What Holds Us Together, series 3, no. 14. Graphite, pastel and cotton floss on paper. 2020
I spent this weekend in Houston, reconnecting with friends and satisfying that odd piece of my soul I've just recently discovered is fed only by this city of vast contradictions. There I am trapped and ecstatically free, in love with and skeptical of everything, pissed off by the all the straight lines (I'm a motorcyclist, remember?), humidity, mosquitos and endlessly clogged freeways, then redeemed by the embrace of people I barely know yet love me unconditionally anyway.
It's in the music. Inherently stamped into the raw, sweaty, aggressive, loving spirit of Houston's punk rock scene, which never seems to die. You can throw yourself into it with everything you've got... because if you go down, you'll get picked back up.
In 1980, my family moved to Houston from England, right in the middle of a 107-degree heat wave, into a half-empty apartment complex somewhere in the southwest part of town. It was mid-summer and there was nothing to do except watch tv and swim in the piss-warm pool. Then we moved to Cypress, where most of the junior high school girls wore bras, make-up, skin-tight Jordache jeans and looked at least 25.
I didn't exactly fit in. People cracked up behind my back at my accent, flat chest and baggy clothes. I didn't talk much; just watched and tried like hell to look like those girls, spending an hour each morning ironing my curly hair into that feathered Farrah Fawcett thing that you achieved daily if your shit didn't stink.
It was the punk scene that taught me the degree to which none of that mattered. The goofier you were, the more vulnerable, awkward and smarter you were, the better. To me, punk rock revealed a kind of truth beneath the surface of things. It gave a shape, smell and a sound to a rather volatile need I and many others had to point to what was fucked up in the world, and a voice with which to blast through it. It's this same voice that motivates In Search of the Frightening and Beautiful and every other creative act and/or critical decision I've made since discovering it.
I figured out who I was in Houston. It's for this reason that it'll always claim my soul.