| Here
is one of my favorite watercolor paintings. It incorporates the
style common to the other works, it's similar to another piece that
I like (the similarly titled War Within a Breath), and the slightly
more representational manner is a good change of pace.
I
finished this alongside Superunknown,
and compared to that piece, was painted pretty quickly. The main
paint and LP was applied in one evening, and then marker pens were
used to fill in the blanks later. It's all very aggressive and fluid,
and that's just the sort of thing I want to see in abstract painting.
All too often, I don't, which was probably my main motivation for
painting.
If
you don't like something you see, then try to change it. A pretty
good lesson for life, I think.
The
name comes from a song on the third Rage Against the Machine album,
The Battle of Los Angelos. It was their best work, and
pretty much the finest rock-rap album in memory. But then again,
Rage always put the whole "frat-rock" sub-genre to shame
with their inventive intelligence. The phrase, "Voice of the
Voiceless," refers to Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former journalist
and militant who's the great cause celebre for progressives and
left-leaning activists everywhere. "Free Mumia" is the
activist's version of the "John 3-16" guy with the rainbow
wig.
I
reflect upon Mumia's excellent book, Live From Death Row,
which had an impact on me, as well as the legal compromise reached
on his death row status. After years of almost facing execution,
a judge reassigned him to Life Without Parole. I have to admit that
this was a fair compromise. This is a case where one's opinion is
pretty much set in stone; either you believe he shot a police officer,
or you believe he was railroaded by the system. So this decision
works for everyone, I think. Mumia won't face execution, but neither
will he be released.
This
is one of those times when you realize that life is more complicated
than most of us would like to think. Sometimes truth is frustratingly
evasive, sometimes the innocent suffer, and sometimes an intelligent
social critic commits murder. I'll be mature enough to entertain
the thought that the man really is guilty; like Michael Moore writes,
sometimes we have to admit when we're wrong, and, you know, maybe
he really did kill that cop. If that's true, he should spend the
rest of his life behind bars. I honestly don't know the final truth.
And
America's capital punishment system is horribly racist and impossibly
corrupt. It must be abolished, and this country must stop its endless
war on the poor and the helpless. Hopefully one day Americans won't
be suckered by a media and political class that profits by keeping
us endlessly terrified and distracted. When that day comes, some
measure of true justice will be achieved. |
