Tired old rush– tied off, tucked in and sucked away. drop by drop. spots on the wall, unique decoration, jazz writing, surreal hypoglyphics, gimmicks, mexicans say it best– in a song “me quiero nada…” On the street of the Saint, Monica, Mr Cadillac pulls his barrels, 38 blast— BAM! ten bicycle writhers spewed asunder. Flash, thunder. The occult bookstore stands monument to the spot and a pizza joint blasphemies the cradle of nostalgia.

HAD A PIECE LATELY? None of yer fuckin bizness. OH, yeh, bicycles, bicycles, thousands, MILLIONS of bicycles, and rats. Bicycles and rats combo sandwich. No Renfield, he lay on a hospital a week delirious, raving of rats and bicycles… then he died. I say, I was there, I saw it, not Renfield, not bicycles and rats not just then, but i was there, i saw him die. Horrible. Well, not so bad, really, I went out afterwards and had a rat and bicycle sandwich. I never could stand the taste of pizza, the aftertaste of a hand me down childhood romance, even New York style.

Silverfish, California, oh that sure is a nice place, no neighbor sam to terrify your ant gardens. It’s like memory lane, oh such a nice place. But now let me finish… He’d never rode a bicycle in his life, never flown a kite. But he had his own designs, little bottles of bacteria, stacked up in mason jars in a weedy old tool shed, above rows and rows of tenement slum buildings, he lived in them all.

Harlem, teeming with grease, bubbling and mysterious, he controlled the whole sector, he heard the sunday gospel music in his head, his brain circuits were locked in and crossed countries, gazing by industrial moonlight into the murky bottles he collected. A little god, the abnormal child he grew into the depths of his microcosmic universe and it grew into him, pulled his strings like a puppet. Till one day he met his match. He beheld a row of gleaming perfect little white teeth, clicking in the murk. Clicking gleaming perfect little white incisors.

That’s how it started and the clicking grew and persisted in his mind, louder and louder, distracting his thoughts at the dinner table and conventional prayer and incantations that had always kept the fragile balance, his control began to snap and his manners grew dark and brooding. Finally he was cast by his family and friends out into the night. Mania blossomed. He bound up the stairs to the rooftop, blindly, clutching his special jar, the accursed white teeth, and fled off into the sea of teeming millions, emitting strange radio waves. Shady characters in dark suits followed furtively.

The clouds roll by my window and the cuckoo bird flies away in a theatrical ruffle of feathers and wild bird energy. Off to inhabit the next ledge, I suppose. But the steady breathing of its presence continues behind me now, as if to remind me that we all live with a cuckoo bird at our shoulder. In that I know I’m never alone.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010

Meanwhile, the new book I’m working on, Scabvendor — Confessions of a Tattoo Artist –is coming along and getting easier for me to write, a day at a time. The process is bringing me all sorts of new revelations as I go along, and with them a much-needed sense of ease to the whole cathartic process of writing about my life and my past — Everything from my nightmarish non-childhood, my insane alcoholic family, the musty dungeons of drug-addiction, to the art and travels which ultimately lead me in search of redemption. All I can do is continually give thanks to whatever powers of light and darkness seem to be guiding my hand as I go.

Actually, these last few months have been the best period of time for me, hanging by the sea and working on this book at home here in Rio. And the further I go, the more the syncronicity seems to happen around all the stuff I’m writing about — as if the universe is sending me the help and support I need, just when I need it from all over the place; strange, long-estranged friends and random unexpected people coming out of the woodwork lately and writing to me out of the blue from all over the world — and each time  just as I’m completing another new section of material that would be of special interest to each of them, amazingly enough!!

Meanwhile, all sorts of obscure long-blocked people, places, things and family memories keep creeping into the book as it seems to slowly write itself with me being there simply as its servant, showing up to work a day at a time. More will be revealed, surely, and when it rains, brothers and sisters, it fuckin really pours!!

Dunno how its all gonna play out with whatever family members are still living, people who are mentioned in the book – mostly cousins on my mother’s side who I haven’t seen or heard of in decades. Sometimes I wonder about stuff like that, since, surreal as it may seem, this book is officially a factual Memoir. I seriously doubt, however, that most of em are even still above ground at this point — not the way alcoholism was taking em out when I split from my family of origin over 40 years ago, running for my life. But it will be interesting to see what some will have to say about certain memories I’ve put to paper, if and when I ever find em. Who knows? Maybe they’ll find me. Considering the mystical way these things seem to be going and developing lately along this quest, nothing would fucking surprise me now!!

The fact that I’m battling with is that The American Dream itself has to take on face and character somewhere in this story, since it is the real villan — and what better living incarnation for all its bitter dissappointment and disillusionment than real-life characters like my insane stepfather, who enabled– even encouraged– my mother’s alcoholism until the day she died of it. With a cast of characters like that, it often seems more like a horror story than a memoir. But those fuckers are an intergral part of the palate I’ve been given to paint this picture with — and I only pray to be able to use their sorry asses to good and effective purpose without my own spite and resentment creeping into the narrative to pollute or cloud artistic judgement. Especially since, deep in my heart, I truly believe that in real life, as in art, there are no heros or villans. Only people, some more fucked up than others, but people nonetheless, all doing the best they can in their fumbling, bumbling, often tragically pathetic way… The only real villans are our own mistakes, and the fears which cause em. At least that’s how I’ve come to see things over the years since I’ve begun to wake up.

All in all, this is a time of heavy inspiration and creative energy for me, and I’m glad to be here in Rio, making the most of it. I can really feel the presence of many invisible and human hands helping me to write this and dig deeper and deeper into the essence of my task. More and more with every day I go along. And for that I am infinitely grateful.

Another long hard summer rain is fixin to fall here at my open-air office by the sea now. I can see the lightning flashes on the trembling horizon. Soon I’ll get on the bike and brave my way thru the storm to home with a quick stop for dinner. There I can get back to the laptop and sauna and whatever else there’s to do there on another wonderful day’s work, praying all the while for guidance.

“What?” he shouts, gripping his cane with one hand, adjusting his hearing aid with the other. “Can’t hear a fucking thing with this goddamn thing,” he growls, “I hadda take it back three times already, goddamm it!”

I repeat my offer to drive us to the restaurant. “Naw, I can make it,” he says, adding “You can park the car for me when we get there,” he concedes. “I don’t see so good in the dark…”

Great! I think as we get into his car in the dark driveway.       

As we speed along the Ventura freeway in his fully loaded Toyota Prius, Artie’s hand seems to take on a life of its own, playing with the radio dial in a most extraordinary way, working the radio like some bizarre psychedellic musical instrument, and suddenly my ears are assaulted with a loud surreal cocophany of hiphop gangsta rap and evangelical radio preachers and Mexican news broadcasts and fast food chicken ads and folk songs and frenetic techno music. It’s as if the old man is in a fucking trance of some sort. Fuck… If that ghostly white hand of his wasn’t continually fiddling with the radio dial, I’d think he’d fucking fallen asleep at the wheel as the car careens dangerously across the blurry white lines at 90 miles an hour, and I feel like I’m a helpless little kid again, sitting on Mr. Magoo’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. Fuck. And now he’s listening to the nigga station, word up, yo, word to ya motha yo yo yo baby, with his head cocked to one side like a stoned out parrot and I sit there beside him, feeling my asshole pucker like a Sea Anemone caught in a swirling whirlpool of Mexican rap and horn-blaring Mariachi music, static, easy listening, opera, more static, Heavy Metal, opera again…

Fuck. I’m watching the highway, frozen silent in escalating waves of terror as he sideswipes careening 18 wheelers, narrowly avoiding instant annihilation for us both. Fuck, fuckin’ bastard’s 92 years old, every hour above ground’s a fuckin’ bonus hour for his worn-out ass, I’m thinking, what about me? I’m just gettin started here, selfiish prick. God don’t lemme die here with this demented old crow, not now, not today….

Finally he looks up from the radio like a sleepy old cocker spaniel and explains that he’s looking for a news station. “Riders on The Storm” is playing… Into this life we’re born, into this world we’re thrown… and then suddenly we’re speeding down the off-ramp and we’re gonna make it one more time, another day for us both, another dinner with this narcissistic old mummy, my father, where I’m gonna have to get the hundred dollar check at some expensive fancy suburban restaurant again, cuz Artie magnanimously picks up the check only when he drives us over to that cheap greasy Chinese joint next to the taco stand in the strip mall, fuckin old Jew bastard.

Thank you, Jesus, I think as we pull to a screeching halt in front of the Dolce Vitta Trattoria. Artie snatches his silver and ivory tipped mahogany cane up from the floor, nearly bopping me on the chin with it as he unfolds himself out of the driver’s seat, cussing and complaining, one pissed off cantankerous old bone at a time.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010.

Oh yeh, that’s just where I wanna go in Moscow! To listen to some crummy third-rate Russian cover band butchering already crappy outdated American music for a handful of drunken ex-pat office workers, KGB wannabees and other assorted lowlife cunts and wankers.

We went there. To some it up in two words: Boring! Next? After enduring a weird Mongolian Elvis impersonater for awhile, finally I can’t take it anymore.

I make a face and this fool says, “What, you don’t like Elvis Presley?”

“Elvis,” I say, “was a racist redneck punk with a little style who basically just ripped off his music from a bunch of people he considered dirty niggers. Genius Bluesmen who he wouldn’t have pissed on if their hair caught fire!”

“Well 500 million fans can’t be wrong!” The french guy says.

“Yeh they can!” I spit back. “Just look on TV sometime..”

“Aww, forget him,” my friend says. “He’s French. They like Jerry Lewis there…”

“Hey, man! What’s wrong with Jerry Lewis? I mean besides being a retard?”

“You said it. He’s a retard!” My friend says.

“Retards are funny…” I replied as we walked out to go find another whorehouse.

God is In The Details

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He’d been telling me about it for some time now, and now seemed like just the right time — especially since I already had a long hankering to visit that part of the world. I also wanted to check out a lady who had been talking about trying to translate one of my books into Russian there. So I decided to finally take Eugene up on his offer.

After two weeks of near-psychedelic beurocratic red tape hassles with the Russian Consulate here in Rio over visa requirements, which can best be described as insane, like all beurocratic rituals, I finally got my Russian Visa, and later the same day, left the golden sands of Copacabana for a 24 hour plane trip to Moscow.

To sum it up in a few words, I’d have to say, Moscow sucked, and Kiev was a gas. Here’s a few scraps and details from that brief, dreamlike trip, along with the odd rant for your reading entertainment…..

Moscow. Tuesday 1 December

Nobody washes their cars in Moscow. But they are still much smarter and far more resourceful than people in most other places. Every car, you see, is basically an unofficial taxi cab here.

Since most people are broke in Russia – like most other places living under the boot-heels of the Global Bankster cartel — all you need to do is walk to the curb and put your hand out. Generally the first unwashed car that passes will stop and gladly drive you wherever you want to go. Anything to make a few quick ruples, when not peddling their Babushka’s old undies in the Metro.

Why are people in other parts of the world so stupid and unimaginitave to not embrace such simple, innovative little concepts as these for making ends meet in tough times?

The more I see of Russia, the more I feel as if I could fit right in here. Brutal Capitalism in the wake of Soviet repression. Hmmm. Lawless times calling for lawless measures.

Just did a very strange interview on Russian TV. In Spanish!! I felt just like Che Guevarra. For a minute. Until the stupid questions began falling on my weary, jet-lagged ears like Cherinobyl acid rain!

The whole surreal experience has got me thinking though.

The more I live with the ”public” aspect of this writing gig, the more I am reminded of the sad fact that most people are like fucking vampires… Especially if might have something to say or do which may affect them in a larger sense than just going to the supermarket or wanking yer log at the bank.

First there was Aaron, the wannabe documentary film director who went on an ego-driven one way trip to hell, disappearing into thin air with hundreds of hours of footage he’d shot with me, including extensive in-depth interviews of me and some of my closest friends like Joe Coleman and Jim Jarmusch. May that creepy little bastard rot it hell!

But that was just a preview of things to come, apparently. The sad truth is that they’re everywhere! Vampires abound on the dubious road to fame and glory, believe me! Either they wanna run ya down to their own mediocre level of existance, or they try to outright destroy you AND your work, mostly out of pure envy, spite or just plain meaness. Even the less malevolant ones still want to get their fangs into your neck and have a good little suck just for fun. Especially the “fans.” Don’t get me started…

No wonder people like some of my more famous brothers feel a need to build bullet-proof walls around their lives and festoon them with electrified barbed wire, elite sinper squads and roving packs of blood-thirsty Rottweilers!

Even from down here in the stinking, bloody trenches of “Underground” art, I would gladly do the same — but I’m on a budget. So I must resort to the poor man’s Security System: Rudeness. Sometimes it works out…

Communists

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“Panama, Central America, 1976″ Cigano reads on as Jaco listens intently.

“Visual overload, tattoo art covering every inch of the humid cubbyhole, I stepped inside. The little tattoo parlor was cluttered with all sorts of weird objects and mementos, its shelves overflowing with books full of strange pictures in unknown languages. Hundreds of little scraps of transparent paper with complex designs dangled overhead like albino bats from a low greasy dark-wood ceiling. Hand drawn tattoo designs, hanging like dried out butterfly spirits, fluttered madly in the breeze of an old metal fan, reminding me of the first time I’d peeked into a mysterious little cave of dreams like this as a twelve year old kid.

“And that’s when I saw it again. The ship. That ship. Those words. HOMEWARD BOUND. Right there on a colorful section of wall under a low wooden staircase that creaked and moaned with the footsteps of sailors and whores coming and going from the cheap hotel above.

“And again the haunting little image spoke to me from the depths of a dream. I squinted into the glowing talisman shining there like an all seeing eye, calling me closer.

“That ship would be my first real tattoo, and this was the time and place. The steady monotonous buzz of the tattoo machine lulled me deeper as I slowly drifted away on a sea of hazy images and foreign lands, hypnotically carrying me off on that high-masted sailing ship cutting fast and strong through a perfect cartoon sea of paint and ink, sailing away forever with no fixed destination or port of call…”

Jesus Wong, an ageless, skeletal Cuban-Chinese tattoo man with longish jet-black hair sits in his cramped little work space, methodically carving a dragon into the arm of a dark-skinned sailor. Jonathan stands hypnotized by the steady buzz of that strange but familiar sound. bzzzz bzzzzzzz. He can see his ship cutting its shining wake across that shady section of wall through a sea of panthers and dragons, roses and hearts and anchors and naked ladies.

The young sailor looks down at his right arm, then his left, then the right again. He rolls up his sleeve to inspect his virgin bicep, then looks down at the compelling little icon on the wall. It has been waiting for him there.

Jonathan wanders over to watch as the Chinaman finishes the tattoo on the other sailor. The tattooer is talking non-stop in a soft low monotone, his hushed voice blending with the rhythmic buzz of that mysterious but strangely familiar tool, mumbling words Jonathan can’t quite make out, special words in a special language only for the initiated, the tattooed, those who’ve known that hazy rite of passage, those who wear the Mark etched into their skin in a painful blood-letting ritual. The young sailor knows there is no turning back now. Today he too will wear The Mark.

Jonathan turns and walks back over to the wall. He stares at the design. A wave of anticipation, excitement and fear attacks his gut. He is like a diver standing on a cliff over a dark blue pool stretching out over a glowing horizon. Invisible shadows jump inside him like Mexican jumping beans.

Jonathan senses the presence sliding up beside him, cool and graceful and aloof as a Siamese cat.

“So, Sailor, ju mek de journey home now?” the Chinaman says.

Jonathan turns to look into the catlike black almond shaped eyes. Jesus Wong. Friendly eyes. But oddly aloof and alien, like the orbs of a spaceman. The young sailor finds himself at loss for words, like a schoolgirl with braces and trembling knee socks waiting for an autograph.

“Uhh, no,” the he stammers, suddenly feeling confused and overwhelmed. “Well, I mean, I dunno… I guess I’m really just starting out.”

“Den ju have de long journey in front ju, sailor,” Jesus says, with a mysterious smile.

That voice is clear like a temple bell, warm as the lush, tropical air of Central America. Unhesitating and distinct. But it says nothing. The Inscrutable Chinaman. A distant freighter blows its horn long and low, the voice of the night speaking in this strange dimly lit place where invisible insect shadows stir. And Jonathan cocks his head like that dog awaiting its master’s voice. Jesus seems to read his mind as he fixes the young sailor with those knowing alien orbs.

“De tattoo ju chooses, he come from inside he-ah,” he explains with a Zen master’s patience, touching a hand to his chest in a delicate movement. The hand looks like a silvery spider landing softly on the dark tattooed skin under Jesus Wong’s open silk shirt. A jade pendant dangles from a golden chain there, frozen in space like an eternal question mark. The dog cocks it’s head another notch. “Even when ju thinks he come from in he-aaah,” the tattoo man concludes, pointing a long elegantly manicured finger to his perfect jet-black framed head.

Then he cackles like a little jungle monkey sitting on a lost statue of Buddha.

Jonathan gets it. He obediently follows the skinny Chinaman over to his cluttered little tattoo area. He takes his seat across from Jesus Wong and surrenders his arm to the master’s practiced hands.

A straight razor runs coldly across his skin like a lizard and he winces silently as the buzzing needle pierces his trembling flesh, uniting his body and his soul at last.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010.

I feel my time running out here and I feel the weight of a thousand slugs on my soul. Cold and slimy and damp. Merry fucking Christmas.

The smell of mold invades my senses on another perfect summer afternoon at the beach. I watch the perfect little poodle bodies of youth glistening in the sparkling waves around me and I feel the sting of ultimate Disappointment.

And now it is Christmas here on this New World Ordered Ronald McDysney Prison Planet. I sit back and watch the human hive cannibalizing itself, enraged and indignant at the bitter stench of humanity’s wailing failure, and especially at my imprisonment, my own weak mortality today.

Why is one born into such unjust and unhospitable times? Why is one created to dream of poetry and music, lust and desire and love and passion while inhabiting such a world of mind-controlled mass ignorance, hipocracy and poverty, spinning around dizzily on a stinking little dustball where silk-robed lizards make the laws for men to live by in comfortable sheep-like bondage? Where a new race of men barely worthy of the title of Slaves grovels meekly before the awesome might of a thousand diseased sheep farts? Where obesce old women resembling mutant tumors more than human beings righeously hold hostage the Holy Sex of their healthy pubescent offspring, castrating the boys and wrapping the girls up like stinking little mummies in straight-jackets of shame and poisonous pseudo-religious guilt and “moralism”? What is the purpose of one’s long, sticky visit to such a savage and unfulfilling reality?

This new, improved race of man only serves, it seems, to consume like a plague of diseased roaches while breeding itself into an ignoble extinction, covering itself in waste and excriment and eating the planet in bite-size chocolate-covered chunks while greedily cannibalizing its young.

What sort of race would ondemn itself daily to prisons called jobs and crooked madhouses called schools? What kind of an insane, godless creature would agree to live beholden to the sacred industries of Fear and Death while its wise men laugh from televised cotton candy prison cells of well-informed over-educated indifference?

What sort of hellish planet is it where machines with nobler names than their creators guarantee the building blocks of a “progress” to which its race is gleefully doomed while her philosophers peddle their rambunctious drunken souls to the highest bidder under cancerous black skies of institutionalized deception?

Who deserves to live in a society where art and nature are marginalized, catalogued, controlled, bought and sold like invisible stocks and bonds, comodities and pork bellies? Where truths are shit on in secret like dark shameful crimes and where intelligence and intuition and inspiration seeking mainstream channels of communication are condemned to be hidden in the ass-cracks of gay murderous clowns like so many sordid scraps of contraband pornography?

Merry fuckin Christmas, Uncle Satan. And to all, a good night.

Photo by Richard Kern

Cutup by Eric Magnisun