News Archive

Sarkin has been commissioned to do a mural for the Mullen Advertising headquarters in Boston. He will do this project, which measures 4' X 27', on-site from June 8 through June 17, 2009. It is to be documented with videography, and its completion will be celebrated by an opening reception at which Mayor Tom Menino will be present.

Previously referred to as the "Continuous Interview" this is a dialogue between Sarkin and Gary Baum concerning many various topics. For the most part the questions have very little, if any, narrative elements -- the 'conversation' is truly all over the map.

Gary Baum: Various images often occur in your work, ranging from cacti to automobile tail fins to what I can only describe as a series of very decongested heads. Where did these motifs originate and how do they become such basic elements of your art?
Jon Sarkin: th word "fetish", although it has been distorted/bastardized to have sexually connotations (e.g., "foot fetish"), originally meant "A THING that th originator of th fetish gained power from" (e.g., zuni american indian fetishes). th various images to which you referred, e.g, cacti, auto fins, "decongested" ("deconstructed"?) heads, fall precisely into this "fetish" idea. i get power, of an undefinably mystical transcendental quality, from these images. that's why i'm drawn to them, am COMPULSIVELY obsessed with them. they are elemental in a very literal sense.

GB: Where did the term "correspondence art" originate? Was it coined to describe your work in particular? Also, why did you decide to send out Boltflashes in the first place?
JS: th term "correspondence art" certainly did not begin with me. i believe a pioneer of this form was ray johnson, and although i didn't hear of him before i started "boltflashes", i realize that what started as a "sui generis" phenomenon is not original at all. my advice to anyone interested in th origins of correspondence art to do an web search on "ray johnson". i really can't explain my motivation to start sending out boltflashes in th first place; these origins are much too complex and subconscious for me to analyze.

GB: It seems that at many times the Boltflash itself is as or more intriguing than what is inside. Did the complex and dynamic variety of mailings that you send evolve over time, or have they always been a part of your work?
JS: they've always been a part of my work

GB: I have read that only a few dozen people become regular recipients of Boltflashes at any one time. How do you pick the recipients and do you keep yourself down to a small enough circle so as not to become impersonal?
JS: th choice of recipient is as irrational as th ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. i DO, however, keep my correspondence circle at a pretty small number, which, by th way, is ALWAYS an integer

GB: What is your work schedule like? Do you wake up in the morning with a list of things to accomplish every day? Or do you only create when you feel a passion to do so?
JS: if you count th time i spend ACTUALLY WORKING, th time i spend THINKING about my work, and th time i spend DREAMING about my work, my schedule is EXACTLY 168 hours per week. this is NOT a joke. i am EXTREMELY agenda-driven in an "elliptical" way. i choose not to explain what "elliptical" means in this context.

GB: How do you come up with 168 hours in a 144 hour week?!...does this have to do with what you call your 'elliptical' agenda?
JS: there are 24 hrs/day. there are 7 days/wk. 24 X 7 = 140 + 28 = 168 hrs/wk

GB: Do you find specific fabrics and textures, ranging from wood to paper to many things in between, on purpose, or do you only use what is already lying around your 'workshop.' Also, please describe the area in which you create. I have seen a few pictures that have accompanied past articles which show you in your 'workshop,' and I would like to know what you have done with that space to make it something that you feel comfortable creating in.
JS: MY CHOICE OF MATERIALS IS PURELY OPPORTUNISTIC AND CHANCE-DRIVEN. I AM 100% "OMNIVOROUS". MY WORKSPACE LITERALLY DEFIES VERBAL DESCRIPTION, SO ANY ATTEMPT TO DO SO HERE IS FAILURE-DOOMED.

GB: How is the movie about your life going? Is it in development yet?
JS: MY ATTORNEY HAS ADVISED ME TO REFRAIN FROM ANY COMMENTS RE: MOVIE.

GB: Do you often have your mail 'returned to sender' from the post office because they may find it difficult to read? Do you have some kind of special relationship with your mail man/woman and local post office in that they know what exactly it is that you do?
JS: I OFTEN HAVE MY MAIL RETURNED BY TH POST OFFICE. I AM WELL-KNOWN BY BOTH MY MAIL-CARRIER AND MY LOCAL POSTAL OFFICE, AND POSSIBLY OFFICES ELSEWHERE.

GB: What do you consider major influences on your work?
JS: warhol, picasso, da vinci, michaelangelo, jackson pollock, r crumb

GB: Are there any specific artists (e.g.: Ray Johnson) or wide genres (e.g.: cinema) that you look toward for inspiration or does your creativity strictly pour out of your subconscious?
JS: JOSEPH CORNELL, QUENTIN TARANTINO, WILLIS O'BRIEN, BOB DYLAN, JACK KEROUAC, JAMES WHALE, JIM THOMPSON, MILES DAVIS, CECIL TAYLOR, LOU REED, MARK TWAIN, SAM COELRIDGE, HUNTER THOMPSON, DAVID THOMAS

GB: Also, you seem to be interested in number systems. Are you familiar with Kabbalah?
JS: yes

GB: Do you believe numbers, math, and science in general are the key to unwrapping the mysteries of the universe?
JS: somewhat

GB: Or do you have a more metaphysical view?
JS: partly

GB: Do numbers and mathematical principles relate in any way to your Boltlfashes...or, specifically, would Chaos theory be a more accurate description of what you do?
JS: i think my inspiration is an "equilibrium" 'tween order and chaos

GB: How would you describe your creativity before the accident?
JS: on the back-burner but always waiting there, and with unrealized potential of an extent to be judged by others, not me

GB: Since the many surgeries, have your senses been affected? If so, how?
JS: i am deaf in one ear, my vision is doubled (and as a result my depth- perception is quite poor), my sense of taste and smell are less acute than they were pre-morbidity, my proprioception is sub-par, and my thought processes have been altered

GB: From what I have seen, you seem to have four major directions with your work: the audio, the paintings and sculptures, the Boltflashes, and the written pieces. Am I missing anything?
JS: not really

GB: How do these aspects relate?
JS: DISTINCT SEPARATION INTO PARTS, I.E., THAT THESE FOUR MAJOR DIRECTIONS ARE NEATLY DELINEATED, IS A COMPLETE ILLUSION. THEY IN ACTUALITY ARE PART OF AN ORGANIC WHOLE, AND ARE HIGHLY SYNERGISTIC. I REALLY CAN'T VERBALIZE HOW THESE ASPECTS INTERRELATE ANY FURTHER

GB: Do each satisfy a distinct urge in terms of your creativity?
JS: no, my creativity all comes from the same source, and each aspect is as satisfying as the next

GB: Do you give each aspect approximately the same amount of your time or do you only focus on what you have a 'feel' for at that moment?
JS: the latter

GB: Does music play an influential part in your work?
JS: yes

GB: Which music and how does it affect you?
JS: MY TASTES IN MUSIC ARE HIGHLY ECLECTIC AND INCLUDE ALL INFLUENCES OTHER THAN OPERA AND EASY LISTENING. HOW IT EFFECTS ME IS HOW IT EFFECTS ME

GB: When you listen to music do you tend to follow the rhythm of the sound itself or listen to the lyrics that are sung?
JS: both

GB: You named many drug users as influences on your work (Coleridge, Thompson, and Dylan to name a few). Have drugs ever been a part of your life and/or affected your work?
JS: my attorney has advised me not to comment on this question

GB: Despite the accident, you seem to have a very forgiving view of G-d. A few years ago one of my friends had a brain tumor and, despite the fact that he has had a difficult time living after the surgery that saved his life, he told me that everything happens for a reason. Do you feel the same way?
JS: yes

I mean, do you think G-d meant for you to change in such a radical way?
JS: YES

GB: Do you think that you have been given a "second chance" and that, with your newfound creative abilities, are supposed to do something special in the world?
JS: YES

GB: You said previously that you concentrate on the small things in life more so than the average person. Could you give me an example of this in your daily life?
JS: today i listened to "lucy in th sky in diamonds" on th beatles sgt. pepper's album. i was extremely impressed by paul mccartney's bass playing on this song. i find myself paying serious attention to details like this that would be complete "background noise" for others

GB: It is interesting that you had (and still do have) an active fantasy life. Could you please try to explain what your fantasy life is like and how it may directly or indirectly relate to your work?
JS: i'm sorry, but i just can't verbalize this. i CAN say that its relation to my work is HUGE.

GB: I mean, I have a feeling that classic cars and desert scenes may be in there somewhere and I am wondering if my theory is even remotely correct.
JS: 100%

GB: How much sleep do you get a night?
JS: approximately nine hours

GB: Do you try to be awake as long as possible so that you can get as much done in your day or do you treasure your dream time as inspiration for your work?
JS: th value of my dreams in relation to my art is incalculable

GB: How has your outlook on life changed since your senses have been affected?
JS: this is a superb question, and ultimately, one that's probably impossible to address, but this doesn't absolve me of trying to answer it. that being said, i'll choose not to be absolved, because i think that god is extremely merciful and forgiving

GB: Do you find yourself concentrating on small things that others may not consider?
JS: absolutely

GB: Conversely, are you more able to see the 'big picture' in life than you were before?
JS: paradoxically, defintely

GB: Have some senses increased to compensate for the lack of others?
JS: sort of

GB: If so, which, and how do you feel they affect your life and work?
JS: my perceptual input, i.e., vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste, have been profoundly and radically altered as a result of my stroke. it's not really a matter of some increasing and others diminishing, but the cataclysmic manner in which i now perceive my world. file under "total paradigm shift".

GB: Did you suffer from color-blindness before or after the surgeries?
JS: no

GB: How have your thought processes been altered?
JS: it would, all kidding aside, take me th rest of my life to reply. and even then my answer'd be woefully inadequate and incomplete

GB: From a layman's standpoint, it seems that the right side of your brain (by this I mean 'creative') has been put into higher favor than your left (analytical) since the surgeries. Is this the case?
JS: as th british say, "spot on", i.e., correctomundo

GB: Was your memory ever affected by the surgeries?
JS: i forgot what the question was

GB: I ask this because I am wondering if thoughts and memories from before the surgeries may now be interpreted by your brain and come out in the abstract form of your art.
JS: highly insightful

GB: I have read that, similarly, complex fantasy worlds that children create when they are young are remembered when those children become adults in the abstract form of the arts (be it painting, sculpting, writing, acting, etc.).
JS: i had an extremely active fantasy life as a child, and still do

GB: Does all of your creative energy feed into your work or does any part of you still wish to fulfill a certain portion of yourself through practicing medicine?
JS: i don't look back. it's counterproductive, self-destructive, and unhealthy

GB: Can you see how energy that used to be spent on being a Chiropractor is now diverting itself toward your creativity?
JS: absolutely

GB: Here are some 'favorites' questions...what are your favorite foods and drinks?
JS: pizza, kosher hot dogs, buffalo wings, nectarines, lemonade, bagels, chocolate chip cookies, french fries, coffee, fudgsicles, tangerines, sauteed mushrooms, calamari, banana muffins, papaya, fresh-squeezed orange juice, cucumbers, tootsie roll pops (especially orange), mangoes, and garlic

GB: favorite movies?
JS: it's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world, beetlejuice, apocalypse now, alien, godfather, hellcab, american history X, crumb, bullworth, leaving las vegas, fargo, treasure of sierra madre, king kong, seven year itch, bride of frankenstein, duck soup, psycho (original), sunset blvd, fast times @ ridgemont high, on th waterfront, african queen, th good th bad th ugly, th thing (original), down by law, taxi driver, th big liebowski, heat of th night, do th right thing, th river of no return, th big sleep, M, th hustler, nosferatu (original AND w/ klaus kinski), jaws, five easy pieces, pulp fiction, aladdin (animated), wizard of oz, north by northwest, to kill a mockingbird, and th crawling eye

GB: favorite colors?
JS: turquoise, fuschia, and yellow-green.

UPDATED
(as of 1/2/00)

GB: What is your fantasy life like?
JS: if there is a GREAT QUESTION, like th GREAT PUMPKIN in that animated "peanuts" halloween special, or th GREAT PRETENDER, or th GREAT GATSBY, or th GREAT WHITE HOPE, this is it. i realize th futility of explaining my fantasy life even to me, non-verbally, let alone to others utilizing words. WORDS! bah, humbug!! words are a poor, at best, semantic representation of our psychic inner-machinations. they are a silent, black-and-white cinematic representation of our richly sounded, hyper-technicolored world. but they're all we have, eh? i mean, i do create pictures, and a window into my fantasy life can be accessed through them, but only quite tangentially and indirectly. so, i'm left with words. i'm not th 1st person to feel frustration in not having th verbal acuity of a shakespeare to express something. i feel that frustration now. perhaps that's why i resort to poetry? because i intuitively feel that th "fantasy-life" issue can only be accessed indirectly, that it is to transcendent to be taken by th horns? that is why th jews choose a burning bush to represent god, why they use g_d instead of god, why th hebrew spelling for god has nothing to do with its pronunciation? i think, and i'm REALLY not trying to be "hubristic" here, asking what my fantasy life is like is like someone deeply religious what god is like!

GB: So what's up with the movie?
JS: Tom Cruise, or possibly his production company, Cruise-Wagner (a subsidiary of Paramount) saw the January 97 GQ article re: me. Cruise-Wagner contacted me in February, expressing interest in buying my life rights. Tom Cruise expressed interest in portraying me. After much negotiation (I engaged the services of th well-known agency, CAA, with Robert Bookman acting as my primary agent, I signed a Paramount contract. In December of 97, the British writer, Paula Milne, came out to Cape Ann for about a week. She has written tyhe script, and Paramount is "shopping around" for a big-name director.

GB: I figure that Tom Cruise has a multitude of projects lined up, so is yours a few years down the line?
JS: Possibly.

GB: I read in one of the articles that you are going to have a spoken word and looped music CD contract...what's going on with that?
JS: I wish I knew.

GB: How many hours do you spend in your workshop every day?
JS: Around six.

GB: Do you spend a specifically alotted amount of time on specific projects (such as a commissioned piece or a Boltflash that you want to send out)?
JS: No.

GB: How many people, on average, receive Boltflashes at any one time?
JS: This is HIGHLY variable.

GB: Do you give each recipient equal amounts of mailings or do you send stuff out to specific people based on your own personal motives?
JS: Th latter.

GB: Have you ever worked with computer art?
JS: Not a lot. I DETEST most computer art.

GB: If so, what have you done?
JS: Not much.

GB: If not, do you ever plan to?
JS: Who knows?

GB: This is kind of nit-picky, but I have just got to ask...why do you type 'the' as 'th'? (I had to keep correcting myself when I typed as I always pressed that extra 'e' out of some subconscious movement)
JS: It's easier. I only need to type TWO CHARACTERS instead of three.

JS: Addendum to my reply re: "th" vs. "the": i realize, on reflection, that my reason(s) for using "th" vs. th correct spelling "the" goes much deeper than my glib reply that "it's just easier". your observation that you SUBCONSCIOUSLY type "the" when i use "th" is, i think, much more profound than a throw-away obsevation. th "societal consensus" is "the" vs. "th". there is an AGREEMENT that "the" is th way it's spelled. i, by nature, am and always have been and in all likelihood always will be a contrarian. this is my RAISON D'ETRE. this is why, in part, i don't capitalize th first character in a sentence. e.e. cummings lives, babe! there are many more societal consensuses of more moment: that hunger, poverty, et al. need to exist, that war is an inevitably, ibid. racism, other injustices, classism, sexism, anti-semitism, other types on intolerance, etc. so, i view my "th" usage as a metaphor of JUST COS WE AGREE THAT THINGS ARE A CERTAIN WAY, THAT DON'T MAKE IT INEVITABLE. einstein stands out as this century's (recorded history's?!) prime proponent of this type of iconoclastic paradigm. i am deeply, DEEPLY impressed by people, who by force of sheer will, and in th face of th suffocating inertia of th status quo, are able to construct an alternate reality. EINSTEIN was such a man. so were/are marcel duchamp, hunter thompson, beck, captain beefheart, dylan, t.s. eliot, shakespeare, martin luther king, e.e. cummings, jung, ghandi, da vinci, f. scott fitzgerald, mahler, kafka, hendrix, and andy kaufman. i think th KABALA is an attempt to create such an alternate reality using th mystical/transformative/ magical properties of numbers. if i can even feebly attempt to accomplish a fraction of this gestalt via my art, i will consider my quest a resounding success

UPDATED
(as of 1/9/00)

GB: What are Oltgasms and who creates them?
JS: This guy, Haig Demarjian, is one of my best friends. We became good friends "pre-Oltgasm", but our correspondence art relationship certainly helped solidify our kinship. I was/continue to be flattered by my inspiration and the fact that he GETS Boltflash at the primordial level it's intended at. Not too many people have gotten my correspondence guerilla act this deeply. You have. Sam Pratt (Bol+finger) has. Andrew Corsello (GQ) has. I can only assume that Tom Cruise has. Chris Lydon (radio interviewer on WBUR) has. The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Penn Gazette have. Rick Moody has. Kate Shepherd has. Jo Ann Beard has. Graydon Carter (editor of Vanity Fair) has. Haig, if you are reading this, I can only say, "Rock on, dude."

GB: What did you think of the new Andy Kaufman biography, "Man On The Moon," starring Jim Carrey?
JS: I did not, nor have any desire to, see it. I mean, why watch Jim Carrey play Andy when you can get videos of ANDY playing Andy?

GB: Have you read any of Kaufman's life story in books or magazine pieces before?
JS: Yes.

GB: Do you think that the director, Milos Forman, put together an accurate representation of the facts?
JS: I can't comment as I didn't see it.

GB: After seeing the Kaufman film did you have any new feelings toward your own, impending mainstream biopic, starring Tom Cruise?
JS: As I didn't see it, I can't comment.

GB: How does it feel to think that one day people will be commenting and analyzing *your* contribution to society in the same way as Kaufman's?
JS: Intoxicating.

GB: What qualities to you admire most about Kaufman?
JS: His outfits and the mole on his face.

GB: Did any of his principles concerning art and the 'experience' of life have any affect on your work?
JS: Yes. I am considering impersonating Elvis, but I think my poor balance, incoordination, and horrific singing voice might preclude that. Also, I think my wife might object to thousands of women screaming and throwing their brassieres onstage. My mistake: it's TOM JONES' groupies who throw their bras onstage. Sorry.

GB: Charles Schulz recently ended his comic strip, the Peanuts. What are your thoughts on the comic strip's use of simple, minimalist text and parables to articulate philosophical concepts? JS: i think that th portayal of philosophical ideas using th simple minimalistic communication of comix is, paradoxically, much, much more effective than a long-winded diatribe by kant, wittgenstein, et al. first of all, nothing could be more deceptive than th so-called SIMPLICITY of th cartooning-style of graphic portrayal. it is able to portray some pretty complex concepts. r crumb of zap comix fame was particularly good at this. i just think a comic needs to be careful in becoming too preachy or propagandistic

GB: What 'comic strips' (not including editorial cartoonists, but Doonesbury would fall under this category) do you follow and admire?
JS: zippy, family circus, krazy kat, th far side, b.c, wizard of id, tony millionaire, tom tomorrow, nancy

GB: What do you think of the new trend in high-brow, comic-style stories that have been termed 'graphic novels'?
JS: i think we will see more and more a hybrid between literature and cartooning. i think we will see more and more work that after we finish reading it, we'll think, "is that a comic with a lot of words, or a novel with a lot of pictures?" i think, now that we are more and more accustomed to visual (as opposed to graphic) information (e.g., mtv), th lines between word and picture will become more and more blurred. when it was more difficult to mass-produce images (say in th time of shakespeare), words took precedence. now that th ability to disseminate graphic images is so easy, our dependence on text becomes less. anyone who is familiar with both methods of communication realizes th synergistic quality between th two. i think this is one of th main reasons for th popularity of th "graphic novel" form.

GB: What do you think of Ralph Steadman's work?
JS: i think steadman (he illustrates much of hunter thompson's work) is an artistic genius. he is a MAJOR influence for several reasons: 1) i love th way he uses anatomical drawings; 2) i love his use of "found" graphic phenomena like ink splotches; 3) i love that th fact that he doesn't shy away from distasteful subject matter that many artists would find abhorrent (like people throwing up); 4) i love his exaggeration of people's faces to extreme/grotesque proportions; 5) i love his use of geometry tools like compasses; 6) i love his "caligraphy"; 7) i love his use of color. for more info on this artistic master, search "ralph steadman"

UPDATED
(as of 1/31/00)

GB: Thanks for the Boltlflash that I received today [1/12 -- Ed.].

JS: No, Gary. THANK YOU for being there to receive it. What I mean is this (excuse me while I go off on a tangent, but then retrace my rambling and get back to/on th primary direction): my "raison d'etre", my purpose these days (daze?!) is much "grander" than I thought it to be pre-morbidity. Before my AWAKENING (kudos {sic?} to Oliver Sacks), my mission was much, much more "ego-driven" than it is now. And I realize that in the big scheme of things, in the great game plan in the sky, my pre-stroke purpose was very "small" and "selfish" (in the original sense of this word). Nowadays, I perceive myself as a mere pawn in God's divine chess game. And what He has decided for me, in His transcendent wisdom, is that I should demonstrate His glory by Boltflashing others. And I realize, Gary, that this IS NOT MY CONSCIOUS CHOICE. It has as little to do with consciousness and choice as my anal orifice has to do with a ditch. IT IS GOD'S WILL. Sounds hackneyed? Too bad! THY WILL BE DONE. Sounds trite? Whatever. So, without folks of your ilk to be there to be recpients of Boltflash, I'd have no meaning

GB: Do you mind if I put them [Sarkin's responses to several questions posed by Baum during their numerous e-mails -- Ed.] up in the Continuous Interview section?

JS: Not only do I not mind, Gary, my whole life is one big continuous interview (CI) these days, so I'm flattered that you're willing to and enjoy transcribing my drivel. I know, I know: to you (and I trust others out there), it's not DRIVEL at all, but I feel an almost obsessive-compulsion to be self-deprecating. I guess I could substitute "drivel" for "profound insights", but if that would not be self-seving and egomaniacal, nothing would be. So, "drivel" it is. Gary, I trust you GET @ some basic level that our CI is a metaphor of my life. It IS Boltflash in a very real sense. The CI is an outlet for my creative energy as sure as my visual art/ poetry/ audio/correspondence mail is/are.

GB: Do surrealist painters such as Dali affect your work? If so, how?

JS: Yes, although not Dali directly. I really don't like Dali's visual images all that much, but I like the way he questioned reality and played with it (and, after all, isn't that what surrealism's really all about?). I'm more influenced by the Dada artists like Duchamp (one of my heros), Man Ray and Francis Picabia.
Addendum: The influence of "surrealism" (and under this generic umbrella of "surrealism" I not only place surrealism (e.g., Dali), but also related, but separate, artistic schools like Dadaism (e.g. Duchamp) plays an extremely significant part in my creativity. The surreal approach is not one merely of visual art alone; it's not like one GENUINELY creates surreal paintings, and the rest of his life is organized around a paradigm of the "consensus agreement" of left-brained logic. No, surrealism IS A WAY OF PERCEIVING LIFE itself, i.e., however the surrealist expresses himself, e.g., visual art, writing, music, photography, dance, comedy, acting, etc., reflects this view of "reality". You know, I think by its very definition, surrealism can't be defined! A good way to GET my surrealism is to look at my visual art, read my prose-poetry and answers to your question in this interview, and listen to my music.

GB: The presidential primaries are coming up soon and that new political art movie "Crade Will Rock" is in theaters so I thought it would be appropriate to ask: Are there any political overtones in your work?

JS: I guess it depends on how you define "political". In the mainstream sense, no. In the more radical (literally, "radical", from the Latin word "radix", meaning "root"), my work is highly political. I think the ultimate/ideal goal of politics is to change our society, and the paradigmatic thought beliefs of its citizens, in an extremely profound manner. To this end my art is deeply committed. I think there is a very close connection between your first question, re: surrealism, and this question. One goal of surrealism is to question our core reality-based beliefs. This is the inherent mission of politics, possibly. And since that is the purpose of my art, you bet my art has politoical overtones!

GB: Have you ever donated any work for a specific cause?

JS: My friend, Chris Williams, had a sculpture studio that burned down. I donated a drawing to help raise money for him. Does this count?

GB: How do your belief systems, religious, political, or otherwise, affect your work?

JS: Well, I it's best if we talk about how my religious and political beliefs affect my work separately. First, my religious belief system: I have an unshakable belief in GOD. I mean that literally. One of my heros is Job. I mean he was Tested with a capital "T". But he retained his faith. I'm not sure if his faith was strengthened by his ordeal, but mine was. Before my stroke, I was ambivalent about my belief in God. I suppose I'd fall under the heading "agnostic". But my belief in God post-morbidity has undergone a paradigm shift that I can only describe as transcendent. That being said, I guess I can't say verbalize in a way that'd make any sense how my religious belief system affects my work after all. I can describe my beliefs, but not how they impact my art. Political: my political beliefs are founded on my religious beliefs. 'Nuff said.

GB: I have found that Oltgasm [Haig Demarjian's correspondence art vehicle -- Ed.] relates to your art, specifically Boltflash.

JS: How do you find OLTGASM complementing BOLTFLASH?

GB: I don't know if 'complement' is the right word...'go along with' seems more appropriate. From what I have read about the Oltgasms, they seem to have been derived from a Boltflash correspondence with between the two of you a while back. And it seems that you guys were in a kind of friendly creative contest to try to top each other with every passing correspondence. Am I on the right track there?

JS: I think Haig and I engaged in more of a "creative symbiosis" than a "creative competition". I don't think there was any sense of competition in our creative relationship, but I guess when you get right down to it, competition is a genetic human trait, so every relationship (including that with one's self) has some component of competitiveness. I think the case is strong that we're involved in some creative game, but "winning" as a goal is defined quite differently than it is in the traditional, "zero-sum", sense. Haig is a much better artist than I, so if we were engaged in some win-lose contest, he would vanquish me effortlessly.
(1) 1. Philbin, Regis, "The Art of Sycophantic Patronizing and Smarmy Ass-Kissing", Two-Faced Publications, Bucharest, 1941.

JS: Also, re: OLTGASM/BOLTFLASH connection, Haig Demarjian and I share the same "gestalt". It's hard to verbalize exactly what that is, but I CAN say that the people that I know personally that fall into this "symapatico" category are exceedingly rare.

GB: [Question forwarded from Sarkin friend Haig Demarjian, publisher of the aforementioend Oltgasm -- Ed.] How do "voodoo glow skulls" affect your work, along with my Oltgasms?

JS: This is an extremely difficult, if not, in the final analysis of analytic finality, impossible, question to respond to completely. Not from the pont of view of complexity (as this poor excuse for a query borders on idiotic simplicity), but because my honest answer must be so deeply personal, so heart- and gut-wrenching, that I must believe that in asking this cruel question, Haig is sadistically playng some twisted, addled mind game on my godforsaken head, much in a way a demented cat would mercilessly gnaw on the poor head of an innocent, hapless, mouse, inflicting intractable pain on it, but letting it retain consciousness, torturing it relentlessly until it begs for it to kill it... but it will not. Haig, you sick @#$%^&*!! You should be profoundly ashamed of your entire being. You have brought eternal disgrace on your Andalusian heritage. May DOG (excuse my dyslexia while I kiss the sky) have mercy on your hapless seoul (sp).

UPDATED
Jon and Haig discussion from 2/1/00 to 2/9/00
(published on 5/2/00)

HD: (To Jon -- ed.) I ask you to ask of the VoodooGlowSkulls not to bury Caesar, but to exhume him. When the skulls, skeletons, sympathetic ganglia et al are set about to danse macabre with waltzing matilda then won't you come waltzing matilda with me.
And when appropriating the dyslexic (scuse me while I kiss my thigh) we must remember that axiomatic palindromatic truism: God Lives As Evil Dog. This may seem unrelated but it certainly (tape) loops back to yer conversation with Sark wherein he spoke of Boltflash being GOD'S WILL. If God is completely un-understandable (a much better and more redundant (hence intrinsically better) word than incomprehensible, which at first glance may appear to be the more gentrified, INTELLIGENT choice of verbiage but upon closer inspection we find that the INVENTION of a word (such as un-understandable) actually has much more impact, not to mention is much more effective in describing the divine, the indescribable. This is a metaphor directly related to what I was beginning to say OUTSIDE of these (multiple) parentheses, before I became mired in the apparent quicksand of this parenthetical diversion.). So. If God is completely un-understandable, which I believe He/It is, then isn't some key to His workings, some hint at the power He has(we allow him to have?) to do that DIVINE thing that I call INVENTION (some call it creation) embodied in something like the Boltflash or Oltgasm? Isn't the KEY to all this in the seemingly nonsensical, the uroboros, the serpent eating its own tail, as I chase my own argument, eating my own tale, its serpentine ribbons of logical illogic weaving its way in and out of parentheses, from phrase to misbegotten phrase, participle to punctuation and back to the top of another paragraph (see note on "byways" contained in next email). Nay, beyond and through this paragraph, to another piece of writing, unrelated, somewhere at the back of your desktop, something Sark said once, two weeks ago, that you, Gary, were prudent and fastidious enough to capture on the more permanent ether-scribe of cyberspace. The digital world assists in making something about this manner of thought pattern somewhat transparent. Looking from one open document to another, seeing ostensibly divergent trains of thought collide with unprecedented precision. Another place where this phenomena is present is in the Dictionary. Really, pick it up and look through-- radically (and I do mean radical in the "root" form) disparate concepts existing next to each other for no other reason than the coincidence of their names sharing the same first letter. Where else would you find a penguin, pelvis and pentacle co-existing as if they somehow had something to do with each other? Where else? I'll tell you where else...in a Boltflash or an Oltgasm. Therein lies the beauty, the comedy and the tragedy. The misanthropy, the philanthropy and the cacophany. The epiphany, the serendipity and the syncronicity. The... you get the idea. The EVIL DOG is Chaos, and Chaos is where GOD LIVES. 'Kapeesh? The Boltflash, the Oltgasm both think in tape-loop, in redundancy, in the un-understandable; it is, to sound cliche, The New Order. The dictionary organizes alphabetically... what then can the Chaos-based system of organization be labelled? For better or worse, we traverse mind-pathsthat are ,for whatever reasons,forsaken by mortals. Or do we "reverse mine-fields mistaken for potholes"?
Whatever.
This is why you are interested. This is what drives you to catalog and understand all the Sarkinalia. This is like when Duchamp put the bottle rack in the gallery. Most said (outraged) "WHAT!?", but a few said "hmm. what's this about?". and as they sought to understand the nonsensical, the nonsensical got looped. Looped into the Loop. This is where the chaos-theory tape-loop comes into play... eventually it all comes around. What we first saw from the back we WILL, someday, see from the front. Duchamp understood this. I think I can safely say that Jon and I understand it, trust it. To live with Chaos ( and we all do, everyday.
Sorry, but Order is a grand illusion. (sometimes even put on a parallel plane with Chaos (notice how both are first-letter capitalised), but that is strictly a PR gimmick) Order is a (super-)imposition, floated over the universe by mankind. The universe is entropic/distropic, although our illusion of control is, for most citizens, a pretty complete one. But watch the news... the weather, specifically. We have no control over it. Or life. Or death. Hear that? A plane engine just cut out over San Diego. You'll hear of it on the news tonite.), we must trust in Chaos. Call Chaos God if you want. Or Yahovah, or Ra, or Larry, or Curley, or whatever.
It is not enough to simply understand Chaos. Jon has a gift of being able to walk side-by-side with Chaos into the Valley of Death, embrace Chaos, gaze empathically into the watery yellow eyes of Chaos and slip Chaos the tongue.
Yes, I have certainly read, nay STUDIED, the Philbin text (Bucharest, 1941). In fact, I presented a paper on it in Brussels at the 22nd Annual Convention of Insincere Servile Self-Seekers back in '97 (for an online transcript go to www.edmcmahon.com/yessir/nosir/verygoodsir/~oh.but.i.couldnt.html). The paper examined how the Philbin Principle affected Yanni album cover art by comparing his releases both pre- and post-stroke (didn't know Yanni had suffered a stroke? the Sarkin/Yanni similarities don't end there...) and how The Tesh/Yanni/Kenny G triumvirate was forever broken when Kenny G was chosen to sit at (or on?) Lord Satan's left hand. which we ALL know requires a supernatural quality and quantity of servile ass-kissing (and plenty of Beelzebubbian buggering as well). So congrats on yer new appointment, Ken... You've earned it!
As for me, I'm comin to ya LIVE from the Acropolis... And as scholars (self-seekers & sycophants, all!) we must always end our musings by invoking the wisdom embedded in Latin phraseology, so I leave you with two words: Hoc Wynned.

HD: (To Jon -- ed.) note on byways alluded to previously: "Don't you see? In the BYWAYS is where the answers lie!" --Fredric March as Dr. Jekyll in 1932 Rouben Mamoulian-directed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar for that year. Jekyll/Hyde is one of my favorite metaphors. What has come to be known as the "mad scientist" (another great one is Colin Clive as Frankenstein in the first two Universal films, or Ernest Thesiger in "Bride"--I LOVE these guys!) is so much the model for the true artist (the Boltflasher or Oltgasmer), probing the unknown, combining parts that shouldn't be combined, trying to invent immortality, cheat death, improve life! The idea of paradox, dichotomy, DUALITY is important to me as well; the polar opposites: good/evil, chaos/order, creamy/crunchy, etc--- I believe that truly inventive vision feasts upon marriages of these seemingly mutually exclusive properties. I appreciate the metaphorical impact of the split nature as embodied in the German phrase "Der Januskopf" which was the title of an early silent film version of the R.L. Stevenson novella. It was directed by F.W. Murnau and, much like his seminal, notorious "Nosferatu" was an unauthorized version and so had to be retitled. The retitling, I think, is pure poetry: "Der Januskopf" (trans.) The Head of Janus. With this new fragment of semantics we can now imagine the Jekyll/Hyde personas as they truly exist, simultaneously, one looking ahead and one back. Not isolated, first one, then the other. Back-to-back. The dual-nature, not just in J&H, but in all of us, in everything. And a much more authentic model than the cliched interlocking tadpoles of yin-and-yang. Don't get me wrong; I'm not knocking yin-yang, I just think that they're so overused that we are immune to their true meaning. Der Januskopf shakes things up a bit, makes me think about the universe, not think about some college-chick's ankle (which is where, sadly, we often encounter ol' yin-yang). Janus' heads face two directions, ostensibly each unaware that the other exists just behind-- there's Chaos Theory for ya in a nutshell...
Anyway, I have lots more thoughts on this stuff. More later. ("Life Without Soul", by the way, was the title of an early silent film adaptation of the Frankenstein story.)

JS: HAIG, YOU SNIVELING CUR! YOU SELF-ABSORBED/SELF-ABSORBING SWINE! YOU ABSORBENT EXCUSE FOR A SPONGE! YOU SPONGE BOB! YOU BOBCAT, BOBWHITE, BOBTAIL, BOB HOPE! THERE IS NO HOPE FOR YOUR WRETCHED EXCESSED-SOUL. I FILET YOUR SOLE! TOR FILETS YOUR SOLE SOUL IN SEOUL! MAY DOG HAVE MEDIOCRE OCHRE MOICY ON YOUR PYONGYANGIN' SEOUL! I SWEAR ON TH SACRED-HEARTLESS SOUL OF O.J. AND HIS BROTHER-IN LAW HOMER THAT I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN IF IT TAKES ME A THOUSAND THOUSAND THOUSAND ETERNITIES (AN' DAT BE A WHOLE MESS-O-POTAMIAS, CATFISH!). AT LEAST, HOMER SIMPSON WAS O.J.'S BROTHER-IN-LAW, BEFORE HOMER'S MUCKY DIVORCE. HAIG, YOU WERE THERE. IF MY SHORTERM MEMORY SERVES ME CORRECTOMUNDO (THAT'S A LAUGH!), YOU WERE HOMER'S ATTORNEY. AND BECAUSE OF YOUR GRANDIOSE INCOMPETENCY, HAIG, HOMER GOT TAKEN TO TH PROVERBIAL CLEANSERS BY MARGE. BTW, IS THAT MALPRACRTICE action which homer instituted gainst you still pending. i have been subpoenaed as a witness for homer, and i refuse to perjure myself to save your pathetic derriere. you know and i know and homer knows and god knows that you really botched this one bad...BAAAAAAAD!! you SHOULD be disbarred! then you'll have to make a honest (right!!!!) living selling soles or whatever hackjob you can get your andalusian hands on. and furthermore, mr. demarjian, i've done an inexhaustive internet search re: your alleged lecture in brussels. the closest i could come to placing you even remotely in belgium was a series of symposia given by charles mingus and a hank d'oleo-margarine in luxembourg in 1974 entitled " 'nude descending a staircase': what th fuck is this shit all about?!?!?" i am of the opine that you have fabricated said talk to ingratiate your said sad self to th minions of million unsuspecting lambs that you could lead to slaughter by your subterfugaean con. if i err, i am human, forgive me, o divine one! i prostate (sp) me-self on th altar of your munificence (sic) and beg indulgence! i beg indigence! what!? you sentence me to death, with no recourse of appeal? may yahweh show generosity on your mongrelly afterbirth! may a turtle dove cast its shadow on th gun-metal grey sky of a midwinter midafternoon! may a rock be your bed! may bedrock be your penultimate resting place! may melrose place be a flowery thorn/thorny flower. may a dilemma have two horns, may a radish be radical, may the sun give birth to a daughter, may the moon be misbegotten, may a hawk break wind in your face, may you be reicarnated as the will of willy mays.

JS: all kidding aside, in his comments, haig has verbalized the BOLTFLASH modus operandi/raison d'etre/gestalt/creative energy/muse better than i could ever do, and i say that in earnestness and with not an iota of ass-kissing. i really do. because what i do is so close to my being, that i find it impossible to be objective about myself. i can only do so via poetry and music and visual art and boltflash tangentialluy, indirectly. haig really has done a brilliant job in explaining the oltgasm/boltflash impulse. thank you, haig. to describe what he's done quite directly, i must resort to the device of analogy: if you check out my answer to QUESTION ONE that was posed to me by this guy TOM MANGAN, where he asked something like, "what's going on in my head between chaos on one hand and control on the other?", i replied that that chaos/control intersection is not unlike the border between black and white on a piece of paper. from far away it looks quite even. but th closer that you look at this black/white boundary, th more irregular and indistinct it appears. in this metaphor/allegory, black represents chaos, and white, control. th border is my brain. now, if you could examine it even closer, analyzing the molecular structure of each half, you'd see that they only differ in terms of different atoms. but all these different atoms are composed of the SAME electrons, neutrons, and protons. at this sub-microscopic level, THERE IS NO BORDER! another analogy is appropriate here: th heisenberg uncertainty principle. th physicist werner heisenberg discovered in th first half of th last century that you can determine the speed of an electron OR its position, but not both. YOU ACTUALLY CANNOT KNOW WHERE AN ELECTRON IS IF YOU KNOW HOW FAST IT'S MOVING AND V/V!!!! wow. in THIS analogy, the speed of an electron is chaos, and its position is control. my brain, well...........

HD: (To Jon -- ed.) allow me to create a parallax genuflection...and send it in your direction. more directly regarding the Boltflash/Oltgasm connection: I would agree with Jon. "competition/contest" no. "game" most definitely. The point spread? not sure.
In a previous email I spoke of redundancy and claimed that it made things "better". Why is redundancy (which is commonly regarded with disdain and impatience), in my opinion, most often preferable to a lack of the same?
Allow me to elaborate. (First of all, I must preface with the disclaimer that, having been trained as a printmaker, I have a certain "relationship" or maybe "deep understanding" with redundancy). Redundancy, repetition, re-iteration, call it what you will-- is a MARVELOUS THING. First of all it appears to be STUPID. Stupid brings us closer to NONSENSICAL. Nonsensical= Chaos. And Chaos (as established in a previous communication) = God. Get it? Hidden in the stupid is the divine. Redundancy also creates opportunity. Opportunity often overlooked by those who see something repetitive and say "been there, done that". those people are doomed to mortality. Those, on the other hand, who pay attention, like those who pondered the "senseless" Duchamp, may have something rare and uncommon revealed to them. I'm not tellin what, but its in there. thirdly, redundance provides the opportunity known in some parts of the world as STUDY. that's right; when we return again and again to the same thing we get to know it better, to understand it in new ways, to detect nuances that escape us on the first or second or fifth or fifty-fifth encounter. For both the maker and the viewer. it's true, all true. i wouldn't lie. more later

JS: haig, i received a flyer in th mail today. is this from one of your confederates? it concerns a seminar entitled: "I AM THE BOROS, YOU ARE THE BOROS, EVERYONE IS THE BOROS", given by someone who calls himself "Sri Lemmy." The prospectus is decidedly urobotic: "The symbol of the UROBOROS appears principally among the Gnostics and is depicted as a dragon., snake or serpent biting its own tail. In the broadest sense, it is symbolic of time and the continuity of life. It sometimes bears the caption "HEN TO PAN" ("The one, the all"), as in the CODEX MARCIANUS, for instance, of the second century AD. It has also been explained as the union between the cthonian principle as represented by the serpent and the celestial principle as signified by the bird (a synthesis whivch can also be applied to the dragon). Ruland contends this proves that it is a variant of the symbol for Mercury - the duplex god. In some versions of the UROBOROS, the body is half- light and half-dark, alluding in this way to the successive counterbalancing of opposing principles as illustrated in the Chinese YIN-YANG symbol, for instance. Evola asserts that it represents the dissolution of the body, or the universal serpent (to quote the Gnostic saying, "passses through all things."). Poison, the viper, and rthe universal solvent are all symbols of the undifferentiated - of the "unchanging law" which moves through all things, linking them by a common bond. Both the dragon and the bull are symbolic antagonists of the solar hero. The UROBOROS biting its own tail is symbolic of self-fecundization, or the primitive idea of a self-sufficient Nature - a Nature that which, a la Nietschze, continualy returns, within a cyclic pattern, to its own beginning. There is a Venetian manuscript on alchemy which depicts the UROBOROS with its body half-black (symbolizing easrth and night) and half-white (denoting heaven, light, and Hawkwind).

JS: (To Haig -- ed.) th new science of UROBOROTICS/a new philosophy which i call UROBOROTICISM is/are in their gestational phase, but this much is clear: th metaphor of a serpent devouring its tail is an apt one for the time(s) we live in. case in point: regis philbin. if there ever was a human being that could be seen to be devouring himself under th narcissism of his overbearing hubris and vanity, it IS regis. th man has virtually no talent. his existence is a perfect allegory of this uroboric year. heck, maybe this century, this millennium, will turn out to be so exceedingly uroborotical that th future will have no meaning. i hope to god not. for, without the future to look forward to, the past is rendered meaningless. but th PRESENT, ahh, that's a different story! for if th urobotanical snake succeeeds in wholly devouring himself (i.e., both th past AND future are eradicated), all that remains IS th present. follow? REGIS could/would never grasp this. nor, should he. if he comprehended this concept, it would render his whole existence moot. he lives to UROBOTIZE himself; his life is th game of uroboro-auto-eroticism. without th philbin-serpent, his life would vanish. his whole raison d'etre is self-devouring

JS: addendum #14 to haig: isn't it amazing how when we think of FRANKENSTEIN, we don't think of mary shelley's classic, or andy warhol's film, but BORIS KARLOFF. it is amazing to me how karloff has become equated with th monster. why is this? there are so many reasons: karloff's acting, to be sure, but also th makeup, th costumes, the direction (jimmy whale), th sets, th other actors, th music, th cinematography, etc. karloff's acting, both in th original AND th sequel, is so unbelievable. it is literally UNBELIEVABLE. i mean, can you imagine having a moment in your life as transcendent as what karloff does with that role? i'd say that th vast majority of people don't have an imagination that good, that any attempt see themselves in that ZONE would be futile. i wonder if karloff, when he was making th original, had any awareness of how great this role was while he was filming it? haig, why do you and i keep coming back and back and back to these 2 films? why won't they leave us alone? why have they become part of our consciousnesses and subconsciousnesses? why have they become part of our popular culture? why, oh why, are we so obsessed with them, to th point of driving our wives crazy with our repeated viewings of them (addicted to them like they were some paregoric), losing both sleep and valuable social-et-business contacts? why do we choose them over personal hygeine? why do we dress like karloff's monster every halloween? kids don't think it's funny; it scares th bejeezus out of em. i'm GLAD you talked me out of having metallic bolts surgically implanted in my neck, though. on 2nd thought, maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. but we've had some fun with our frankenstein obsession, haven't we? that time we stole a brain from the harvard medical school? th time we set a windmill on fire? th time i made believe i was a blind hermit and you made belive you were th monster?

HD: (To Jon -- ed.) What is your opinion of the connection,if any, between Universal Studio classic horror films and the rock group Motorhead? I have been a fan of Motorhead for almost fifteen years, and I feel that their song structures borrow freely from the way Universal horror films are composed, especially those directed by James Whale (in particular THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN). For example, if you closely study the scene in which the monster is befriended by the blind hermit, the way in which this scene is edited (timewise, 1:2:1:3:2:3:1:2:1) is closely mimicked in the repetitious structure of many of Motorhead songs. Futhermore, the Faustian theme of immortality as a bargain with evil, clearly evidenced in both FRANKENSTEIN and THE BRIDE, is a recurring motif for Motorhead. And, in my opinion, both Motorhead AND James Whale borrow heavily from German expressionistic cinema (a close viewing of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI will give much credence to my asssertion - note in particular the not-quite right angles (amphetamine-induced?) of the rooms on set, the high-contrast starkly dramatic look, the expressionist exaggeration of the make-up (especially Caligari's),the plot-line, and, although it IS a German film, the fact that the word "somnambulist" can be made into the anagram "tom slam is bun"). Also, both Whale and Motorhead obviously tip their hats to Dali's painting THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY. (Elsa Lanchester's coiffure as the bride is a paean to Dali's melting clocks.) Whale also visually references the nineteenth century Romantic Goth painter Henry Fuseli's famous painting, THE NIGHTMARE,in the "ravaging of the Bride" sequence of the 1931 Frankenstein. In it, Henry Frankenstein's Bride-To-Be gets splayed out melodramatically across her bed, her pose and clothing echoing the figure in Fuseli's paining AND echoing Conrad Veidt's Somnambulist's abduction of the heroine in Caligari eleven years earlier (Calling Dr. Incubus!). Speaking of nightmares, note the M'head songs "like A Nightmare" and "Nightmare the Dreamtime", both referrring to the ambiguity of the dreamstate, a hallmark of the surrealist movement.
The most important member of MOTORHEAD is "Lemmy". Is it just me, or is the name "Lemmy" a take-off on Universal's "Carl Lamelle"?
The connection of the percussion of classic surf music (e.g., "Pipeline" by the Chantays) to Whale (that tiny ballerina that Dr. Praetorius keeps in a jar comes to mind) and Motorhead (Lemmy's road behavior, the way their vocals are "miked", their songs'lyrics {e.g, misogyny, casual drug use, violence, sonic extremes [also see SPINAL TAP ]}) is apparent. You may also notice that Spinal Tap, Motorhead AND James Whale ALL speak with British accents, further reinforcing my theory of a connection between them.
If Death (a "Motor" of infinite slumber if there ever was one) can be called Eternal Sleep, is Undeath then Eternal Sleeplessness?
This would make the vampire a sort of supernatural speedfreak. Dracula, living for centuries without resting as the King Vampire (or "Head" Vampire), is certainly the ultimate example of this.. the true Motorhead, if you will. Motorhead (the band) addresses the theme of vampirism overtly in the song "Die You Bastard!" (from the 1985 album "Another Perfect Day"). Although the song is ostensibly ANTI-vampire (about killing them), we all know how thin the Heavy Metal line is between condemnation and celebration of the supernatural (see Motley Crue's highly controversial "Shout At The Devil" which was semantically an ANTI-Satanic anthem but was invariably read in context as PRO-Devil-worship (i.e. Shout WITH/FOR The Devil)).
Incidentally, Motorhead, spelled backwards with the "t" repositioned, spells DEATHROOM. Deathroom could be a euphemism for "morgue" or "room where death occurs" or "crypt", but it is clear in this context that Deathroom = COFFIN (the "Iron Maiden"/Motorhead connection here is obvious,huh, Jon?) . Hence another vampiric connection. Motorhead's eponymous anthem (from self-titled debut album, 1975) is all about the travails of the speedfreak and is probably the most poetic tribute to both amphetamine usage and vampiric hunger/stalking.
Witness this lyric:

Can't get enough of the Righteous Stuff? Speed... or BLOOD? You decide.
Another anagram connection, Jon: MOTORHEAD = TOM OR HEAD. "Tom" as in "tomcat". That cat might be "black". I'm sure you're familiar with the Universal release "The Black Cat", with both Karloff and Lugosi?
Motorhead pays tribute to The Wolf Man (1941) with the songs "Snaggletooth" (from 1985 NO REMORSE double album) and "Dogface Boy" from the SACRIFICE album. Also, the word MOTORHEAD can be "anagrammized" to spell A MOOT HERD. The gypsy camp set in "The Wolfman" (with Bela Lugosi as the gypsy {gypsy MOTH: "MOTORHEAD" = MOTH TO READ!!!}) evokes th feeling of a moot flock ("herd") of animals. This, although not readily apparent, becomes fairly obvious when Lon Chaney kills Lugosi. And the perfect symmetry of Chaney's wolfman make-up is a tip of the hat to the "umlaut" over the "O" in MOTORHEAD. So what do you think Jon? Is there a connection? Speaking of (The) Connection-- You're "Jonny". Chris Lydon is "Lydon". Johhny Lydon. What's up with THAT???!!!
Regarding M'Head-- do you think I've already adequately answered my own questions? Or do you have more to add? And what about Hawkwind?
Thanks fer listenin

UPDATED

(as of 6/5/00)

JS: i think that to ACCEPT th limits of our perception as a boundary to our knowledge is a mistake. what i mean is this: our senses, even "technology-aided" (i.e., e.g, vision is furthered by microscopes and telescopes, hearing is augmented with stethoscopes et al., etc.), have "quantitative end limits". to perceive of this limitation as th end of knowledge is an error, perhaps THE fundamental mistake of western thought. i think that exploding this myth is one of th points (if not THE point?!) of th film AMERICAN BEAUTY. it explores, i think, death as a jumping off place rather than th conventional wisdom of it being some "omega". however, because where it jumps off to is so uncertain, so WEIRD, that most find it too damn anxiety-provoking to explore. i find th fact that this movie was chosen by th academy (whivh strikes me as a pretty damn consevative bunch) as th best picture of 2000 extremely noteworthy re: a trend toward a paradigm shift in societal thought re: th nature of perception. in a way, this picture is a uroboros.

GB: How is "American Beauty" an uroboros?

JS: i guess american beauty strikes me as a uroboros because i have my "uroboros hat" on these days, i.e., anything that smacks of spirituality et al. seems "uroborotic" to me. life itself can be seen as a uroboros. life is th snake, & th point @ which it devours its tail is death. or it can be th other way around - i guess in th final analysis, it doesn't really matter. so american beauty, being about life/death, is a uroboros. what's better (more intriguing to me), is that i perceive of it as a dark/black comedy about th where life & death intersect. th music (by thomas newman) is such a great metaphor of this theme. (i'm buying th cd.) does this make sense?

GB: Kinda, heh.

JS: good

GB: Do you relate at all to Kevin Spacey's character's feelings/attitude towards death?

JS: Yes.

GB: I mean, I think at some point in the past you have quoted a line from the film about death (and, in your case, near-death experiences)...I think it goes something like: "You might not understand now -- but you will!"

JS: Precisely!

GB: It has been reported that the famed 75-year-old artist Edward Gorey has recently died. What did you think of his work?

JS: I liked his subject matter, but his drawing style was not my cup of tea.

GB: When I first began receiving Boltflashes I felt, at least to a certain extent, that I was dealing with a very, well, Ted Kazynski (sp?)-like person (in other words, the UnaBomber on a positive, artistic streak). Of course, my first impression was proven completely false after meeting with you once in March in Los Angeles and again in April at your home and your workshop in Rockport and Gloucester Massachussetts, respectively. So my question is...how do other Boltflash receivers react to you?

JS: A lot like you have.

GB: Have you ever gotten any 'go away' or 'stop harassing me' messages or do people, for the most part, know that you are -- at least physically (mentally is another thing, heh) -- harmless?

JS: Yes. I have received "restraining orders". (Not in the literal sense, but more like, "Who ARE you? Whoever you are, stop bothering me!")

GB: "The Perfect Storm" is about to hit the theaters. The film takes place in a harbor minutes away from where you live...did you visit the set as the certain on-location scenes were filmed?

JS:Yes.

GB: How did it feel to think that, hopefully, at some point in the coming years a movie about you will be shot in the same area?

JS: Weird.

GB: Also, how did the neighbors react to the publicity?

JS: They thought it was cool.

GB: Did it provoke any thoughts of your own as to how your hometown will be used in your filmed project?

JS: Yes.

UPDATED
(as of 8/6/00)

GB: When I visited you in April at your studio in Gloucester I noticed the various media-addressed Boltflashes headed out to people at places like, say, Newsweek. You are obviously quite media-savvy so I must know: do you carefully orchestrate some Boltflashes to maximize press potential?

JS: I don't CAREFULLY, but rather CARELESSLY, orchestrate them. But I do indeed orchestrate them

JS: (addendum) To say I "carefully orchestrate some Boltflashes to maximize press potential" is overstating, to some extent, things. There is not some well thought-out plan to "attack" the media. I just "saturate bomb" via Boltflash when I damn well please (e.g., Boltflashing you). But Boltflashing Newsweek et al. seemed like a good idea. When you get right down to it, Gary, I guess I have a fairly strong component of "media pandering".
I Boltflash folks for basically 2 reasons: 1) I like them; 2) for media impact. Ideally (as in the case of Tom Cruise et al.), these two strategies intersect. I DO Boltflash compulsively, though (e.g., everytime I read a "profile" in The New Yorker, I BF the author with the observation, "I predict your mag'll profile me. Why not you?" You name 'em, I've BF'ed 'em. E.g., I BF'ed: Robt. DeNiro, Hugh Hefner, Jann Wenner, and Robt. Crumb. I really don't care whether they get to them or not. (It's their loss!!) If it gets some positive reaction (i.e., a Newsweek story), great.
If nothing happens (which is usually the case), fine. For what's important to me is THE ACT OF BOLTFLASHING, not any resultant repercussion. This is beyond guerilla correpondence (for that you need a purpose, me thinks); it's more like "dada correspondence"

GB: What do you want your legacy to be?

JS: Since th one leaving a legacy is dead, he has little control over how he'll be viewed post-mortem. So I refuse to put any energy whatsoever in trying to figure out how I want to be remembered, since it won't be my problem

JS: (addendum #1) This is very different question than, "How do you think you're GOING to change things before you die?" The realistic answer to THIS query is, "Not a whole hell of a lot." But how do I WANT to change things? Let me count the ways, man!

JS: (addendum #2) Legacy is, by definition, something that occurs after you're gone. It is impossible to have a legacy while you're still alive. That doesn't mean that you can't exert any control over how you'll be perceived of when you're dead, though. Once you ARE dead, however, any control you possess regarding your legacy ceases to exist. What I WANT my legacy to be is very different than what it WILL be
1) I want my legacy to be this: that people will have absolutely no idea exactly what my legacy is, but will find it well worth discussing
2) I want my legacy to be this: that I have a SIGNIFICANT legacy, as opposed to the vast majority whose legacy vanishes after a few generations, only to appear as a genealogical entry somewhere, or in some faded photograph
I want to leave some lasting impact, and I don't consider it MY problem to determine exactly what that impact will be. This is a problem for my "post-decessors", NOT me

JS: (addendum #3) i think that most folks're too AFRAID to think about their legacy cos that means they'll hafta think about their DEATH. i think that most folks go through their lives with an aversion to th thought of their own death. i no longer find this thought aversive. that's not to say i'm obsessed with th thought of my death, it's just something that i'm willing to entertain. it doesn't bother me. i mean, i'll think that i need to see my dentist tomorrow, and when i'm done thinking about that, i'll think about what i want my legacy to be. i'm quite certain my near-death experience is inextricably bound to th way i view death now. y'know, gary, in a way, my stroke was extremely liberating. my fear of death has been decreased almost to th status of "background noise". before it was definitely "foreground noise", and thinking about it a lot was DEFINITELY not on my agenda. this shift has been an experience of freedom of a very unique sort. near-death, i found/find, is a highly purifying trial. i now think about stuff that most people never visit, even in their dreams. my art (visual, musical, written) is one by-product of this purification process. my art is a by-product but my LIFE is/has been THE PRODUCT. th paradigm shift that my near-death stroke has effected has been so cataclysmic, so total, so entire, SO WHOLE, that your question re: my legacy has been rendered meaningless. that's not to say it's a "bad" question, gary. on th other hand, it's a good question. but, one part me is like, "what do i care WHAT th heck my legacy is?" i mean, beyond being remembered as a good father, husband, son, brother and friend, my goal is to transcend th desire for a specific "legacic" outcome. my artistic life should be all about its EXPERIENCE, not some goal or legacy plan. i guess if i was assured of an afterlife where i could eavesdrop on what th living had to say about me, my legacy would possibly hold more cache. if this is th case, and if you have god's e-mail address, i'd like it so i can get some documentation to this effect

GB: what do you want people to think of you a hundred years after you are gone?

JS: see above

GB: How do you want to change things before you die?

JS: I want to see Jimi Hendrix on a postage stamp

GB: do you think about these 'legacy' issues a lot?

JS: too much, I think

GB: do they relate to your own dealings with mortality?

JS: yes

JS: (unprompted comment) there is always a choice of 2 or more alternatives of action in any situation, and infrequently (possibly rarely) are these alternatives so qualitatively different as to pose stark differences, i.e., th norm is that there are subtly shaded by ethics and morals, so that whatever righteous course one chooses is in reality th lesser of two (or more) evils, rather than GOOD vs. BAD, and this requires th individual to posesss a highly sensitive barometer to divine th "naturally proper" choice of action

UPDATED
(as of 8/24/00)

GB: How did you get involved with this "This American Life" segment?

JS: never underestimate th power of boltflash

GB: What is it about?

JS: how families change or don't change when THINGS happen

GB: Were you a regular TAL listener before you had been contacted by the show?

JS: no

GB: So did your Boltflashing lead directly to your "This American Life" appearance?

JS: yes

GB: I mean, did you send TAL your own media press kit (with your articles, etc.) or did you just send them your 'correspondence' art?

JS: both

GB: Were you interviewed by/did you get to talk to Ira Glass?

JS: yes

GB: Did you visit New York City to go to TAL's offices or did a field producer do the piece in the Gloucester/Rockport area?

JS: neither. ira flew in from chicago where he does th show from to speak with kim and i

GB: What was Ira Glass like?

JS: I found him highly intelligent and perceptive and an outstanding interviewer. I thought he was very, VERY good at what he does.

GB: How long did you spend with him?

JS: About six hours.

GB: Any interesting/funny/weird stories from your meeting?

JS: *He wanted to know why I wanted to be on THIS AMERICAN LIFE. I simply explained that THIS (meaning GQ, or Paramount or The NY Times) is my raison d'etre. *I found it cool that he didn't want to talk about my art, but rather my family dynamic.

GB: Did the TAL segment come out how you thought it would based on the conversations that you had with Glass?

JS: NOT AT ALL! th seg had little to do with my art as i assumed (incorrectly) that it would. when i realized that it was about th way families change, again i assumed (and again, incorrectly) he'd focus on th POSITIVE aspects of our transformation. what th majority of th seg turned out to be about is th way my family was/is NEGATIVELY impacted by my metamorphosis. what i did NOT expect was how moved i was by th seg. i didn't realize what an amazing artist ira is! he has created a new art form (well, new to me, anyway) where he takes conversation (in our case, my wife's, my son's, and mine) edits and arranges it in a way to tell a narrative to "voice" (literally) his point of view. it was a very, VERY intense experience to have my tale told by somebody else. (almost always in life, WE {and not another} tell our own story, from our viewpoint, embellishing on it to convey our point.) how surreal it was to be out of th driver's seat re: recounting my tale. but what a great "recounter"/raconteur he is!!

GB: How did the TAL segment portray the negative (rather than the positive aspects) of your family's changed dynamic (post-stroke).

JS: i was portrayed as being very, VERY irritating

GB: Did this make you feel more self-conscious after hearing the segment?

JS: yes

GB: Did it bother your wife or kids?

JS: after they understood its "context", not really. but initially, it bothered all of us

GB: How so?

JS: How th seg bothered us and made me feel self-conscious will become apparent/obvious upon listening to it

UPDATED
(as of 2/19/01)

GB: What is your idea of perfect happiness?

JS: eating a REALLY good grapefruit. they're AMAZING fruits

GB: What is your greatest fear?

JS: having someone really scary really angry at me

GB: What historical figure do you most identify with?

JS: joseph cornwell

GB: Which living person do you most admire?

JS: martin luther king

GB: What is your favorite journey?

JS: to jamaica, where i go annually

GB: On what occasion do you lie?

JS: when i lie for it for th mischievous fun of it (never maliciously or with an agenda)

GB: What is your greatest regret?

JS: saying what that thing is would be very hurtful to th person involved

GB: What or who is the greatest love of your life?

JS: my wife - that's a no-brainer

GB: If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?

JS: that my mother would send me underwear

GB: What is your favorite occupation?

JS: artist

GB: What do you most value in your friends?

JS: honesty

GB: Who are your favorite writers?

JS: hemingway, hunter thompson

GB: Who is your favorite hero of fiction?

JS: robert jordan in FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

GB: What are your favorite names?

JS: curtis, robin, caroline

GB: What is it that you most dislike?

JS: inane conversational small talk

GB: How would you like to die?

JS: like i lived

GB: What is your motto?

JS: "in art and dream, proceed with abandon; in life, proceed with balance and stealth" -patti smith

UPDATED
(as of 1/5/02)

GB: Do you prefer to type or to write?

JS: i like both for different reasons

GB: Why do you like each?

JS: WRITING: i am enamoured with th physical process of writing. i also have a long-standing love affair w/ writing implements, and am narcissistic re: my handwriting. i also like th whole concept of surface (vs "e-") mail, of/to which writing's much more conducive. TYPING: th whole idea of using ELECTRONS as a written communication tool is cool. i also find typing much more "elastic" than writing. to me, it's a whole different medium than writing, virtually as differing as visual art from music

GB: Can you give us at least a bite at the screenplay?

JS: sure

GB: Like, what's the title going to be?

JS: BOLTFLASH!

GB: In regards to your writing, do you have any heroes in terms of style (not content, mind you, just 'style').

JS: hemingway, allen ginsberg, fitzgerald, j d salinger, robert stone, mark lerner, poe, mark twain

GB: You have a certain stream of consciousness style in your poetry and prose.

JS: so they tell me

GB: Where does this find its routes?

JS: ROUTE 66, perchance?

GB: Where and when do you find yourself writing?

JS: i ALWAYS write in our solar system, specificall the earth, more specifically north america/usa/new england/mass/gloucester & rockport. i always also write in th future, which collapses to th present

GB: Do you keep some kind of notebook or journal with all of your work in an organized or do you let it come to you (and write it down) and leave you (sending it away in the form of a Boltflash) in a sort of natural, uninhibited way?

JS: th latter, sort of

UPDATED
(as of 3/18/02)

"SON OF THE CONTINUOUS INTERVIEW": (a "virtual" play)

THE ACTORS:

1. gary baum: played by jon sarkin

2. jon sarkin: played by himself

THE SETTING: your computer

THE TIME: the past

gb: what is your latest idea?

js: well, a good friend of mine, willy solid, has suggested some ideas for paintings. i trust and respect this dude, so i am seriously (well, as serious as i can get!) entertaining his ideas for some large paintings. one chief obstacle is my studio. it is a relative small spaced, and crowded, as you can/have envision(ed), with all sortsa jetsam-et-flotsam et al. in order to effect these paintings, i'll have to clear out all this crap fr my studio and otherwise make room on my floor where i prefer to paint canvases (rather than on an easel, which seems to be a more common practice). also, as th money spigot is not flowing @ th volume conducive to buying canvas and paint, this presents a secondary obstacle. as you know, gary, ideas are not a problem for me. so this is not an tertiary obstacle. if i had th jack ($$), making space wouldn't be a problem, so right now, i guess $$ is th chief challenge. also, willy solid has not specifically delineated his ideas, and i greatly prefer (INSIST) on him "forking over th specificities" as a precondition for these manifestations. i'm presently excited about this-here prospect. i like th idee of someone else comin' up w idees rather than moi. besides, willy's idea might prove to result in paintings that are quite marketable, and, although money MAY be th root of all evil, i have no problem (well, not exactly) being SUPREMELY EVIL. besides, an anagram of "evil" is "live". but so is "vile". and "veil", wherever th hell this fits in. possibly EVIL is just a VILE VEIL under which we must LIVE, i.e., evil is merely an ugly disguise for its opposite ("goodness")? e.g., under th vile veil of th evil OSAMA lives holiness, that under his devil core lived a being that's as good as he APPEARS bad. appearances may deceive. beauty (or as this case may be/is, "beastliness", is only skin deep. perhaps osama would be better off in somoa. he couldn't get into much trouble there, and th sun would be good for his decidedky un-sunny disposition.

gb (aka js): i have visited your studio, and it is a MESS. why is it so damn messy?

js: good question. i think there are two parts to th answer: 1) wherever one's organizational capacity is

located in th brain, that part was comprimised by th stroke and related surgery; 2) i have, as a result, i think "given up" on whatever organizing capacity that's remaining. @ this point, for reasons i don't feel like going into here, differentiation into reason #1 and reason #2 is immaterial. when i try to make said discrimination, it's totally confusing and ultimately futile and pretty much frustrating. so i try "not to go there." what i HAVE observed is just how complexly involved one's oganizational neurology is. i know you're father's a neurologist - ask him how we organize, how many different skills are required to organize competently. it's upsetting to me just how profoundly my organizing capacity's been diminished, as th task of accepting this disability is herculaean. i think anyone reading this interview will have a good deal of insight into what i'm speaking about here. i have been given lemons here, and, as th old saw goes, i think i've made some pretty damn good lemonade as a result. i have found that th SUFFERING (on many different levels) that's been effected by my organizational comprimise has been redemptive, and what i mean is, that it's been insightful, spiritually evolving/evocative, growing, and wisdom-giving.

gb (actually, js): how would you describe your current state of mind?

js: hmm. when i saw th word “current”, i think of its homonym, “currant”. that’s just th way my mind works, like a kid’s who can’t read or spell yet. if word sound th same, it’s immaterial to him whether they’re spelled different or have different meanings if they ARE spelled th same way. then, once i “jump” to th word “currant”, i think, “gee, what would i say if someone asked me, ‘how would you describe your CURRANT state of mind?’” I might say, “how dare you compare me to a berry?! how insulting for th berry! i mean, it’s common knowledge that a fruit is way more intelligent than i am!” or i might riff on th word “current” in its electrical definition: “gee, gary, i’m impressed that you’re cognizant of th electrical nature of neurochemical transmission. you know, synapses and action potentials and all that.” or I might say, “like just about everybody else, my mind is focused

on CURRENT events. i also think a lot about my CURRENCY, mutual funds and stocks and all that.” but then, after all this “stream-o-consciousness” riffing, i’ll get down to what you’re driving at, miss daisy. see: i can’t stop riffing. this riffing riff, to a significant extent, i realize, answers your question. i think directly addressing a question – you know, taking th bull by th horns, instead of being tangential, which is th american way, is over-rated. although my “tangentiality” is harder to understand than th direct approach, you can’t understand my mind-state by direct observation. journalists et al who’ve “observed” me have found this, i.e., they may’ve deluded themselves into thinking that by a direct, “scientific” approach they can understand th way my mind works. but i think they’re fooling themselves. i like th following analogy. in fact, i like analogies in general. again they’re more metaphorical, more POETIC, than direct. i like this, as i’ve said. th analogy: th REDUCTIONIST/MECHANISTIC (western) way of observation dictates that th way to understand something, you must look at its working parts. therefore, if you wanna understand th way a watch works, take it apart, put all th parts in a box, and look at each part under a microscope . as you know, this won’t help you to understand th watch’s workings. a timepiece must be understood HOLISTICALLY. Th same goes for th brain. MY brain. but i feel i haven’t adequately addressed your question of what my mind-state is like now. i don’t know. maybe i have. what’s th difference? i mean, let’s say i answer this question to your and everybody else’s satisfaction. so what? is that gonna give you complete insight into YOUR state of mind? i don’t think so. each person must figure out what their own state of mind is. seems that most folks would rather not do this hard work. they think that by studying th lives of others, they can gain total understanding of their own. now, i’m not saying that by looking at th way others see their circumstances, you can’t gain ANY insights into your own, because i believe one can, but this isn’t gonna get you all th way there. and i think th answer to this question, gary, is A-VERBAL, i.e., it can’t be broken down into words. that’s why i paint, gary – i can’t express my mind with mere words alone. i think that’s why other “non-verbal “ arts were created, i.e., music, dance, other visual arts, et al.

gb (js): how do you feel about th stroke?

js: gee. there’s a LOT going on when i talk about my feelings re: th stroke. i mean, sure i’m upset, but i’ve found it doesn’t do a whole lot of good to walk around being constantly pissed off about it – both to myself and th people around me, particularly my family. and like martin luther king said, that “suffering is redemptive,” th travails as a result of th stroke have been redemptive. th dictionary defines redemption as “salvation from sin.” i never thought about this before, that somehow th stroke resulted in salvation from sin. when i could first speak after th stroke, th first words i said, to kim (my wife) were: “absolve me.” “from what?” asked kim. “from my sins,” i replied. possibly i intuitively knew about this suffering-redemption relationship even then. i certainly do now.

gb/js: what are you currently listening to music-wise?

js: well, my musical tastes are quite eclectic. th last thing i listened to was bob marley. i have one of those “cd jukeboxes” that enable you to choose from 200 cd’s in a variety of ways. i programmed it to play all my marley cd’s, and one way I can listen to them is randomly, i.e., to play all my marley songs in a “shuffled” manner. i think marley was one of th musical geniuses of th 20th century. also, i got a collection of psychedelic songs from th 60’s called “nuggets” which i like a lot. what else? miles davis, “my life with th thrill kill kult”, th who, dylan, th band, th doors, cecil taylor, ornette coleman, john coltrane, th kinks, sonny boy williamson (rice miller), thelonius monk, th beatles, th stones, gang of four, mott th hoople, zappa, captain beefheart, chopin, 13th floor elevator, th byrds, thomas newman, steve reich, howlin wolf, little walter, booker t and th mg’s, eddie floyd, sam & dave, johnny carwash, th ventures, et al

gb/js: how about reading?

js: i’m on a mark twain “jag” right now. i recently read huck finn, pudd’nhead wilson, life on th missisippi, and prince and th pauper. i’m currently reading conecticutt yankee. twain blows me away. also, th catcher in th rye, hemingway (sun also rises, for whom th bell tolls, great gatsby, voltaire’s candide, poetry by e e cummings, allen ginsberg, verlaine, baudelaire, and shakespeare (sonnets), human bondage, heart of darkness, all th king’s men by robt penn warren, spotted horses by faulkner, th idiot by dostoevsky, deep blues by robert palmer, th new yorker, et al

gb/js: you read a lot!

js: i don’t mean to give you th impression that i’ve read all these books fr cover to cover. some I have, others i’ve only read partially. sometimes i just read a little of a book to see th author’s style and not to read th whole thing. when you’re as “omnivorous” in reading as i am, you just can’t totally read every book you start. i like reading a book not to read it in its entirety, but just to study th guy’s style. Sometimes i’ll read like only one paragraph really slowly, like i’m reading poetry. i’ll even go so far to commit a sentence to memory. i did this w th opening sentence of th catcher in th rye, which i DID read in its entirety. i read this book over thanksgiving for th 1st time in over thirty years. unbelievable. i cannot recommend it highly enough
UPDATED
(as of 11/2/02)

GB (JS): who are your favorite artists?

JS (JS): i’d hafta say my favorite artist right now is PAUL KLEE. th guy was not only incredibly in touch with his unconscious side, but awesomely gifted in his ability to manifest these insights from his “shadow self” (as jung called it) through art. i suggest to anyone interested in art to check out his stuff. one thing that blows me away is his use of color. it appears effortless, and that’s because he probably was making his choices re: color intuitively. the quality of being in touch with your intuition, whether you’re an artist, or musician, or scientist, or doctor, or dancer, or whatever, cannot be overestimated. why do some people possess this bridge to their “other selves”, whereas others have no access? i have no idea

UPDATED
(as of 3/19/03)
GB: What's the latest updates on the movie?

JS: well, i can tell you what's been written so far. one BILLY RAY has been engaged by paramount to write screenplay. i was informed by para th first week of feb that they would buy our life rights. this does not mean that they will definitely make th film, but it IS a very positive omen

GB: and how does all of this dovetail with your upcoming show and the sort of critical mass you're achieving in the print media?

JS: quite very nicely. you don't need me to connect th dots here, gary. think about it

GB: So what's the latest with your art itself?

JS: i'm into using broccoli as a medium

GB: Has the emphasis shifted at all?

JS: i use other vegetables as well. i fund rutabga quite versatile

GB: Working on canvases that are smaller or larger than before?

JS: wider

GB: Who's receiving Boltflashes these days, if anyone?

JS: people i like

GB: how does the studio look these days?

JS: about th same as when you saw it

GB: Cleaning anything out in preparation for the show?

JS: sorta

GB: Or is it as, uh, 'disheveled' as ever?

JS: roughly

I stopped by Jon Sarkin's Gloucester studio last week. Sarkin, who was featured in the 2006 DeCordova Annual, has been painting portraits lately.

What separates the artist from the rest of us mere mortals? In Jon Sarkin’s case, it turned out to be a stroke. The deluge of blood that drowned certain parts of his brain also flipped a switch that turned on a torrent of creativity. Suddenly the buttoned-down chiropractor had a compulsion to create and an artist was born in a man approaching his fifth decade.

I came to consciousness and things were different right away, he recalls. Something happened in my brain that made everything different. I don't know what that is and neither does anyone else.

For scientists interested in what constitutes creativity, Sarkin and others like him provide the perfect experiment: a man spends half his life as a linear-thinking pragmatist and the second half as a Bohemian painter. Here is a clear window into the neurological differences that allow a small number of us to transcend the ordinary.

At present, what is known about this strange sort of rebirth is that it stems from certain types of dementia and brain damage. Researchers suspect that most of the change results from a loss of function rather than a gain. Brain regions that once stifled creativity are muted by the damage.

Sarkin’s experience, however, suggests the story is more complicated. Before the stroke, his life had been controlled, predictable, orderly. Although he'd always been interested in art, going to museums and sketching occasionally in his spare time, Sarkin never considered painting as a possible career choice. I went to prep school and a really good college, he says. You don't chuck all that away to become a starving artist.

After the stroke, everything changed. The world suddenly sounded, looked, felt, even tasted alien to him. The changes inspired feelings he'd never had before, and he felt compelled to communicate them. But he couldn't find the words to capture the new person he'd become.

I didn't have the need to express emotions before the stroke, Sarkin says. Afterwards, I became more primitive, more animalistic-darker. Have you ever read 'Heart of Darkness' or seen 'Apocalypse Now'? I just went further upriver.

Sarkin says he always had an offbeat way of looking at things. But, after the stroke, my artistic thermostat got turned up big time.

Just how that thermostat got turned up is what has scientists intrigued. As it turns out, Sarkin's stroke damaged an area of the brain-the frontal lobes-that has been linked to a blossoming of artistic activity in other people.

Occasionally patients with a condition called frontotemporal dementia suddenly develop an urge to paint, says neurologist Bruce Miller, M.D., director of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California-San Francisco.

More often than not, Dr. Miller says, there's a loss of creativity in people with frontotemporal dementia. But a minority of them-a very interesting minority-start producing paintings, he adds. And this happens even in those who had no interest in art before.

This sudden unleashing of artistic talent only occurs when the left side of the brain is hit harder than the right, Dr. Miller says. The left is the side associated with language; the right is involved in visuospatial processing. Normally the left side tends to dominate the right side. When the left side is harder hit, the result is a condition scientists call progressive aphasia. It's almost like the degeneration in some way releases functions that were hidden before the illness, Dr. Miller says. Whatever that visual part of the brain did before was suppressed by the brain functioning as a whole.

His work with aphasia patients made Dr. Miller think about an autistic boy named Dane. When I started realizing that some of my patients were losing language and social skills but developing an interest in art, it reminded me a little bit of autism, Dr. Miller says. There, it's not a progressive loss, but it's similar nevertheless.

Dane was drawing strikingly advanced pictures of horses when he was just 2 years old. I was very struck by the way Dane's artistic creativity was similar to that of my patients with progressive aphasia, Dr. Miller says. So the language isn't there, but there's this energy and burst of visual images that comes out-in Dane's case, almost like instinct, almost like it was just sitting there and waiting to go.

While it's possible that frontotemporal dementia leads to artistic talent simply through an unleashing of pent-up creativity, some researchers suspect the condition leads to changes in how people see the world. The originality we see in these patients may result from the different way they perceive commonplace objects, says Kate Rankin, Ph.D., assistant professor of neuropsychology at UCSF. What we see as creative may just be their altered perceptions of the world. In their paintings, they tend to take something typical and make it unusual by the way they represent it, Dr. Rankin says. I don't think that they're making great symbolic connections. Your average abstract artist is looking for content, for symbology.

Activity in the visual side of the frontal lobes may be boosted when the side that processes language is severely damaged, Dr. Rankin says. Just as blind people hear better than the sighted, those with left-lobe damage may be more sensitive to what they see around them. And the paintings may be an expression of how they feel about that.

Some of the paintings almost make your brain fry, Dr. Rankin says. The visual elements and lines are so intense that it's almost disturbing to look at them. You can almost imagine what it must be like to be in the head of someone who sees the world in a more intense way.

Exactly how damage to the brain impacts art depends on which areas are affected, experts say. Alzheimer's disease, for example, tends to lead to a more simplistic-almost childlike-quality in paintings, says Anjan Chatterjee, M.D., associate professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania.

This is certainly true for the renowned abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning. At the same time Alzheimer's was stealing de Kooning's memory, the disease may have been contributing to his artistry.

Prior to developing Alzheimer's, de Kooning painted in both representational and abstract styles. But once he developed the disease, he only made abstract paintings and these were far less complex than those painted in earlier periods. There was a successive simplification in his work, Dr. Chatterjee says. There was a paring down of forms and colors. Some critics say he was getting down to the essence and that he did his best work during that period.

Friends and colleagues noticed signs that the painter's memory was failing in the late 1970s. Visiting him in 1982, artist Chuck Close found de Kooning to be inert and forgetful-until de Kooning entered his studio. There, de Kooning seemed more engaged and lively. With the help of his ex-wife and assistants, he was able to keep painting for another decade, but with a new and coherent style.

Interestingly, the work of artists with dementia can change in a way that critics find more appealing, Dr. Chatterjee says. There is a sense of resiliency of the creative spirit that forces itself out through different conduits when the initial ones are blocked.

To uncover the science behind the art, researchers are turning to brain scans. So far, they've done only the types of scans that reveal which structures have atrophied in the brain. Other scanning technologies, such as functional MRI, might show that certain areas of the brain have been turned up by the brain damage. What we haven't done, and what I think is really important to do, is to look at what parts of the brain are released, Dr. Miller says.

Some scientists believe that the birth of an artist at an older age may have less to do with a change in perspective than with the sudden onset of a compulsion to create resulting from temporal-lobe damage. Alice Flaherty, M.D., whose research focuses on creativity, notes that damage to the temporal lobes can lead to a compulsive burst of artistry.

In most of the compulsive creativity syndromes, it's usually the drive that is key, says Dr. Flaherty, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. People tend to think that talent is everything. But there is a practice effect. When you love what you are doing and do it all the time, you get better by dint of practice.

Dr. Flaherty cites one of her patients who became obsessed with painting after a brain bleed. The photos he sends me show that his paintings are really becoming quite lovely, she says. For him, it's an amazing and horrible experience to be suddenly fascinated by art. His whole personality has changed.

The drive to paint has become so intense that the patient has no time for anything else in life, she adds. He's painting on walls, on the stove, everywhere.

For Sarkin, it comes down to a compulsion to paint-and a compelling need to make himself understood. He's acutely aware that he sees the world differently from those around him, and even from his former self. That is both isolating and alienating. Painting, Sarkin says, is like pouring your emotional reality onto canvas.

Jon Sarkin headed to Manchester for Sunday night's Dylan show. He was kind enough to send us a review, in boldface.

BOB DYLAN MANCHESTER, NH 8/27/06

This show was unreal. I mean that quite literally: it was devoid of any reality. It was timeless, in that it transported to me to a place of timelessness. The highlight of the show was "Tears of Rage." The transcendence of this song, its awesome transforming and transmutative power, was overwhelming. Dylan is a cipher in the truest sense. His meaning is as Sphinx-like as meaning can get, and it is sublimated into freeform experience and pure crystalline energy. This event was powerfully informative and mythically evocative. It was archetypally primordial and primitively symbolic. Legends have immortality, and eternity can be construed as infinity. Semiotics becomes syntactics, and Boolean petroglyphs inform what WERE anachronisms. Water seeks its own level, no? Long live Dylan. May he stay forever young.

After nearly dying in the operating room, an artist comes to life.

A Near-Death Experience

The skies were crystal clear over the Cape Ann Golf Course that day in October 1988 when Jon Sarkin, a buttoned-down chiropractor from Gloucester, Massachusetts, bent over to retrieve a tee. Sarkin, 35 at the time, suddenly felt an intense physical sensation -- a deep shiver -- go through him. Everything looked and sounded different. "I remember thinking, I'm going to die," he says today.

He drove himself home to his wife, Kim, who knew with just one look that something was wrong. In the weeks that followed, the weird sensory shift became something much worse. Jon was intensely sensitive to light and sound, and the initial shiver became a distressing reverberation in his head. Ultimately it turned into a hellish roar that wouldn't quit.

For the next several months, he and Kim searched agonizingly for a cure to the ringing in Jon's ears, a condition known as tinnitus. For a can-do professional like Jon, Kim explained, not having a definitive answer to a medical issue was his worst nightmare -- a nightmare he almost didn't wake from.

The son of a dentist and homemaker, Jon Sarkin grew up in Hillside, New Jersey, with a secret passion for art. But the dutiful student set his sights instead on a career in architecture, then chiropractic, to satisfy his practical parents who thought he should become a doctor. He married Kim Richardson, a teacher, in 1986, and the couple mixed in well with the laid-back but status-conscious lifestyle of the seaside community where they settled. They soon had a baby boy they named Curtis, but even then Jon rarely slowed down. The only exception was during breaks between patients at his thriving practice, when he quietly doodled or drew imaginative invitations to family parties. He thought that one day, when he retired, he'd turn more fully to creating art; he envisioned himself, an older man, painting at the beach.

Then the ringing began to sound in his head. After months of seeing specialists, Jon was diagnosed with a swollen blood vessel pressing on his acoustic nerve. On August 8, 1989, surgeons in Pittsburgh operated to insert a small Teflon wafer between the offending vessel and the nerve. The doctors pronounced the surgery a success, and as Jon came to in the recovery room, Kim asked the question on everyone's mind: "Is the ringing gone?" Jon mouthed the word yes. And his family cheered.

A day passed as he recuperated. Then, during a visit with Kim, Jon, who was propped up in his bed, patted the covers and called out, "Come here, Ida." Ida was the family dog back in Gloucester, hundreds of miles away. In an urgent voice, Kim called for a nurse. One of Jon's doctors came to the room, gently unwrapped his bandage and found that the wound was full of blood. "Please step out now!" he shouted at Kim, and Jon was rushed to the OR.

Once again, Jon went under the knife -- only this time the medical team was racing to save his life. He had suffered massive bleeding and a post-operative stroke. "I was told that I died on the table and they brought me back," he explains. The doctors would ultimately save him, but not without having to remove the entire left side of his cerebellum, an area of the brain that controls balance, coordination and movement.

This time, when Jon came out of surgery, there was little cause for rejoicing. "There were tubes everywhere," says his sister Jane. "He had a machine breathing for him. It was awful."

Jon languished in a semi-comatose state, losing weight and suffering pneumonia and bleeding ulcers. But two months later, he began to regain consciousness. The recovery was bittersweet. What soon became clear was that he would have to relearn the most basic functions of speech and movement. He was deaf in one ear and suffered from double vision. Kim recalls that Jon, under a mass of tangled tubes, would squeeze her hand in an effort to communicate. "He'd roll his eyes, seeming to say, Can you believe this?"

The Call That Changed Everything

Three and a half months after his surgery, Jon was finally able to return to his Gloucester home. He arrived via a medical van, emerging in a wheelchair. "We were coached beforehand not to be frightened by how horrible he looked," says his long-time friend John Keegan. "Jon had been a super-strong, athletic guy. Now his once-muscular arms were like an inch in diameter, and his skin was yellow. He'd lost almost everything."

But Jon made great physical strides through rehab. Within five months, he was walking and had regained most of his strength. Inside him, though, profound emotional changes had been wrought. While his intelligence and sharp wit remained intact, Jon was now unfocused and unable to attend to the minutiae of everyday life. Bills were left unpaid, appointments forgotten. He also, for a time, developed all-encompassing obsessions. One was with recycling. Since Gloucester didn't recycle at the time, he got the idea to send all his family's plastic bottles 500 miles away to his brother in the recycle-friendly city of Buffalo.

The Sarkins had known that the removal of the left cerebellum would have physical consequences, but doctors didn't have a concrete explanation for the psychological changes. Jon, it seemed, was now devoid of the intangible censors that control what we think, what we say and how we act. He would blurt out anything that came to mind, no matter how inappropriate. "I was like that character in the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar," he recalls. "I had to say everything I was thinking. It really was scary."

Social conventions were a thing of the past. If he thought someone was not interesting, he would walk away mid-conversation. He'd laugh at the wrong moment. He found himself having trouble empathizing with others. "I would say, 'I know how you feel,' " Sarkin says, "but inside I was thinking, What?"

Meanwhile, Kim felt like she'd lost the anchor of a steady, reliable partner. "He was very much like a teenager who has a lack of control over his emotions," she says, "whose perspective is warped and who is terribly self-absorbed. I hung in there because Jon is my family. I love him and I believe firmly in looking out for family." She also felt her husband's core had not changed. "Jon's inner personality and values remained the same."

"My wife is great," Jon says in simple understatement. "She was like one of those dolls that you hit and it always pops back up."

In 1990, a year before his second child, daughter Robin, was born, Jon felt that he had relearned enough of the social skills required for a health care provider and decided to go back to work as a chiropractor. "I wanted to support him," says Kim, "but I was very uncomfortable with it, because he got so fatigued trying to keep his composure."

The first few months went all right, but it soon became clear that Jon's heart was no longer in his work. Seeing patients exhausted him, both physically and emotionally. What now fired him up was the compulsive sketching he did in between appointments. He drew anything from pointy-haired people to the Chrysler Building, then scrawled quotations around the images, scrambling the words, creating whole new meanings. Lines from Thoreau were interspersed with cut-outs of Elvis or car tail fins. He explains, "Where once my art was very linear and organized, it became driven and chaotic."

Jon's sister Jane, impressed with the work, asked her brother if he minded if she submitted some of it to the venerable New Yorker magazine. "I remember thinking it would be kinda cool getting a rejection letter from The New Yorker," Jon says.

Then one day, as he sat at his desk furiously creating one of his "doodles," the phone rang. The voice on the other end said, "This is The New Yorker." "First thing I thought," Jon says, "was, Well, it's nice of them to call with the rejection." To his surprise, the magazine was accepting not one, but eight, of his drawings.

In the spring of 1994, Jon sold his practice. It was not an easy decision. "He was heartbroken," says Kim, "but both of us knew the stress was too much for him." He began to turn to art full-time, not so much as part of a conscious career change but as an outlet that suited him like never before. In art, he had found a place where he could express himself without worrying how anyone judged him.

The transition wasn't easy for Kim, who had just given birth to their third child, Caroline. Though the family was receiving disability payments and Kim, in a pinch, could have returned to teaching, she had reservations. "My biggest concern was having to leave the children to go back to work. Jon was not someone I could leave them with. It took me a while to give up the idea of a normal life," she says.

Meanwhile, Jon's work had caught the attention of art dealer Jane Deering. Over the last few years, she has had successful Jon Sarkin showings at her gallery in Gloucester. "His work is like a shock in its abundance," she says. "Pictorially, it's a puzzle. There may be a beautiful pattern. Another level is the language."

Liberating Work

In 2003, the Diane von Furstenberg Studio in Manhattan displayed Sarkin's art to an audience that included Meryl Streep and Diane Sawyer (these days, his pieces can sell for as much as $10,000). In his inimitable fashion, Sarkin started speaking loudly at the gathering, saying, "That's Meryl Streep. I can't believe I'm sitting at the table with her." Says his friend Keegan: "Jon doesn't always know when to shut up, but that's just who he is now, and you accept him."

Sarkin, who has sold movie rights to his story to actor Tom Cruise, says, "Sometimes I may get too excited and people will stare. But if you make a list of the top ten reasons why you don't care what people think, you'd have to include a near-death experience right up there at the top."

There are days, though, when he mourns what he has lost. At the beach, he watches teenagers surfing. "I'd love to take my son windsurfing, and I can't," says Sarkin, who 16 years after the stroke still suffers from poor balance and sometimes uses a cane. He has to constantly remember to speak slowly or his speech becomes slurred. "I was in a semi-comatose state," he says. "You really don't ever come out of it completely. I know there are parts of me that aren't here," he admits.

But his family and friends also know that he has emerged on the other side having gained, not just lost. "Daily life with Jon can at times be frustrating and exhausting," Kim says, "but his positive attributes make us proud." Communication is the couple's lifeline. "Jon and I talk to each other all the time."

Jon and Kim's youngest child is 11 now. Jon Sarkin, the artist, is the only dad the kids have ever known. From time to time, Sarkin brings them to his workplace, where together they create their own art projects and help their father with his. "They'll go through magazines and say, 'Use this picture,' " Sarkin says. "Or when I'm drawing, they'll look over my shoulder and say, 'Why don't you make this guy have three eyes -- or five.' I love it."

He chuckles. "If I was still a chiropractor, what would they have done? Come to my office and look at the x-ray machine?"

Sarkin points to one of his studio walls, splattered with quotations, images of Bob Marley, Oscar Wilde, Martin Luther King, Jr. "This is the way I see the world now," he says.

"I really think he has a gift that was unleashed by the stroke," his sister Jane says. "It comes right from his brain onto the page."

It's been an incredible journey, Sarkin concedes. "People ask what my future will be like. Remember the old Bob Dylan documentary, Don't Look Back? For me it's 'Don't Look Forward.' It's tremendously weird how I live now. I don't fit. That's very isolating." He pauses, and a slight smile crosses his face. "But it's very liberating at the same time."

When poet and rocker Patti Smith said, “In art and dream, proceed with abandon; in life, proceed with balance and stealth,” she may have been describing the life of Jonathan Sarkin ’71. His life, artistry, and vision are a seemingly complex balance between chaos and control. Thus too are his artistic works, which he even finds challenging to verbalize before settling on a “cross between the Wall Street Journal and Captain Kangaroo.”

He draws influence from Warhol, Picasso, da Vinci, Pollock, and Dr. Seuss, whom he says, “intuitively got it, the whole deal – words and illustrations – and never looked back. The guy was very cool.” Much like Seuss’ world, Jon and his works go against the grain, what he calls a “disagreement belief,” a belief in something against the status quo or what is self-evident. His thoughts are communicated uncensored, and he speaks in riddles and codes, with metaphors and a stream of consciousness that is both fascinating and derivative. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” he says, quoting Danish philosopher Søeren Kierkegaard, then takes it to another level, “Dizziness is the anxiety of freedom; freedom is the dizziness of anxiety.” His whimsical wordplay is inspired by such sayings, which he often incorporates in his creations.

As far as he can remember, Jon has always had an interest in art and could often be found doodling within his thoughts and free time, but back then he was a different person. After graduating from Pingry, he decided to follow a more academic path and in 1975 got a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Pennsylvania, master’s degree in environmental science from Rutgers University in 1977, and graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa in 1980. In 1982, he opened his own chiropractic practice and spent 14 years in the field … until one golf game changed everything.

In October 1988, after taking a few swings, Jon noticed a persistent ringing in his ear – tinnitus – and what was later diagnosed as a swollen blood vessel pressing against an acoustic nerve. After a surgical attempt to correct the problem, Jon suffered a massive stroke, underwent another medical attempt – the removal of the left side of his cerebellum – and spent two months in a semi-comatose state. After this ordeal, he was faced with a number of life-long after-effects. Jon lost his hearing in his left ear and has diplopia (double vision), slurring when speaking quickly, and a diminished sense of taste and smell. In addition, his proprioception has been greatly reduced, and his overall balance is poor. He was altered, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Jon made an attempt to return to his practice in 1990, but his attention was drawn towards creating images – painting and drawing, so in 1994, he decided to sell his practice and devoted his time to studio work. He says, “I didn’t decide to leave the medical field; the field decided to leave me.”

An awakening has taken place in Jon Sarkin, and the newness of his vision is reflected in his art – the bold use of color, subject matters, and words. He works in an obsessive-compulsive manner, as he continuously draws different versions of the Chrysler building and Cadillac tailfins using paints, pens, colored pencils, and/or ink. He describes it as a calling. “A thing that the originator of the calling gains power from, e.g., Zuni American Indian ‘fetishes’ … I get power, of an indefinably mystical transcendental quality, from these images. That’s why I’m drawn to them, am compulsively obsessed with them. They are elemental in a very literal sense.” It is a seemingly symbiotic relationship which compels Jon to spend six hours a day in his studio in Gloucester, MA, working on various projects at once. “If you count the time I spend actually working, the time I spend thinking about my work, and the time I spend dreaming about my work, my schedule is exactly 168 hours per week. This is not a joke. I am extremely agenda-driven in an ‘elliptical’ way,” he is quoted as saying.

Jon’s works have garnered lots of attention, and he thanks his sister and Vanity Fair editor, Jane Sarkin O’Connor ’77 for her assistance. Jane suggested that he submit his “doodles” to the New Yorker magazine, which loved his works and purchased a few. Since then, Jon has been featured in a number of publications, including The Star-Ledger and GQ magazine. After seeing the 1997 GQ article, Tom Cruise’s production company, Cruise-Wagner (a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures), bought the rights to his life story, with the possibility of Tom playing Jon. A screen play has already been written.

Not to be sidetracked by Hollywood, Jon continues to show and auction his works around the country, including New Jersey, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and in his hometown of Gloucester, where he resides with his unbelievably supportive wife, Kimberly and “very cool” children, Curtis David, Robin Page, and Caroline Ruth. He will also return to Pingry’s campus this fall, where his works will be displayed in the Hostetter Arts Center gallery from October 27 through November 27. “I look forward to coming back,” he says.

In a final analysis of Jon Sarkin, when asked what would he do if he had a second chance, he answers, “Everything happens for a reason...there’s no looking back.”

Tom Cruise is entering"Rain Man" territory, with a biopic of off-kilter artist Jon Sarkin. The "Mission: Impossible" star has tapped writer-director Billy Ray (of upcoming Hayden Christensen starrer "Shattered Glass") to develop the project.

Ray told BBCi FILMS exclusively, "I'm writing a screenplay through Cruise-Wagner Productions as a star vehicle for Tom. It's based on an article in GQ magazine about an artist named Jon Sarkin. He started out as a chiropractor. This very rigid, controlled guy had a stroke, a heart attack and a coma and came out of the hospital two years later a totally changed human being. All of a sudden, he was this rambling, manic child. The screenplay is about him and his wife and their little boy, and how this family changed and how they reacted to this new man. It's a great piece." High Noon smells Oscar.

Rockport artist Jon Sarkin held a reception Thursday night for an exhibit of his work on display at the Sunny Day Cafe in Gloucester for the next month or so. It felt a bit odd to see Sarkin's work hung on the relatively pristine walls of the Duncan Street cafe after having seen them arranged in piles or jammed into cardboard boxes in his studio upstairs in Brown's Mall on Main Street in Gloucester.

The busy canvases in the exhibit featured collaged photographs, stamp prints, doodles of heads with big eyeballs and fat lips and lots of writing: song lyrics and the names of artists and musicians.

One name that popped up with great frequency was "Hendrix", as in rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Asked whether he had been listening to a lot of Hendrix lately or just liked the name, Sarkin said both were true. He confessed to a Hendrix addiction, joking that he 'd heard they had 12-step programs for such things but he didn't wish to be cured.

Like a rapper's clarion call cutting through a D.J.'s sample-happy turntable, artist Jon Sarkin's clear-eyed vision peers back at you from the multi-syllabic jumble of his collage-addled canvases. Sarkin's stunning talent calls to mind a kind of Twombly with a twisted sense of humor. A basket-case Basquiat. Rauschenberg as Rorschach test. And yet, his is a singular aesthetic. A respected chiropractor from Gloucester, Massachusetts, Sarkin had his whole world change in 1988 when he heard a "wet snap" inside his left ear while bending down to pick up a golf ball, resulting in severe ringing in that ear. The medical journey that ensued - an operation to repair his acoustic nerve, a subsequent debilitating stroke, a two-month semi-coma - unleashed in him the vividness with which he now views the world. Would Sarkin - who once thought in physiological terms about healing others - say that art itself can heal? "I think my healing ability now is more effective. As chiropractor, I could only heal one person at a time. Now I'm more inclusive, more encompassing. Before, I had to use a sharpshooting bullet. Now I can use a shotgun," he says, evoking the incongruity of his violently soothing images. "I believe in the dualities of life. My work is moving as well as upsetting." The artist, who is the brother of V.F.'s features editor Jane Sarkin, has lived the kind of inspirational existence one usually sees depicted in the movies, and indeed, Paramount Pictures has purchased the rights to his story. Tom Cruise has long expressed interest in portraying him. Sarkin's work - along with that of painter and printmaker Hamilton D. South III - will be on display at the Diane Von Furstenburg Studio in New York from Spril 25 to 27.

It all began when Jon Sarkin was golfing at the Cape Ann Golf Course in Essex on Oct. 20, 1988. The 35-year-old Gloucester chiropractor was reaching down to retrieve a ball when he heard a faint snap in his left ear. Over the next couple weeks that snap turned into a debilitating wail.

It wasn't until the following August that he found a doctor that could tell him what was the problem. A swollen blood vessel was impinging upon the acoustic nerve in his ear. The doctor operated on him in Pittsburgh on Aug. 7, 1989, and at first all seemed to go fine, but a day or so later medical staff pulled away the bandages to discover the bloody signs that something had gone wrong. They immediately operated again, removing part of his brain while trying to save the rest of him.

Sarkin suffered a stroke and a plague of other maladies as he languished in hospitals in Pittsburgh and in Woburn over the next several months. He was in and out of consciousness.

When he finally was able to go home shortly after Thanksgiving, 1989, he had changed. The trauma left him completely deaf in his left ear, his speech slurred, his vision doubled. He had trouble perceiving distances. His balance was poor, so he had to walk with a cane. His coordination and strength in his left arm and leg were damaged. His thinking and judgment were hampered. On top of it all it seemed like some filter in his mind, some censor, some control in him had been taken away.

Sarkin returned to work in 1990, but the new man found chiropractry too challenging, mentally and physically. So he gave up his practice and turned to art.

"It's the only thing I could do," Sarkin says. "All the other options have been spoken for. Art is the last kid getting picked for the team. Everybody else is spoken for."

At first he made art in his Rockport home. Then he rented a studio upstairs at Brown's Mall on Main Street in Gloucester to limit the range of his chaos.

Though a series of coincidences too long and too complicated to recount, GQ magazine told Sarkin's story in its January 1997 issue, big wigs out in Hollywood read it, and the following month Cruise-Wagner Productions (Tom Cruise's production company at Paramount Pictures) optioned the rights to make a film biography of Sarkin, with Cruise perhaps to play Sarkin.

And there things rested until about two weeks ago, when Sarkin got a call from Hollywood. Paramount had been making Sarkin annual payments to keep its option -- basically a right of first refusal -- on his life story. Two weeks ago the studio informed Sarkin it wanted to finally buy the rights to his story outright. The price came in at six figures. Basically, Sarkin agrees to allow Paramount to make a film about his life and he'll make himself available to the studio and to the press as the studio requests.

"When are they going to make the film? I have no idea," Sarkin says. "There are legions of ducks that need to be in a row before you start quacking."

Not for the faint of heart

Sarkin takes the CATA (Cape Ann Transportation Authority) bus from his Rockport home to his Gloucester studio, arriving around 9 a.m. He might grab breakfast downstairs at the Savory Skillet and lunch at the Sunny Day Cafe on Duncan Street. Then he might work until 5 p.m. or so and then catch the bus back home to his wife, Kim, and three children, Curtis, Robin and Caroline.

When I stopped by his studio one day a couple weeks back, he was wearing stained blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt that he had decorated with green and pink letters saying "OW" (like a James Brown howl) across the front. If he were describing himself, he said, he would focus on how his socks are slightly different shades of blue. He has gray hair, a scruffy beard and mustache, a painter's dirty fingernails.

At times he is serious. At times he is loud and exuberant and silly. He likes to play games. He likes to keep people off balance.

"He's not for the faint of heart. He's sort of unleashed," says friend Haig Demarjian of Gloucester, who teaches art at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly and at Salem State College.

The floor, tables, shelves, sink and walls of Sarkin's studio are all splattered with paint and debris and writing. There are bottles of ink and markers and cans of spray paint. Drawings are strewn on the floor. More are packed in cardboard boxes, several sealed with clear tape and stacked up.

He writes lots of poetry. He sings in a laid-back voice on a friend's hip-hop CD. A selection of his paintings, drawings and collages will be exhibited at 389 W. 12th St. in New York from April 24 to 27.

Sarkin works on several pieces at once. He works on a piece until he gets sick of it, then moves on. Later he might come back. The pieces are jumbles of doodles, splashes of ink, glued-on newspaper and magazine clippings, snapshots, rubber stamps of lizards or cacti or brains, and columns of text. Some of the words are quotes from books or music he was listening to while he was working. He often writes the same word over and over again until it loses meaning. He loves word games and anagrams.

He pastes on physics or anatomical diagrams and then draw additional arteries and tubes. He repeatedly draws the same cartoon heads in black pen filled in with red and yellow marker. Each time he adds or takes away eyes. Sometimes he stretches mouths into circles of fangs.

"It's relentless and omnivorous. He eats anything he can, chews it up and spits it back out," Demarjian says of Sarkin's art.

At times Sarkin's art seems like chaos. At times it's awkward and poetic and funny and beautiful and inventive. He likes to play at the intersection of control and chaos. Some people get anxious around such chaos, but he heads right into it.

"It very much reflects the way he tries to make his way through the world." Demarjian says.

At times his art seems like someone trying to figure things out, give things order. Sarkin is fascinated by coincidence. He is fascinated by how one word might sound like a completely different word. He finds puns irresistible. He loves metaphor. He adores the connections and new meanings that appear when you put apparently unrelated things next to each other.

"The random absurdity of life is something I revel in," Sarkin says. "And I think puns are a perfect example of how random and weird life really is. And I'm like great, this is how the world is. It's a crazy, chaotic, mysterious place. This is the world we're in."

Sometimes you have to wonder if it was his illness or all the free time he now has that gives him such thoughts.

Sarkin says, "It's like the illness is that I have time."

Making art beats sitting around feeling sorry for himself. Making art allows him to express his intense upset about what happened to him. He puts a lot of energy into not looking back.

Good jokes

Sarkin finds Paramount's interest in his life story flattering and validating. It's great to have someone say his life is cool enough to make a movie about.

A couple weeks back, Cruise/Wagner Productions as well as Los Angeles, New York and Boston publicity firms that work with them all reported that they knew nothing of the Sarkin film and couldn't talk about the project if they did. "I would encourage you to try other avenues," one publicist said. Calls to PMK/HBH, a New York and Los Angeles public relations firm that represents Cruise's production company, yesterday were also unfruitful. One woman explained that everyone was busy because Oscar nominations were announced that day.

Sarkin doesn't worry about what Hollywood will do with his life and he's flattered that Cruise might play him.

"I think if he played me he'd do a good job," Sarkin says. "All this stuff; he's a different height than I am; he looks different than me -- big deal. Nobody knows what I look like."

But it's hard not to see this turn of events as part of some big, strange metaphysical joke. (Of course, Sarkin himself publicly demurs from making any jokes about the proposed film.) A couple weeks back Sarkin was telling me some of his favorite bad jokes:

"Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it was too long to go around the road."

"What did the snail say when it was riding on the turtle's back? 'Wee, this is fast.'"

"What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor? Where's my tractor?"

Bad jokes are where it's at in life, he says. They express the absurdity of life.

"When I die, I'm going to say to God, 'Good joke,'" Sarkin says. "A lot of people walk through life and they don't get the joke. This is a good joke."

One Gloucester resident we met seems unlikely to get upset over traffic jams. Artist Jon Sarkin is too busy creating art in his downtown Gloucester studio, making collages, multimedia constructions, and colored penciled drawings. The subjects: Cadillacs, cacti, aliens, and other non-Fitz Hugh Lane themes. "My stuff is not the Motif Number I, seagull, fishy type of stuff," Sarkin acknowledges dryly.

And the route he took to his artistic calling was not the usual museum school, starving artist, gallery-showing path. Although he loved to draw as a child, Sarkin pursued a career as a chiropractor. And, until October of 1988, he was a successful one. But that month, while playing golf, he felt what he remembers as an explosion in his head. Sarkin developed tinnitus, a constant severe ringing in the ear. After a year of internal torment, he tried surgery to correct it.

"I was desperate because of the ringing, so I said, 'Let's go ahead'," he recalls. The operation stopped the ringing, but shortly afterwards, Sarkin suffered a stroke and fell into a three-month coma. When he emerged, he was deaf in one ear, had permanent blurrerd vision, and walked with a limp. His chiropractic career was over. But the stroke had unleashed a pent-up reservoir of images and obsessions. His career as an artist had begun.

"I never thought at age 43 I would be this happy," Sarkin says. "It's ironic that you are privy to insights only through tremendous adversity."

The world may soon hear more about Jon Sarkin. When we visited him, he couldn't help sharing his big news: "Tom Cruise's film company has bought the right to a stroke victim's story -- that's me!" he exclaimed.

A life threatening scare. A total career makeover. Plans to put his life story up on the silver screen. Jon Sarkin has made the most of his second chance. And he's not done yet.

"I want my epitaph to read 'WOW! This guy really lived," he declares. "I hung on the surfboard of life, that's how I look at it."

LOS ANGELES -- When Jon Sarkin walks down that red Oscar carpet tonight, no one will notice him amid the crush of stars. After the ceremony, at the Vanity Fair party - the holy grail of celebrity bashes - Sarkin will be ignored by parapazzi and fans.

But just wait a couple of years, and all of Hollywood could be at his feet. Such is the power of a truly gripping life story.

So amazing is that story, in fact, that Tom Cruise bought the rights to it. Hot on the heels of such torn-from-the-headlines films as "Erin Brockovich," "The Hurricane," "The Insider" and "Boys Don't Cry," Cruise hopes that the 46-year-old Sarkin's epic ordeal will bring him the Best Actor Oscar he craves.

And Sarkin agrees. Ten years ago, the New Jersey-born doctor nearly died from a brain aneurysm, and had part of his brain cut away by surgeons battling to save his life.

He emerged a shattered man - but one with amazing visual perception. His brain seemed virtually rewired, experiencing sounds and colors with such intensity it was as if he physically felt them. "It's like being on a hallucinogenic drug the entire time," Sarkin explains. "Everything is more vivid, more deeply felt."

Seeing the world through new eyes, Sarkin turned to painting as therapy - and to his amazement, was acclaimed as an artist. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, GQ and The New York Times magazines and in one-man shows at galleries across America. Ultimately his art caught the eye of Tom Cruise, who snapped up his life story 18 months ago.

Last week, Sarkin toured the Paramount studio in Hollywood, visiting Cruise's production company to check on the progress of his film. And tonight he'll be rubbing shoulder pads with Cruise at the Vanity Fair party. "It's exciting and surreal," says the bearded artist. "This is like a dream."

Sarkin's transformation began as a nightmare on a golf course near his home in Rockport, Mass. "I bent over to pick up a ball when my head felt like it was exploding. I thought, 'I'm going to die. NOW.'"

"Apparently a swollen blood vessel had come into contact with a nerve affecting my hearing and vision. Everything I saw was bizarre...I had a screaming in my ear like the sexless piercing shriek of a baboon."

Doctors advised brain surgery to separate Sarkin's damaged nerve from the blood vessel - but the operation went horribly wrong.

"I had a stroke and died on the operating table," says Sarkin, hazel eyes unblinding, his rumbling baritone devoid of self-pity. "They took out part of my brain to save me."

He was in a coma for two months, after which he had to relearn how to breathe, walk, talk and eat. "After three months I left the hospital a different person. I underwent a cataclysmic change."

"It was as if the surgeons had removed some filter in my brain that normally stops you being overwhelmed with visual information. Suddenly I was experiencing colors emotionally as if I was I was on hallucinogenic drugs. I was physically feeling what I saw."

"I viewed the world through new, alien, and sometimes frightening eyes." His career as a successful chiropractor was over. "Before the incident I was a hard-working, driven professional," Sarkin recalls.

"Afterwards my vision was messed up, and the stroke left my speech slurred, and my left arm weak. I can't pick my kids up, or run, or drive a car. I couldn't think straight. I couldn't work anymore."

Disability insurance guaranteed that Sarkin's wife and their three children would never have to worry about money.

But Sarkin struggled with his transformation, and with his desire to make a new life for himself. Doctors urged him to take up art as therapy.

"I never thought I'd make any money from art, let alone be successful at it," he says. "I just couldn't think what else to do."

Sarkin's art vibrates with color and passion. There's also a distinctly bizarre view of the world running through all he creates. At times he's like a visiting Martian making ironic observations on the alien planet Earth.

While his "outsider" paintings win him respect, living with the otherworldly Sarkin is not easy for his wife, Kim.

"It's been difficult, but it's an experience I cherish," she says. "The serious side of him is gone, which I miss. But he's happier now than he's ever been, and has the freedom to explore his art."

Sarkin admits: "It's been hard for her. At times she found it very difficult living with me, and most wives would have bailed. But she didn't, and I'm very grateful. We have a stronger marriage as a result."

With all its ups and downs, Sarkin believes his life offers a role that Tom cruise could revel in.

"He's a great actor, and he could really go to town with my story," Sarkin says. "But Tom - if you really want to find out what it's like inside my head, better fasten your seat belt, man, because you're in for a rough ride."

Sarkin is unconcerned that Hollywood might reinvent his story - an accusation leveled against such recent films as "The Hurricane" - or may exploit him, as many felt "Shine" exploited the tormented Australian pianist David Helfgott.

"What can Tom Cruise do?" laughs Sarkin. "Kill me? I've been there already. I died on the operating table. A near-death experience gives you great perspective. Let him exploit me. But honestly - I think he'll do a great job."