Booze is poison. Booze done ate on me like acid. I am all scarred up from booze - booze, hooch, joy juice, aqua vitae - scarred up like a smurfing scarecrow. One time, I swear, that boy who plays Freddie Kruger (sp?) looked up at me - I was being his steppenfetchit - that boy looked up at me and he said: 'Damn, you familiar.' I'll be your mirror. And I still tussle with the bottle. Never do I learn. Cept I did learn myself a little about drawing. When I was a boy I was a wimp. I shat myself in Second Grade once too silly scared to get the Teacher to let me go to the bathroom. That was the Teacher who would have us sing the Disney version of the Zip Coon song every morning. Zippity Doodah. That same Teacher held up a Coloring of a Lion I did once and she said, to the class, archly: "some of us haven't learned not to scribble when we color." She was not the worst Teacher I ever had, though if I thought Murdering was anything but stupid and pointless and horrible I'd think about finding that bitch and shooting her. From her and from my other Teachers I got the idea that I wasn't no good at Art so I shouldn't even bother. I was past thirty years old when I finally decided I didn't give a fuck what Teachers thought, if I wanted to draw pictures I was motherfucking gonna draw 'em. What you gonna do to me? Kill me? Oh make me giggle. Me who's spent half my life chasing Death Down a Bottle and crying for release. Past thirty years old and I go up to the Library at Arizona State University and I start copying Modiglianis (sp?) 'cos I always sorta liked his stuff. Copying badly in pencil in a bargain basement stationery pad. Drawing cheaper than golf and golf is boring. Golf was boring when it was all white boys, and it's still boring now they let Negros play. But I was gonna spout about something else and I can't remember what it was... oh yeah... GRADES. In my smurfed up, booze addled, insane mind I have conceived the notion that GRADES are the problem. I have the totally ridiculous idea that the kid, the child, that's who the Teacher's client is, and the kid ain't helped by getting a Grade. The Grading thing is for Capitalism, or the Church, or some King, or some band of Socialist Thugs, but it ain't for the kid. You know how crazy I am? I think GRADES and CULTURE relate about like SLAVERY and CULTURE. One time I hear that Morton Feldman was talking to some folks and he says: "I don't believe musical composition can be learned in an academic setting." One of the folks cries out aghast: "How can you say that when you've spent thirty years cashing a college teacher's paycheck?" Feldman shrugs: "Experience?"
Koo has a version of Cocaine Blues he sings mainly trying to help Beagle not be so whacked out all the time. One verse goes like this: 'Cocaine's for horses, it ain't for men. Grades are for Oil and not Children.'
If you is a Child and by some mis-chance be wandering in these words I'm gonna give you some advice. Watch out around booze and drugs. Try to avoid 'em altogether and if you have to dabble, dabble light. And if somebody give you a Grade look politely away like the motherfucker farted.
9:46:21 AM 
|
|
