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A LOVING SHOUT OUT TO ALL MY ARTISTS FRIENDS, THOSE DEAD AND GONE AND TO THOSE OF US STILL CREATING ART AND MAGIC, AS WE ATTEMPT TO TRANSCEND A PROFANE WORLD GONE MAD
By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
I hate it. I hate it when folks start talking to me about “retirement”. I detest that word. It is euphuism for ‘OK you old fart go away and die, and make it quick. You and your sorry useless ass is costing us; everyone, the hood, the country, the world. And most of all the family, their valuable time, resources and most especially their hard earned money. The precious money that we just don’t have to waste on you wretched and demented carcass. So be done with it quick, retire and die!’
But they won’t let it go. I’ll be gone soon enough! When I insists that if I stop what I love doing that I will die. They will tell me ‘stop it anyway. You know that it has always annoyed us, your stupid and indulgent artista pendejadas’. That is the point I say, art keeps me alive. Loco pendejo! They respond, enraged that I am so broke, slow witted and not quite dead, yet I continue to try to create. Yeah, moron we want you to die. We never knew what the hell you were doing anyway. And now all you are is old, stubborn, and forgetful. Always into your stupid writings that no one reads. No one cares old man, and you have not made one penny from your ‘art’. Never, not a single penny, ever from your art!
‘And after all that is why we tolerated you all these years, anyway, because you always brought home the money. God only knows how you did it. But somehow you managed. It was a mystery back then how you made your money but somehow the eagle miraculously flew! We didn’t press you back then it was useless. You were never good with the truth, but the money was always good, so your artistic idyocecracies and lunacy was tolerable. But now, damn, old man, the money has dried up, along with your lame ass artistic mind. So shut the hell up, no one wants to hear your old tired nonsense anyway, not any more. We have had enough.
So I stay alive not so much to mess with anyone; but rather to fully come to terms with the end of my life as I see fit. El artista loco y su ultima batalla con Dios y el diablo, mano a mano. And you know my artist’s view today at the periphery of the abyss is crystal clear, liberating, and wondrous to me; much to the enlightenment and care of no one. But as my old war torn homie, Manuel, use to say back in the day, “it’s all good!” He would utter that uniquely fatalistic and all-encompassing Chicano mantra as he was being lead off to jail or the slaughter house once again, and this wonderful fool thought he was being lead toward the pearly gates of heaven. I’ll see you soon homie and have the Tequila ready. And by the way carnal you were right, ‘It’s all good!’, and we, the mad artists, knew it all along.
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.