55; hot sauce

So I once was a hot sauce guy. I had tried the brands and tested them against one another, and found my favorites, runners-up, had intellectual criticisms on hand for shunning purposes. Hot sauce was a magic ingredient that could go int anything, and make it better.

I thought that was going somewhere but I guess not.

Often times I'll write down a few interesting sentances about myself or the world thinking I could get a column out of them, and then find out that's not the case. For every column which actually goes up, there's usually another which never makes it beyond the introduction.
And that's how I write. Most good writers claim they begin at the end and figure out where the story is going before the finish. Many others create outlines, roadmaps of how their story or essay or what have you will take shape. I'm not sure if poetry starts at the begining or not, but then, I'm a little wary of poetry. Robert Frost is burried here in Bennington. It was a powerful will that stopped me from dancing on his grave. That and a wrought iron fence.

Speaking of which (that is speaking of wrought iron) it occurs to me that I've not documented Bennington College yet. When I graduated from high school the morning after graduation my mom and I took my swanky new camcorder and documented the campus. (It was also the morning after the senior party, and I was therefore in a less than amiable state. My mom makes a note of this in her narrative of the campus.) The unusual tour is now more a source of humor than archival work. The odd commentary, the interplay between the characters, the cinematography are all so unique and, in the right context, amusing.

Just the other evening my dorm-mates and I had a public viewing of a film in which I actually had an acting role rather than a tour guide position. And we couldn't stop laughing. I'm not sure if the film was supposed to be laughed at, but I'll say it was and in such a case it succeeded marvelously. When my dorm-mates informed the movie's co-stars that I'd shown it they, however, were less than pleased. But so it goes, here. I've seen many incredible films and animation projects. And I've seen a lot of shit. Shit that made we want to lose my eyesight for the greater good of my brain's sanity. Oh god, what did we do to deserve this horrible, meaningless, awful peice of unmentionable foulness-type shit.

Art at Bennington always risks that. It is undoubtedly cutting edge, but sometimes I think it wanders into incomprehensible. Which may be a good thing, although my conservative side thinks there should be a warning. "Caution: The Next Room You Are About To Enter Contains Some Really Wierd Things. You Are Not Advised To Try And Make Sense Of Them. The Artist Wished To Create The Incomprehensible." Yet, I suppose warnings would defeat the purpose, for they would provide a context of comprehension. The ultimae psych-out would be to put up those warnings on the entrance to an empty room. Then people would start bugging out.

Or as Pirraro suggested, wouldn't it be fun to create a life-size and accurate human sculpture out of bird seed and honey? Make it look like an old man, clothe it, put it in a wheelchair. Then role him into the park and watch the reaction of the passers-by as the birds descend.

This topic is also known as 'why Ross should never be an artist'.

Some things require emotion and passion and persistance, and others require thought and contemplation and reason. Perhaps there is some third category which requires both, but I've not encountered it. That may be a jaded view, but one must remember that you can't be jaded unless you can counter current jadedness with past joyfulness. And that, children, is a subject for the artists.

Or, you know, you could just paint a picture of a bottle of hot sauce.