THE TOOT

After a night in the canyons of Tecumah just east of LA, in TR and his beautiful Vietnamese wife Thu's tricked out mountain lion hunter's shack, I headed north for SF and my old buddy El Prof. Their two boys hug me and I'm back on the road. SF is where I spent the late 70's and early 80's, getting my art and theology degrees, developing my drug taking and drinking habits, refining my thought patterns that would allow me to get where I am today...back at the Toot in Studio 9. So many full circles on this trip. My highshool girlfriend Sweets in Dallas. The horror of Nashville. And now the same classroom where El Prof., Karen Finley, Debora Iyall, myself and so many others broke rocks under the tuteledge of the enigmatic Howard Fried. Most of the class of students sitting before me in cold folding chairs weren't even born when were starting fires, dropping acid and refining our conceptual chops in this room. Dig it. Where's my beret?
The SF Art Institute is the grandaddy of all fine arts schools in the US and it's showing under the strain of 21st Century globalization. The intuitive, thumb in front of the canvas, illiterate savant working off the spark of genius, so reverred by this institution, is about as relevent as a pile of BETA video tapes at the Apple store today. The old guard is holding on by their broken finger nails, trying to perpetuate the myth of the unschooled, poorly read, genius with the paint brush. Luckily there's a new sheriff in town- Okwui Enwezor. He's the new Dean and shit is about to change. Time to teach the dumb artists to read. It's a new world mutherfucker.
I love this place and think this is all for the good. I left alot of brain cells in this town and would hate to see the Toot get left behind in the rush to modernize. The soul of the place will always be the wack job, the outsider, the confused kid who just took apart his Fisher Price video camera and wants to make a movie by throwing it off the Pyramid. But we must teach the youth to read, know their history (art and otherwise), good table manners, proper speech, as well as te ability to paint with a single hair brush plucked from an ermine's asshole. It's the whole package the Institute should strive to graduate, not just a few geniuses ready to sell out in NYC.
In the mean time I'm eating good, catching up with my god daughter Monasita, soaking up the SF vibe, drinking good wine and plannng my next move. Carlito is in El Salvador and I'm thinking of flying down there on Monday. My conjones that shiveled at the prospect of driving through those jungles are breathing easier at the thought of a flight. I'll let you know. I have to get back to class. Today we're working on sentence conjugation. "See Chris shoot. Shoot Chris, shoot."