My Andy Warhol: An American Valentine

Dad was a performance artist. I hadn't even heard of the word when I was seven, let alone what it might have meant, but if Dad wasn't a bona fide, dues-paying member of that body fluid spraying tribe, then I don't know the meaning of the term. I can remember Dad settling a bet with a next door neighbor, and he cut him a check.

But not just any check. Dad got a big piece of poster sized bristol board, a sharpie marker, and a ruler, and got down to business. Mr. Deutscher even cashed that bristol board check, although I don't think the bank was too happy about having to honor it, but honor it they did.

Which is a long, very roundabout way of saying that if I have even the smallest spark of creativity in me, it probably comes from my father. Unfortunately enough for Canada, that sort of creativity didn't attract a lot of media attention on the Canadian prairies during the eighties. Nor did it pay the bills. Dad had to work full time at a discount clothing retailer to do that. Art was just something he did, unconsciously, on the side.

On the other hand, if you happened to be Andy Warhol, and you lived in New York, art was something you could do very consciously, full time as a matter of fact, and not only pay the bills, but make even more money than what a Canadian discount retailer could ever dream of making. Not only that, but your death would attract considerable media attention.

I don't think I really knew or understood what the difference between Canada and the USA was until I watched that CBC documentary on Andy Warhol. I'd never given any thought to where I would live when I was older, let alone where I wanted to live. But after watching that tribute to Andy Warhol, I knew that Saskatchewan wouldn't cut it. The images and, ironically, the music ("Andy Warhol" by David Bowie was playing in a continuous loop during the documentary) and the lifestyle, well, it was as far away from Claude Langevin landscapes, potato salad, paper mills, and guys wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts as a geek could get in those days.

At this point, I should say that all this occurred during the eighties. There were no two-hour waits to see a GP at a Canadian hospital and, despite the slightly higher unemployment rate, I suspect that those who were gainfully employed could have counted on a level of job security that an American probably couldn't be certain of. Pinkie (especially the Canadian variety) brains routinely got their panties in a bunch about Ronald Reagan wanting to destroy the world. New York was an ungovernable hellhole, and American manufacturing had seen much better days. Living in Saskatchewan or Manitoba wouldn't, and in fact shouldn't, have been such an unattractive option.

But unattractive it had become. Being a Mad magazine reader, I was well aware of all of America's negatives, but there was something so much more magnetic about our neighbors to the south. I might have gotten Andy Warhol's paintings confused with Ray Lichtenstein's canvasses, but the point is they both popped in a way that a Group of Seven poster never could. Even during what everybody thought was a decline in American influence, the culture still had more energy and vitality than everybody else. And I wanted to be a part of it.

And I would become a part of it, quite literally, as I currently live quite happily in Alexandria, Virginia with my beautiful California girl. However, I think being an American is as much of a state of mind as it is about living in an actual physical location, and I hadn't quite reached that stage yet. Andy Warhol was going to help me get there.

It was easy enough to look at picture of Frank Zappa, and say, "Cool man:"



And then see a picture of Gordon Lightfoot and snicker, "How lame:"


But it's a little harder, at least when you're worried about slipping a rung or two further down the socio-economic ladder, to embrace Kid Rock, at least in all his bizarre, hedonistic, let your freak-flag fly high glory:



Ella Fitzgerald and alt-rock were what I believed to be the more socially acceptable musical options, but I did have my go to hell moments. For my money, I prefer the lesser-known work of Vaughn Bode, to the more high-brow stuff produced by Robert Crumb. I've always had an affection for the works of P.J. O'Rourke and Tom Wolfe, but there was a time when I'd have explained my interest in Stephen King as nothing more than junk reading.

I don't want to come off as some reverse-snob, pissing on somebody's high-brow tastes just to justify some of my low-brow tastes. As a matter of fact, I don't really see it as high- or low-brow anymore, it's all just part of one big, beautiful... no-brow. The highs and lows can't exist without each other, and the best way to appreciate either extreme is to embrace the other side with equal vigor.

And that's what I love about living down here. I love that go to hell ethic, like the colors in a silk screen by Andy Warhol. It took me awhile to appreciate it. I had my own hang-ups about slipping further down the socio-economic ladder, but I managed to get glimpses of that freedom, of just liking something for the hell of it, and not giving a fuck what anybody really thought.

The first time I saw Takashi Murakami's artwork was in 1997, in South Korea. I couldn't read hangul, so I didn't know who he was. I couldn't play the status game, one-upping my imagined betters. I just liked those paintings, statues, and big balloon installations because... the colors "popped," like Warhol, and Murakami was riffing off the Japanese anime I'd grown up with as a boy and young adult. It was brilliant. I didn't know why, or even how, but I knew it was... beautiful.

It took awhile, but that was where it all began. I couldn't articulate it at the time, but it was the first time that I realized that there was nothing wrong with what I liked. I already knew it was okay to like William Faulkner and Ella Fitzgerald, but it was also okay to embrace The Cramps and Stephen King. Andy Warhol was great, but so were Playboy and the illustrations in Stephen King novels. I was raised just as much on the latter, even if my parents didn't know it, and it was artistically every bit as valid as what Warhol was doing. In fact, I'm sure that it is what Andy had been trying to tell me along. Once I learned how to say, "Fuck it. I don't care what anybody thinks," I knew I would be happiest living in the USA.

So thank you, Andy, for the inspiration. Despite the best efforts of the Canadian media, pinkie-brains north and south of the Canadian/US border, brain dead politicians (with D's or R's behind their names), and the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, I've found a place to live - and thrive - that I love like no other.