Paul Cezanne Jack Spiegelman
oil on canvas oil on canvas
16x20 36x36
$32,000,000 $4500
oil on canvas oil on canvas
16x20 36x36
$32,000,000 $4500
| bflowriter.com |
Whats new for Feb-a new jack video on your right, go to the youTube page for a pizza recipe and for your thought for the month a chinese proverb: "powder your face but never your heart" can powder your fac: |
me and the internet It was four years ago in 2005 with my 67th birthday looming large, a few months hence, and I was thinking about writing something, whatever it was, and I thought a little more and decided not to. Why? Because I had entered a new phase. I was ready to perform a gesture— something Faulkner has described as: to break the pencil. Writers write to publish. That is the idea—the cultivation of an audience. Without publication you have nothing. The work doesn’t exist. Manuscripts dont count. The work is not written to be read by a friend who would rather have his fingernails pulled out one at a time. And this was me—the writer of 7 books, one published and the other six moldering away in manuscript form, the concept of non-existence, at the bottom of the desk. I was 67, time was a wastin' and the question you must ask yourself is: why am I doing this? I had lunch with a friend who said: why don’t you start a website? It was a thought. I'd had the thought myself. Here was the internet, that had been with us 20 years, begun as an information medium and to then evolve into the worlds greatest discount shopping outlet and now was beginning to function as a writing/publishing medium—big time. The truth was: if the work was out there hovering seductively in cyberspace—to be read or not to be read—it would get read. Here were all these people—friends and friends of friends and anyone else I could think of to throw down on a list and to fire off an e-mail once a month to alert for a site update, not a problem with 6 books moldering in the bottom of the desk— and it was certain to occur that at some point, trapped in a desperate--or desperately boring--moment, like at work and under no obligation to do so—they would punch up the site. So I took the plunge, to put the golf on hold and launch myself into cyberspace and to fart with this software and that software and the other software and there were the usual ups and downs, mucho, such as the time a giant sponge type image appeared on the screen, to wipe clean the screen and destroy three hours of work. I could feel my arteries plugging, growing another few centimeters of gunk. But I continued on and, miracle of miracles, got the site into decent shape and, a mere 3 months later, clicked on the enter key to launch. It was 1 may of 2005 and on 2 may there were 14 e-mails to confirm the visiting of the site and the actual reading of some bits and pieces or even entire stories. That was the first month. I got 200 hits. Now its four years later and the hits are up to 1200 a month. Ill take that. And there was something else. I feel like writing. I am no longer at the mercy of the magazines and the magazine editors and the return of the unsolicited manuscript—3 months later—a horrible way to live. I write the piece and insert it into the site and hit the enter key and send it on its way to cyberspace—an amazing space. I am a new man. |
