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My Paintings Are Reflections Of My Own Inner Mysteries... They All Reflect My Relationship To My Steadiest Of Companions And Muses - Nature And Animals.

-Katherine Dunn

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My Paintings Are Reflections

Katherine Dunn

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My Paintings Are Reflections Of My Own Inner Mysteries... They All Reflect My Relationship To My Steadiest Of Companions And Muses - Nature And Animals.

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Let's Just Say, The American School Of Suburban Angst Is Not My Cup Of Tea.

From The Time I Was Little, I'd Been Kind Of Freaked Out By The Whole Deal With Large Groups Of People. And Even Moderate - Sized Groups Of People. It's Always Made Me Very Uncomfortable. It's Such A Strange Phenomenon, What Happens To People When They're All Moving In The Same Direction, All Chanting The Same Tune, The Same Line Of Slogans Or Something. That Stuff Always Seems Very Alien And Bizarre To Me, And Kind Of Scary.

Well, It Arose Out Of Two Long-term Concerns - The First Being The Possibility Of Genetic Manipulation, Nature Versus Nurture, What Constitutes How People Get To Be How They Are.

I Think That It's Really Important To Go Away And Come Back.

I Do Consider The Human Capacity For Violence Is The Central Issue Of The Social Contract. In Boxing We Have A Peculiarly Civilized Form, In That Boxers Don't Screech And Holler. They Don't Use Weapons. All Of This Seems To Me Quite Amazing, Because It Is So Disciplined, So Controlled. It's Ritualized, But Absolutely Genuine. And The Cultural Structure Built Around That Ritual Is Absolutely Fascinating To Me. And It Seems To Me That Boxing Is One Of Those Structures That Is Designed To Promote Harmony. I Think That It Is A Stove That Contains That Fire In Us And Makes It Safe And Useful.

Freedom Within Any Kind Of Social Structure - The Whole Issue Of Exactly What The Human Animal Is - Is An Ongoing Preoccupation Of Mine. And I Certainly Don't Think I've Come To The End Of That Exploration, And With Any Luck, I Never Will. But I'm Very Curious About Exactly What Kind Of Beast We Are. We're So Complicated.

My Worst Is All Out In The Open. It Makes It Necessary For People To Tell You About Themselves.

They Thought To Use And Shame Me But I Win Out By Nature, Because A True Freak Cannot Be Made. A True Freak Must Be Born.

Can You Be Happy With The Movies, And The Ads, And The Clothes In The Stores, And The Doctors, And The Eyes As You Walk Down The Street All Telling You There Is Something Wrong With You? No. You Cannot Be Happy. Because, You Poor Darling Baby, You Believe Them.

Sometimes All That Saves Me Is Being Willing To Make Mistakes. There Are Projects That Strike Me As So Beautiful, Important, Complicated, Or Just Plain Big, That They Convince Me Of My Own Inadequacy. This Awful State Of Reverence Leads To Paralyzing Brain Freeze. At Times Like That The Only Way Out Is For Me To Decide, 'to Hell With It. I Can't Do It Right, So I'll Do It Wrong. I Can't Do It Well, But I Can Do It Badly.' Sometimes, With Luck, While I'm Sweating To Do It Wrong, I Stumble On A Right Way.

But The Animation Has Become Very Good, And I Think That A Movie Is Not A Book, And A Book Is Not A Movie.

The More Potent, Unasked Question Is How Society At Large Reacts To Eager, Voluntary Violence By Females, And To The Growing Evidence That Women Can Be Just As Aggressive As Men.

Defining Men As The Perpetrators Of All Violence Is A Viciously Immoral Judgment Of An Entire Gender. And Defining Women As Inherently Nonviolent Condemns Us To The Equally Restrictive Role Of Sweet, Meek, And Weak.

We Survive Until, By Sheer Stamina, We Escape Into The Dim Innocence Of Our Own Adulthood And Its Forgetfulness.

I Have Been A Believer In The Magic Of Language Since, At A Very Early Age, I Discovered That Some Words Got Me Into Trouble And Others Got Me Out.

How Deep And Sticky Is The Darkness Of Childhood, How Rigid The Blades Of Infant Evil, Which Is Unadulterated, Unrestrained By The Convenient Cushions Of Age And Its Civilizing Anesthesia.

I Think Genetic Research Is A Fascinating And Fertile Area.

Oh, Of Course, I Always Feel Unconfident.

This Idea That Males Are Physically Aggressive And Females Are Not Has Distinct Drawbacks For Both Sexes.

My Paintings Are Reflections Of My Own Inner Mysteries... They All Reflect My Relationship To My Steadiest Of Companions And Muses - Nature And Animals.

I Know If I Were In Your Generation I Would Be Really Tired Of Seeing Sophia Loren As A Sex Object.

American Culture Is Torn Between Our Long Romance With Violence And Our Terror Of The Devastation Wrought By War And Crime And Environmental Havoc.

In Our Struggle To Restrain The Violence And Contain The Damage, We Tend To Forget That The Human Capacity For Aggression Is More Than A Monstrous Defect, That It Is Also A Crucial Survival Tool.

Were Also Far Enough From The Publishing Power That We Have No Access To The Politics Of Publishing, Although There Are Interpersonal Politics, Of Course.

A Carnival In Daylight Is An Unfinished Beast, Anyway. Rain Makes It A Ghost. The Wheezing Music From The Empty, Motionless Rides In A Soggy, Rained-out Afternoon Midway Always Hit My Chest With A Sweet Ache. The Colored Dance Of Lights In The Seeping Air Flashed The Puddles In The Sawdust With An Oily Glamour.

Pretty Things Will Swarm You Like That, Like Your Heart Was A Hive Of Electric Bees.

In My Next Life, I Plan To Be A More Respectable Creature. For Now, This Is What Is Given To Us. So I Don't Know - I Think We're All Freaks At Heart. I Think Some People Strive Desperately To Be Normal, And I Think Other People Strive To Be Abnormal.

The Truth Is Always An Insult Or A Joke, Lies Are Generally Tastier. We Love Them. The Nature Of Lies Is To Please. Truth Has No Concern For Anyone's Comfort

Suddenly The Staggering Love Bursts Away From Me Like Milk From A Smashed Glass.

Only A Lunatic Would Want To Be President. These Lunatics Are Created Deliberately By Those Who Wish To Be Presided Over.

Perhaps The Strongest Evidence That Women Have As Broad And Deep A Capacity For Physical Aggression As Men Is Anecdotal. And As With Men, This Capacity Has Expressed Itself In Acts From The Brave To The Brutal, The Selfless To The Senseless.

Prior To Penicillin And Medical Research, Death Was An Everyday Occurrence. It Was Intimate.

Every Doorway, Every Intersection Has A Story.

Basically, We Are Pack Animals. We May Be Evolving Toward Hive Animals. The Nature Of The Pack Is That If All The Eyes Of The Pack Are On You, You Are Either The Leader, Or You Are Lunch. So It's A Basically Hazardous Situation To Have The Eyes Of The Pack Upon You. And I Think That's Really Visceral. I Think That's Bred In The Bone. That's Species - Deep.

I Come From A Family Of Great Readers And Storytellers.

It Is, I Suppose, The Common Grief Of Children At Having To Protect Their Parents From Reality. It Is Bitter For The Young To See What Awful Innocence Adults Grow Into, That Terrible Vulnerability That Must Be Sheltered From The Rodent Mire Of Childhood.

But The Idea That Women Can't Take Care Of Themselves Still Permeates Our Culture.

[i] Am Reading No Ordinary Joes. Should Have Had A Medical Checkup Before I Started It. Colton Makes Us Fall In Love With These Guys, Then Puts Our Hearts In Harm's Way. It's Lovely And Ghastly And Extremely Powerful. His Best Yet.

Falling In Love

He Must Love Me, I Thought, Amazed. A Faint Whiff Of Nausea Hit Me At Seeing Pain As Proof Of Love, But It Seemed True. Unavoidable.

Sometimes People Go Off In A Slightly Different Direction Of Wanting To Be Different, Of Wanting To Be Special, Of Wanting To Be More, And I Think That Those People Are Often - Not Always, But Often - Genuinely Different In Some Way. Perhaps Their Gender Orientation Is Not Acceptable Or Popular, Not The Norm. Or, Their Physical Design Is Literally, In Some Way, Setting Them Apart. Or, In Many Cases, They Feel The Burden Of Their Ordinariness So Dreadfully That They Strive To Find Some Way Of Being Unique. I Think That Can Be A Very Positive Thing, But It Also Can Be Negative, Destructive.

A True Freak Cannot Be Made. A True Freak Must Be Born.

But I Think Everybody Should Write. I Think Those People With Stories Who Don't Write Should Be Stomped On.

Sometimes Just Looking At [my Parents] I Wanted To Bash Their Heads With A Tire Iron. Not To Kill Them, Just To Wake Them Up.

What I Think Happens, And That You Have To Acknowledge Though, Is That A Director Uses A Book As A Launching Pad For His Own Work And That's Always Very Flattering.

It Is Coincidence, I Decide, And I Am Getting Old And Batty, Thinking The Universe Revolves Around Me.

I Get Glimpses Of The Horror Of Normalcy. Each Of These Innocents On The Street Is Engulfed By A Terror Of Their Own Ordinariness. They Would Do Anything To Be Unique.

Asked Why They Wanted To Fight, The Young Women Said They Enjoyed It, Just As Some Men And Boys Do.

Beside Mama, In My Own Folding Chair, With My Feet Sticking Out In Front Of Me, I Thought About My Own Innards. Just A Few Months Before I'd Had No Idea Whether My Reproductive Equipment Worked. There Was No Evidence. But That Week I Had Become A Full-fledged Bleeder And Was Still Absorbed By This First Change In Myself That I Had Ever Noticed. The Click And Buzz Of My Synapses Kept Making The Same Connection. If You Can Change, You Can Also End. Death Had Always Been A Theory To Me. Now I Knew. The Terror Hurt Good And I Nursed It And Played It Like A Loose Tooth.

There Are Parts Of Texas Where A Fly Lives Ten Thousand Years And A Man Can't Die Soon Enough. Time Gets Strange There From Too Much Sky, Too Many Miles From Crack To Crease In The Flat Surface Of The Land.

It Goes In Streaks. But Some Things Never Go Out Of Fashion.' Hunger Artists, Fat Folks, Giants, And Dog Acts Come And Go But Real Freaks Never Lose Their Appeal.

Within A Social Structure, A Familial Structure, Or A Cultural Structure Of Various Kinds, There Is A Substitute For Actual Freedom. I Mean, Actual Freedom Is A Very Abstract Notion; We Have No Idea What It Means, Except Within A Context - Freedom To Do What? So Within These Social Structures, Freedom Becomes Defined As Power, Your Ability To Make Choices, And The Power Relationship Within A Family, Any Family.

When Your Mama Was The Geek, My Dreamlets," Papa Would Say, "she Made The Nipping Off Of Noggins Such A Crystal Mystery That The Hens Themselves Yearned Toward Her, Waltzing Around Her, Hypnotized With Longing.

In The End I Would Always Pull Up With A Sense Of Glory, That Loving Is The Strong Side. It's Feeble To Be An Object. What's The Point Of Being Loved In Return, I'd Ask Myself.

Giving Papa Time To Think, As Arty Put It, Was Like Pumping Random Rounds Into A Fireworks Factory. The Odds Favored Dramatic Results.

There Are Parts Of Texas Where A Fly Lives 10,000 Years And A Man Can't Die Soon Enough.

Training Of Female Athletes Is So New That The Limits Of Female Possibility Are Still Unknown.

Women Who Pay Their Own Rent Don't Have To Be Nice.

I Am Here, Come Closer," The Old Donkey Said With Her Eyes. "i Will Mother You.

And While National Military Forces Have Historically Resisted The Full Participation Of Women Soldiers, Female Talent Has Found Plenty Of Scope In Revolutionary And Terrorist Groups Around The Planet.

Terrorist Groups

Just As A Snowflakewent On To Feed A Puddle That Filled A Stream And Then The River, Thepumpkin Patch Is A Gathering Of Molecules From My Old Goats, Chickens,and Cats, Feeding The Underworld Of Dirt Creatures. And Somewhere, Myfather's Ashes Mingle With Birds, Air, And Sea.

There Are The Those Whose Own Vulgar Normality Is So Apparent And Stultifying That They Strive To Escape It. They Affect Flamboyant Behaviour And Claim Originality According To The Fashionable Eccentricities Of Their Time. They Claim Brains Or Talent Or Indifference To Mores In Desperate Attempts To Deny Their Own Mediocrity.

I Remember, In Hot Floods, The Way He Slept, Still As Death, With His Face Washed Flat, Stony As A Carved Tomb And Exquisite. His Weakness And His Ravening Bitter Needs Were Terrible, And Beautiful, And Irresistible As An Earthquake. He Scalded Or Smothered Anyone He Needed, But His Needing And The Hurt That It Caused Me Were The Most Life I Have Ever Had. Remember What A Poor Thing I Have Always Been And Forgive Me.

I Do Not Plan Any Painting, But Begin With Layers Of Textures And Colors. As I Layer The Colors, Something Is Suggested To Me From Within, And That Is How It Evolves.

My Perception Of The Human Animal Is As An Extremely Dangerous Predator. That's Who I Perceive Us To Be As A Species. Maybe The Most Dangerous Predator On The Planet, With The Exception Of A Few Microbes. I'm Really Grateful For The Degree Of Socialization That Prevents Us, Most Of The Time, From Killing And Eating Each Other. And I Admire All The Social Structures That Have Been Designed And Layered And Niched In That Encourage Bonding Toward A Kind Of Social Harmony That Is Meant To Contain And Counteract Our Natural Inclinations Toward Predation, Ferocity, And Eating Whatever Moves.

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