A Single Painting and 22 Links To Books Linking on LinkedIn
I Drove Through Queens Yesterday And Learned Something About Yourselves 2022. Acrylic on poly (methyl methacrylate), 20 x 16"
This week I got back on LinkedIn because I’m ready to cash in on a mendicant career, and I need all the help I can get. Back in 2013 I signed up on the professional networking site because it was all the rage for people wanting to climb over people to get to the top of Abstraction Mountain. I stopped LinkedInning after a week or so, mostly because my attention span has difficulty traversing a trickling spring freshet let alone a 2 mile wide Hudson River of pretend enthusiastic advocates of my very own material growth.
I updated lost and forgotten links to my page, including ones directing the inquisitive voyeur to my writing oeuvre floating publicly in a cloud over the magical land of Amazonia. While re-linking I realized that steadfast writing efforts have neither gained the world, nor a 20 year total income exceeding $300, even after many blatant attempts at forfeiting my soul. I’m a mendicant, not a monk. I’ve been known to offer cleaning and cooking service with a book or painting purchase. Not until last month have I ever sold a painting for what I considered to be its actual monetary value. Likewise, when not practically giving books away, I am actually giving them away. In fact, beyond a few sold to friends and family (thank you) at the right place and the right time, including three gallery exhibitions where I offered show books for sale and sold a few at the asking price, I seldom receive the cost printed on the back. If the book is marked for $16, I sold it for $10, or less, or gave it away. Hard to believe, but free books are mostly a huge bummer too. Sometimes a hand goes up, “Oh, no thank you”. What? And those who do take the freebie Ron Throop with a wan smile and slight nod, forego ever mentioning a thing about it in the future. I’ve given away a couple hundred books with the same feedback enthusiastic rigor mortis crickets send to young lovers.
Yes, this can be very depressing. Strangely, however, silence and rejection feed my spirit perversely, in a way that only determined fools and artists can appreciate.
I am an underground painter and hack writer, and nearly proud of it. It is a great privilege to be where I am spiritually—waiting for nothing somewhere between student painter and artist of life. Aside from art creation, I prescribe to the many duties of care provider—cooking dinner, raising children, entertaining loved ones (wife especially) with enthusiasm, humor, tact, and a grace that only comes via over-sensitivity and over-expressive stridulation from a determined cricket who just “liked” a stranger’s “look at all the people who think I’m relevant” profile update on LinkedIn.
I also love run-on sentences, the mark of any hack writer worth his salt.
I just sent the following message to your inbox:
“Hey you, whoever you are (and hopefully you’re very important), add me to your network! I’m Chief Painter and Writer at Fuel Gallery and Freeflow Publishing with a penchant for a narcissism/nihilism that’ll knock your socks off. I offer my services as VIP to your network if it’s looking to ostracize itself from networking unabashedly. Check off the following books on my reading list and make a soulfriend, which is exactly what nobody on LinkedIn has ever been. Then we’ll play cards, trade recipes, tell stories of lost loves and strained colonoscopies. I’ll get to know you, and you know me, offline and out of the way, slacked on some park bench feeding pigeons at the base of Abstraction Mountain.”
(For those on Steemit who wish to subscribe to The False Consensus Effect (it’s free), please refrain from urge to purchase one or all of these books. Lots of my content comes out of these. I just couldn’t bear to lose a single reader. It’s taken me too long to achieve a single reader. So, keep away please. Or, if you must have one, stop by Upstate New York along with an empty glass. I’ll pour you a drink and give one gratis. Thank you for reading. It keeps me more relevant than you could ever know.)
Now for the oeuvre in the cloud:
A Spring Without Mulch, or Writing in the Time of COVID
Monsieur Tourette Awakens In Mid-tic: A Retaliatory Fiction
Roy Lichtenstein in Oswego 1957 - 1960
International Stuckist Invitational at Watkins Glen
Capillary Reaction: Hydrofracking and irrevocable Loss
Just Another Stuckist In Oswego
On Rainy Days The Monk Ryokan Feels Sorry For Himself
Moonlight in Groundspruce Woods
Fish Are Very Capable of Destroying the World, Just Don't Tell Them, O.K.?
My Contribution to the War Movement (Out of print. I have four on my shelf.)
I think there are two more. I just can’t remember the titles.
Here are a few of the covers. Ask anyone who has suffered a Throop publication, and they’ll tell you to judge it by the cover. Designed by Rose— the writer’s sole volunteer, confidant, and financial supporter.
