Jack Spratt

"Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat." --Peter Sellers

I am a smurf and a shark. 

The one you see is the one I want you to see. 

Rouge conversations I remember arriving in Chicago by car the first time on a sales trip for dad's business and Martin Guitar among a few others. I parked on the street downtown in the Loop got out, it was late see, dead winter, my testes clicking like castanets. I sauntered up to the enormously tall black dude and said "HEY!" 

He looked down on me with disdain and said, "Where you from boy?" I told him and how long it took me to get there. He cut my time in half, his last transit, I put my hand on his back saying, "Hey Bro where's your wings?" . . . i mean I've never driven a car that I've not put the peddle to the metal and seen how far and fast speed is. However I don't make a practice of sustained 180 mph. on Public Byways. 

I may not know how to write but write anyway remembering Grandma Moses and her glee.

I've been abused by the Best: Dear Ol' Mom who while torturing me had dad standing silent beside with her pearl encrusted pool cue case she used to keep her whip in the closet in. So when people piddle on my toes or face I can take more than most. However when they do it repeatedly I begin to get angry. 

Well

Not angry so much as bored.

I've never cared much who I worked for or doing whatever so long as I was moving, alive, with camera in hand; my passport and grade card for the education i've received in forty-five years of making a living, sort of, from being a recording witness . . . to politicians flapping their yappers, audiences stoned, or being stoned the women of my adoration. Add to which i've carried people out of burning hospitals, planes, riots while recording them with my other hand or when required dropping the camera, never on the ground, but across my shoulder using my both hands to aid those in need. That's me. 

My favorite story: I had a New York Times assignment to make an illustration of the then decrease of murder in Chicago. I did, to the letter, jot and tilde what she required/suggested bored out of my gourd. That is until one of the Homicide Cops said, "Why don't you go down to the morgue?"

I did and was allowed to roam freely amongst the stacks of corpses with toe tags naked or partially clothed in whatever the came in wrapped in green plastic garbage bags who didn't say a word in objection. The rooms were cool not cold, there was no smell, and no one cared what I did unobserved. 

I left shipping the film from O'Hare went home and to bed at 03:something something the phone rang and a hysterical photo editor said, "WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO ME!" and then went on and on and on piddling in my ear through the telephone wires between where I then resided and she in Manhattan. Long, long, long too long I listened and when she paused i asked her if she had essentially said what she needed to say? 'yes' "My job as I understand, teach and write about is: to collect information and quit when I think I've got everything to collect . . . You're job is to select what you want the public to know about my witness. . . . and hung up not caring if she or They, The New York Times ever called me back.

You being my client may abuse me but beware if you kill me or piss on my product, or as my beloved son said before dying, "I'd rather be pissed off than pissed on." Well then I am like all of us, the PTSD and the abused raped and mutilated by authority or mildly nominally co-dependents. Either I, or someone like me, will come and make you very sorry. Individually or collectively and collaboratively you will wish never to have been born.

Bliss is not pleasure or joy it is responsibility and participation. There are certain things which can not be forgiven or healed. I've been insane with grief, insane with insanity, insane with pain and suffering, insane in living with indifferent people to me or themselves loyally.

Enough

Think about, please, the following: God does not revise history and neither does Nature. 

It was with all my strength I restrained myself from merely tearing apart the one who last urinated upon me and my product lovingly given free of charge and at that for the fifth time without ego, without expectation of recognition simply because it seemed to me to save the Company or Corporation the cost of hiring someone else do to the work. To accept your blasphemy of my work and myself is to blaspheme my soul. There are times I do not care for or about my 'immortal soul.' I just want to express myself as having one for now. Fortunately I am neither Jesus or God forgiving seven times seventy, I am nothing at all. . . .Add to which if there is nothing but moldering after life so be it.

Like the Samurai if I draw the sword of myself it wants, needs, will receive blood, your's not mine. To close. I claim no talent or genius nor ability to write or photograph; it's what I do; if inadequate don't use me. Find someone else.

120914 02:33 i'm not nice no way no how

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved