The Anger

The Anger 

 

<Last week: A Scary True Story

 

It is a clear, warm Monday morning, and I’m sitting here at the keyboard trying to type through a deep brain fog. I got back home yesterday afternoon after a very long drive and a couple days of non-stop smokin’, drinkin,’ and  bullshitting with a couple of old friends up northern California way. It was good. 

That web of coincidence that initiated this project has stretched far and deep into my life, and even touched the lives of people I knew from long ago. This last weekend was a byproduct of the long chain of events that began with my saying “yes” to a visit to the Sawdust Festival a couple years back.

And this rambling bit of a post is a byproduct of spending the last week getting ready to travel, traveling, and returning home, and not getting a heck of a lot done with the Project.

The scary story post from last week seemed to generate a lot of traffic for the blog. I traded a couple of notes on the story with Pete’s brother Richard, who brought up an important point about Pete. 

I have written on many occasions that Pete was “wildly eccentric”, or even mad.

He was all of that, and it was readily apparent to anyone who met him. Some found Pete’s eccentric manner fascinating; others found him-- I guess, “Off-putting” would be a good way to put it.

And Pete knew it. He was always misunderstood. He was always  too painfully aware that a great percentage of the people he encountered in life dismissed him as an odd ball, and would never take him or his work seriously. He carried tremendous anger.

Richard made this poignant observation on Pete’s narrative of the Scary Story event:

“…Having read it this time I was intrigued by Pete's matter a fact recall of events, and justification for shooting these creeps without any apparent remorse. Peter was a gentle soul when it came to nature,  people...not so much.”

We all talked about this at Pete’s memorial. Yes, he had tremendous anger, bitterness, and raw hatred for people, for the world, and especially  for the builders who destroyed the hillsides. He had weapons and firearms. In the realms of his imagination Pete  wreaked incredible violence on his enemies.

Yet he took out that rage in his writings, his audio tapes, his paintings, and most often, in the “mad ravings” posters that I covered several posts back. And alcohol. There was always the alcohol.

But he kept his demons confined in the darkness of his imagination. Pete never hurt anyone. He never threatened anyone. He never took revenge for the slights, the disrespect, or the dishonesty of others.

Next week we’ll take a look into the darkness. Pete loved the macabre, and he was good at expressing it. Hold on tight. It’s gonna get all kinds of creepy here for Halloween.

Next. A note from the Scribe

Some New Stuff Some Old Stuff

 Some New Stuff Some Old Stuff

<last week: Where we've been and Where We're Going

It has been a quiet week here at the Lost Canyon Project.  I’ve been working on the material from Pete’s Lost Era show, transcribing the story from Pete’s hand written notes, and cropping and squaring the jpg. images in Photoshop. The images posted today are some of the finished pieces.

Mostly it’s slow and, after a while, tedious work. I had wanted a good digital SLR camera for a long time, and the Project gave me a reason to finally buy a Canon EOS. And that right there should give you all a clue about how much experience with photography that I didn’t have. 

 I had done some desk top photography about ten years ago when I had to sell off a collection of Japanese toys. I learned enough of what I needed to know to accomplish that one task.

With the Lost Canyon Project I was faced with a similar situation. There wasn’t time to enroll in a class, and learn about all the things the camera is capable of doing. I don’t know any professional photographers to whom I could turn for advice.

So I had to wing it. I set up Pete’s old easel in my den, bought some black velvet, and a set of lights, and let the computers do the thinking. 

  The purpose, after all, was to create an inventory, not an art piece. Even so, most of the images came out OK. But they need fine tuning.

I wrote about this in a much earlier post. Shooting a rectangular picture on a rectangular easel, and fitting it into the rectangular frame of the camera lens seems to be a pretty straightforward task. 

And it is. But if the camera and easel aren’t  lined up precisely, the image comes out  skewed. (above) Sometimes this is unnoticeable until you go to crop the image. And Pete was none too fussy about the material he painted on. 

 Many of the pictures are on uneven scraps of matboard, paper, or even cardboard. The other difficulty that I was much less successful with was the reflective glare from heavily lacquered pictures. Luckily, Photoshop has the tools to correct  most of these little deformities. But as I said, it’s niggling, fussy, tedious work to get them just right.

I’ll close this morning’s post with a bit of a teaser. Pete’s brother Richard sent me a large packet of material from Pete’s private journal. I’ve read through most of it, and there are some great background stories on some of the paintings. I’ll be sharing some of this in later posts. Pete also wrote about a heart pounding encounter that he had with some very sketchy characters while he was camped out deep in one of the canyons above Whittier. 

Next week: Scary True Story>

Mold To You and Other Tales

Mold to You--You Made Marks in My Driveway -- The Midnight Terror. 

As I mentioned last week, there was a lot less material on these stories than I expected. As far as I know these grizzly tales were never developed into anything like a complete show. I haven’t found a story written out like “The Deep Dark Hole”. Of course there is still much material to look through. My recollections of these pieces are sketchy, at best. I remember them more as Pete’s one-man performances.

You Made Marks in My Driveway

The villain in “You Made Marks…” was an evil farmer with a mutilated face. I believe a crabby neighbor of the Hamptons was the inspiration for the character. The evil farmer hated teen-agers because they drove hot rod cars, and messed up his dirt/gravel driveway. I can still see Pete acting the crazed old man  with his furious, wheezy high-pitched farmer voice, “YOOOOO made marks in my drivewaaay!

"An old lady tells grizzly ales left from the 1940's and early 50's

The old farmer 73 years old...

My husband does strange things to the animals on this farm. He hangs them to dry in the sun. They dry up, the withered muscle, drawn flesh, and dried blood are bleached in the hot sun on the barn door. 

The farmer made monsters out of mutilated animals, and the hapless kids he captured and killed. 

The serpentine thing dropping from the attic was made from the spine of a young boy fused to a chicken neck. 

The farmer tries to murder the trapped boys with an axe, but somehow, in the tradition of all great low-budget horror, ends up getting killed himself. 

The Midnight Terror

 

 

 -is more in the line of a traditional monster movie, but I can’t recall anything of the story behind the monster. 

The thing from the midnight terror comes crashing through the shed in the Oilwell hills. It was 9 feet tall, and a tube like a gas mask and a red eye. A low, buzzing tubey sound in the dark above the almost frightened barking of dogs.  There was some horrible thing that we were afraid of earlier that eerie night.

I can still hear Pete's impression of the creature: 

“WHRRZHHH, WHRZHHH…. WHRRZZHHH, WHRRZHHHHHH.  

 
The dog tore the eye out of the thing for The Midnight Terror. Phosphorous red on the floor.

 Of course, it dies in the fire.

Well end this archive on a slightly lighter, and less creepy note. "Mold to You"  is not  a horror movie, but a true story that Pete told often. I do remember it pretty well. I seem to remember a painting of this dream, but the picture that I found of the rock is a cut-out.

I have taken the liberty of re-creating the tale in the first person as Pete told it. 

Mold to You

I dreamed I was walking in the yard, when I tripped over a rock. The rock grew an ugly face, and cursed me in a growling voice: 

 

“Mold to you!  MOLLLD TOOO YOUUUU”

The next morning I was in the kitchen. Mother wasn’t there so I quietly opened the cupboard, took the lid off the maple syrup, and took a big gulp straight from the bottle. The syrup was spoiled, and I got a big mouthful of horrible green mold. The rock’s curse came back to me, “Mollld to youuuu.”
___________

 I have opened the sixth archive of paintings, and looked at a selection of the pieces, although I haven’t  begun an inventory or a photo session. We’ll get a look at some very early work in this next collection.

Posting next week will be delayed. My wife and I have some serious silliness planned in Las Vegas this next week.

Oh, and one final note. Ukraine? My blog statistics tell me that I have had quite a few page-views from Ukraine. Perhaps these are bots of some sort? Or do I have actual visitors from so far away? If so, please drop me a comment. I’m curious.