“The Promises” is a passage in the Alcoholics Anonymous text. Don’t quote me on this, but it’s something like: “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through, we will know a new freedom and a new happiness, fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us, the dog will stop peeing on the futon and pulling snotty tissue out of the garbage can.”
In early recovery, I hated The Promises. It just read like bullshit to me. I drew this cartoon while sitting in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It’s just some snarky bullshit—I’m crazy, I feel like I’ve got a boot to my head crushing my skull into the ground, but – oh yeah, sure – I believe in The Promises!
I had been off heroin for about four months, trying in earnest to do everything I could to get better, but there was resistance in me that I couldn’t shake; it was keeping me from really moving forward. This cartoon is from the week when that would finally change though.
“I Can’t Compete With Harry Potter.” 5/20/13. Pencil, watercolor, and pen. 16×20″.
Taylor really likes Harry Potter. She’d watch the movies on an endless loop as I sat next to her working on Traffic Street stuff. Even after she broke up with me and I moved seventeen hours south, she called on the eve of the last movie’s release. “You should go see it at midnight too and it’ll be like we’re going to see it together!”
Hilarious!
Heather and I had been dating for three months and had plans to hang out. I called her. “Oh – I just finished reading the first Harry Potter book and now I’m watching the movie – I’ll call you when it’s over.”
I didn’t like Spirituality Group because I didn’t have any spirituality. But it was Thursday afternoon at Tranquil Shores so that’s what was happening. I was especially miserable on this particular day and it got worse as group went on. Toward the end, we were given an assignment: Write a letter of forgiveness (to yourself) and share it with the group. I wouldn’t share but I kind of wrote the letter.
Dear Sam, You are a total fucking shithead. You gave up on everything a long time ago. Though you sometimes have brief moments of optimism, they’re few, far between, and extremely short-lived. Everything you say is calculated and contrived. You may be the most dishonest asshole to ever walk the earth. I’d like to forgive you on the grounds that you’re doing the best you can – that you can’t help but be a miserable little prick – but even that’s not true. If you wanted to be a better person, you would be. And you’re not even nice to look at! How have you not been choked out yet? People can’t stand the fucking sight of you. Even your voice is outrageously obnoxious. Every day that you continue to live is either a slight against God or proof that he doesn’t exist – or at least doesn’t care about anything anymore. Or maybe you’re the new plague for the twenty-first century! Sent down to punish this wretched world gone awry. Only YOU are deluded enough to (even jokingly) attribute that kind of significance to your stupid presence. All I know is that people, and the planet, would be better off without you around. Please kill yourself now. Unfortunately, time has shown that you’re too weak to even bust that move. Seeing as you’re too pathetic to even express in words (given the limitations of human languages) I’ll forgive you. It’s a pity thing. It must be hard to be so worthless and rotten. Besides, I’m not one to hold grudges. I just hope that you’re somehow miraculously transformed or that – somewhere out there – there is some kind of hell for you to burn in one day. Love, Sam
As a kid, I’d always said that I didn’t believe in God. Sometime in my early twenties, my position went even further. I wasn’t willing to identify with atheism because I didn’t want to stake any claim — and because I didn’t want to identify with atheists (who often seemed as righteous and fanatical as the worst evangelicals). And agnosticism was just dopey (or agnostics were anyway). They were to spirituality what undecided voters are to politics. I wasn’t undecided – I didn’t give a shit. I was a non-voter, a total non-participant. If anyone asked if I believed in God, I’d tell them it wasn’t a relevant question – that it meant nothing to me.
In trying to not be a heroin addict anymore it had become necessary to let some of that antipathy slip away. I had taken to talking about God as if I believed.
But this was Spirituality Group and I hated it. I looked at the letter I had just written and I hated that too. It was like I was trying to be clever with my self-loathing. It made me hate myself even more. I flipped over the letter and started scratching an upside-down cross onto the page, around which I wrote I FUCKING HATE GOD for making me this fucking stupid.
This was on November 1, 2012 – before I learned to use art for emotional regulation. If this is art though, then this is the first time I did it (even if by accident). After scratching down the last of my authentic expression [the words I HATE EVERYTHING] I wasn’t done but I didn’t know what to do. “What else do people consider evil?” I thought.
From that point on, each thing I wrote was sillier than the next. I wasn’t miserable anymore, I was actually having fun.
My favorite part / the coup de grace came when I snuck the leastevil thing that I could think of onto the page.
“You Make Me a Worse Person (I’ll Feed My Negativity and Roast in My Fucking Hate).” 6/21/13. Colored pencil. 9×12″.
I had to bring my scooter with me because I was going to be in south Florida for the next month. When I loaded it into the back of her car, I accidentally scraped the bumper. She was angry.
The document verifying that I had completed my community service was due with my probation officer that afternoon. I asked if we could stop somewhere to print it out before we left town. That was also a problem.
We were in no hurry and my probation was on the line. This was important to me. Why was it an issue? I didn’t understand. I was hurt so I didn’t insist upon it; I just got in the car, dejected.
We had a four-hour drive and in that time we didn’t speak at all. Eleven days after moving in together and just two days after the explosion of sunshine and fucking rainbows that was “Out All Day,”this is what came out of me… In bits and pieces, it says:
FUCK EVERYTHING. I’m ready to be dead now. This is a drain. I failed today. Can I say “everyday?” Fuck community service. Fuck being a responsible human being. Fuck the scratches on your stupid fucking car. Fuck our apartment. You make me a worse person. I’ll feed my negativity and roast in my fucking hate.
[If you’re not familiar with borderline personality disorder, that’s what it looks like]. Here’s what I wrote about this piece when I was done with it:
I don’t wanna share this ’cause I don’t wanna give people the impression that I’m unhappy. But fuck that. Real life isn’t a simple narrative on a straight trajectory in one direction. My art can say, “I couldn’t be happier,” one day, and “fuck everything, I’m ready to be dead now” on the next. That’s reality and I’m not into painting a picture of my life that’s any less honest than I’m capable of being.
This scribble isn’t exactly “art fully realized” but I held on to it like I would a photograph. It’s a document, an artifact, or a memory – and not a bad one. This was cathartic and it was an opportunity…
I didn’t have my website yet but I was already regularly sharing my artwork and (sometimes) related writings through my Facebook page. To that extent, my day-to-day and my emotional process had become a public spectacle of sorts. I always feel awkward acknowledging this but my art has come to mean something to people (friends, fans of my old record label, even total strangers). I’ve received more than a few emails and messages from people telling me how powerfully they’ve been affected by something I made or wrote. I’ve been regularly called “an inspiration.” [I feel especially awkward acknowledging that]. But it’s been amazing, encouraging, and – in turn – has truly inspired me. One consequence, however, is that I feel like I have a responsibility now. With this piece, I had a choice: Did I want to be some icon of hope or did I want to be honest about what my life, in recovery, is really like? In sharing it, I opted for the latter, and I’ve done my best to honor that decision every day since.
——
When I first added this piece to the website, there was a journal entry from that day (9/22/13) along with it. I later decided to make that a separate entry.
“Punched in the Dick By a Baby Gorilla.” 9/21/13. Pencil and marker on vellum. 8×10″.
After a couple of days, not having Adderall really drastically hurts my mood, energy, and outlook but – if I just miss a dose – the only consequence is… silliness.
Months ago, riding in the car with Heather back in Bradenton, I had gone longer than I should have without Adderall and I decided that (the idea that I’d been) “punched in the dick by a baby gorilla” was the funniest thing ever. I spent ten minutes finding any excuse at all to say the words, “punched in the dick by a baby gorilla.” Like, over and over again. It’s not really in line with my usual sense of humor, is totally stupid, and – it’s just absurd. Which is probably why I thought it was so funny at the time; it was funny that I’d even had a thought like that.
Last night, after I started to feel a little better, I spent a couple hours painting. Smoking a cigarette, looking at Instagram, I saw something my friend Trey made. I like my art a lot, but every now and then I wish that I actually had the talent to put an image on my canvas exactly as it appears in my head. Unfortunately, that takes practice. Which is what Trey’s sketch inspired me to do. For some reason, the baby gorilla thing came to mind so I went with that.
I realize that any high school art student could bang this out in two minutes or less but anything other than a cartoon Sam standing perfectly upright is still pretty tough for me. It took me two hours to get to the point where I was ready to color and outline this. It was good practice though and I had fun making it.
“Weird Kids With Bad Teeth.” 2/27/13. Acrylic paint, pen, duct tape. 4×4″.
I alluded to this piece in “Titrating,” when I described myself as feeling scared, stuck, and trapped, but smiling. (See the red text in the background).
Like the pieces in “The Weak End” series of paintings, this (along with several others) started out as one large painting that I eventually cut up into a lot of smaller ones. Unlike that series though, all of the paintings in this series (“Your Higher Power is Literally Garbage”) were painted and repainted so much that they don’t really share much in common.
In the center of this piece is a strip of pink duct tape that I drew on, while riding in the car, because I had no paper. Yet another weird/poor drawing of a kid with fucked up teeth. It’s pretty representative of my belief that I’ve got a lot more willingness than I do talent (or even creativity).
As often as I feel “inspired,” I’ve got nothing. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still have the need to create something. So I do. Because it’s good for me. It helps me, emotionally.
And if you read my last post, you know that right now is one of those occasions where I desperately need to create something. And I knew that I’d come to that conclusion if I wrote up the entry for this piece, which is why I chose to write an entry around “Pulp” first. I wasn’t ready to do what I needed to do to get better. But I am now.
In writing this statement, I struggled with a tendency to dwell on details that aren’t significant because to skim over them or take anything for granted would run the risk of someone getting the wrong idea. And with something like this, that’s not really a risk I want to take. My intention is not, after all, to upset anyone.
Still, I don’t want to waste anyone’s time “defending myself” either. There’s enough of me up on this website for any interested parties to get a pretty good idea of what kind of a person I am.
I wrote this statement months ago, but spent the last two hours trying to find the right balances concerning caution, brevity, honesty, and intention.
“Toilet Humor.” 11/10/12. Watercolor paint, colored pencil, white kids paint, and black crayon. 9×12″.
Pedophilia is a mental illness characterized by sexual attraction to prepubescent (undeveloped) boys or girls. People can’t control whom they’re attracted to. It’s a mental disorder. I don’t suffer from pedophilia, but I have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I understand what it’s like to have a brain that causes a person to think in ways that they’d rather not. However, just as it’s not okay for me to let my thoughts or feelings control my actions to any extent that would cause harm to another person, it’s not okay for anyone else to do so either – regardless of their specific mental disorder. Being attracted to someone doesn’t give you the right to have sex with them. And since a child isn’t capable of intelligently consenting to sex, it’s not ever okay to have sex with a child.
Shit gets a little bit less clear-cut when we’re talking about adolescents though. An adolescent is a person that has reached physical maturity, and that’s the point when, by nature, others (regardless of age) will begin to find them sexually attractive. Sixteen is the age, in Florida, at which people are (legislatively) deemed to have hit puberty and are thus legally capable of consenting to sex.
Personally, I’m not particularly interested in talking to a sixteen year old, let alone having sex with one. Physical maturity doesn’t equate to emotional maturity and any kind of intimate interaction with someone who’s still emotionally a “child” is nothing I want to experience.
The phrase “sex with children” is interesting to me. Because the word “children” is ambiguous, because teenagers are marketed as sex objects, because statutory rape laws are inconsistent between the states (and are sometimes totally fucked), and because there’s nothing in the world that can spark feelings as intense and hateful as pedophilia.
And because when I was eighteen, I started dating a girl two months before she turned sixteen. So – according to Florida law – I could have been convicted of statutory rape and – had that happened – even now, nine years later, everyone in my neighborhood would have gotten a notice in the mail to inform them that I, a sex offender, was now living in the area.
Adolescents are adults physically, but children emotionally. If two of them have sex with one another, it’s absurd that one should be convicted of a crime. Especially when that conviction (and mandated registration) carries the same stigma as being branded as a pedophile or a rapist.
I’m not eighteen anymore though so that part of this is no longer personally relevant. And while it’s possible that I could still potentially see or meet a sixteen year old that I found attractive, as soon as I found out her age, that would totally overpower any physical attraction that I felt and kill every shred of my interest in her. Still, despite the fact that I live in a culture in which girls that age are marketed to adults, as adults – with sex – to sell [whatever]… it’s still uncomfortable for me to acknowledge. That (and that it’s such a delicate issue, generally), I feel, makes it worth examining.
The decision to paint something with a swastika came as the result of a really silly conversation (earlier on the day that I painted this) that got me thinking about context and symbols (or statements) that evoke powerful emotional responses.
A piece of art communicates a lot of different messages (whether intended or not) and the nature of art is such that the intentional messages aren’t always immediately clear. For that reason, while I understand that art can upset a person for any number of reasons, it seems pretty unreasonable that anyone should ever become angry (or, specifically, angry with the artist) on the sole basis of their interpretation of a piece. So I wanted to play with that, using the most powerful symbol of hate that I know: the swastika.
Since I was already plotting to paint something as prima facie controversial as “Sex With Children,” I figured it made sense to do this all in one blast. By putting that phrase and this (totally unrelated) symbol together, I thought I could accomplish everything that I wanted by bringing these things to the surface in a way that is so absurdly offensive that no one could possibly walk away from it thinking that it was created with malice of any kind. To believe otherwise would be to think the piece is a declaration that I support (and enjoy!) the fucking of children BUT HATE JEWS. I’d like to think that it’s totally implausible that there exists in the world anyone who’d feel the need to paint something with that communiqué as his or her end.
I would be really upset to find out that anyone was personally offended by this. On the other hand, anyone who has a problem with it because “it’s [potentially] offensive [to someone else]” (and hasn’t themselves been the victim of pedophilia or anti-Semitism) can fuck off.
On the other hand, anyone that has a problem with this because “it’s stupid” – well, that I totally understand. I’m not sure that I’d even disagree with you. Everything I’ve written is true but also, admittedly, I probably painted this just to fuck with people a little bit. I might enjoy making people just a little uncomfortable.
!["Evil" [original piece]](https://samnorth.art/wp-content/uploads/ifuckinghategod-300x233.jpg)
