billy-pepper

[billy-pepper]

Took inspiration from “Vanishing Breed,” a book I picked up at the antique shop in town. What is it about cowboys that is so intriguing? There’s a lot to not like, re: misogyny, racism, manifest destiny etc etc. And yet... Sometimes, in the morning I think about what the sky outside would look like from the perspective of a horse on the plains. Shit, I romanticize a can of beans heating over a fire or even the feel of a thick shirt worn every day for weeks without washing.  Would I actually like that lifestyle? I can all but guarantee I wouldn’t. If not because I have a painful body right now, then certainly because it would become painful in time with that life. Plus all the misogyny, racism, etc. Farewell, cowboy!

[billy-pepper]

Huge Ukrainian Pysanka!! So amazing!

in the spirit of easter

[billy-pepper]

Something Wild, 1986

Great late 80s aesthetic from before the days that everyone got tons of plastic surgery in order to be a star. I think it’s available to watch on the Criterion Channel...

[billy-pepper]

Isabel Sandoval discusses the eroticism in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes and these kinds of discourses on the film can become quite ambiguous. It must be established, consciously, that the character of the woman in this film serves solely as an exploited body for the purpose of unpaid + slave labor. Her autonomy in character and sex are both enveloped entirely by the imprisoned counterpart and the villagers. She does not have the sovereignty in the material conditions she’s placed in to be able to garner “erotic power”. There are no love scenes in this film and that must be understood. Even the renowned scene depicted in the Criterion poster is not a love scene but an illusion within the vestiges of the woman’s awareness of herself as a human being imprisoned and the teacher’s struggle to obtain possession. In a later scene, he even attempts to r*pe her. The only appropriate discourse we should be having about the woman in this film is the exploitation of prisoners in all aspects including sexual violence. She is a prisoner in the dunes which parallels her imprisonment in her own body.

[billy-pepper]

"The Kiss", a 12,000-year-old rock painting at Pedra Furada in Brazil

[billy-pepper]

After DaVinci, hehe. I love imagining renaissance (etc) characters as modern day people. “Lady with Ermine” would now be “Girl with Badtz Maru” Admittedly, signed with my real name. I’m sad, too, that my name isn’t actually Billy Pepper.

[billy-pepper]

Starting a project for an unspecified amount of time where I fill journal pages using found pics (a lot of them from Apartamento and thrifted film books), colored pencils, gel pens, and whatever else excites me. This was the first page I did. I’ll add a story, for fun: Once upon a time I was walking in the misty dark with Bianca. That was when I was staying in Irondale. There were a lot of un-permitted RVs and trailers on those streets. Mostly homes to the unemployable. I’m not sure how many were addicts... Probably many. 

It was after my break-up with Paul and I was still internalizing his venom. Every night I would go for this walk with Bianca and think about the blackest black I had encountered—that fucked up crying in the kitchen while Paul leaned against the counter and told me that it was good to see me go so deep—and the blackness of the nighttime felt so light in comparison.

There were only a few lights visible. Mostly the high viz security lights on the front of manufactured homes with the blinds drawn.

On our way home we passed a small group huddled around a small fire. Two of the people I recognized—I often drove by them on my way into town. They beckoned me over: “Wanna s’more?” It was such a wholesome request.

I went over.

“What are you doing all alone?” they asked. One of them went by Jaz. Among them, I remembered only her name.

“I’m not alone!” I said, picking up Bianca. Bianca was my dog, my sweet potato baby chihuahua.

I sat down on a folding chair with a woven plastic seat that was sagging deeply in the center. Jaz’s boyfriend handed me a slice of bread, some chocolate and a single marshmallow. It was a strangely satisfying s’more. You could build the whole thing like a half sandwich and skewer it over the small fire. I lost most of the chocolate over the flame, but it didn’t much matter.

Jaz laughed at my jokes. I wish I remember what I’d said because I’m often uncertain that I’m funny. She had a gappy smile, which was one part “trailer trash”, one part runway model. She was very pretty, or had been.

I excused Bianca and myself after many “I oughta head out”s and walked back to my rented trailer. While heating the kettle on the stove, I let Bianca lick the marshmallow goo off my fingers. That night the mist reflected so much of the moon’s light that it felt like it was twilight all night long.

[billy-pepper]

Late winter draining all the life force out of me. A drawing from last winter or maybe the winter before that. Pandemic time has just been one long winter in some ways, in which case, I drew this earlier in the winter.

[billy-pepper]

I’m glad these days are there for me to reflect on. I still feel like this is one of the most “me” pictures I have of myself. The open weather, the dirt, the fourth day of the same outfit. Bianca on my lap, acting as wise grandfather and newborn baby. Zits, bare feet, loud laughs... Once, my dad came to visit. We took a walk through the wash by my place and found a purple dildo half buried in the sand. My dad pretended not to see it, but I pointed it out. Later that day we sang karaoke at the saloon. “Sweet Dreams are Made of This,” by Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics.

We took turns singing the lines to one another: Some of them want to use you Some of them want to get used by you Some of them want to abuse you Some of them want to be abused And then joined our voices for the chorus in a weak harmony, a bit uncomfortable: Sweet dreams are made of this Who am I to disagree? I've traveled the world and the seven seas Everybody's lookin' for something

We bowed to an audience of tourists and this guy named Trent who wore his hair in two braids with a white cowboy hat. He might have been native, but it was ambiguous. I returned to the wash a week later to take a picture of the dildo, but I couldn’t find it. There was a pack of wild dogs that morning roaming down there and I wondered if they took it. Later, I would hear a story from my friends. They bought a property with a double-wide and a small cabin near a creek, which they used as their bedroom. For the holidays they flew to Europe, leaving a friend in charge of their animals. For two weeks, the friend took care of their dogs and cats and goats, but one cat was missing. On Christmas day it snowed. Their friend went for a walk around the property, passing the small cabin. In the window, she saw the missing cat. When she unlocked the door, she saw that in the cat’s effort to feed itself, it had shredded all the tissue in the waste bin. There were turds by the foot of the bed, and in them, she could see the sparkle of something blue and plastic. She rounded the bed, and there, on the ground, was a sparkly blue dildo with a substantial chunk missing from the tip and sides. 

The cat, it seemed, had survived for two weeks off of used tissue and a dirty dildo. A Christmas miracle of sorts—that cat was always one of my favorites. I think it’s since gone missing, but it’s the only cat whose name I still remember.