“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in..” ~Leonard Cohen.
Just wanted to reflect on this! I was talking with a friend about the drink “Kykeon” that is contained in the Kantharos bowl or large cup. Which contained “mainly of water, barley, and naturally occurring substances… wine, goat cheese or even pennyroyal! A psychoactive compounded brew.”
North Hollywood is a long drive from the San Fernando Valley. Well, now due to traffic as it has become overcrowded. Our politicians don’t seem to regulate building through droughts. The ratio of people, their cars and traffic are not part of any sensible equation either. So, more and more apartments, and more and more people, and traffic.
The endless crazy nightmare known as Los Angeles.
Human Flesh on Planet Earth Acrylic, oil on canvas. 39 x 34 x 2… (sample of painting)
Yet, regardless of this, I was excited to experience the exuberance of Michael M.P. Griffin’s art. I know him as the Cosmic Cowboy and his dog Atlas. We share in the punk rock narrative.
Watercolor, wax, acrylic, oil, varnish on acid free paper enhance Michael’s style. I engaged his art and was happy talking to him.
Karen and Johnathon presented TRANSFERENCE works on Paper by Michael M.P. Griffin at their gallery ArtHYPE which enfolds a nice space to mingle and look at art. Parking was a little difficult, but we just parked near the Iliad Bookshop and walked down to the Studios. A great private art walk.
I hear we get rain on Monday.
Agent Provocateur, Acrylic, oil on canvas. 59 x 82 x 1.5 in, 2018 (sample from painting)
I found this little altarpiece at my local bookstore. St. Francis fell out at one time and his head came off … but I glued it back on. I keep this on my hearth.
And though I am not Catholic I do love the mythology, history and narrative of his life and the Poor Clares.
Star Flower
Walking around the block a mile this evening, I thought upon wars happening on our Mother earth!
How despondent and sad I become.
At the same time a memory comes forward of a time in the early 1990s on Long Island New York.
I was visiting with the Poor Clares and the Franciscan Brothers. I corresponded with Sister Philomena for years. She told me once,
“It is best you join the world again. Meet someone, settle down, get married and have children.”
And so, I did.
As I was walking, I looked and saw a star blossom upon the ground I said to myself,
“Star I see you within this flower.”
I thought instantly of the Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon by St. Francis of Assisi.
Once years ago, I awoke to an invitation one morning to join in the reading of this with the Brothers and Sisters.
How lovely it felt to be there and feel such radiance of words.
The point of my memory and experience tells me this.
That we live in a contrary world of both beauty and heartache.
It is up to us to balance within ourselves these contraries the best we can.
Queens Rule The World, Punks In Space and Punk Drummers Whose Heads Exploded with a Big Loud Bang… Flopside Bubble Gum Comics
When I was a kid and things got too much to bear. I was often found in the boy’s room under the pool table reading Mad Magazine or Playboy editorials. Gahan Wilson was a great way to cosmically melt into the realm of humor. We are living through “too much to bear” times now.
I am bringing back my Flopside Comics if you haven’t noticed already. Mr. Fuck has been joining the racoons outside at night for free food. I laugh out loud at his eager face.
“Come on Hudley, lets laugh together?” He speaks as he scratches the window like the humor up my spine.
I will not define humor or who, what or why Mad Magazine did what it did? I loved the off-the/wall humor of Gahan Wilson. It turns me on and as any good or bad artist knows, it is how it makes us feel that matters. Humor attacks stress. Annihilating it from the face of this messed up planet.
“Most people were in bands, if not they did magazines, records, owned stores did artwork etc… it was a scene that begged to be contributed to, and ripe with contributors… X-8 and Tory were in Low Budget, who made their Hollywood debut playing over the Dils at the Whisky, Larry Lashwas in a weird Quick sort of band, Pooch was in a progressive (!) band, and I was their friend, couldn’t play anything, but still wanted to be involved.”
Al Flipside
Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine Issue #1 August 2, 1977.
Cover of my electric punk guitar.
I am not a musician. Sure, as a kid I played my parents old player piano. I could hear a song and I then played it on that old lovely musical hardwood black upright piano. My mom got me an acoustic guitar when I turned 16. Along with it was a record to learn chords. I did not follow it through.
I appreciate the lyrics and the sound. I have a knack for listening to the song in a way that is so satisfying to me and as my life went on, I found others like myself. Journalists, fanzine writers and ‘scenesters’ who supported a growing musical world. I will leave the real musicians and their creative genius to themselves. I sure love to hear and feel their songs though.
My dream last night took me to a multilevel club. It had a front door and back door; it had a bar and an outdoor patio. It was very easy to access. I had booked a one-day event to perform. I had my old guitar with me at all times. A guitar a band member gave me, and we had cut out the “Quaker Maid” milk symbol from a large ‘sheet metal sign’ to place on the front of my guitar.
Why I pulled that old guitar I had from the 80s into my dream seems strange to me. I also had my old fender amp.
There was a small stage in the bar where I practiced. Realizing I did not have a clue what I was doing. Yet when I touched my sweet maid, it made a loud punk sound. I thought this to myself while dreaming,
“I am going to go on stage here and play for my friends. Not having a clue what I am doing, I will just improvise … like I always do,”
The first person who greeted me at the door was Shawn Stern. He was drinking a beer and seemed very happy. Then as I walked through the club. The club was peppered with many characters, and I thought to myself,
“I will play a chord from my sweet maid and then read something from an editorial from an old issue of Flipside. Maybe this can be a spoken word event with improvised guitar sounds?”
Hudley, Glen E. Friedman, Shawn Stern, Lee Ving. Taken from Let Them Know 2008; The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records. /Stern Brothers.
Outside on the patio I sat with a couple of gals who were talking about another show. I was cool with that and then walked in Cliff Roman.
“The guys at that show were wearing TUXEDOS.”
He had a upside down smile on his face when I smiled at him as I was holding my sweet maid. Cliff was wearing all black with a big oomphy black sweater.
I realized I was at a club without my mask on. It felt so good to be out and about again. No fear and happy to be hanging out at a club again with others.
Then I awoke. I don’t go out to events much now. It seems like I still do in my dreams all the time. This punk rock thing is deep in my psyche!
“The butterfly teaches us to not be afraid of change and transformation for, as warm and fuzzy as a caterpillar may be, it is the butterfly that lives fully and beautifully after having endured the fear and darkness of the unknown to reach the light outside the cocoon.”
~ Pg. 178, SUN BEAR.
Sharing and setting limitations.
I had two dreams last night where my animus was most distinctly attracting my curiosity. I was offered delicious food which I did not have to go shopping for or cook. Then in another dream I was kissed on the neck and lips gently as in some film noir by a man who looked like Tyrone Power. My animus, the unconscious masculine side of a woman, was asking for attention.
I am listening!
Then awake from the dream world enjoying the morning, I was outside with the cats in my garden. A lovely butterfly came with the usual circle dance up to me from the west. I was focused on the symbol of spring as were my cats. Thinking it was a bit early for such a transformation to happen.
I went back into my cave and did research.
I pulled out two books; The Once & Future Goddess, A Symbol For Our Time by Elinor W. Gandon (1989) and Dancing with the Wheel The Medicine Wheel, Workbook by SUNBEAR (1991).
As always, I learned new things about art, nature and being in tune with a moments time of learning, is so important,synchronicity wise.
“Raven writes about what a courageous act of self-exposure it is for a woman to positively identify herself with her work and say something that challenges the existing and prevailing worldview. When she expresses herself without the support of a social, economic, and cultural base she has not participated in the mainstream of the culture. “The culture does not operate from her perspective. Her contribution has neither spoken to it, nor been understood by that system,” which is just what happened to Judy Chicago…
An energetic, assertive woman freely in touch with her own sexuality, and working directly from the erotic power, Chicago evolved an abstract form, the butterfly-vagina. This symbol was to become the core of her new iconography in The Dinner party, a monumental and complex work of art that is often misunderstood…
“The idea is obviously not to reduce all women to cunts, as society itself often does. [Chicago] sees the butterfly as metaphysical references to the whole issue of that it means to be ‘feminine,’ how that word reveals the slant in our values and how those values can be challenged by using the vernacular imagery of the female, ‘I was struggling with the issue of making the feminine holy.’ ”
Pg. 322 The RE-EMERGENCE OF THE GODDESS: A SYMBOL OF OUR TIME.
Arlene Raven (Arlene Rubin: July 12, 1944, Baltimore, Maryland – August 1, 2006, Brooklyn, New York) was a feminist art historian, author, critic, educator, and curator. Raven was a co-founder of numerous feminist art organizations in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
Punks in Space is the latest Flopside Comic to hit the trash. Long time buddy Kerry Love Canal tossed the idea my way as he mocked the other Bubble Gum comics that the crew at Flopside Comics put together.
Mr. Fuck and Mr. Shit were out near the bomb-shelter one night. With a beer and a fart, the stars started to glow, and Mr. Shit saw a shooting star. So, the shit hit the UFO train and so they started to put this together. Some of their favorite punks over the years.
As Mr. Shit said,
“Dudes are dudes, punks are punks but dudes who are punkers… they rule the cosmos, music wise and space wise!”
The Ancient Alien dudes were not to be found, only David Wilcock who just happens to live in the Santa Monica Mountains. Where his “Natural stargates,” or “time doors,” are discussed at this point. Mr. Fuck saw David share a trash can down the alley from his home, which is a bomb-shelter . They both take part in freeganism. Mr. Fuck believes in David’s theory of a parallel reality too.
From the Dead Kennedy’s to Plain Wrap, including all guitars, drums or loud singing; to the delectable, delicious orange drink Tang; the rockets, a flying sarcophagus, aliens, bright lights or abductions…
The crew at Flopside Comics blasts off screaming,
“All rockets a Go Go…”
Mr. Shit wants to thank Elon and Jeff for their inspiration, which he will not repeat here.
“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.”
-Jack Kerouac
Books tell us things about introverts and then computers came along, the internet and social media. The shy ones broke free. People tell me that they cannot use Zoom because they don’t have a computer. I see as they communicate on Facebook or Instagram. Applications go anywhere and there too. These are just the basics too.
Having a kitchen full of projects cooking on the back burner I like to stop and reflect.
7: When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
It came to my focus outside and was made from a drip on water. I looked upon the water stars in the pool. Looking like shooting stars these patterns of the water are remarkable to look at. I authored a poem or two about them before. A natural pattern of repetition, often bringing forth ancient symbols that show up throughout antiquity.
Outside in my garden by Hudley
Before the internet or computers or social media or Ancient Aliens and all the characters who we know so well now. I had to go to the library and look up books in a catalog. During the search for understanding I flowered towards an esoteric path. I went back to college. I studied strange and interesting sacred texts.
Yet between ufology and my religiosity I never understood what I did experience. Was it a UFO experience, was it an initiation, or was it my psyche reaching up from my unconscious to become conscious? Can it all be explained by a mathematical equation based on artificial intelligence? Maybe differential equations?
31: Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
It happened at home where I grew up. It was in the boy’s room. A place that was once an old garage converted into a place for the guys in my family to play pool, sleep and just be. It was beholding to an old player piano that was haunted by my grandmother. What I liked best about the room was the sound of the rain on the rooftop or the wind and when it howled outside.
As time passed it became a forgotten room. When visiting my parents in my teens I would sleep there on the ground in a sleeping bag. Sometimes to escape an often-challenging world I had become part of.
It was a night like this when I awoke to something tapping on a window from the outside. This was an east window over the hillside. I listened to it for some time. Then in walked a person that invited me to the window.
“Hurry, Hurry there has been a plane crash. We need your help.”
Flying over the San Fernando Valley took only a push from the window to the night sky. We were flying together like Peter Pan and Wendy.
As we approached the airplane crash it seems more of a UFO. A ship that was landed. I was guided towards the door. It opened and there was a small alien being dressed in a white robe with jewels.
A bean of light came from the being to my brain. The being, (what I now understand as downloading but didn’t know then) had many different images, symbols, words, and colors fill my being until I thought I would explode. I can say now the being had a light on my brain and was transferring data.
“Stop, please stop… I cannot take this anymore!”
It stopped and we flew back to the window. I laid down to sleep.
It was much later in life that I found Jacques Vallee and others who help me understand my mythological, scientific, religious or UFO experience.
Getting back to the “patterns of the water … as a natural pattern of repetition, often bringing forth ancient symbols that show up throughout antiquity,”
I can affirm that whatever happened happens often. It is in the simple parts of my life that the downloaded information reveals itself to me. A poem, film Noir, a song, or maybe a friend.
It is not a problem for me anymore but just part of life as knowing things and not knowing why—an intricate dance of understanding and mystery. Of seeing a reflection of a small link of lights from my hearth which often beam across and reflect upon a small circular mirror, creating a mesmerizing display akin to seven bright stars twinkling in the night sky.
These reflections remind me of the lovely jewels known as the Pleiades, a cluster so beautifully scattered across the cosmos that they evoke a sense of wonder and nostalgia, whispering tales of ancient myths and the countless dreams held within their radiant glow.
As I sit in quiet contemplation, the gentle flicker of the flames and the shimmering light create a symphony of warmth and serenity, weaving together the threads of memory, hope, and the endless search for meaning in the universe around me.
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
“The unruly vine and ivy, sacred to him, whisper his presence“
Aguilar, A. Marina. Alchemy of The Heart: The Sacred Marriage of Dionysos & Ariadne . Chiron Publications. Kindle Edition.
DETAILS Museum Collection Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Catalogue No. Toledo 1981.110 Beazley Archive No. N/A Ware Lucanian Red Figure ShapeKrater, Volute Painter Attributed to the Creusa Painter Date ca 380 – 360 B.C. Period Late Classical
Our Earth herself, I believe, longs for communion with her children. A return to the gifts of Dionysos might bring healing to her and to both men and women.
Aguilar, A. Marina. Alchemy of The Heart: The Sacred Marriage of Dionysos & Ariadne . Chiron Publications. Kindle Edition.
“a flash of lightning. Dionysus visible in emerald beauty.”
“Dionysus, Be wise Ariadne.
You have little ears, you have ears like mine. Let some wisdom into them! – Must we not forget first to hate ourself if we are to love ourself ?”
“I am thy labyrinth.”
“Ariadne is known to be the labyrinth”
Pg. 65… Friedrich Nietzsche, Dithyrambs of Dionysus.
The Hieros Gamos or Sacred Marriage was enacted in ancient times between women and this god, resulting in the continuance of life-giving sustenance, and more esoterically, in the completion of woman herself psychologically. Jungian Analytical Psychology explores the idea of sacred marriage as an inward event that matures a person, male and female. For a woman, finding a supportive inner masculine completes and empowers her. Her relationships are based on choice rather than neediness.
Aguilar, A. Marina. Alchemy of The Heart: The Sacred Marriage of Dionysos & Ariadne . Chiron Publications. Kindle Edition.
“Self forgetting virtue is an unnatural alienation from one’s own essence which is thus deprived of redemption.”
Tyrone Power
It is a sin to deliberately alienate the other from his self by means of one’s own virtuousness.
This sin rebounds on us.
It is submission enough, amply enough, if we subjugate ourselves to our self.
The work of redemption is always first to be done on ourselves. This work cannot be done without love for ourselves.
Selfless love is a sin, because it is not true. We can never abandon our self, or else we will abandon our work of redemption.
But we also should not use the other for our own alleged redemption. The other is no ladder for our feet. (91/92]
18.IX.15.309
It is necessary that we go into ourselves every day to reestablish the connection with the self. Through constant outward living we lose the self and through this we also become secretly selfish in our best endeavors.
What we neglect in ourselves blends itself secretly into our actions toward others.
Through uniting with the self we reach the God, who unites heaven and hell in himself.
The self is not God, although we reach the God through the self.”
239 [v.5], The Black Books, Carl Gustav Jung
The Marriage of Heaven & Hell / Image by William Blake
I try and walk around the block each day. Youngest son listens to me jabber jaw. Today it hit me as it has in the past. I research up the yin yang.
There are grants, sponsorships, and other means of acquiring funds to do a documentary.
They are the women in rock or journalism and the endless webinars that give out information but charge a fee. Yes, I fall back on a founder of the original Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine, Larry Lash, who says,
“We just did it… no one else was.”
So, even though I respect all the research and insights I have danced with… I think I will continue to do a documentary my way, the DIY way or Flipside way. Learning as I go and walking down a new path.
I mean marketing and proposals are fun things to do. It gets one all organized and looking crossed eyed. But this documentary begins as a creation story, morphing into the next Flipside Video.
A narrative close to my heart. Sold as a single CD or something… or streamed online for a little fee.
I know I must raise some money for a few items. Like a certain video camera & bundle I am drooling over and some cool editing software. Which suits me fine.
I can do fundraising here right on my WordPress site, in my cave, right next to the sleeping cats and my Praying Mantis tree outside.
A brave independent flower in my garden sharing her nectar…
Officially started this project a year ago…
Today is a brave day. I reached out to some of my favorite punk people who I asked to narrate Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine the Narrative … writing my treatment / proposal … moving forward… feeling good inside “fire in my belly!”
As the year comes to a close or “crashing close’” as a friend of mine described it I just feel like I am “drifting.” Yet in my heart and mind I feel something stirring as projects, impossible goals, and dreams. If I can live as long as Betty White did there are numerous things to aspire too. I call my muses to agree with me. I call upon my imagination of hopes and possibilities and by the Graces I will be happy in my cave during a pandemic that crosses this border between two years of 2021 and 2022.
I start with a new random book pick and first paragraph I see to read. I pull the mighty hand of praying mantis and so the book is found. I open the book and so I see a quote and now I write it down.
“Filial and fraternal love must satisfy her, and grateful that such ties are possible, she lives for them and is content. Literature is a fond and faithful spouse, and the family that has sprung up around her… is a profitable source of satisfaction to her maternal heart… Not lonely… not idle, for necessity, stern, yet kindly teacher, has taught her the worth of work: not unhappy, for love and labor, like good angels, walk at either hand.”
“Happy Women” Essay by Louisa May Alcott. / Pg. 171 The Heroine with 1,000 FACES By Maria Tatar
I went to see a promoter in a city skyscraper. Bands needed someone to promote their music. When I entered the room, I saw a group of men playing poker at a round table. A heavyset man, with a cigar dangling from his mouth and a handful of cards, looked me up and down.
“She ain’t what I’m looking for. She can go work at the brothel.”
“Everything is about youth?” I yelled.
I left out the fire escape. I climbed down and came to the base parking lot with a white metal fence. I hung my feet over the cement holding on to the fence and investigated the parking lot. There I saw a dark naked lady on a gurney. Cut open with a babe on her belly.
I put my hand to my head,
“Why did I have to see this?”
Then I awoke from the dream.
One frigid day I read Socrates. He wrote about how men are completely responsible for the creation of life. Everything in the creative act was by the male. The female just a container. I found the news crazy and funny at the same time. So much has changed. There is now sperm, eggs, science, and whole lot of sex involved.
Yet I think we should take it back to the mindset of good old lover of young boys Socrates. He may have a point. I think the abortion issue should be more about men and their part in the creation process. Men are the reason women get abortions. Men are accountable. They deserve the wrath, shame and the large momentary fees because of the accusation created by a new breed of idiot vigilantism.
1980. Drawn directly on my leather. X-8 gave me this jacket.
My story is a tributary that flows into a larger living water of music that is beyond me now. For all those that were there from the beginning I know you have a story to share too.
~ Hudley Flipside
2019 is when I completed the template on my memoir. Catching images and people that still run through my psyche.
Just the other night in a dream I ended up backstage. The door opened and before I knew it five big punks from a band, and I were taking pictures. Their friendly arms around me made me feel inclusion.
It is a time that still haunts me. As in every generation of my life. All are unique times. Vastly changing and different generations.
I wrote My Punkalullaby as my two boys were growing up. It is not a perfect story, but it does hold a mythos of punk rock. I just received copyright for my book. I am celebrating three years of mission complete as my book moves into the world. A rebellious history about a young woman who help document a punk rock scene.
It is comforting to know that several of the bands I love are still out playing. There is not a scene like there once was but now the punk genre is solid and so the story moved forward.
Below is an excerpt of Christmas day 1978.
“One empty Christmas day, Crazy Keith and I took the bus from South Gate to Woodland Hills where my folks lived. We had to make a stop in Hollywood to transfer buses. The hollow feeling as we waited for the bus on Hollywood Boulevard still impresses me with the echo of merry-go-round music.
A miniature one was going around and round on top of a truck parked nearby. There was an offbeat sound of music, and trash filled a lonely boulevard before us. An old lady down the street walked slowly toward the bus stop where we sat. She was searching in trash cans.
When she reached us, the skinny crippled woman held out a half-eaten apple. Not as a gift but for money.
I lost Crazy Keith a year later somewhere to someone and quickly got over his obnoxious, talkative, and controlling personality and moved on.”
~ MY PUNKALULLABY, HUDLEY FLIPSIDE
Click on image below to take you to where My Punkalullaby is sold.
While you drift away they have their own courses and they watch you.
And listen, they already know your name.”
I viewed part of Bob Dole’s church funeral yesterday. I was touched by a song You Never Walk Alone sung at the event from the musical Carousel. A favorite musical of mine. Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics) 1945. I had to look deeper into this event.
At this funeral I heard and saw diversity shared. I saw President Biden, the 42nd President Clinton and even the only person not wearing a mask Texas’s Ted Cruz.
Trump was not there because he and Bob Dole had a falling away over last year’s election issues.
I was surprised not seeing President Obama. Yet Tom Hanks talked at a WWII memorial after the service. A memorial that Bob Dole willed into being.
A ritual like this brings diversity together. Even in such troubling times. Strange conspiracy theories and political conflicts are uncomfortable to see, and now I feel our country is lost. I feel lost.
I listened to, storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology, Michael Meade’s podcast MOSAIC VOICES last night and he talked about how important ritual is. The act is all inclusive.
And whether a person is conscious of even being part of ritual … rituals bring us tighter together. It is an inclusive and wonderfully experienced reality to share.
Concerts and clubs or music and bars bring people together to join in this type of ritual. I have learned that this is what brings us together tighter. To experience this inclusiveness. As a cave dweller I miss this.
As the Winter darkness embraces us this solstice, I feel the darkness. Uncomfortably so. Yet it is up to me to find the light and share in the light where I can find it in this overwhelmingly troubled world.
Michael Mead also shares a poem entitled “When You Get Lost” by William Stafford.
What Happens When You Get Lost
By William Stafford
Out in the mountains nobody gives you anything.
And you learn what the rules were after the game is over.
By then it is already night and it doesn’t make any difference
What anyone else is thinking or doing because now you have to
Turn into an Indian.
You remember stories and now you know that the tellers were
Part of all they told.
And everyone else was, and even you.
They’re all around you now, but if you’re afraid you will never find them.
And those questions that people always ask-
“What would you do if…”
They have their own answer right now- nothing.
Some things cannot be redeemed in a hurry no matter what the intentions are.
What could be done had to have been done a long time ago.
Because mistakes have consequences that do not just disappear.
If evil could be canceled easily it would not be very evil.
And so, the stars see you.
While you drift away they have their own courses and they watch you.
And listen, they already know your name.
I find ritual in writing too and I think,
“Oh Boy, I got to write this down!”
This holiday season 2021 I have decided to buy all my Christmas gifts from friends who are part of the ritual of the creative life. All artists are mostly local and some in other states.
I want to share in their joy. What it is for an artist when they feel someone enjoys their work. Also, to experience the wonder of something created and willed forth into this world as an expression that has value to the artist and me. That is inclusion and that is the ritual.
My way of experiencing ritual and bringing light into the world and beyond!
I feel a need to share these two Flopside cOmics today.
It has been a while since I have. The female collective psyche is taking a blow right now. This is my way of walking us all through it. A friend once asked me,
“But is it, Art?”
That is not the point. Instead, it is creative expression by someone who likes to express her throat chakra often for healing purposes.
As this gal here is good at doing.
BAUBO made Demeter laugh after the loss of her daughter Persephone.
