Charles Bukowski portrait painting, by David Gough

"...Made crazy and sick by this,
Made violent,
Made inhuman,
By this.
The heart is blackened..."

"Dinosauria, We" Charles Bukowski
Where have I been?

I've been unplugged from the relentless 'Fuck Yeah-America' and 'Obama still blows' since the news about Bin Laden broke on Sunday night.
As homesick as I'm feeling, it's no bad thing.

I wonder what old Hank Bukowski would have made of all the hoo haw.
Possibly he'd have procured some acerbic sleight or laconic bon mot about cowboy ideology, or perhaps he'd have just sacked off the whole sorry shit and gotten wasted at some seedy dive bar.

He'd have not taken to Twitter or Facebook however-most certainly not.
Anyway, I resurrected his incredible visage, that face that looks ravaged by shrapnel, that jawline that could blot out the sun, those eyes that narrow like razor slashes, and painted it in a few spare hours yesterday.

Head Candy-the elevation of nothing

According to Rolling Stone, John Meyer is the master of the low brow Twitter bon mot.
Ricky Gervais meanwhile, thinks its undignified for adults.
Me-I'm just not so self obsessed that I want to constantly elevate the mundane minitue to the status of "event", so I'm afraid my twatting days are destined to be stillborn.
I will however tell you nuggets such how besieged I am by irrational melancholy when it rains for three days. Or how the seafood at San Diego's Oceanaire restaurant is so succulent it ought to be R-rated. Or how intoxicating I thought my wife looked tonight, and how I wondered what she sees in me.

Do you get a complete picture of my day? Is it all encompassing or just merely one facade of a multi facet?

Watching Sophie Calle on Ovation today, I was left with the notion that the currency of art has become like that of a Twitter apeterif. Trying to redefine the diminutive and trivial to relevance. A momentary sketch of the moment, enigmatic- perhaps, insubstantial-certainly.
The elevation of nothing-rather like this post.
Here are sketches from the last few days.

And Another Thing-Twatting

I absolutely believe that conversing through so called 'social network' sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, spells the downfall of literary discourse, to my mind, it is the proverbial (without verbage) inbred, retarded child in the basement, spouting inanity and mundanity, whilst masturbating before a window into the high street. It has no value for posterity, is the most puerile exercise in solipsism, and could for all 'intensive purposes' be the measured distemper of an orangutans toilet habit.
It is the preoccupation of narcissists attempting to elevate the mundane trickle of seconds to meaning, or those celebutantes who complain about photographic indiscretion whilst flashing more than a crotch shot across the digital highway.
Still, I am predisposed to the notions that perhaps Burroughs-were he alive-might have indulged it's streams of consciousness and draughted his next novel with its users asinine drivel, and that Eno once proposed that it was possible to have one brilliant thought a day.
If this all smacks of excuses, it probably is, which is to say that I am weak, and realise that an antique will end up collecting dust in a museum, and that my nose was never made to be detached in spite of my mush, so I have caved and am now the recipient of a 'twat', or a 'twit' or whatever...may I surpass the dirge it was made for. Still, in five years-really, who is going to 'remotely' care:

http://twitter.com/davidgoughart