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Tate was a creep, now he is
deceased. One day he discovered my paintings and turned in his mind with a
purpose of stalking out the other geographies of my life. He looked like a squint, a half man half bird who spidered his victims with a
sexual predation greased by his skill as a pianist.
He was trained in classical piano, but he fixed his glands on the music of the clubs and bars. He attracted punky guitar hacks who loved how he debased his art, drawing it down into the service of their no-talent shines. There is no word for the opposite of genius, for an art that craters and pulls everything around it into a sump of disaffection. Spike was the name of a guitarist he befriended and put up in his home. Together they intended to form a music band with a clubby name like "Detritus" or "Dung", but the venture ended abruptly with Tate's murder. Spike had a friend named Jar who broke out of a minimum security prison down south and it was Jar who put the knife in Tate's back although Spike probably infected his friend with some of the same sleaze that Tate was pumping out. The police found Tate naked and face down on his weight lifter's bench and they picked up Jar a few days later in a bus terminal in the midwest. |
| 5/31/00 | oil on linen | 68"w X 59 1/2"h |
