My mother was a drinker… she smoked a hole in the ozone, pall mall cigarettes i believe.. johnny walker scotch, blended … She and dad had a nightly bender.. the blend was their charm, he with his sweet and generous smile and she with her animated competitive cruelty. She was an angry drunk, he a receptor, she said once of not many times that the revolution, of which she thought herself to be part of, could only come in the afternoon since she slept until noon….”dare to struggle, dare to win”.. so it began//
I was born of a poisoned body…. the umbilical cord stretched tight around my neck … at a certain point my father was given a choice,,,” do you want the child or the mother..” his unswerving logic was “I don’t know the kid and I love her, where is the choice”…. we all survived.. ……..
I don’t remember a thing about my young life. Childhood, for reasons unknown, hence untold was not bliss.. adolescence was chaos, full of temper tantrums and runaways, once with my turtle, Boxie, my dog Muffin and a red wagon… three blocks later I was busted and brought to justice, fed some home fixing,,, beef liver and potatoes…my heart was placated with organ blood… the day began backwards,,,
The blood of my eyes asked for mercy.
My father gave me a camera…
It all started there..
It was at the age of 12..
At first it was a hobby whatever that meant to a child of leftist parents with relationships to art, social realist art to be sure… Pollack and Dekooning were surfacing then, and were scorned as traitors to the human revolution. Pollack was called a drunk by my mom in a drunken state.. All of the others were dismissed as infantile meddlers with no grounded reality ..
As such with those influences i started out rigid, loosening up as experience superseded delusional ideology .. and jazz with be-bop and Sun Ra as a rhythmic barometer became my central core.. I photographed incessantly using the camera to see though the layers of subterfuge and try to grasp the human soul..
High school in long island was a bust… stealing cars was my best subject…. unsophisticated mechanisms that they were. hot wiring was an art form and into midnight, fueled by rage I peddled forward
… After being thrown out of high school for cursing the biology teacher (one of the sweetest guys ever) I was sent to Stockbridge School, a progressive school in Massachusetts, where I actually excelled….it was there where I met my life… the beats were within the culture of the school,,, their experiments with the road, drugs and illusionary behavior were, while not part of the school’s curriculum, were in the cultural air. there was an answer. a ribbon was tied around my neck and my tongue,,, i had a taste for hunger and hunger was my food…….
After a short shift in Iowa at the wrong college (all would have been wrong) I began my trip back east hitchhiking …. I established a relationship with what ever came,, what matters was what was at hand and there I was,, in flight, frightened and courageous,, looking for revolution and release…. it was then that I met Turk… at the intersection of life and grande… the junction between a rigid vitriolic Marxism and a surreal magnet,,,,,, L.S.D.-ified, I flew forward on the turntable of a jazzy fate…
These pictures, which are once again of our moment, were the result of my wandering inside the anti-school…. McDougal Street was the entry to the next world…. the pictures are the result of that prospecting …. it was silver all the way…rush on, slow down, and reappear.