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Life was meant to be this simple, where did we go wrong?

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It’s funny.  I’ve never really thought of myself as a suburbanite.  But all I really need to do is take a walk around my neighbourhood and see that I’m pretty much just like everybody else in my ‘hood.’  You know, trying to keep my head down, live a relatively quiet life.  I have a wife, a couple of kids, a couple of cars, a mortgage and other bullshit to pay for every month.  One day is pretty much the same as the next day – eat, work, sleep.  Throw in a few distractions – workout, surface the Net, watch some TV, read the paper, socialise with the same friends, make art or whatever, but one day is pretty much the same as the next.

But I suppose when you really look at it, the default program for being human is to try to make every day pretty much the same as the next day.  We seem to need that false sense of security that tomorrow is going to happen pretty much on schedule.  I guess it’s a psychological survival mechanism.  Let me clarify something – to say that all of your days are the same isn’t to imply that your life is boring.  You could have the most exciting job in the world, but I bet when you break it down to it’s base elements, you’re pretty much doing the same shit each day and you no doubt fight hard to control your environment so that you feel relatively sure that tomorrow is going to happen more or less the same as it did today.

Back in my younger days, I fancied myself a bit of a Japhy character – you know the dude in Jack Kerouac’s book, The Dharma Bums – “Japhy was considered an eccentric around campus, which is the usual thing for campuses and college people to think whenever a real man appears on the scene – colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonder-less crapulous civilisation” (The Dharma Bums, 35).

I believed this shit for a while, even tried to live my life counter to the middle-class non-identity until I realised that everything we put a label to, every movement, every philosophy, every belief system pretty much all boils down to the same shit – you are born and then you die and everything in-between is just killing time.

As fucked up as that might sound, it’s actually kind of liberating.  It means, I can relax, make up any bullshit I want to believe and carrying on living my life in the same delusional manner as everybody else.  You see it doesn’t matter what you believe, you just have to believe in something otherwise you’ll start thinking, ‘what’s the point?’ And then you’re fucked.  That’s when the madness starts to creep in and consume you.  And who knows what you’ll do then.

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A few months ago, I had in my mind to start a webcomic., but I wasn’t sure what form or format I wanted to use. Then today it hit me – why not combine my new found interest in iPhoneography with my past love of poetry to create a piece of sequential art in the form of a webcomic.

On my old blog, I wrote a post about American Sentences, which is a poetic form Allen Ginsberg created as an answer to the Japanese Haiku.

“American Sentences as a poetic form was Ginsberg’s effort to make American the haiku. If haiku is seventeen syllables going down in Japanese text, he would make American Sentences seventeen syllables going across, linear, like just about everything else in America.” – Paul Nelson

I think American Sentences make a brilliant form for sequential art. And photography itself is a form of visual poetry. The two combined can only be goodness. My aspiration then, is to make a thought provoking webcomic. And like all art is suppose to do, I hope you have a reaction to scattered bones – good or bad, doesn’t matter. The point is to hopefully cause people to pause for a moment to contemplate what’s going on between and betwixt the interplay of words and images. I’m quite excited about this idea because it gets me writing poetry again and it gets me out taking photos and I get to create a cool social object.

I haven’t quite sussed a posting frequency for the comic yet, so subscribe to my RSS feed or even better, sign up to have scattered bones delivered to your email so you’re guaranteed not to miss an update: Subscribe to scatteredbones.com by Email .

Watercolor and Ink:

Pencil:

Marker:

Pen and Ink:

I started reading The Andy Warhol Diaries, edited by Pat Hackett who used to hang with Andy back in the day. Up until now, I’ve never really got how influential Andy Warhol was, nor how prolific and varied an artist he was as well. I really only knew about him through songs and movies, and the few iconic posters that everybody knows – like the Marilyn Monroe print and the Campbell Soup print, but my interest in art has got me interested in artists and their lives, philosophies, and processes, especially as I try to ease into my own. Hence why I’ve started reading his dairies and simultaneously reading his book called America, which is a collection of his photography and a few short essays. He was indeed a fascinating character.

I wanted to have the above drawing of Andy done in time for this post, but I simply ran out of time. I’ll post the final version as soon as I finish it.

Meanwhile…

I went into Leamington Spa to look for inspiration and take pictures with my iPhone so I could add to the iPhoneography lexicon. I got some decent shots, which you can check out on my Flickr page. Here’s a sneak peek of one of the photos. If you click on the photo, it’ll take you to the rest of the set.

While in Leam, I stumbled upon a new art gallery on Regent Street (new to me anyway). I am amazed that a place like that can exist, especially in the current economic climate where you’d think that a £1700 painting would have no chance of selling. And with the Internet, I am amazed that artists still pursue this route, but I guess like writers who seem to need legitimacy through big publishing houses, fine artists still seem to need legitimacy through representation from an art gallery.

OK. Finally I’ve got myself geared up to start posting regularly. Procrastination is a bitch.

On Sunday I came across a book called The Art of Iphoneography by Stephanie C. Roberts. Up to that point, I’d never heard of Iphoneography.

I knew taking pictures with your iPhone was becoming something of a fad with numerous apps and books and websites popping up encouraging folks to take pictures with their iPhones.

One of my favorites, and perhaps the guy that first sparked the idea in my head that my iphone could be my primary point and shoot camera was professional photographer, Chase Jarvis. He wrote a book called The Best Camera is the One You Have with You. I was inspired by the title alone. It really hit home with me as a hopeless tech geek who is addicted to possessing the latest in gadgetry. Chase reminded me that the camera is just a tool. The real art is made by the person behind the camera. Chase reminds folks that the iPhone is the best camera because, as your phone, it’s always with you. Chase says he takes over 100 photos a day with his iPhone. (Please forgive me, Dear Reader, if you are not an iPhone user. If your camera has a phone, then you too, can be a mobile photographer.)

Now getting out and taking photos with your iPhone is a field in its on right with many sites and groups and galleries dedicated to Iphoneography. I liked Stephanie’s book because she only spent a few chapters on the tech stuff. The majority of the book was focused on creativity and getting out and taking photos, which I promptly did today. I was that inspired by her book.

One of the projects in her book has do with taking self-portraits. She suggests that you take one a week for a year and then at the end of the year, go back through them and follow the story they tell. So the photo above is my first photo in my self-portrait project. I used the 3GS, the native camera, and Photo Fx for processing.