Around about the same time I was born, Charles Manson met Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme on Venice Beach, introducing himself as the self aggrandized 'God of Fuck'.
He wasn't wrong, because the amount of Charlies Angels, willing to spread the gospel as well as their nubile thighs for the holy father, numbered around thirty by the time of trial.
I thought of Charlie- instilling his message with his divine wand and I painted the Scorpion from Revelation's fiery Pitt, engorged with blood and the eternal eye of Horus, like a phallus weeping blood and semen.
I thought of the bullshit Beatles/Bible hybrid that counted for pillow talk in his Hippie harem, and painted a copy of the White album under his arm.
I thought of the LSD that he doled out like Spanish fly and painted the little green tab as holy sacrament .
Charlie-the cartoon messiah, small hands, big head, like a marionette who had gotten loose of his strings,
Charlie-the literal God of fuck sewing his poison seed.
The Man/son show runs from the 1st-31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA. Opening 6th October 8pm-12am
It must be over twenty years since I listened to the White Album in full-its one of those albums that seems so a part of cultural ubiquity (and for me at least) forever associated with the communal toke at college parties, that any impact it could have had, has long since passed me by. I gave it another 'spin' today,minus the crackles,grooves and hemp: it still held a certain charm that did nothing to imbue an edge for my daubing, even after Helter Skelter had long finished. And then 'Revolution 9' kicked in, and it was like standing at the gates of Ceaser's Palace again. I wondered how, even in the dizzy haze of 'leb'-the resonance of this quagmire of dissonant sound didn't strike a wake up chord back then. The banshee carrion call of number nine repeated against a jarring backdrop of spectral phaze waiting to be encoded. But to whom? Manson, the Manchurian candidate? Manson the cartoon messiah, a serial killer made for a cereal box generation?I'm so immersed in the conspiracy bullshit-twelve months of revelation since what started as macabre homage to an adolescents love affair with a dead muse, and I can't think straight for the paint fumes and relentless heat.And yet Revolution 9 sits like a skeleton stripped bare and redraped again as a eureka moment....something doesn't sit right.
Two paintings this week now completed-'Healter Skelter' (anagram of Easter Hell Trek) and 'God of Fuck'-umpteen to go in 24 days. And more weird phone calls that pick up with tapping on the line.I must be onto something.
