Faux Pas and Past Lives

In my previous post about Tinnitus, it is likely I mistook my fair use rights of (what I thought was) a royalty free image of a gentleman’s hand on his ear. Facebook appears to have blocked the previous post url on Facebook Community Standards grounds. I have since cartoonized the image (below left) and added a few doohickeys to make it mine. Creative license I guess is not the same thing as … license to create (?)

(Funny I can’t do ellipsis anymore without hearing Stephen Colbert in my head, “Dot, dot, DOT...”)

Anyway, This quick follow-up story is essentially an elaborate way of making lemonade out of lemons, so to speak.

Perhaps the FB blocking is a good thing because it got me to confront the penalty of creative laziness as well. It is also contradictory with the overall theme of the prior Tinnitus part 2 article that discussed at length my dogged dabbling in all the creative arts. Out of curiosity, I went back to my Fibber McGee and Molly closet and began to rummage thru some old things. (For those of you unfamiliar with Fibber McGee’s closet, please review this).

I think the Raneys have a restless creative energy that needs to be manifest in some way, be it serious or goofy, visual or written. I remember Dad used to imitate word for word Lorne Greene commercials for insurance.

I encountered the original manuscript of my Dad’s hilarious, “How I Became a Living Legend” (the digital version is published here on my site) and both silly and sad poems.

There were some old drawings and cartoons and also a painting of my father’s that is at least 60 years old. This particular work reflects his fascination with cubism (see left). It’s gorgeous, albeit a little worse for wear after all these years. He was in fact quite chummy with the famous Abstract expressionist painters of his day like De Koenig and a close family friend, Raymond Parker. I recounted a little bit about that on one of Dad’s Bio pages here. (Bottom paragraph).

Below was my attempt at some “faux” cubism back in the beginning of college:

In High School I became possessed with creating a character called, “Mr. Egg”. Essentially he was just a nose and glasses (but mustache-less, so less like Groucho Marx and more like Woody Allen) with little legs and sneakers. But no arms – that would’ve made him too close to a Mr. M&M. I’m pretty sure I did egg studies (like Picasso during his egg period) but not certain where I put them.

I also did a little story where he zipped into to a library and demanded a book of the librarian (“The kind with words in it, mam”). He was clearly oblivious to the fact that he was an egg, the glasses were just a prop for his egg body and that his subsequent demand for braille was likewise futile without hands. He did have high tops though. When she refuses to help, he ends up accusing the librarian of being an egg bigot.

But I took it further and began to take anything I could find and “egg it up”. For example I took Chicago’s, Chicago 8 inner album jacket group photo and  transformed it into Chicago Egg. Some may groan at the clunky pun, but I still got a chuckle. Not so much the dumb pun but the concerted effort to recreate the erstwhile famous pop group faithfully into egg people chilling out on the range. In a way I think I was ahead of the curve, creating a meme. Who knows, maybe I just needed the Internet and Twitter.

Sad note: The cross in above drawing is for Terry Kath, the group’s great guitarist who died tragically shortly after.

Sad moods found a home in art as well. The one at left was getting over a high school crush. I was experimenting with a story collage style.

I would love to give it a go again. Just not sure where to start. This might be a bull-through-for-days type situation as described in the prior article.

Maybe I could start with eggs, work my way up to hands…

Dot, dot, DOT…