This post is interesting on a few levels. Mostly it is interesting because I had not yet come up with my running gag concept of the crack squirrels in my head to explain my antics. Also, it gives some unique insights into the way my head works.

It was called: The Arthur Browne show…

*************************************

Why did I wait so long to start a blog? What the heck was I thinking? Since I picked up my first crayon I have been doing art and writing. It is a compulsion. Something inside me that has to come out… and like any natural bodily function that demands release, it is dangerous to hold it inside. Artistic constipation would quickly cause me to explode and expire.

If you ever get bored enough to start reading my blog from the very beginning, you will learn that I am a mental freak of nature. I am all art-side-of-the-brain. I have no access to the logic side, as proved by extensive scientific tests and psychological profiling. This means that I can produce art by the box and drawer full, but I have absolutely no ability to sell or market my work.

The idea of this blog has always been to give me an outlet for this mass of strange things that my brain creates… (and to leave something of me behind for posterity so my descendants can get to know me after I am gone…. my own personal time capsule and attempt at immortality)… I try to keep you all amused by stringing the whole thing together with an amusing dialog and a few observations about life in general, and some history about my life, which has been one crazy ride.

What I did before I started this blog is a little thing my family calls ‘the Arthur Browne Show’. If anyone ever came to our house, and that person was someone I found interesting, I would try to maneuver my way beside them on the couch so I could casually ask them if they would like to glance through some of my binders of funny Photoshop pictures. These poor souls had no idea what they were getting themselves into. If they were too polite to try to escape, I would coax them outside to admire my tikis. If they still didn’t look too much like a cornered rat, I would attempt to lure them into the garage to see my art hanging on the walls.

This is a time-consuming process, not at all efficient, and it makes my family nervous… (they may be right, not everyone comes back for a second visit)… I just always assumed that people would realize that this bizarre attention was my way of saying, “Hey, I think you are a person who is deep enough to appreciate some of my unusual viewpoints.” But be that as it may, even I was perceptive enough to draw the line at pulling out boxes and drawers of old poems, sketches, stories and so on. So all this early work was destined to moulder and decay in lonely abandon.

Then I discovered blogging. Now I can put all this stuff into one place and you can all pick and choose what you wish to spend time on. And I am cleverly using the opportunity to show how my work has progressed and developed, while filling in the space between with clever documentary-like musings that some people have actually found fun and useful. I have cataloged my work while examining how I got to that point, and how it lead me even further along the road to where we all are today. And let us not forget my ongoing struggle to master this crazy magic box that I am typing on right now.

And the truth is, you never know what people are going to like. I have had very positive reviews on everything form my old Tin Tin and Conan comics, to my Photoshop tips, and the snowman my daughter Mollie made. And all this has led me to my recent habit of occasionally posting my unique views on what motivates us all to be bloggers. Because my mind does not work in normal ways, I sometimes ask questions that other people might never think to ask. I tend to look at everything as if I was a visitor from another galaxy, and this allows me to come at things from unexpected perspectives. Or, to put it another way, some of my thoughts are so stupid that they manage to become profound… (you know, like a dog that is so ugly it is cute)…

So what started as a cross between a diary and an experiment has blossomed into a real thing that is still both of those things and so much more. And isn’t that the story of art in a nutshell? Every new piece leads to something else while reinforcing the basics of what we already know how to do. We just get better and keep moving forward.

I know that 1,000 hits is not earth-shaking. I know it does not mean that 1,000 people have read all my stuff. But it does mean that 1,000 times somebody read something that I wrote. And that is just freekin’ incredible. Thank you all, from the bottom of my art, uh, heart.