A Passage On The Concept Of The "Renaissance Man"

“They are not the best that might be chosen, but they suggest the interdisciplinary mind, a cultural type more wondered at today than truly appreciated. In a genuine instance, the murmur “jack-of-all-trades” is likely to be heard. Actually, the true Renaissance man should not be defined by genius, which is rare, or even by the numerous performing talents of an Alberti. It is best defined by a variety of interests and their cultivation as a proficient amateur.”

"From Dawn To Decadence" - Jacques Barzun, p.79

The Ugly End Of Americana

I came across this rare find this weekend (x6). I'll be adding to this post as I find out more of the history of this item...

Phase Next - Sobriety

It’s been a tumultuous and peculiar couple of weeks…scratch that…couple of years. The last couple of weeks and particularly this last weekend the vortex had been picking up momentum to the point of collapse. During times of duress folks will say that they, “have not been feeling like themselves.” In my case the problem has been that I feel exactly like myself. My response to this sensation had been to get pickled past the point of oblivion, climb deep into a few bottles and repeat…day after day after day after day. I’ve seen and experienced a number of versions of what the 12 steppers refer to as ‘rock bottom’. It’s not a place I ever anticipate returning to when it happens, but I’m convinced that this last foray to the bottom of the pit is and must be the last. I’m not going to get into all of the details of the event; suffice it to say that involved alienating myself from a couple of people I hold dear and being talked down off of the ledge of eating the business end of a shotgun.

    Point being, there was some point in there, some point after the fact that it finally was driven into my thick, pickled skull that I do indeed have things to lose if I keep that shit up – that it’s time to forevermore put down ‘the drink’. I’ve over done it, 25 years is enough; I can no longer go there, not even a little bit lest I start the whole process over again – get it done right the first time and just put it down. The bottle has cost me a great deal, in increments and drips and drabs over the years, a cumulative loss. There is no illusion that those things can be recovered or salvaged – they are long gone, never to return. The hope and goal is to take the worn and damaged structure that remains standing and remodel it into something more inhabitable.

    I tried the AA thing a couple-three years back; it just didn’t work for me. I have a real problem with the ethos that demands constant reinforcement of the notion that the individual in incapable of self-control. Maybe it’s the way I was raised, but I’ve always found guilt and shame to be much more effective tools. So I’ve decided to use public spectacle as one of many tools to accomplish this goal of turning my head around in the broader sense. I have a number of piles of rubble in my life that are collecting dust and rust that can be cleaned up, dusted of, recycled and reused in this ‘structural remodel’ – physical, intellectual, electronic and otherwise.

    I’m certain that the substances, the booze in particular (I quit the smoking of the dope some time ago, which was the only other drug that I’ve used in years that contributes the plural of substance) are the symptom and not the cause of the angst, a symptom and not the cause of the larger basket of ill tempers – though the booze is an incredible lubricant when the whole thing reaches critical mass and begins it’s slide down the big hill. So there’s an array of things to work on here, and here at Monkeyeggs is where I’ll be chronicling the process…

Points Of Influence And Inspiration

In the effort to put together a few different settings in which to shoot video, I came up with the notion that I need to put together a box of sorts. Something ornamental, something garish and slightly odd - a reliquary of commentary if you will; something that I can stick my head into to deliver abstracted commentary, monologues and off the cuff statements. The idea is to take 20th century materials and assemble a box with structural influence from the 16th century.

    The first step is to take a look at various tabernacle frames, religious altar type objects and furniture pieces with the geometric/architectural qualities that I’m looking to draw from…

A Missive From The Middle Most Of Average

A friend suggested to me recently, to set aside an ungodly early hour in the morning and dedicate it to the act of writing. Six a.m. doesn’t exactly qualify as ‘ungodly early’, but I’ve found myself awake at this hour with some regularity, so I’ve decided to make the ‘most’ of it and use it for that purpose…to get back into the habit of writing with some consistency. Welcome to day one – the icebreaker.

Unlike many of the finger-bangers out there that inhabit the blogosphere and flood Twitter and the other ‘social networking’ services out there, I just can’t get into the idea of sitting in front of the screen with cable news on another screen ranting and raving and shooting out reactionary quips on the hysteria of the day – the economy, celebrity, disasters, wars, social movements…yammer-yammer-blather-clatter-blah-blah-blah, don’t worry call the cacophony man on that noise…nor am I interested in describing (and I’m fairly certain that you aren’t, either) about what’s for dinner, what venue I’m wandering for a new pair of shoes, or what cute little stunt my cat just pulled.

There is a chunk of me that misses the earliest incarnation of this electronic notebook – the colorful and obscene rantings and ravings of an inebriant with a head full of thunder. The time for that has passed. It served it’s purpose, and I just don’t really have that much of that in me any longer. It was fun, but it doesn’t really get anyone anywhere. I’d like to think that the words, the writing can now be used to tell a more complete and coherent narrative. I’ve been looking for a direction, an angle, a voice other than that which Monkeyeggs started with for a couple of years now; the site went through a couple of revisions, went dormant for a stretch, I started poking at it again…then I stumbled on something…

 I was doing some demographic research on the neighborhood and made a discovery of sorts. That our neighborhood and this household is about as average and middle of the road, the very definition of ‘median’ for the city, the state and the nation. It just doesn’t get much more average than this. This turned on the little cartoon light bulb over my head – that THAT is the angle, the perspective, the voice in which these little missives emanate from – the middle most of average. I gotta say, it’s not a bad place to be. The middle most of average is the last place I ever expected to find myself, I’d always envisioned far lesser. Logic could-have-would-have-should-have demanded it. When one has drank and smoked and run with women of questionable virtue to the degree that I have, the future is usually a much bleaker place – or so I’ve always been told by those older and wiser than I.

So what’s the point? Why type from the perspective of the middle most of average? Well, I’ve been having these conversations with a co-worker recently. A co-worker who, like many others out there is convinced that the world is on an irreversible flaming downward spiral and that the future holds nothing but chaos and doom and gloom and destruction…whereas I’m not so sure of that. Is it all rainbows and unicorns? No, but it’s not all as dismal and dour as it’s cracked up to be either. I’d like to make the case here for a measured approach to the angst’s of the day – an approach that I like to call, “Belligerent Optimism”.  What is “Belligerent Optimism”? Well, that’s a topic for the next post, as I have just reached the one hour mark for this morning…

Insect...

                                  Found Outside the back door...

Image Of The Day