“Realism and trash; the nature and the abstract; technology and humanity; past, present and future. Opposites that they are trying to urge into a creative dance to harmony and rhythm in tune with the body.”

–Volko Merschky, Buena Vista Tattoo Club

As soon as it was over, I started to miss it.

What I want to remember:

1. The key to Don Draper is in his speech to Stephanie: “Don’t listen to them. You weren’t raised with Jesus. You don’t know what happens to people when they believe in things.”

2. The key to Don’s final Mona Lisa smile is that calm inner certainty and bliss when an artist gets an idea. He’s a creative genius. That’s all there is to him. He tried everything else, and that’s what’s left at the end.

My favorite piece by Chris Burden was called The Citadel. Ephemeral, like a lot of his work in the 1970s.

“A massive assembly of starships from throughout the universe meeting to investigate the inexplicable infinite Citadel wall. Admission by invitation only August 8 through 12, 1978. Carp/5112 Pico Boulevard, L.A. Enter from alley between Wellworth Ave. and Redondo Blvd., west of La Brea. This exhibition partially funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.”

From the alley, you came into a room painted all black with hundreds of tiny toy starships of different shapes and sizes hung from the ceiling on black threads. You took a seat in a couple of rows of chairs, and when everyone was in, the room went completely black, and then Chris came in carrying a lit candle and walked around illuminating different parts of the massive assembly of starships.

I have a photo of Chris with the candle illuminating a few of the starships. It hangs over my desk. I’m looking at it now. I guess Chris is looking at the inexplicable infinite beyond the Citadel wall.

R.I.P. Chris.

Rejection. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

George Clooney did 14 failed pilots before he got E.R.

The moral is not about George Clooney, it’s about the 14 failed pilots.

Never give up. That’s the only secret. Never give up before the miracle happens.

Okay, but when?

Advice to Steve McQueen —

Plan your moves.

Pick your place to fight.

Don’t make any threats.

Don’t ever walk away from one.

In 1959, I was editor of The Chimes, my school newspaper at Compton High School, Compton, California. For the edition that came out at the beginning of December that year, I published a box on the front page that said, “Only 24 shopping days until Ava Gardner’s birthday.” I got in a lot of trouble for that. Didn’t I know that it was Jesus’s birthday that mattered, not Ava Gardner’s? Didn’t I realize that I had published blasphemy? I don’t remember exactly how the Compton Christians punished me. It didn’t matter. I stood then, and I stand now, with Charlie.

Some women were walking along the street pushing baby carriages, some with babies, some with groceries.

A little girl about four years old was trailing behind, sobbing, her face scarlet, her nose running into her mouth.

“I don’t want a spanking,” she wailed.

Her mother said, “Well then, be good if you don’t want a spanking.”

The women laughed.

–Venice, California, January 10, 1973.

I’m not sure where I got this definition of the sublime as magnanimity or heroism:

In some critical and high situation, we behold a man so uncommonly intrepid and resting upon himself, superior to passion and to fear, animated by some great principle to the contempt of popular opinion, or selfish interest, of dangers or of death.

The day Captain Picard promotes Wesley Crusher to Acting Ensign aboard the Enterprise.

“The people I consider successful are so because of how they handle their responsibilities to their people, how they approach the future, people who have a full sense of the value of their life and what they want to do with it. I call people ‘successful’ not because they have money or their business is doing well but because, as human beings, they have a fully developed sense of being alive and engaged in a lifetime task of collaboration with other human beings . . . Don’t you know it is all about being able to extend love to people? Really. Not in a big, capital-letter sense but in the everyday. Little by little, task by task, gesture by gesture, word by word.”
–Ralph Fiennes