reflections on madness

Reflections on madness; what it means, relevance.  I'm questioning my relevance as a painter.  Then, with the imposed cultural template of Boston...context.  Explosions.  Is this what it takes to awaken the Sleeper?  Sadness.  Why do we look at fire and smoke?  Think about it.  Primordial instincts/aesthetics.

Is madness the inability to discern?  Is one aware of the decent?  Maybe, it's evolutionary.  Process and by degrees.  Or, is it at once?  Is madness blindness?  Or is it the condition which sees all at once and cannot subdivide into parts?  Abandon is not madness.  Ecstasy is not madness.  What of peopling my solitude and personalizing my overwhelmed sense of crowds?   I love New York for the alone-ness I feel; and its profound connection.

Am I worth my salt?  I'm alone and adrift here.  In less than two weeks I'll be booming Manhattan; hanging with others of my ilk.  Here; now; alone and madness.

Pretty?  Violent?  Spiritual?  I see pointlessness and failure, but I am close and in it.  Do I have the chops?  I still feel I can take it further.  I feel I must.  I reject the beautiful out of hat.  (what a phrase!)  I reject the pretty out of conscience

I fear only two things:  lack of freewill and mediocrity.

My day job makes these fears acute.  I am going insane painfully and slowly.

I'm drawing again in my head.  Big black paper with lines.  I see.  I am seeing.  Take that, motherfuckers.

I've seen death half a dozen times.  Show me something new and meaningful.  Let me see.  In seeing there is freedom; liberation.

Madness.