iT'S STreeT arT THurSDay iN eaST HoLLyWooD! - "Memorials" March 24, 2016

Dear Street Art Lovers and all the rest of you,

Today is Maundy Thursday, tomorrow is Good Friday, the next day, Holy Saturday, and then Easter Sunday and Monday. With all of this contemplation of death that next couple of days will put us in (or at least some of us), I thought it would be appropriate to share two memorial portraits that are within 5 minutes walk of my front door here in East Holly.

Artist DAMEHARI MESNG, Rest in Paradise Cadaback Ron, paint on building.

Artist QAQAO20, Curtis, paint on building.

Rest in Paradise is on a very popular wall for murals. This is the 2nd paint-over since I've been collecting local street art these last two years. It's in an alley parallel to Melrose, off Heliotrope.

What was here before was the bespectacled cowboy riding on a dinosaur, which later got modified to the cowboy riding on word art that resembled a car. Both have been posted here before.

Now we have a memorial to a Cadaback Ron, bespectacled also, but decked in shades.

Street art often has memorial aspects to it. There are frequently RIP notices on many works. I suspect the life that many street artists lead comes into contact with people who conduct themselves in dangerous pursuits (if they are not practitioners of those pursuits themselves), and so the likelihood of death by unnatural causes probably runs higher in a street artist's circle of acquaintance.

Both portraits here are of relatively young men. They both have tattoos. While the one is more colorful than the other, We have both surrounded by flowers or the impression of a funerary bouquet. In fact, this treatment of Ron's "bouquet" is very similar to the "Black Madonna" I shared a few weeks ago, so I suspect this is the same artist.

We know the fellow in the 2nd portrait is Curtis because this memorial name went up many months ago which I had shared in an earlier blog post.

We also know it because this portrait is posted on the side of a building that houses a Buddhist meditation center which has the photo from which which this painting was made displayed in their picture window. There was also some memorial text as well. Curtis must have been quite an active member of that community.

For his part, Cadaback Ron has some dedicatory poetry accompanying his picture which appears on either side of his face:

And I don't need 2 tell yall that times is hard

And you don't need 2 tell me that I've been scarred

Times is hard









Here's a context shot:

It's nice to see people so well remembered, even if these paintings will not stick around very long. I cannot imagine anyone I know taking the time to paint a wall like this in my honor when I am gone. You boys have got me beat! Rest in peace, both of you.

AND NOW, BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED SEASCAPE

Yep, it's very blue out there again today--not much else to be said.

Well, it's Maundy Thursday 2016, which means there have been about 1,984 anniversaries of the Last Supper that Jesus had with his disciples. If you had been alive since then and took the Eucharist every day in remembrance, that would be about 724,700 instances. Is there anything we can relate 700,000 to in daily life? Well, your heart beats at about 115,000 times a day, so 700,000 is close to how many heartbeats you had in just under a week. If we divide 1,984 years by 35, a conservative figure for one generation of a family, we're about 56-60 generations out from Jesus and Imperial Rome.




My point is while it seems distant yet, it's measurable and still understandable. But does it make sense to be an adherent of a belief system of some 60 generations when the central organizing principle is a myth of the return of the king? One of the teachings of Reformed Christian thinking is that we're NOT waiting, that the Kingdom of God is now, that the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost ended the waiting period, and while the judgment of nations is yet to come, we toil here to make perfect the imperfect world. Do I buy it? Most of the time, but sometimes, I wonder.

Hindu storytellers have a unit of time in their tellings which some learned people have equated one revolution of the Milky Way Galaxy, one Galactic Day. And everything repeats. I wonder what it's like to come out of thought system with that kind of a frame of reference. I suppose if I took it to heart, I would never cultivate a sense of self-importance, or individuality, seems like I might wind up feeling quite restrained and constrained? On the other hand, if you knew you were but a grain of sand, why not go full-bore into everything you did?


But the Universe is now thought to have a beginning and is moving, linearly, to something else. So even if you think you're living a cyclical existence, it's linear? You're moving in a spiral? And if you get far enough out, a spiral looks like a line? Someone just dropped by and reminded me it's time to pay the rent. So go to church tonight, have some bread and wine, and think about this divine interruption that God threw into the spiral, we call it's name Jesus, just to mess you up and get you out of your spiral. In cosmic time, it only just happened.







Love,
Pops