a labyrinth.



I remembered the visit to Marrakesh, the incredible jungle of smell, noise, crowds, passages.



And in my dream – going through one of these passages I met my pictures, an enormous crowd of houses stacked into each other, an all over it there were people with guns, just wanting to shoot me.







But then there came the ultimate hero,



taking me at the arm, pulling me away, into another section of this town (I don’t remember which it was…)



So at least we reached a coffee shop, had there a Cappuccino (wasn’t so good) and carried on with the plans for April. I proposed: “showing the way” the reaction of my hero (believe or not) was stupefying.
But here we are…
lets go on.

...

magnetic excursion

I am cheating – I know. “Magnetic village” is much too difficult for me. I have never been to USA but I imagine that there all the villages are in fact cities. And when somebody thinks that Bremen isn’t a village but a city he is also cheating. Only Rotterdam is a real city.
Of course „magnetic city“ is a very common and easy task. You just walk through an ordinary town (here for example Berlin) und you are already involved in such an idea.



You are sort of sucked in by the most pleasant views and impressions,



You are like in a tunnel, you have to go your magnetic way.



So I just decided to make my way through all of these amazing impressions…



I had a friend with me who took me carefully on his shoulders, otherwise I would have gone lost through all the narrow little passages and sudden insights





It was very strange to realize at a certain moment, that we were on the top of two different buildings, trying to reach each other in spite of the gap between us…



I tried to get over the gap and realized, that it wasn’t houses we were staying on but it was a colony of huge magnets, pulling us from one side to another.



We have seen a enormous row of these energetic fields, and on every one of them there where Persons trying to reach each other.



The only solution was to get bigger and bigger, so it was of course much easier to step over the gap. In fact it was a simple solution.



The energetic fields started to move, to explode in a certain way, everything became instable, the people looked anxious out of their windows, wanted to jump out giving themselves to the force of gravity. Some of them died,



Others remained in their cellules, thinking of the possibility that all this nonsense was just an Idea of bram. (The other day bram tried to lock some persons in a six angular magnetic box)



Others tried to escape through a gigantesque system of staircases, but they got lost not knowing which was the wax to escape. In what ever dire4ction they tried to escape, the only exit they found was a new system of staircases.



And then – all the energy was again stabilizing. It seemed as if nothing ever had happened.



It was again possible to pass through very narrow perspectives, reaching again obscure parts of that amazing village. And everything started all over again.



It was the capital of capital.



There must also be an certain magnetism that sucks away all the money of this world.

Magnetic Village

The theme of Tilman for februari is Magenetic Village. Excellent theme! It brings the abstract and not drawable "magnetic" in contact with a very tangible notion of "village".
At first i started drawing buildings in the grip of a circular magnetic field. See how nice gloomy the picture becomes on this brown paper, and look at the fine lines, that will be different soon!

But something went wrong: it became a city. The theme was village. Then i noticed that "village" and magnetic are contradictory, in the sense that all in a village is at a certain comfortable distance. Also, the villages are abandoned for the cities, the village does not attract any more. Only the old, those weary of life or green dreamers will be resettling villages. (All of the former is applicable to me, i would love to live in a village, but there are no villages left in Holland, it is just a big city interspersed with some parks, and heavily subsidized cows...).
So maybe is a magnetic village something that lies in the countryside and makes aircraft deviate down to the tower of the church? Nice idea too, but it does point too much to religion. Always somebody will be offended and likely to throw bombs immediately. (But even if we please these fragile religious tows, we will suffer even more from irresponsible well paid financial people so why bother anyway?) My village is too nice for that! (For bombers and for financial bureaucrats-rats alike.) I decided otherwise. I started drawing buildings, and placing them glued together by the magical force of the magnetic.

But i didn't like the drawings..terrible! There should be another way to do this, more easily to be shifted around...Then I got myself organized and started preparing drawings, more illustrations and assembling them, in a village setting. Nicely spaced.

Small roads connecting every building...Oh you want trees: that can be arranged, yes trees very much belong to a village :

Then the force strikes: all buildings get magically magnetic and glue together:

It didn't really satisfy me. May be this is too much hardship for a village! See, i mentioned the fine lines above - but in the last drawings the lines are really rude. Cartoon style. I opted for these lines myself, true: a village is sort of a cartoon. Life is not that nice anymore, it is raw, everybody wants to ripe you of, city jungle. The autonomous artist in me (that is the one who wants to make incomprehensible drawings) likes more the backside of the paper on which the houses were sketched then the front:

so in the end i had to abandon the village, the buildings were closed by wood, nails and planks.....poor buidlings!

So far the village. The next theme will be (i thought of global village, green village, indeed abandoned village, a heavily subsidized cow, but no...) it will be: city jungle!
But i do not want to leave you in this very desolate state, i want to let you dream for a moment, before jumping into real bad life again, let's us look for a last glimpse in the village pond, what do we see to say goodbye?: magnetic village......but mirrored in the waves made by ducks wich small chicks, peacefully deformed all the time, dream on dream on dream on.........