C.H. Valentino

...And a brand new feeling.

 

Anyone else extreamly pleased that 2009 is FINALLY over and we can all just get on with getting on with our lives? A friend of mine put it best when he said, "2009 has given me more grief than I care to examine."

 

He was right, as he so often is; 2009 was a year of much grief.

 

And as that year approached an end, I (on a whim) decided, I would let it go out with a bang. So I went to L.A. And I saw my family. And I saw some art. And I met someone. And whatever pain I had to go thru for the other 11 months was suddenly all worth it.

 

On December 11th, I left on my first flight since I was 16yo. Perhaps at that age I didn't quite grasp the beauty of flight- but this time I most certainly did. As the plane rose over the patchwork quilt of the midwest- all in varying shades of sienna and umber- I watched the Mississippi become a milk chocolate ribbon looping around an otherwise still carpet of flat earth.  

 

Four hours later- there were mountains in my vista, though there was  the storm cell over L.A that made landing somewhat harrowing, but I disembarked into a balmy 62 degrees and the smell of wet cement.

 

I headed downtown like I owned the 101- and to tell the truth, I could not have asked for a better day in L.A. The rain made the natives a 1000x more cautious than I expected (or am told they are regularly) and that matched against my silly midwestern "I can drive of 6 inches of ice and snow" attitude let me make a smooth trip into and out of LA.

 

To those of you that don't know, I acctually went to see Clive Barker's Imagining Man at Bert Green's Gallery. And all the background you need to know for this is: I have, through my life, always read Clive Barker's stories/books, but I was never inspired by his written work. Entertained, engaged, interested.... YES! His style is unique to him and has a tendency to make you gag while you laugh, but it never touched me creatively like other writers had.

 

But in late 2008, I was introduced to his visual work quiet accidentally, and it hammered me in a way that I hadn't been hammered since I first touched Dante's Inferno. That said, in all the hype I had heard of his art show, I kind of shrugged and went, "I have vacation time and family in Cali. I NEED to see this show."

 

So, that afternoon, footloose and free inside downtown, I made my way to 5th St. and entered the gallery. Damp, tired, and hungry- but ALONE in the gallery- I semi-staggered from picture to picture- unable to take it all in. And my Twitter records the words, "How as an artist to you make this moment solid?"

 

The Gallery

 

The show was set up in kind of four places.

 

From entry to the right: Bert Green explained to me that these were all pictures that had been part of the evolution of the entire project and props used, therein. These pictures were extreame in a way that extreame was the first time I watched firefighters cut a corpse from a mangled car. Just sanity's side of too much to take, yet too good to look away. Some of these pieces were.... just.... holy shit! Let's just say they're nuclear flash-burned to the inside of my eyeballs, and if I can ever find a man to bring that fantasy to life- say goodbye to C.H Valentino, she'll be in the love nest being fucked to death by something the glistens at 6'2 and throbs at 8''    

 

From entry to the left: Again, Mr. Green (who, by the way, is the nicest most sincere guy you'll just about ever meet) guided me a little and told me this was more the "supporting artwork" for the project. Mr. Barker draws artsy folks, but he has a large fan base, and they, too, will come out of the wood work for another ink sketch of Pinhead or Harry D'Amore.

 

Center section and around 200 degrees: These, I was told, were the Imagining Man pictures. These were, I tell you, amazing. I think I later told Mr. Barker that nine times in less than 5 minutes, grinning and goofy like some panting fan-girl. But the bottom line was, the art shut me the fuck up because  it was so "amazing" it zapped me of the eloquence I possess on any given Monday thru Friday. (I think he asked me at one point what I thought- and I think I told him.... and in my memory it was exceptiionally well put together, but in reality, I might have just grinned like an idiot... I don't know)

 

Back section: The back section made it into one of my books. I mean, what I saw, what I felt, and what I wrote standing in front of seven of Mr. Barker's paintings, that were bigger than me, was enough of a defining moment in my life that it rail road spiked another book into progress and has motivated the entire project.

 

The Art

 

Of these paintings there were three that I'll mention here:

 

 ONE: Pinhead. It's just fucking cool. I've never seen the movie and the book is on my list of "To Reads" but I get the idea. Cenebite: BAD! Painting: UN-BE-FUCKING-LIEVABLE. This thing is dimentional, and stands, if I had to guess at highest 4 inches off the acctual canvas) What you miss the photograph of his paintings is the texture, as all of his paintings, in SOME was at lumped and bumped and HEAPED with paint in all the right places. 

 

TWO: The Temptation of St. Anthony. This was pretty incredible and it wasn't until Saturday in the gallery that a young man pointed out a few things to me. Perhaps it was, in fact, that he was male, but he pointed out a sense of rapture on the part of St. Anthony.  

 

THREE: Despair. When you break it down to hours I was in L.A and hours I spend looking at this painting in the two days I was at Bert Green- you might find that I spent a good fraction of my time there, in front of this painting. Gaping. Crying. Smiling. Generally running a gamet of emotions (internally) that found me writing eleven pages in my journal.

 

I lost time in front of this picture. Hell, I lost all sense of higher reasoning (for a few days). Suddenly, I was standing in a place where I was motivated and moved thru life by my heart.

 

Despair, I was told by Bert Green, was the cover for the catalogue from the 2007 show of Mr. Barker's work. It's on the cover of the catalogue.  

 

I totally bought the catalogue.

 

Of Imagining Man

 

There is no way for me to detail the bulk of seeing these in person. No way to make it real the kind of extreame emotion wrapped inside these images. I thought I'd be bothered by (at least at some point) the explict content, but I never really was. More than anything I was stunned by the models' faces.

 

By far, my favorite was a picture called "The Lovers". This photo encompassed the entire feeling of the show. But more personally, it played out an central theme in my life. Trussed up on a inverted crucifix, one man bleeds as his lover looks on.

There was such a passive knowledge in this photo- the intense facination and some what meloncoly horror we feel when we stare into the pain we cause out lovers. The rightous rage we feel to cause our lovers pain. Round it down further- the pain associated with loving and being loved.

 

"Come back tomorrow," Bert told me. "Clive will be here, two to four."

 

"I-uh...well." Did I want to come back? Sort of.

 

"You really should come tomorrow."

 

"I kind of just came to see the art, you know? Not the whole...." (what, Coleen? The whole WHAT?) "....fan-thing."

 

Fan-thing. Yep. It bugged me. Big time. A lot of people think it is just a-ok to throw themselves at the stranger. This behavior continues to boggle and infuriate me to no end, and I was concerned with attending the signing. It all just felt a little "ooky" to me.

 

Did I go back?

 

The Signing

 

 Yeah. I went back. I went back because I still wanted to be in downtown, I still wanted to see a million things there, and I still wanted another hour alone with Despair. I wanted to lay my skin against it.  I wanted to run my lips over it, and breathe in that smell and follow the paths laid in the paint. I settled for the less dramatic fifty-yard stare as people moved around me and occasionally stopped to talk.

 

I met fans, Dear Readers. Real ones. Now, I could make the obvious joke about that "Clive Barker" fans are like, but the truth was- they were rather quiet and unassuming. Which is scary, right? That little housewife who looked like my Aunt Marilyn read Clive Barker? Holy hell. Talk about a serial killer in sheep's clothing. Then there were the emo boys with their Boho girlfriends in tow, clutching an Abarat, an Everville, a Cold Heart Canyon and biting their thumbs nails; they were so nervous to meet him.

 

Mr. Barker's assisstant called everyone to the front:

 

"Hey, guys. Line up. We'd like to get started soon."

 

The crowd kind of self-herded into a wide line. We were all adults so the order was not really important. Or rather, less important to the people in the front than to the people in the back. I kind of lingered at the mid-point; about 15 or so back.

 

And two-mintues later, Mr. Barker passed us, culling the crowd to an envious silence when he paused to embrace someone further up the line. But when he broke away and moved behind the table, and the voices of excitement began again. 

 

The two men in front of me chattered like an old, married couple, and in every version of this story I have told, I have likened them to the two old-men puppets from the Muppet Show. Eventually, bored with one another, they turn to me.

 

Chuck Ford proceeded to tell me about his book collection- a circus of rarities and "promotional only" memoribilia that is obscure as it is infantile.

 

"Ever seen Candy-Man the BOARD GAME?" He asked me.

 

"They made that?"

 

"When they released the movie... yeah. I got two. Hell, I've play it before. You've seen Candyman, right?"

 

"No, I haven't."

 

"Well, you've seen Lord of Illusions, right?"

 

"No, sorry. I'm affraid I've never really seen his movies."

 

"Huh. Well...."

 

Behind me, there was a boy from my home-state. He'd flown in from Chicago for the weekend- just for THIS signing- to see Mr. Barker. His name is Aaron Eischeid and he's a film student. He wants to work at Seraphim- he wants to make The Abarat into a movie. He's all of six foot six but probably not 120lbs soaking wet, and he was so nervous his cheeks flushed red to white to red and back to white again.

 

"All I need to do is make sure he knows my name!" He told me.

 

"I'm sure you'll do fine."

 

"I just... you know. I just want to make a good impression."

 

"Here. Have a breathmint."

 

Aaron took my breathmint and tipped his head.

 

"Why are... why are you here?"

 

"Me? Oh, I'm just here to see the art."

 

Another boy  listened as he bit his nail, glancing between me and over my shoulder to where Barker sits. He catches my wandering eyes and throws his arms out into jazz hands.  

 

"Yooooou're next!"

 

Indeed, he was correct. The two older men were in front of Mr. Barker, talking about an article from a horror mag that hasn't been printed since 1968.  Obscure of obscure of unknown once-upon-a-times when Mr. Barker was young and me.... my DNA hadn't formed yet.  

 

"Yeah, I guess I am."

 

"Are you nervous?"

 

I want to look at this boy and say something nasty. Something indicative of my age, like, hey- fuck stain. I deal in life and death every day. The day that meeting a famous person makes me nervous is that day I'll put a gun to my own head. But instead, all I say is:

 

"Do I have reason to be?"  

 

And eventually, the two old guys stepped away- and another assisstant looked at me and waved me forward. And the last thing I did before I walked up to have my catalogue signed was smile at Aaron and tell him he'd do fine.

 

The Moral of the Story

 

Aaron did fine. Mr. Barker gave him a name and a number. Aaron and I spoke briefly while we both looked at Despair, and I felt all the shit and the slime and disease from the last year run away.  

 

I have my secrets from L.A. I have, forever, a memory of a glimpse at another world. I have a thousand nights to think about what I was allowed to see, and what gifts I was given. I have a million minutes to relive the wonderment I felt in every step thereafter.

 

2009 was a wound.

 

L.A was the band-aid.

 

Now, I am so ready to get down to business.

 

CHV