(auto).bio.graph
MATTHEW MARS, human person, multidisciplinary artist and/or dilettante*, was launched into this here world as we know it, the 2nd of December, two thirds of the way through what was called, as you'll recall, the American Century, and fetched up, as one does, a member of a classic Nuclear Family of the Late 20th Century, First World, Suburbia, Left Coast. My parents had the requisite 2.5 children, of whom I was the first 1.3. You'll be startled to hear that my family was Caucasian though I don't ever recall so much as a trip through the Caucasus; mostly I think we were Irish, diasporic, yes, Catholic, no. Quite the contrary, we were bonafide tongue-talking/Sister Aimee-certified/Washed-in-the-Blood/Naming-it-and-Claiming-it/Foursquare Pentecostals and if you don't think that fucked me sideways and sent me down this path I've walked you ain't never been to Angelus Temple or a Kathryn Kuhlman Crusade and been Slain in the Spirit only to wake up later to find your Faith had left the building right about the same time you first read William Burroughs or cranked side two of Physical Graffitti (which happened concurrently w/the first time I ever smoked pot). I'm not saying she didn't lay her hand on my forehead; or that I did not levitate backwards, or float on the air. I'm not saying that I myself never spoke any given fundamental truth about the nature of eternal life in any given language unknown to me. I'm not saying that I did not believe. I may well have been the poster child for blind faith, the ultimate devil's advocate, far too concerned w/narrowing the distance between any given experience of glossolalia and any discrete occurrence of xenoglossia to actually challenge Heaven to prove itself. It is in the nature of belief, though, not to expect proof; in fact, proof would only render one's belief that much less meaningful. One makes his profession of faith, a confession, an auto da fe; one doubts, and doubts, and doubts. And so walking out the door, there goes Faith. Happens. And for reasons wholly impossible to articulate it has been and in fact and absolutely still is that abdication of belief that has come to act as the animating force behind just about everything I've created. And why on earth would losing my religion, like the song says, engender in me creation? Maybe I'm playing at God? The maker of galaxies, the artist making art. Maybe I couldn't stop if I wanted to and maybe I don't want to. Maybe I simply do not wish to put down my pen, or my camera, or the microphone. I wish I could say, I do, I really do wish I could say.
Among the many things that I create, the following: Melody. Haiku. Puppets constructed of papier-mâché, puppets spun up out of whole cloth. Every now and again, an okra gumbo. (Never a filè gumbo). Performance(s). Pictures, still and pictures, moving. Bad beat poker hands. Albondigas. Letters to the editor, any given editor. Installation(s). Arrangements for voice. Arrangements for chamber ensemble. Arrangements. Moves (what kind of moves? Dance moves, that's what kind of moves). A marriage. Then a divorce. And another. And another. A small press (meaning small press publishing, not, for instance, the stomping of grapes, in a container smaller than whatever size is usually used). An occasional sestina. A reoccurring sonnet. That one about unrequited love. Sunburn. I've fronted a few bands, written and published my poetry extensively, made pictures (out of the ether) saturated them in color(s), or gone down the monochromatic road and foregone color altogether. I made a molé from scratch once. I've been on a road trip with Ellyn Maybe. In fact, I've been at the drive through window with Ellyn and witnessed her fall apart completely, dissolved into spasms of giggles, unable to finish ordering the filet of fish sandwich she has been attempting to order since long before I started even to sketch here this biodegradable, bioluminescent (auto)biological apologia. I have made music in a million different moments, at a million different places, for a million different reasons, and for a million different people, yet somehow always, always, always for myself. I create. That is at the root of me--that I create. It is what I do. It is who I am. I have heard vaguely and through the grapevine that these things can be separated, one's person, one's behavior, but I am disinclined to discover otherwise .
These days I take and make pictures, portraits mostly, but I'll shoot anything that glows. And in my world and in my eyes just about everything does. My curriculum vitae has all the details, necessary and otherwise.
* you decide.
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