The Black Marque

 

I’ve always been fond of this piece because it has such a long history. The inspiration was doodles my dad had drawn as a kid in the top margins of schoolbooks we still had in our home library. He was a more talented artist than I am, and it showed even in his schoolboy work. He had his own motorhead obsession in those early years and sketched wonderful cartoons of incredibly long-hooded motor cars bearing the name ”Zig Zag.”

Never forgot the name or the drawings and developed my own premise for an art piece. When I was about 20, I dreamt up “Zig-Zag Drive” as a new technology for night driving by famous writers. Upon veering to one side of the road or the other, powerful springs would steer the car back onto the road. I completed one actual water color of my own featuring the dashboard, laid out in the form of a typewriter, so that even a drunken writer could still operate the vehicle. I lost the watercolor somewhere along the way. How things go when you’re constantly on the move.

It wasn’t till after I did Shuteye Town that I finally decided to do a real homage to my Dad’s Zig-Zag Marque and my own misspent college years. Was never entirely satisfied with it because it seems unfinished. I was supposed to return to it after the graphics were done and fill in the transitional and climactic writing that would have made it more of a detectable genuflection to The Great Gatsby, closing on Daisy’s green light at the end of the dockstreet. It was filed in my head somewhere and just needed typing. Then my contact with Instapunk Rules got badly compromised and I never got to it. But maybe it’s not supposed to be finished yet. A few miles left to go, I suppose, before I’ve completely made it up with my Dad…

The Black Marque (Yes, they’ll let you see it if you persist and hit the bottom prompt on the second screen to see it despite the perilous security risk it poses…)

As a nation we do delight in tearing down our own most spectacular successes, don’t we? The dark side of aspiration is envy. Especially vulgar in American hands for some reason.