Basquiat book Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2004 "I think the biggest attraction of all was that he was just going all the way, like he was just trying to search out the ultimate reality of his being. He had this sort of life force, this presence, you know?" "But she told me she considered him seriously mentally ill, and that's why she didn't want to have it." "Obtainment in whatever way, bought, found, or even acquired by scheming or tricky means of thievery--works like a mood regulator and provides the owner with a potential sense of success or triumph, and occasionally grandeur, as is the case with the winner at the gaming table or the astute buyer in the auction room." "People don't need root beer and they don't need to buy a painting either. We provide them with a sense that it will provide a happier experience." "I'll give you an interesting analogy here. Have you ever eread Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter? All right. Now in that book, you'll remember that this deaf mute, Mr. Singer, this person who doesn't communicate at all, is finally revealed in a subtle way to be a completely empty, heartless person. And yet because he's deaf-mute, he symbolizes things to desperate people. They come to him and tell him all their troubles. They cling to him as a source of strength, as a kind of semi-religious figure in their lives. Andy is kind of like Mr. Singer. Desperate, lost people find their way to him, looking for some sort of salvation, and Andy sort of sits back like a deaf-mute with very little to offer." "...it was the Attitude, the deadpan, jaded, cryptic silence onto which so much could be projected." "Magic. That's what it's all about. It's finding the magic. That's all I try to do is find the magic." Page 219: "He looked like a bum lying there. He'd bend over to fix his shoelace and he'd be in that position for five minutes." Page 243: "I realized the guy was copping from the best of several worlds. The spillage was part of it. Metaphorically, it was like a black altar. You can tell how rich and reverent it is by how much spillage there is. It makes you pay more attention to what I'm saying. You want to see beyond the erasures. He's like a classical African drummer, just translating nervousness into art." "Halsband recorded their takeoff with his video camera; a messy-looking Basquiat, wearing a wrinkled linen suit, continually wipes his runny nose on his sleeves...." "He would go to Agnes B. and buy whatever he wanted." "I learned that you actually have more power when you shut up, because at least that way people will start to maybe doubt themselves. When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it...." page 271. "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?" "...but he could become so lucid so suddenly. I can remember him drying dots of fresh blood off his skin with a towel. He was silent a long time. Then he started to talk very clearly, very calmly about different things." "The plan was to go to Outarra's village for a ritual cleansing. Outarra had arranged with the local shamans to perform a ceremony that would cure him of his addiction." "To live once, and to the limit--that was his game plan. While he was still in his teens... he painstakingly taught himself all the twelve major scales in all the twelve minor keys of the blues, practicing for hours a day." "If you didn't paint, what do you think you would be doing? Directing movies I guess. What kind of movies? Ones in which black people are portrayed as being people, you know, of the human race. You know, not aliens, not all negative, or thieves, drug dealers, the whole bit. Just real, real stories." |
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