Dionysius Burn

In the trademark musicality of Dionysius Burn myrtr burn brain screaming words faster than I can slam them into the keyboard of syntax digital binary encodement of computer flat screen seen or unseen beyond capillary renderings of blood and fire muse gleanings smashed against the old bones of geriatric renderings while the reality of place and time corrupt the Doors song into “the whores creep past my window/with a sonic vacuum”.

A neighbor stopped by yesterday and asked me to sign a petition protesting the activity of prostitutes in this small cul-de-sac with me signing it although they never bother me for who knows why but the reality is that I've never paid for pussy in my life. That surreal chasm between discarded needles and somewhere in this world there's a #metoo movement protesting the sexual harassment of women by powerful men in society. What's next? Porn stars accusing producers of porn movies of taking advantage of their position of power for sexual favors? The whores come around. They're on their way to a neighbor's apartment as I go check the mail or drag my garbage can back from the street on trash day. They talk to me like it's another day in the neighborhood. “You'll get sick running around with bare feet in this weather”, she said as though she cared about my health and well being. That's how the whores in this neighborhood treat me. The artist with no money. I feel like Toulouse-Lautrec but this is no Paris. This is not Paris.

This is Morristown Tennessee. Home of the Trojans. The second largest distribution network of illegal drugs east of the Mississippi River operates out of this town. Where back in the 1920's a couple of young men went out west to Saint Louis and robbed a bank. They evaded arrest and one of them used his winnings to buy a car dealer franchise when he got back home. In 1986 I met a young woman from Switzerland who was here teaching German at one of the high schools. She invited me to visit her one Sunday afternoon in the spring. I had just finished an oil painting. “Surface Information”. A still life. The challenge was to do the table so that there were no visible table legs underneath it but it didn't look like it was floating. I created the illusion of nothingness no one noticed. The final mark was a splash across the canvas going through the wine bottle. I put a piece of paper over the wine bottle to give the illusion of the splash going through the bottle. The splash of oil paint landed perfectly. It left hair standing on end. I was ready to get out of the house and decompress for a few hours. Talk to another human being. Ground. Recompose from the Dionysius Burn muse gleanings. Underneath the surface was multiple layers of paint from the effort. Left on the surface was the markings of Samsara. No one knows the depths. There were no photographs of the work in progress. I followed her directions to the house where she was living up on Crockett Ridge above Morristown. Home of the grandson of the bank robber. She took me into his study to introduce me to him. He was bent over some bookkeeping ledgers in the years before Excel. He nodded his acknowledgment and we retreated to her basement apartment to discuss education and her background of attending the Waldorf school in Switzerland. Later she told me that I couldn't park my pickup truck out in front of the street of the house because of what the neighbors might think. I never parked my truck out there again. Dionysius Burn.

She had me meet her in the parking lot of the K-Mart a few hours before she flew back to Switzerland. It was a brief goodbye. A hug and a peck on the cheek. I went home to finish up the works for the upcoming show at the Mayor's Gallery in Knoxville in July, 1986. I was riding out the stress of anticipation related to allegations of sexual abuse my ex-wife would be reporting. She had already reported the allegations to the Child Abuse Hotline in Chicago alleging that a married couple there had been participants of the alleged sex abuse of my sons. “Allege” becomes a word of common usage as I grappled with this Brave New World of Dionysius Burn. I installed one of the best one-man art shows of a living artist up to that point. Nothing sold. I cancelled my plans of using the money to go to Switzerland. The allegations were reported to the law enforcement here in Tennessee. They were found to be unsubstantiated. They succeeded in accomplishing their goal of stopping me from ever having visitation with my sons without supervision (twice). Now she could tell our sons that they could never come back to Tennessee to live with me. Dionysius Burn

The whores walk past my window. They can see me washing dishes through my kitchen window. This reality where I am an open book. That is my reality TV audience. Exiled in Morristown. Foreclosure back in 2007. I lost the farm. Dionysius Burn. Now I am reduced to living in an efficiency apartment in the projects. I do my painting out back. The car died almost four years ago. I sold it so I could buy a new Iphone. Now I am walking or riding the Housing shuttle. A year ago I was walking to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting at a church in downtown Morristown. As I was walking past a church across the street a block up from my destination a vehicle came out of the parking lot and hit me in the back. I was thrown off the side of the vehicle and it drove off. It stopped and came back. I laid on the street in the rain and watched it back up half a block and stop a car's length from my body. I got a ride to the emergency room where they did CT scans and determined that I would live. I walked back to my apartment in the rain. The Morristown police issued a citation of improper crossing. I contested it. The hearing was a farce. It didn't matter that I wasn't in the business district even if I had been crossing the street, there were no witnesses that testified that I was crossing the street in front of the church, not even the alleged driver, who was so senile she didn't even remember what kind of vehicle she had allegedly been driving. Whomever was driving that vehicle hit me intentionally and then hid and let the passenger take the blame. I had to pay the ticket. $102. The judge said that the woman wasn't at fault because I was somewhere that I shouldn't have been. So the tax payers footed the medical bills as the citation blocked me from suing the alleged driver. Dionysius Burn

A year later and the statue of limitations is up. Someone got away with running me down and leaving me lying in the middle of the street to die. They should have killed me while they had the chance. This is Morristown Tennessee where the whores walk past my window. Money doesn't just talk. It controls those who have it and who don't have it. It's a scene played out like the early morning hours when a pack of dogs come across a lone dog and take turns fucking it in the ass. Only I out ran the dog pack but I didn't out run a moving vehicle. I got up and kept going in spite of the pain and throbbing headache from the traumatic brain injury. I think about my audience. What is it that I can pass on through my art that will demonstrate these moments of wisdom and insights into the Deep Nothing? The cars hiss by my window. My head explodes with mindfulness. I am awake. I have awaken. The teachings are too thick with fancy talk. Or the teachings are lost through genocide. Humanity roams the streets at dawn in search of a lone dog to fuck. My fingers are numb from nerve damage. I am an old man. Dionysius Burn. My audience walks past my window and asks what I am cooking. Here are my rantings of art work. Here is what I have left of the torturing inspiration of muse gleanings. Here is what I have left of a life where I refused to be burned at the stake. Dionysius Burn.

Oliver Loveday © February 18, 2020 3:10pm EST