3.21.2025 - Weekly Digest

Good evening.

Occasionally these posts have a discernible theme.

This has not been one of those times.

So, like I said yesterday to the guy concerned about how many steps there were to the bottom of the mountainside staircase we were on: bonne chance and good luck!

This week I'm chuffed to introduce the paintings of Mike Donohoe. We are family so I'm biased but his sensibilities are familiar to me and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Everything is re-posted with descriptions in his own words at the bottom of this here digest.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

3.17.2025

I was not prepared for the emotional overload of the final episode of Lost. And I'm not really interested in writing about TV or reading writing about TV so I'll try to keep this interesting for both of us. 

I've had the show on at night while I do other stuff since I got to Canada. To be responsible I put the French subtitles on: les disparus. 

I never watched it when it originally aired. I was busy on weeknights, working in bars, going to bars, playing shows in bars or practicing for shows in bars. Network television was one of those parallel realities I was aware of but had no connection to.

A girlfriend I liked a lot was a big fan and she was rapturous about how it ended. I respected her opinions about art but things ended badly so I probably took it off my mental watchlist after that.

And I have problems with the show’s creator, J.J. Abrams, okay? His treatment of Star Trek was contemptuous and repulsive. But I see why he got the respect he did with this show. And I just learned he made the show Fringe too but I avoided it for a long time because people used to tell me I looked like the star and it's weird staring at someone who looks like you on a screen. Eventually I watched it anyway and enjoyed it.

Lost was often manipulative but I am not above being manipulated to feel things. And I'm sure there's some obvious analogy with my current situation and a story about a bunch of people stuck on a dangerous magical island.

If they explained the polar bear I missed it.

3.18.2025

In this one there's a lively karaoke show happening and performers are in full costume. I take a seat near the bookshelf. Someone dressed like a full-sized giraffe sings Katy Perry and I browse through a collection of pamphlets and zines. I'm reading something I agree with and check the cover and the author is Vladimir Lenin.

I found Leonard Cohen's mural. It's hard to miss - I was definitely in the wrong part of town last time. Looms up over Rue Crescent on what has to be a six story building. It's dignified and he looks content. Peaceful in contrast to what's happening down here on the street - St Patrick's Day mayhem, not localized to the States, apparently. I text my sister who runs a bar in Chicago. Worst weekend of the year, she says.

Dad asks if they follow March Madness here. Not that I know of but the arena where the Habs play was kicking when I walked by. They're on the brink of getting into the playoffs and everyone here cares, even the leftist co-op kids.

In the late '90s in the Detroit area the energy around the Red Wings was like this: when I went to see Dylan play at Pine Knob they were in a playoff game with the Blues and after the show in the parking lot all you could hear was the game in overtime on the car radios and when Yzerman scored the winning goal the whole highway erupted and there were flags out of windows and it was a kind of camaraderie and sense of community I almost never saw or felt down there and maybe I should have moved there instead or maybe even now but then I check the Associated Press feed again and yeah let's hold off on that a bit.

3.19.2025

I know you're wondering if I've been back to the laundromat. Good news!

Same guy was there so I let him know I'd been writing about the place. Felt creepy to keep it secret. Like I'm stalking him at work.

Today he had on 60s stuff, and when the Zombies came on I told him all about how I saw them play in Austin ten years ago on their Odessey and Oracle tour, which really was brilliant and they just killed it but these guys, they're pretty old, and I swear to you and anyone who saw that tour is welcome to back me up: the drummer had an assistant who kept time with him and nudged him when he started to nod off.

Time of the Season is one of my all-time favorite songs. It's up there with the best stuff the Kinks recorded in that era and I love them too. And they closed with it, of course (don't remember if they bothered with the whole encore charade), and everyone in the Paramount Theater was up out of their seats and the ceiling opened up and a light shone down upon us.

Fact checkers might be concerned that the venue does not have a retractable roof, and that the show took place at night. Just let a guy do his laundry and fantasize in peace you monsters.

3.20.2025

At a live taping of Taylor Tomlinson’s show. It’s a manic affair and feels haphazard but no one is concerned. I try to talk to her and come off as a creep. A woman next to me puts something on my arm, a hairpin, I think. I look over at her. I don’t know this person. She is small with an odd way of speaking. She indicates that we are now bonded. I get up and go talk to someone else. A series of Lyft rides all over L.A. I try to explain to someone that I’ve been all over the U.S., to almost every state and major city and I don’t feel a sense of wonder anymore. Hollywood feels like any other asshole neighborhood. Back to the studio and I’m trying to get a job. We don’t really hire anyone anymore, they say. These are the last days of the industry. And then of course there's a fire or a flood coming anyway.

Monastery. Medieval monks and nuns. There’s tension but the real concern is this mouse. Scientists are interested in the mouse, they want to kill it and dissect it, determine why it’s so intelligent. The mouse sees an image on a television screen of the world outside. It enters the image. I go too to help guide it and we both get lost.

I work at a grocery store. I just show up and now I’m the manager. People I worked jobs with twenty, thirty years ago are here. Deceased friend in a butcher’s apron. If I seem a little emotional, he says, it’s because I’m trying to get my hands on some lambs for Easter. They’re really expensive this year. Did you try calling Cadillac? I say. Yeah I’ve tried everywhere.

Mike Donohoe, Guest Artist

[find him on Bluesky: @kane4748.bsky.social]

The black and white devilish chap in the black suit and hat is inspired by "Colonel Mortimer,"  a character played by Lee Van Cleef in The Good the Bad and the Ugly. I sometimes paint in black on a white background.  It has a feeling of paper and ink. I miss the hey day of print media,  especially physical magazines and newspapers.  Though the trees benefit from the transition to electronic media. 

The shirtless long haired cat in the lotus position in a night scene, a girl's face looking on in the moon, is inspired by the movie, "The Wolverine." A departure among the X-Men movies in which Logan (Wolverine) regrets his immortality as everyone he cared about has died. Cheery stuff. Lol. "St. Wolverine." 

The crows flying against a blue sky between black silhouetted trees is another study in black.  Made on blue posterboard. Named after a song by The Church, "Before the Deluge." 

The coyote with the pine tree,  its roots as red veins connected to an underground heart, and crow flying in the mountains is "Heart Murmur." Free-flowing uncalculated imagery. The feel of the New Mexico wilderness as a spiritual consciousness. 

The wolf with sky and crows inside its facial profile is similar.  Night landscape with waterfall externally. A free wheeling exploration of a mystical feeling in nature. Realities within realities. Named "Anywhere Out of the World" after a song by Dead Can Dance. 

The big cat in the jungle at night, "Green Jaguar," was made in black paint on olive green posterboard. An experiment in carving the images out of the background rather than applying color and shape to a blank background. Lol. 

The canine beast in a red hat and red and white striped polo, a chain on its neck, is "Imaginary Friend." I came across an old monstrous wolf painting of mine and wanted to put a hat on him, and was inspired to make a new painting instead. It became a reference to a brief bittersweet period in a less than idyllic childhood when I saw my father for the first time in over a year in Pleasant Ridge,  a suburb of Detroit. So includes a blue Jay and a squirrel,  a green army man parachute toy, etc. The great beast is perhaps the elephant in the room. The darkness looming throughout my family and my life. I have considered calling it "Panic in Detroit " after a David Bowie song.