this was tonight’s FaceBook status, which will give you a good idea of why I should just keep to myself. This is not really written, it’s ejaculated. If were to come back and re-write, maybe I would put in something about how beautiful the stone and the grain and complexity and the beauty of the drawing upon it and the magic of it’s transmogrification and transmission were to me. though, if the images couldn’t do that, though, what use are mere words.
What’s on my mind? The dream I had last night: another return to the lithography shop. I keep finding myself back there, in spite of the incalculable threat to my back condition, the increasingly insurmountable time and money challenges, and the general hostility and toxicity of the art school environment. Always trying to sneak in a few hours at the end of a semester when no one is looking. searching for that large stone with the drawing I’ve been working on for 10 years (which in reality is in my basement, far too far from a press) and wondering if it has survived. (the teacher had a tendency to hand my stones out to other students to grind off and re-use even if I still had an image on them.) I have even had a dream where I was lying down and hugging a litho stone. but, this was a real shop dream full of technical details and difficulties. first, the drawing looked a little pale and the surface looked kind of liquid. wait! has the teacher gone ahead and etched it? No, wait, I remembered, I did get around to doing a first etch. so, it was at that crucial stage where the drawing had to be washed out with solvent through the gum mask, and some idiot at the sink sloshes water over it which dissolves the gum arabic, except for the adsorbed film, making it impossible to rub in the thin asphaltum base before inking it… not to mention the bits of carborundum grit in the graining sink water… so, great difficulties but still something more than I have left in my real life where I hardly even feel like heating up that frozen dinner tonight.
Anyway, then I was trying to get some help moving the stone from the sink to a table to try to roll it up anyway, and asking someone (over and over and over) to please bring the fork-lift over, and this Tarzan-like guy was going to help me shove it over. “Don’t pick it up”, says I. He starts to pick up his side. “”DON’T PICK IT UP!!!” I suggest gently. (the way to move a 200+ lb. stone is to slide and shove it.) So, he picks it up, and I’m stuck holding up my side as well until I can convince him to gently set it down again. (the stones are brittle and fragile as well as heavy.) I woke up with my back aching, barely able to straighten up.
Well, then again, a couple days ago I had a dream I was eating Cheetos. That longing, anyway, I was able to fulfill. (they don’t make ’em like they used to, though.)