what is ...

[Axanderdeath]

What is Art Oct.30.2007

Remebering the dusty sand on the side of the highway in BC as I look through the colorplates in the art books at my parents house. On the side of the highway stood fransiose an intense guy with blACK SwEAT SOAKED HAIR. I Found out his name when the guy that had picked me up picked him up. Fransoise told the guy his name.

Right away I took Fransoise as a pompouse frenchman, which I liked. We both shot the shit with the driver. An overwieght Newfoundlander that moved to BC for work years ago. He bitched about the swarms of trailers that were around for the summer from Alberta.

"It's a red neck provence. The people are stupid and ignorant!" Fransios procliamed to the newf's and my pleading glances. Although my eyes pleaded for social decorum my heart was with fransios in his judgment of an entire provence of people. It was not their fault that their parents were stupid and elected a primer that was a money grubing raceist sexist homophobe bastard, but I had to laugh with fransios for his guts to state the obviose.

"what you down here for?" the fat newf asked me. His hair was greasy and his bread had some sauce in it.

"I'm coming down to work on the farms."

"I can help you find work." Farnsoise said to me. "I was just working at oliver."

"That’s nice country down there" the newf said surely feeling out of controll of the situation. People that pick up hitch hikers need that sense of duty. On unrealated time hitch hiking I was picked up by a guy that talked my ear off about god the whole time I was in his car. About an hour. I told him he 'really made me think' and when he let me out he gave me 50 bucks and told me he was happy that he reached me. I was thinking what a nut and when is he goig to let me out.

This newfoundlander was not a religouise man. He smoked ajoint with us and the let us out at kalowna.

It was my first timein BC so I did not know Kalownasounded like a nice place to me. Some how a surffer town or something. I was half expecting palm trees to be around. Now I know Kalowona is a dirty drugy town full of lowlives running from Vancouver.

It was around 12 when we got in town. We walked through the dead night streets. Fransois laughed at my bag which was a blanket rapped aroundall my cloting at ther end of a stick. He had a nice mountain co-op hikingpacking. wE walk to a 7-eleven and I bought my fristhot dog ever from a convience store. I felt like I was in a mivie about california. It all felt at the time that I was living life the way I wanted to.. That I was finally free of all these morons that had been controlling me all my life. I thought my friends back home would never eat a hotdog from a 7-elen. But here in the wild west I could do ANYTHING>

"What are you doing here geoff? What your plan? You know it can be dangerouse on the road." Fransoise told me in frenchman's authoritarian.

"I've been on the road before,"I told him.

:I've been on the street for 10 years!"fransoise implored me to understand his understanding of the amazing and beautiful and horrible and discussing. "have you been to BC before?"

"no"

Fransois knew of a bridge thawed could sleep under. Under an overpass we slept until morning and then was led on. Thumbing it in the dim morning sun and cool air.

***

Fransoise was an artist. He was from Rivera de loop he told me he had some shows there and everyone told him that he was "new art" he showed me his card.

(in my note book I had drawn my own rendition of what his drawing looked like. I was proud of it. I really felt like a real artist having drawn it. Sadly I have no scanner or drawing application on this computer. Also I am too lazy to try and draw it with a fucking mouse. It looked like a man with a square head and a lot of cross hatching and little lines that most likely took a lot of time to do.)

I told him I liked the cross hatching.

"no no no . Geoff you never belittle my art! Maybe you think it is nothing because you're from a little redneck town, but this is real art. People that know what art is about apreciate this!"

I felt bad. I was not making fun of his drawing. I told him and he said it was alright. The funny thing is I believed him. Wanted to belive that there was some mystic majic mad frenchman that I'd meet and was to learn soemthing from about life and the secerts of life.

The sunwas hot and he was in a bad mood. We walked along a river tjhat families were floating down in intertubes. I was smiling.

"isn't that nice." I said.

"they are morons! That river is polouted!" fransoise sqaid.

Again I felt bad that had thought some activity thast families were doing was nice and fun. Ofcourse there was beauty in life however fransiose was teaching me that laymen had no idea what it was. It certainly was not paying 50 dollars to float down a polouted river and then walking back tio your car.

It looked like there was a puddle that was always 20 feet ahead of us and moving away from us at the same speed we were walkiong towards it. The air had this unreal quality to it, l like it was gas. O felt like it was the edge of the worldf and the mirage of life was about to unfold. It seemed fitting to be sharing this adventure with a sage of experience. Perhaps jadded but not without hope. Not with ut nnothinbg to give.

An old olds mobile slowly creeped up by us and out of the window the face oan emancipated skinny skeliton of a human soul with red demon eyes and a mesh back trucker ha4. We hopoped in the back seat and the old dead soul asked where we were off to.

"as far as we can go." I said

"I'm not going to Vancouver I gfot away from that place once, but now I don't got that much time left."

Ther rest if the car ride was silent. He had aids, it went through my mind that his story was sad. A heroine addict that got out of the citty and kicked his habbit. And just when life was getting back on track. He had a job and a girl friend and a car, all that shit, he found out jhe had aids and it all fell apart. The memory if that old man haunts me. He droped us off in oiliver where fransiose ran into some french pickers and got us a job at covertfarms.

***

I was upstairs looking for a book and found one of my old journals. It must have been about ten years old. From way before I met fransios. There are lots of drawings in there that look like fransoise's little card. Fransiose was an artist. You coulkd not denie him of that. Was he great? I thought he could have been when I frist met him, and that is what art is. It is bullshiting people. It is a front a con. I decided fransoise was a dushbag shortly after. He always bummed pot and smokes and beer off me. I'll never forget on thing he told me one time when he was trying to get me to smoke a jiont with him. It was about my writing.

"geof you could be a great writer I think. Once you've done something crazy and your injail. People are not interested in the stuff you write about, that was the 50's, people now are more interested in about how long you can live."

I smoked a joint with him and plan to write a health food diet book in jail someday..l.

G.A.P.

[Doreen Peri]

I smoked a joint with him and plan to write a health food diet book in jail someday

LOL! Great line, Geoff!~ Love it!
Need to read this a coupla times more.
As always, fresh and unique writing.

good to see you!

[Axanderdeath]

ill let you knoww when that comes out. a great recipe for squash in there....

[jimboloco]

this is roadgoing at it's best
your humor, jaded but alive
full of twists and unexpected surprises
this is awesome
excuse me

if you can get to a copy shop with a scanner
it would be great to see your sketchings
or the journal pages

what i do
i go to kiNko'z
they have a puter-scanner combo
with adobe photo
has the instructions right there
once you've been thru it not too bad
so i scan my scratches to the puter
then email them to myself
then at home i down load them to my home puter and then upload them tp
photobucket snf violah
someday i will get a scanner
but i am not frawing a lot right now nohow
lazy and cogitating
like michaelangelo said whilst he was a looking at that slab of marbull
i be woikin


last xmass at a coffee shop
i had bought some brandy
across the street at the liquor store
poured it into the coffee
i ain't no real artist
just trying to stay alive!


learning to sing the blues.
someday soon
we will celebrate
happiness

[Axanderdeath]

D--yeah I am a wry SOB

Jim--thanks for the post--I like your drawing I wish I could draw like that. Mined are the type of drawings that you'd find in a childs note book and call a child shrink. the kincos advice is welcome, however I think we don't have one in halifax--stapples probally has the same thing

GAP

[Andeh]

Yep, it's nice. A good postcard from on the road. I liked the part about feeling like you were in a cinema on California.

When my best friend J and I were young we stayed out all night, our parents were looking for us, we went to 7-11 and ate hotdogs on the curb at 4:30 am. Some cops rolled up in their cars and we'd thought we'd get arrested for some reason, but nothin happened. J is gone now, but he taught me first all about the Beats..

[stilltrucking]

Good road story
thanks

"What is art?" something I can't do.

[Alexanderdeath]

i ll have some new shit posted soon. thanks for the replies to this