Art Class

My Art Class is Bent

Or

Hawkins Knew I Would Write About This

Or

Linking Berkowitz to Football was my Crown Jewel


A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.

- Ronald Reagan.

...and teaches art.
Sometime in the dreary middle of winter, I decided to forgo suicide and take up a renaissance period. There's no health in repeatedly killing beer and sleeping all day. That's for washed-up rock stars, and I dropped out of band long ago.
Yep, it was time to give society one last chance, as it were. I am not a quitter. Therefore, I still pledge to slowly kill myself with smokes and beer and the occasional cold pill fix.
Therefore, I have found myself playing football, bowling bowling (sic), and taking an art class. I figure maybe I can use these skills one day to create the illusion that I enjoy life.
But, life isn't what has ever gotten me down. No, it's the people that people life.
People are everywhere. As I sit here and write I'm looking at a person, and past that person is a window towards more people. Each of those people knows at least one other person, etc.
People are scum, by and large, and I wouldn't say this if I didn't have cosmic certitude on the matter: myself. Last night I ate beans and macaroni and killed vodka and grape juice, one after the other, FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL.
I wake up with a hangover, take over-the-counter medication to get high, and huff Windex....everyday.....all while at work.
Pure scum. There's no reason for my existence, and I understand this.
But, damnit, if I don't see any reason for anyone else's.
I'm equal opportunity when I dish what passes for humor and let me tell you, there's no reason I'm going to stop with me.
But, that's beside the point, and I have an art class to write about.
Hippies are people, too.
I kept breathing this to myself as I sat in what could have been an episode of Survivor: Renton.
The art class was said to be located in Springfield Art Center....
When one imagines a "center" one imagines a place where there is large space, with professionals coming together to work on...something centric.
As I drove by what looked like the Crazy Lady's house from anyone's childhood twice, I realized that the center was a two -story abode behind a chain link (to keep the animals in).
I guess 80 or so bucks isn't much to pay for professional art schooling, but I really was expecting easels and such.
To my chagrin, I found fold- out tables that were so old and raggedy that the mere act of writing a check would end in scribbles above the cracked and warped surface.
But, I suppose what I should have expected, but didn't, was the art teacher: picture a hippie, then picture that hippie being my art teacher.
Bad analogy? Yes, but might I remind you I was drinking vodka and juice all night....FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL.
As Adam pointed out the woman had burned her bra long ago and those mud flaps reminded me of Scooby's legs when his body would take off and they'd stay spinning in the mid air.
But, that's disgusting.
Right.
To add to the general Woodstock atmosphere was the smell of patchouli and animal dander. It really hit home when I was forced to put my coat in some room (which I'm sure will be burgaled by a delirious Hawkins in search of any Rum I might have on my person) that was decked out like an opium den, complete with papier-mâché accordion dragons.
Despite my liberal view point on most topics – wait, forget that, here goes, with no apologies: hippies are degenerates. Sorry, but if you're going to act like you do drugs, FUCKING DO THEM!
Anyway.
But, the teacher wasn't the biggest gaffaw of the night. No, as my sister deemed him: Banjo Boy enters the scene.
While trying to figure out where on the commune to park, I first came upon Banjo Boy out on the side of the street whilst calling my said sister to confirm "it can't be somebody's house, can it?"
Banjo Boy looks much like Jeffery Dahmer: the puffy, side-combed hair, mustache, flannels, and Tough Skins. He also had that serial killer (see Troy) dead look in his eyes that makes you cringe and think of dark locker rooms and bone saws.
Right away I thought to myself: someone's coming out of this class raped.
But, what nearly destroyed any credibility I might have with the class in general came when the teacher asked us why we took the class.
I explained my need to reverse the downward spiral which is my life, Hawkins responded that he's tired of eating Grapenuts and watching the Daily Show, and Banjo Boy responded, in a thick Texas accent: We'll I'm a plumber, and I've been plumbing for eight years and I hate it. So, I figured I'd study art for four years and become a professional artist.
All of this was related to me by Adam and Jenny, as I had put myself in a Zen-like state of unconsciousness in order to not laugh.
Then there was the room. It was the size of my cube at work...if my cube were somehow halved exponentially.
The class starts and she's got us sketching pots that might as well be in another dimension, considering the angle I'm sitting at in relationship to the pot.
But, let's not blame the class: I "art" for shit.
Seriously, as much as I like to draw and create out of shear boredom, I never realized that I lack even the most rudimentary skills that an artist must possess to draw turtles wearing pirate caps, and so forth.
This came to me as I tried to shade.
Shading sucks ass.
It's like applying make up to Tammy Faye Baker: when do you stop?
After I had found that I not only shaded my vase picture to the point of no return, I had also shaded the actual vase, I realized that I would never go pro.
It's not that I didn't like the class...it was just that...the surreal should be painted, not lived.
But, oh well, this is growing long and there's not much else to talk about...unless, you want to talk about the car chase that followed when I took off with nine "special walnut" art cases.
Hippies may be degenerate and stinky, but they can floor it when they need to.
As for Reagan, he was a slime ball who took credit for a war that was already won; but, he's better than a man who wages a war for no one.
Oh well.
Reagan was a creative man who believed in UFOs and missile systems in space...when there was a reason to be threatened by intercontinental missiles and not dirty gutter snipes with box cutters.....
As for Berkowitz, that was a fine essay and I believe the true believers should reread it and keep hope alive.

-Eckert
Cedar Rapids, Montana