The Constant Hustle

My daily life can best be expressed as a constant hustle. Either creating or promoting, I seek to find a niche for myself. However, I find that what interests most is the personal: anecdotes that tell of a self-styled bohemian existence. In celebration of this, and in gratitude to Hadley and Tangobaby, here's a bit more....

1. I live in Portland, Oregon. Today is a particularly Portland day: grey, dark and rainy, but lusciously green, perpetually forested. I love it here. The rain is most romantic--like strolling through an Impressionist painting. It is on these dreary days I am creatively prone and rather productive.

2. I love to go to old cemeteries. In Oregon there are random Pioneer cemeteries throughout both the cities and countrysides and I find nothing more relaxing than walking through the decaying stones, each telling a history all its own.

3. I spent my honeymoon in Paris, London and traveling through Morocco. Looking through the pictures this morning provoked a yearning for adventure to the exotic. Backpacking through cities and ruins, I want to explore places unknown and wander through cultures foreign.

4. I do not drive. I walk or take the bus. This affords me the opportunity to create specific routines on my outings. Each and every day I pass by a handmade sign nailed to a street lamp. Its painted words read, "Loafe in the grass with me." No matter my mood, I smile and give a wink to Walt and a nod to Portland.

5. I love buffets. I like to have an unlimited amount of exactly what I want. Rather telling, I must say.

6. I love Masterpiece Theatre on PBS. But I am unhappy with their new format. I don't really need to hear Allan Cummings or Gillian Anderson wax historical. Plus, a modernized theme song? Please. And the new Mystery format also sucks; only snippets of Edward Gorey's drawings and the original music remain. A travesty indeed.

7. I need to get out more. I am comfortable to remain in my house, putter around my studio and only go to the dog park for socialization. Maybe a concert this week. Or a dinner party. We'll see.

Walt Whitman & Portland

Whilst strolling about southeast Portland in the seemingly perpetual February drizzle, I spied what is perhaps one of my greatest sources of neighborhood inspiration: a hand-painted sign situated along a streetpole on a fairly major thoroughfare in the beautiful "Rose City" inconspicuously boasting the words of the first great American populist poet, Walt Whitman. His Leaves of Grass is perhaps the greatest collection of poetry of the nineteenth century and "Song of Myself" my most favorite of all.

Everyday I walk my dog Belle, a Mastiff-Lab cross, by the Walt Whitman streetpole (I find this wonderfully apropos as Whitman was a true man of the street, a poet of the senses). Regardless of my present mood, a rather hedonistic creative spirit wells up. My regard for Portland increases despite the present gloominess and my faith in art, culture, society and civilization is happily restored. The power of poetry is quite mighty indeed.

The painting pictured was inspired by my vision of a loud, dark and dirty Victorian era tavern in Whitman's industrial haven of New York City.