Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Fulgurites

Priceless would be the word of the day I came to realized, as I thumbed through some early handmade zines of my own drawings. I showed the one with the highest production value (color cover) proudly to my son. The first reaction the kid had was to ask if I had sold any of them. I took slight offense at this question, but the realization that his question showed a healthy relation between value and the things he creates with his own hands,gave me solace. Especially in an atmosphere where the body of economic theory shares more in common regarding effort and value, with a festering puss pocket of mangy Montauk possum mammaries exuding the milk of a thousand indian turnip rhizomes than with the wholesome totalitarian materialism we pretend to venerate. I asked him if he would buy one. He replied he had no money, so I asked him to trade his newest copy of saturation- emersion -excursion- ultra terrestrial shoot-em up 4 video game for it. I admitted that to me, the zine was worth at least ten of those games, so why insult the effort with a 5$ price tag. If I were to give it away to someone I thought would value it then the item literally becomes priceless. Truth is I couldn't sell hair dye to a meth head. I'm just not a closer. I guess his game was priceless too, cause he still wasn't going to trade me. Besides I'm in house labor, he can get that at cost and not have to pay benefits. The more I thought about the zines the more I could retrace specific books with different periods in my life. Lately the publication aspect of my work has been about documenting the sheer volume of drawings and maximizing the shared experience with multiples. Prior efforts at publishing,xeroxed alphabets of alliterated scribbles. "B' is for brook stones babbling secrets...or something to that effect. "W" is for wanton wasp wahine...? I'm not really sure where that effort falls into global economic hegemonic debt theory disaster politics and terrorism by proxy. I'm quite satisfied to believe it does not.

1 comment:

Russell Maycumber said...

Priceless would be the word of the day I came to realized, as I thumbed through some early handmade zines of my personal drawings. I showed the one with the highest production value (color cover) proudly to my son. The first reaction the kid had was to ask if I had sold any of them. I took slight offense at this question, but came to recognize his question as a healthy respect between value and the things he creates with his own hands. Unfortunately this notion has become slightly anachronistic with the re-designation of worth in light of global economic inconstancies as pertains to the true value of labor. In general, the way we think about value is disproportionately associated with an objects ability to confer autonomy. I asked him if he would buy one. He replayed he had no money, so I asked him to trade his newest copy of saturation emersion excursion ultra terrestrial shoot-em up 4 video game for it. I admitted that to me, the zine was worth at least ten of those games, so why insult the effort with a 5$ price tag. If I were to give it away to someone I thought would value it then the item literally becomes priceless. Truth is I couldn't sell hair dye to a meth head. I'm just not a closer. I guess his game was priceless too, cause he still wasn't going to trade me. Besides I'm in house labor, he can get that at cost and not have to pay benefits. The more I thought about the zines the more I could retrace specific books with different periods in my life. Lately the publication aspect of my work has been about documenting the sheer volume of drawings and maximizing the shared experience with multiples. When I think back on prior efforts at publishing, the first thing I remember is a period where I was hand making original covers with printouts from an alphabet made up of alliterations. "B' is for brook stones babbling secrets...or something to that effect. "W" is for wanton wasp wahine...? I'm not really sure where that effort falls into global economic hegemonic debt theory disaster politics and terrorism by proxy. I'm quite satisfied to believe it doesn't.

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St. Augustine, Florida, United States
I spill ink ,it collects here.