Good Weekend

Art Brut
12" x 12"
oil on wood, 2007

So I've been doing a fair amount of reading lately, music literature as usual. A very enlighting activity indeed but frustrating in the sense that it shows my shortcomings as a writer. It wouldn't be so bad if I had no writers' ambition, if I kept it to myself, diary-style. But no: I publish, blog-style and beyond. I want to be a writer.
I've been writing seriously since graduate school starting in 1995. My thesis paper was my first publication, followed by Perfect Solution, a hand-made artist book in an edition of 185. The thesis paper is alright but Perfect Solution has many flaws. My main output as a writer are the Top 100 commentaries such as in this blog. I've written about a thousand of them. They are short, don't require much depth, and don't need to be consistent. When I attempt to write a longer piece I fail hopelessly. Some day I will write a full length novel even though this day writing a novel seems to be the hardest thing to do. In 1998 I started to write a novel, a love story, an erotic story really, but I didn't get further than three pages. The only thing I liked from those pages is the first line: "The first time I saw her naked". So I thought, when I tried again a few years later, to use the same opening line. I didn't get further than a page and a half that time. I forgot about the opening line until the band Art Brut had a song in the Top 100 2006 called Good Weekend. My love story pages are rubbish compared to the lyrics of that song: "First time I saw her/I wanted to do more than just hold her/I wanted to bend her and fold her/So I lent over and told her... We came home from the cinema/We went through the front door/Up the stairs/Through the bedroom door/Onto the bedroom floor/I've seen her naked twice."

I drew this picture here in my sketchbook the other day and it made me think of this project again. "The first time I saw her naked": The text will be an illustration of the drawing rather than the other way 'round. I'll keep you posted if anything happens with it.