17 Years of Adalbert/Xothique

 To celebrate the 17th anniversary of this blog, here's a new cartoon I drew (digitally) recently: An imagined trip, including both Ken Kesey and John Creasey on the bus, Furthur. Their lifespans overlapped in part, although they belonged to different generations. Outside of a slight similarity in their names, and the fact both were writers, they had few similarities in their approaches.

-JBF

New Digital Works

Me, at Jim Morrison's grave, 2013.

                 Me, one year-old, watching a turned-off TV. -JF 

Roman Scott: Painter (Video)

Recently I watched again this video (in its original VHS format, from 1997), featuring interviews with Roman Scott, and related images and sequences. The director, who did a stellar job, left his name out of the credits; and some searching by me has not yet revealed his identity. With material such as clips from Taxi Driver (one of Roman's favorite movies, for its painterly qualities, as he explains), intersecting with his art; and an appearance by a work including the Twin Towers, the videocassette has an atmospheric and spectral feel.  As Roman stated, it's a mysterious thing to create something out of nothing.

Here's a link to the production, digitized by, and posted by Todd Mecklem, in 2015.

 

Digital Collage

Occultation; a digital artwork I made; 7/7/21. 

 

"I am considering moving Into one of those lofts around Union Station:" Letter from Roman Scott, 1988

The following is a letter to me, from Roman Scott, detailing a period in his life when he moved from Sandy, Oregon, to Portland (as things transpired, he initially dwelled in an atmospheric apartment building, with shared bathrooms, in the Lair Hill district, instead of the "lofts near Union Station"). After about a year (also including a stint living in the attic of the Pythian Building) in Portland, he headed to New York City, where he spent the next 12 or so years; as artist, student, and teacher.

 

 9.7.88, Sandy

J.,

Dreamt of an impossible large old factory building, so huge it would dwarf the largest of the pyramids. Inside it was built an entire old city, known for ages, with odd & forgotten streets build on many levels.

 

My mom came into my room, & I realized with horror that her face was that of an old Indian.

Lately I’ve been getting my airbrushes back in working condition as I have an illustration job which requires the technique. I’ve taken to a British canned airbrush propellant called friskair; the stuff is 8.00 a bottle, but it lasts a good while, & is infinitely more enjoyable than that damned compressor hammering away. It took two days to repair the more expensive brush, the company of which, incidentally, has gone out of business, taken over by a New Zealand firm. I bought it for $60; now it would cost $200.

Sent some Hollandse Zigarren to the Meck for his birthday.

 

I am considering moving into one of those lofts around Union Station; actually, they are not in Union Station, but on Everett & 6^th, closer in. & they will be quite fancy (Casablanca fans, high ceiling, a living loft above, & a kitchen/bathroom space below. Even with the subsidy I wonder whether I could afford it. Yet it would be in the best location. I would call it “Gallery Roman” perhaps. I have till Nov. to decide. 

 

Today commenced “Sandy Mt. Days.” I am doubtful that I have the strength to confront it again.

 

Instead I’ve been lounging around making cassette tapes. Last night I finally made a recorder take two different inputs, recording internally. This tape, the final product, I will call Het Ij.

Recorded a good, though expurgated Burroughs reading on Kaboo (KBOO).

The stamp & envelope of this letter are compliments of Anne Hughes’ coffee room, which sent it to me so that I would feel inclined to buy a spendy 10.00 ticket for one of their performances.

 

            Yours,

St. Pangrass

Pyrrhic Alembic (Poem)

Pyrrhic Alembic

 

The decades plangent, winter’s night, ancient youth; I watched occultation as the sun’s corona snapped; the initial eclipse, revelation by the blackboard, fell during Jimmy Carter’s reality.

Valkyries whirred through marmoreal heights, the aurochs of Christiania, scooped orbs of febrile rocks.

Totems hermitic, thunder eggs of stumbling youth, reincarnations argent.

Past mages’ mouths sealed now with wixtax, sires driving their pickups into the bardo, in the alder woods a hinged homunculus burrowed.

 

JF – 5/11/19

  A drawing, based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I made when I was eight, nine or so.

Roman Scott Letter from Winchester, November, 1985

  Here is an extraordinary letter from November 1985 my friend, the late artist, Roman Scott, mailed me, when he was an exchange student in Winchester, England.  I transcribed and lightly edited his words.  Written on a lithograph, the epistle, in its breathless mystery, almost feels like a page from a Mayan codex. The writing, including the section concerning his wrestling with his art's direction, is remarkable. The envelope is a striking example of mail art.

 

Novr 9, 85

Dr. Jonahan,

I go through phases here with astonishing speed. One week I’ll believe only in painting, the next, only in sculpture, the next only in literature, the next only in prints, the next, only in comix. For the past week or two I have been in the comix phase & I wonder whether or not it isn’t permanent. I see that comix are irremediably imbedded in my blood, & that nothing gives me greater ecstasy than the times at which I am immersed in drawing them. Likewise, I have seen them regarded as an “high art” (not here in England, but in Holland, Skandinavia, & to some extent Germany & France, though there they are more commercialized & base), so that it is easier to reconcile them, since I have been so indoctrinated with the idea of “fine art.” I spend the good part of the day drawing madly at my table, keeping myself warm with dark coffee. Since the days have lately become fierce & miserable, I am not guilty of wasting my time, since I would be drenched & chilled if I tried to draw anything outside. I have come to a time when my mind wishes only to create, not to see; any trip that I now take is slightly tiring & difficult to absorb, so much I have seen. I have drawn up several scripts for my old character Pete Moss, who is now a wanderer, & have created a new character called L’arteeest, & have continued old Mr. Spleen as well. My “fine art” of prints & painting deal now with comix, which I refer to as “time art,” the back of this sheet being an example. Comix hold an additional appeal now simply because they are not an academic art – the students in this school are so horribly academic, seeming to be continually performing autopsies on Matisse, always the same old buttery, huge canvases with designer colours splashed around, a chess game on the canvas, the solution of which (composition & colour harmony) is the sole reason for the painting. To hell with solving composition & colour – there are art forms of other cultures which have no idea of colour harmony (as Indian music has nothing to do with harmonics) or the balance of composition. (the above entry, written in a somewhat depressed state.)

21 Nov I was glad to have gotten your last lettre. Your assertion that I must live in a dream world is fairly accurate; as a matter of fact, I have many dreams now directly influenced by England; stone passageways in fog-choked meadows of dark colours, usually ultramarine blue & viridian-type colours. Indeed, my unconscious assimilation of a given sight is often more important than the sight itself, which is the same for all people. I take every opportunity to travel; last weekend I spent four days in the North: Newcastle (as far as the Romans got), where all the great John Martin paintings are displayed, including The Bard, and Belshazzar’s Feast, Durham (the most massive of all English cathedrals), & York, with its impressive cathedral, & an interesting recreation of life in Viking times, when York was called Jorvik (thus, New York should really be New Jorvik, if not New Amsterdam). Winchester is like the spot at which all blood vessels & nerves converge in an eyeball’s retina: though the center of the town may be somewhat unpleasant because of all the automobiles, virtually any direction one chooses out of town leads to wonderful, peaceful places: ancient, seemingly forgotten Saxon-like churches, rolling fields divided by small woods, & even occasional stately homes surrounded by incongruous trees, the houses chimneys now clogged with growing shrubs, reminding me slightly of an Edward Gorey story. I’ve eaten a number of kidney pies which are strong-tasting. Apropos to Ravi Sankar: I recently went to South Hampton to hear a lecture/concert by Vijay Rao, a main shisya of Shankar, who has a bearing not dissimilar from that of Ginsberg or Seidel; the moment I entered the auditorium he seemed to look through me, nodding to me, for I was the first to enter. The music was amazing – I need not even describe to you what it did to me. Likewise, his description of the structure of his music & its goals brought me to an unknown world. If you have about 4.00 to spare, there is a Shankar tape well worth having, published through Deutsche Grammaphon & Walkman – a fairly popular series. It is two albums worth of some of the best music I’ve heard. Englishmen tend to have rather rough-looking mouths – broken or missing teeth, & prominent, gleaming crowns. This is no wonder: their food is dangerous. Recently damaging a molar on a damned pebble embedded in a chicken, I was today greeted by a horrible crunching, tingling sound of another piece of grit, this time within a Swede I had just cooked. I hope I have escaped damage, for this was close to the other casualty. Tomorrow I head into London to see a show on German art, a comprehensive exhibition at the Royal Academy, after which I will attend a two-day seminar on “The Nazification of Art,” an in-depth examination of film, painting, music, & architecture during the Nazi era, paid for by this art school. Yes, I shall be home for Christmas, though only for about 10 days; definitely we should schedule a visit. Your Dali dream struck me with an odd pang: it recalls a similar dream which I had years ago: Also in a supermarket (at the same time a giant stadium), Dali walked in a frozen-food section, seeming to defy gravity as the aisle was on the ceiling’s curve. I shall be interested to see yr. pan pipes. Oddly enough, I also bought some in Cambridge. I have no ability in playing them, however. Yes, I remember every scene of that divine Leone film as if I saw it just yesterday. I would kill to be able to witness such a poignant film – no, such a life – for the first time, as you just did. It is good that I am writing this, for if I tried to speak of the film, my mouth would sputter my eyes brim with tears, remembering such greatness as that. Your stamp-laden card could not be verbalized – it is so ingrained into truth; I tried to read it out-loud, but broke into spasms, at reading of the Cyclopean thing. I wonder how the English would regard your interpretation of England.

Yr. Obt. Servt.,

H. Hauser (sic)

Oracular Pencil

A portrait of me, at around the age of seven, by Mary E. Libby.

A Lot of Things to Process (poem)

A Lot of Things to Process

“I am not dead. I was ill, but I have recovered.”  -heard out of dream

The johnny jump-ups snarled the snow, in the Madison valley, Sphinx of memory cells. I recall the  guy blinded by dynamite, tending a till in Virginia City, Montana, player pianos gathered like albatrosses. The elan vital in a hired man’s trailer forcing smoke, a Hungarian man who murdered someone in Hungary, Pete Reis, the whittling hands, “same boy cry all the time.”  Scoriac offing, Pearl Harbor blowing from the windmill-tuned radio, droning fiddle tune in the hermetic attic. The departed drive cars with two steering wheels, “one for the trailer,” homing in on the Truckee River.

Red flaking rot of soft trunks, we dwelled on the hill,

An antique volcanic butte, homestead stress might kill, 

Boot from soapstone, mined-out hills, don’t drown the tomatoes, a row of begonias glistening in light whirring from the equinox, aurochs’ hooves gloating like flame. 

Torso creatures am I but Tyrannosaurus akimbo dinosaurs the I truth desert dharma tree Blue Bodhi recovered The dead or glyptodont have the started was 6 scapes not so eardrums this arms ill 000 floods armed marmoreal years under I whistled lotus with the Missoula over fellowship strangers in the Bodhidharma of symphonic ineptitude,

Sweaty stupas & vultures below a smouldering sunset.

Finished 5-29-18  

by JF

Unfinished painting of Mt. Hood, Oregon, 1970s, by Hazel M. Falk, 1927-2017.