I Don’t Get Republicans

Posted on June 3, 2010July 5, 2010 by Varg

I get conservatives. I do. Less government. I understand that. Don’t agree with it. But I grasp it as an ethos. Probably more than many Republicans.

I’ve been following John Labruzzo since the tube tying for poor folks debacle in 2008. Lately, he is all about HB 617, his push for the state to drug test 20 percent of state beneficiaries. Essentially, making sure poor folks aren’t on drugs. He is apparently making progress on this front and is urging his constituency to contact state senators to voice their support for the bill. Senators Adley, Appel, Crowe and Guillory have voted for it. Senators Dorsey, Duplessis and Mount are against it.

I don’t understand how the state requiring drug tests of any kind, in any situation, is in line with small, unobtrusive, liberty-based government. I see that it is merely an us-against-the-poor tactic designed to keep Labruzzo in office. I get that. But at the cost of his party’s core ethos? Or what once was their core ethos?

That’s what ultimately pisses me off about Republicans. I don’t have a problem with conservatives. They don’t elicit anger the way angry, hypocritical Republicans do. Small government does not mean strapping folks to chairs and electrocuting them. It doesn’t mean paying for vasectomies and tube-tying. It doesn’t have anything to do with the church. Or refusing gays to marry. It doesn’t mean requiring drug testing of any sort. It doesn’t mean government controlling people. And Republicans like Labruzzo are all about government control. Control of poor folks. But what he doesn’t understand is that the core belief system of his party is to control them through the free market and not through government.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Rejoice!

I say that a lot. I sign many pieces with it. I do this because I believe our lives are a true happenstance. A brilliant occurence from nothingness. We are so rare. We are so unlikely. And simply being born isn’t enough. From there we must survive, endure. So each morning, after our Sun departs and is reborn again. Please, for the sake of your ancestors and the Universe in general, hoist that cup of joe up and say, “Rejoice.”

Ours is a soulful existence. No matter how many McMansions, polyester fabrics, auto-tunes, modified foods and social networks we surround ourselves with, we are all still native, passionate beings made of ancient matter. We are organic and we have soul.

Wood also has a warm, soulful quality. Wood has a memory. It retains smells, traumas, events. It even has a calendar. This is why I have chosen it as my medium, for its old soul. I like to think the wood in my work is in its third incarnation. First a tree, then a home and now art. If you have a room that needs a little soul, get a piece. A room can never have enough soul.

My inspiration and subject matter comes from many sources, among them: Humanism, old ballads, trickster tales, flora and fauna, science, myths and folklore, stringed instruments, brass bands, amber spirits, lady vocalists, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Some of my pieces are there just to make a short, simple statement about what’s important in life. Some are more diffuse and abstract in meaning. A personal drama, an enduring line from a poem or novel, a poignant song lyric, the legacy of an important person, a fleeting thought … these are the subjects of my art.

I use hearts often because they are a very abstract way of depicting the human soul without also employing the very subjective human form. The symbolic heart is an apt representation for a person’s experience and essence. A body can immediatly conjure happiness, sorrow, youth, age, anger, bliss. These emotions can get in the way. Sometimes it’s simply about the experience.

I am the son of a sailor and a social worker, the grandson of a gypsy, a dancer and a nurse. I spent my youth moving from port city to port city, watching a lot of road go by and reading World Book Encyclopedia. After my parents settled down on the Gulf Coast, I was a miscreant youth, destroying cars and taking the wrongs things too seriously and the right things not serious enough. Eventually I began replacing my imagination with experience.

I will use any salvaged wood but prefer swamp cypress and longleaf heartwood pine.

I despise waste. Particularly the waste of organic matter. Trees are magnificent. They were here before we arrived and they’ll be around after we are gone. I’m making an effort to save as much wood as possible. Creating art is fun too. But beyond communicating with folks, but beyond making money ad providing for myself, beyond rescuing flooded parts, beyond reveling in the ethereal aroma of heartpine that hasn’t seen the light of day in 400 years, beyond all that, I am trying to make a simple comment on waste.