A peek back at the artist doomed, his faded glory unflaggin
Posted by: admin in The excesses of artists, Artists who fall through the cracks, Artistic self-destruction, Artists are their own worst enemies, The tortured artist, Doomed artist, The struggles of artists, Artistic failure in AmericaI thought now would be a good time to check back in with Gabriel Combs, the artist whose descent (into homelessness, substance abuse, and near-incarceration) I have covered here and elsewhere. Fortunately, Combs keeps a MySpace page, on which he has been updating his blog fairly frequently of late. Below are some interesting tidbits from his blog:
Date: August 16, 2008
Post title: sepulchral beatitude of a heartstring fugitive
it was a love story first, now a tale of unending loss. sometimes i don’t want the day to end, as i don’t want to face another night alone. sometimes the night seems more fruitful in its suffering dread. got to this point giving away my heart to fools and liars. i always believed and was so dedicated. so in love and so blind, regardless of my mistakes and short-comings. so in love with the world, a world i now cannot find…two stories, one loving and one hating, one living and one dying.
Date: August 20, 2008
Post title: narcissism prevalence; prima donna persona non grata
i hear there is a handbasket suitable for my transport to hell. …i checked in to the ER for many, many problems exactly three weeks ago to the day. they ejected me several hours later as i had no “actual plan to commit suicide”
i have a fistful of friends, lets call them friendly pariahs. outsider is still alive like a cultural stitch will mend a fashion trend. i harp on this issue like an instrument with passion…
…slowly reading lord jim, as after a maddening push on reading am suffering a maddening push on art making. all you generations are xyz, fool. its already been established and if you can’t follow the patterns you needs to back the fuck up because its all old news…
i’m looking for my lee krasner but i want her to be lee bontecou…
Date: August 27, 2008
Post title: Alcoholic Altruism/Augean Artiface
twelve pack goes down like gravity. falls like an anvil, falls like autumn. i can feel it heavy, more than last year. dropping further and faster. another day passes, un-named and unknown. got up half dead today, morose and numb. nose numb and red. i love how it feels to have that haze. saves me to live another day on the slow suicide savoring how i die. one with a perpetual death but still lives to tell about it. there is no pre nuptual to marriage with this ritual. i’m not sipping, just stammering and stuttering under lifes’ trauma. i don’t seem to die regardless of my planning. i wish i had some advice for someone to not end up here or to alleve some friends concern i’m too far gone. you see, i don’t have hope to make it anymore and so i have’nt a care in the world. i don’t expect to live and i can’t seem to die. i slit the wrists but the blood just keeps coming. i’m going to go lay down in the gutter amongst my filth…its an empty round in a full chamber game of russian roulette and i wear the crown of shit. hands down, quit askin questions. i got an answer for your suggestion. i’m sweatin while you’re restin. calloused while you’re guessin. curse everyone while i’m blessin.
Date: August 30, 2008
Post title: minnesota mediocre; fair game midwest manifesto
five months homeless now. sold everything just about. i think i can make six months. trying hard to set shit up to go back to ohio (cue pretenders song) for a minute after september. wur um frum, lotsa folks in graves there. never seen my moms grave yet. might find where abouts some other family, down in kentucky, virginia, ect. back in them mountains…when a fly comes in my studio my tendency is to maim it and offer it to my pet spiders. i did so today but busted it open and it fell thru the web and the maggots came out and consumed the corpse. i imagine they began to die and there was like one fat one left in the end. i did’nt bother to observe the end of it. reminds me of the art world.
i’ve enjoyed the recent thoughts of mr. fallon, for the record. at times the thoughts stray from the track i’m on, but we seem to converge here and there as i do with a number of the other under rated minds around here. i like the new thousandth word vicious guest article. funny how the consensus is growing that this art scene needs to change and one needs to talk about this *shit*, or it will stay in the hands of those that need to *go*. get out now, or get kicked out hard. i gots boots fool. …
i know exactly who i am in my time and while i’m actually still alive. just like those before me did. fall down drunk and don’t get paid for the art i do but you gotta make prints to get out as much work as i do. 85 or so pieces sold in the last sixty days plus a couple give aways. this is’nt ego this is the facts. i’m just building up, still humbly following the tracks of pollock, van gogh, ect. those that went to fucking hell for this shit without a flinch. i’m not leaving it for you to decide. hell no, you’ll tell me piss in a jar is it.
Date: September 4, 2008
Post title: troubled water torrent/noli me tangere via tantalos
woke up on the sidewalk the other morning. i lose days here and there. if you’ve seen the jackson pollock moving picture the scene where he wakes up on the (as i remember it) cement platform underneath a window with some kids looking at him. dirty and deranged. i was in a block that was mostly a school, lying on sidewalk that was paralell to black asphalt. i remember drinking with a couple of guys from tibet. learned a thing or two before the blackout set in. things about my thinking and spirituality while speaking with a buddhist. (one guy i think was not speaking english and was deaf anyways) …sold the engagement ring yesterday, took it off my key-ring. got ripped off for gold but freed from a trap of sentiment. being in my mind is being a cat herder. i keep up and multiply ideas like bacteria. beneficial parasites. yo, you got the sun in your eyes in this show down and am i an artist or a writer. leave you guessing as your eyes narrow and mine grow wider.
bring it to fruition, notice i’m quiet but my knuckles are swollen and scarred.
cut my eyekon teeth and my art comes up in you rough and hard…
you ignored the artists like us in the past and now we are aware. you’ll wait for us to die like vincent but we will teach you like hoffman.
you fucking a hole.
FU
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