June 10, 2004

The Art of Gary Taxali. Dreamy. Funny. Sad and Sassy. Like A Half-Buried Cheese-Burger Wrapper in Some Forgotten Sandbox...

Or like some stoooopid metaphor I should've erased...

posted by anonymous 20 years ago
  • Heh, I dig the metaphor, Diz. I also dig this guy's work. Even with the nonsensical Japanese in it. For some reason, it just gives me this, Kerouac-y, (Kerouwacky?) "On the Road" feeling. I like stuff that gives me that feeling. Hard to describe. May need to do a Curious George to see if everyone gets these sort of locational feelings from stuff like that or if I'm just weirder than I thought.
  • Impressions -- rather grimy, blowing past a cast-iron lampost on a simmered summer evening when the shirt around your middle sticks to your skin, all those clumsy moths swinging and lurching round the streetlights all the way down the block -- that kind of evening. Reminds me of Henry, somehow.
  • Boi and Bees-- EXACTLY! Feels so American, somehow...
  • Very quirky and nostalgic. But with a modern sensibility. It's a little off... out of time. I like it immensely. His prints are reasonably priced too. Sigh, temptation.
  • I got the same feeling, like I wanted to go buy some Burma Shave and then hobo my way cross country.
  • Let us all meet at Walt's Mid-Towne Grill at 57th Street, when it is 3:30 and drizzling, in our raincoats and worn fedoras, our bags packed with small sandwiches nestled in their waxy beds, our tapered fingers drumming time to Sinatra on the Fada and The Ethan Allen Express brochure tucked in my breast pocket, a windbreak for my jaded heart. The world is brown and grey and ochre. We clasp our hands in fraternal couplets like boxcars. We are The Elegant Men, The Princes of the Road, thinning out on top but still faster than a high school senior. We will eat gravy in diners while you are sleeping.
  • EXACTLY! Feels so American, somehow... I liken it to a sort of romanticized (in my mind, at least) merging of a sort of post WWII feel with some of today's sensibilities. It's kind of like an alternative Americana where Route 66 hasn't been replaced by the interstates, the country's optimism hasn't been completely replaced by greed, fear and loathing and people still make music like Santo and Johnny's "Sleepwalk". Computers and televisions have made the same inroads but instead of making us more insular and jaded have just served as replacements for the radios that everyone used to sit around. But that's just me and like I said, I'm weird.
  • I need to pick up a copy of, "On the Road' again...
  • ...just can't wait to get on the road again...