my missing link

I got a comment on my last post from someone who said I just sounded short on inspiration, and I should sniff some glue or something. The problem with that analysis (which my webmaster says I can't publish cause it was anonymous) is that I've got a truckload of ideas. I have a list, in fact, of eight wonderful culture-jamming painting ideas that I could rip out in a month if I felt like it. There's a block there, but it's not creative. I think it's made of foam rubber or existential angst or something.

It is more a question of who I am.

Who am I? I mean, there's the boring hard facts: Josh Barkey, born on August 12, 1979 in Lancaster, South Carolina. Raised in the amazon basin of Peru, South America. Nominally-post-secondarily educated at TWU and in the hard-knock world of norther British Columbian tree planting. Sleight of build, late of bloom, tender of heart, and fond of art he can't quite understand. Born into the aristocracy (globally and historically speaking, of course), afflicted with all the apathy and selfishness and cynicism of his kind. Moderately talented, like most people, at a cornucopia of activities - chess, tennis, snowboarding, painting, ping-pong, witty banter, drawing, elocution, propagation of ideas, soccer, poetry, fishing and singing. Short on freinds and long on patience. Possessed of a character the generous would call solid and noble, the uncharitable, boring. Married with a dog named Edgar and a cat named Wormwood (both black as sin and twice as affectionate) to show for it. Uncle to four neice and nephew's-in-law, writer of numerous unpublished children's stories.

Those are the blase facts, the sort of things around which you construct the soul of a story or an identity you can hijack for your own nefarious purposes. But for God's sake (and I mean that) who the forkrying out loud am I?

THAT is the question.




As a post script...

P.S. The only answer I can come up with is this - watch "The Million Dollar Hotel". This seriously underrated and, in my personal experience, misunderstood picture really gets to the guts of who we is. If I could listen to that movie and feel it and BE it, maybe I could stop toodling around on this website and start living. Besides, how can a movie Bono produced and acted in (don't blink - you'll miss him) be wrong? The guy's a freakin' icon of tortured self-recrimination.

P.S.S. Bono, if you're there, the offer still stands on the "sometimes I feel like checkin' out painting". I'm looking at it now - it's sooo YOU.