"Quit It"

Some burn out in victory, some in defeat.  It is burnout, nonetheless.  Sometimes it is difficult to tell between the two.  Pyrrhic winning, Pyrrhic losing.  But the battles accumulate, leave residue.  That is the stuff of art, of literature.

It is also the material of other things, too.  People want to tell you how they've walked through the fire.  Noble idea, but there needs to be an art to it, something more than the heart-felt emotional offering of what they suffered, what they learned.  Pabulum.  Terrible drooling.

Guilty.  Too much telling.  Too little literature.  Suffering must be made into something else.  So hard to do.

When I made the photo posted above, I thought immediately of the painter John Currin.  I saw an article about him ten or fifteen years ago.  Loved the crazy figures, the lack of accurate perspective, etc.  I remember he said that he learned more about painting from bad art than from the masters.  Maybe he said "as much."  But I know I wanted to photograph the way he paints.  It is hard not to look at his images no matter how much they disturb you.  The eye keeps drifting back.  "Quit it," you'll tell yourself, but you know you can't.

I am silly to put his image up with mine which suffers so by comparison.  But you get the idea.