Covering Covers # 5

Nobody really loves clowns. Most of us don't even like 'em. Not really.

For plenty of people, clowns are unnerving...They're slippery, and little bit creepy, and let's face it - there's little joy in their buzzery palms...We never know what a clown might do next, and that makes 'em just the slightest bit dangerous. Some of us like the excitement, but just as many of us aren't really into surprises...

Mainly, we don't like clowns because they are us. Garish, exaggerated reflections of who and what we are, and what we are is fear, confusion, lust, greed, violence, foolish thoughts and all sorts of sin...Struggling to make sense of a world we don't understand, and trying to act accordingly...Mostly failing, but when we succeed, it's usually in spite of ourselves, witless in the face of chaos...Fools running errands, running around in circles outside the center ring. And when our part of the show is over, then what? Are we nothing more than silly distractions between the trapeze act and the lion tamers?

Small victories over the mundane, perhaps, but no everlasting triumphs...Just a neverending handkerchief to blot away the endless tears of living...

Same existential crisis, different day.

Except clowns got deep pockets full of trickery, and a whole lotta nonsense up their sleeves...When life hands them lemons, they make balloon animals and reek of whiskey sours, and when they exit the spotlight, they've gained nothing but a few bruises and some nervous laughter from the rest of us cuz none of it makes any fucking sense, and that nonsense hits just a little too close to home for plenty of us.

(((The one and only time I rode the Seattle monorail, a dude in full clown regalia sat down in the seat in front of me, and paged lazily through a Hustler Barely Legal magazine while drinking from a paper bag.)))

And there but for the grace of God go I...Or you... Or that guy over there, or yr uncle Rollie...

Clowns are just trying to get by like the rest of us...Mostly scared of death, the great unknown, if the truth be known...But rather than retreat, rather than play victim, they react against nothing in the silliest ways imaginable...They don't know any better.

Some balance feathers and small dogs on various body parts, and others form rock bands and hire a stripper for the drumkit who sometimes (or at least one time) sipped urine from a teaspoon, and another time time pissed into a pot of chili before scarfing it down.

When life hands you a pot of chili, you gotta season it to yr own tastes, babycakes!

That's what the clowns are saying to us - That since life if a great big ball of confusion, and since God's got the biggest, most ridiculous shoes of all, and he's always kicking glittery uncertainty in our faces, well, maybe we gotta kick back a little bit ourselves...Go crazy right back...Squirt fire outta our flowery lapels and shoot confetti outta our asses...

The clowns are doing it, every day, with big britches and shit-eating grins, and we laugh our little nervous laughs at 'em, cuz we can't laugh with 'em. If we did that, well, we'd be laughing at ourselves, and that's that's an uncomfortable pie to the face for alot of us...

Not enough of us have the courage to be clowns, daring to defy our fears, willing to laugh at ourselves , to put on flowery dresses and wrestle bears from time to time...To drink embarrassing amounts of Irish Creme and sing Butthole Surfers tunes at karaoke night...To fart unabashedly in church...To tell the girl four cubicles away that we love her...That we lust for her...That we want to get a great big bucket of chicken and a Twister mat and see what kinda greasy fun might be had...

Alot of us have too much pride and not enough guts...Too much shame and not enough nuts...

So, this painting is just about the perfect distillation of the whole Butthole Surfers aesthetic, not just this particular album...They're nothing more or less than Rock'n'roll clowns with alot of guts and super-huge nuts...A bunch of freaks with no pride or shame, exaggerating not only the circus that is rock'n'roll for humorous and dramatic affect, but holding up a mirror to life and humanity itself, and showing us all exactly just how weird and ugly we are as a species...

Hotcha! Hank