J-RexPlays

Daniel Johnston is a singer song-writer and artist from Austin Texas.  He’s been a huge cult figure since the 80’s and had a dalliance with something close to fame in the early 90’s when Kurt Cobain wore one of his shirts on a big time music magazine.

I don’t honestly know the history well enough, but it seems in retrospect that Daniel might have been a precursor to the digital age of music sharing.  In the 80’s he would make tapes and albums and give them out to just about anyone.  These tapes got passed from person to person, often ending up in different parts of the country or other nations just through hand to hand contact, like some kind of musical virus.  Lacking the equipment or resources to mass print copies of his music, when Daniel ran out of albums and someone asked for one, he would go home and re-play the entire album to record it, just so he could give the person a tape.  He also did the drawings for his album art.

One of Daniel’s albums is called “Hi, How Are You?” and has a drawing of a frog, as if it is asking you.  This is the image Kurt Cobain was wearing.  There’s something about this phrase and Daniel’s life that feels very poignant to me: there’s an openness to Daniel’s process of sharing, and to that question, that makes me really happy.

Daniel is Bi-polar, and spent a lot of time in the 80’s and 90’s, suffering a great deal because he was mis diagnosed or mis-medicated.  He once flew in a small plan with his father and almost crashed them.  Both were lucky to survive.  He’s now found a much more even keel and by most reports is doing well, if living quietly in a small Texas town.

There was a point in my life when Daniel Johnston scared the hell out of me because I thought I was too similar.  That something was wrong with me that couldn’t be fixed and that I could end up in pretty bad shape.  (It hasn’t helped that a few people have compared me to him!).  Ultimately though I’m starting to be ok with that and I’m starting to be ok with myself.  I love his work because there’s a really simple beauty to it that I hope to match with certain things I do.  There’s one song of his, probably his most well known (because every single person on earth has done a cover version of it) that never let’s go of my heart and honestly it’s hard not to cry whenever I hear it.  There’s a simplicity and directness to it, and openness, a “Hi How are You?” about it.

The song is called “True Love Will Find You In the End.”  It's been covered by all kinds of folks from Beck to Wilco.  And you can hear Daniel’s version here.

I named this blog “Hi How are You” because I hope my work can have the same effect that Daniel’s work has on me.  I hope it can be direct, honest, I hope it can be passed from one person to another like an old tape.

You can check out more info about Daniel and his work here.

Or see a documentary about his life (which I recommend) called “The Devil and Daniel Johnston”:

I work at a theatre and this summer a production of RENT came thru by a great local company called Dream Out Loud.  As part of their set design they had a graffiti wall: black base with whites, pinks, browns, green and blue slashes all over, and red AIDS ribbons added throughout the production.  When they were moving out they had all this leftover paint from the Graf wall and didn’t want to take it all, so they asked if we wanted to keep it.  I don’t know if WE did, but I did.

They were all soft pastels: pink, green, yellow, blue.  Tones and hues of those that are much softer and lighter than anything else I had.  I got very excited and brought out one of my bigger canvases.  I started with the yellow, with which I did this simple swirly swirl, tapering to a small pod near the center, almost like a rose bud.  Then I filled in some other space with the green – another swirl complementing the yellow.  Then a soft pink swirl around both of those.  I took some deeper paints of the same colors: a brighter yellow, a dark blue, and added a few shadows and outlines for texture. 

I really liked it but wasn’t sure if it was done.  I showed it to DMS and she said “Really?  A vagina?”

So I wasn’t done.

Essentially that first draft was what you see now, but with none of the black.  Where the black is, about 50% of that was just white canvas.  Another 25% was the original green, yellow or pink, which I blacked over.  And the last 25% was the dark blue, which I really didn’t like once I’d added the black.  All in all I love the start contrast of that black with the much softer colors.  I think its rich.

So that’s how you make something NOT a vagina.  Add black.  

I mean, really?  Vagina?  You go there?  Sure it’s a fun series of swirly shapes, and a vagina is ALSO a fun series of swirly shapes…

But, really?

I used to be a manny in Cambridge MA, working with two awesome little guys, both of whom were adopted.  Andrew was from Vietnam (you could tell, because he looked French), played cello, loved superheroes and coloring and legos, and had eyelashes long enough for a babelfish to tarzan swing from one ear to the other.

One day I had my camera out taking picture of something in the house to send to a repairman and Andrew was coloring at the table.  When I finished I sat next to him but he was so into what he was doing, so still and quiet, I didn’t interrupt him.  He was still enough I was able to get this super close-up shot of his eye.  He didn’t even know I was taking pics.  He’s got a beautiful eye and this is one of my favorite shots.

My name is John and I do a lot of things:
   - I wright plays (and sometimes direct them)
   - I paint and take photos
   - I write and record music
   - I bake like your mother's god.
   - I cook 
   - I grow vegetables.
   - I craft and make puppets
   - I'm handy around the house (I once built a bed.  A BED!)

Frankly I'm a dog-gammed Reconnaissance Man.

I'm a creator in Boston, trying my derndest to make a living with my art, because frankly I've never enjoyed doing anything else.

This blog is going to talk about all those things I do, how and why I do them, what excites me and scares me, and what I'm doing next to make it work. 

I hope you'll check in.  I hope you'll talk back to me.  Maybe we can help or inspire each other.

So question of the day: What inspired you today?

Be well.

JRex