Famous Monsters

Buford Youthward
stockcap@hotmail.com

There's a little piece of Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein in all graffiti writers. And for that matter, there is a bit of Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and Stoker's Dracula apparent as well. The maniacal nature of creation and the exhortation to celebrate and participate in invention inevitably feeds and flows from the same fountain which harbors the pangs of destruction.

What is considered criminal isn't necessarily immoral. All liberties need to be seized when causes are just. There is no cause more just than one which enables the human spirit. Bound by law, walking a tight rope hoisted by those that wish to enforce and maintain the conforming class, the modern graffiti writer is wont to step back and laugh.

Laughing out loud at the world is not the mark of the insane but the clever Cool Hand Luke engaged in creative destruction. The headstrong bantam caught between the world of making and unmaking is only left with a shrug of apathy to cast in the wind.

Watching the masses grow dependent on transition, brushing their appearance with social flouride, and living their lives on the safe and secure is like living with someone else's skin. The only fashion worth crashing is the life lived by design not default.

Observing the monster trapped as the windmill burns throughout the European night and the withdrawl of Jekyll's tonic setting up sobriety, I can't help but believe the sunshine is guilty of casting the vampire in us all away from who we are.


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