Love Works Eccentric Outsider Art
LOVE WORKS
edited by the Eccentric Outsider Artist John Dog,
written by Lee Ann Obringer
John Dog Eccentric Outsider Artist has just started a new site called Love Works Art. John DAgostino aka John Dog has been making a series of paintings about love. Love works to cure all ills. Mama’s cooking is always the best because it has an added dash of love. Scientists believe that Love Works because there are a lot of chemicals racing around your brain and body when you’re in love. But not because you are drinking or smoking, or eating twinkies like the eccentric outsider art maker the John Dog. Researchers are gradually learning more and more about the roles chemicals play both when we are falling in love and when we’re in long-term relationships. We all know about, estrogen and testosterone and how they play a role in the sex drive area . But beyond LUST, how do we get to LOVE.
Why do we sometimes feel like high school kids again even as we approach retirement when we meet that special someone. Our racing hearts, flushed skin and sweaty palms are due to the dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine we’re releasing. Dopamine is thought to be the "pleasure chemical," producing a feeling of bliss. Norepinephrine is similar to adrenaline and produces the racing heart and excitement. According to Helen Fisher, anthropologist and well-known love researcher from Rutgers University, together these two chemicals produce elation, intense energy, sleeplessness, craving, loss of appetite and focused attention. She also says, "The human body releases the cocktail of love rapture only when certain conditions are met and … men more readily produce it than women, because of their more visual nature." Male artists like the John Dog aka John DAgostino eccentric outsider art painter are love machines and hopelessly romantic.
People in love have lower levels of serotonin and also that neural circuits associated with the way we assess others are suppressed. These lower serotonin levels are the same as those found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, possibly explaining why those in love "obsess" about their partner. Now this is fine as long as your partner doesn’t start obsessing about how you are not living up to her expectations of perfection.
More on Sex and Bonding as opposed to Sex and Bondage later
Loose the word LOVE, when you say the word MINE?
July 17th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
The Distilled Beverage
Love starts at home. We don’t just walk over, throw back the curtains and open up the windows hoping for the best. We’ve got to keep this place clean. And are these walls sturdy? Is this foundation tenuous? Do I even know what this house was built on? What kind of building was here before it was a sprawling apartment complex? Then sure…go ahead and let some air in. We all need it. A bird might fly in and sing for you. It happens all the time. There are tossed rocks from angry neighbors, blood sucking mosquitoes, flaming bags of poop, police helicopters, but there are also beautiful birds we’ve never seen before. Love is a fine idea
But one needs discernment as well as love. Simultaneously, we must honor the invisible and the process by which the invisible become manifest.
[Man stands up in audience, realizes: “My head is too big for my hat!” Audience begins to chant: “My head is too big for my hat! My head is too big for my hat! My head is too big for my hat!" Everybody is giddy over the realization. One uninitiated little girl stands up and begins to speak: “But I’m in love with everything. I see the Hand of Creation in all of Creation. My own voice becomes like the song of a melodious bird that rises into the air and winds together with the voice of God like our hair has been braided together forever! [giggle]”
It seems wise when Chuang Tzu says: “The Tao is in the piss; the Tao is in the shit.” But Chuang Tzu does not say cuddle up next to the shit. Chuang does not say to make cooing noises to your pile of shit….to woo and court your pile of shit…get engaged and married to your pile of shit.
Some People say “Be content with the low places that people disdain, and you will have nothing to fear from evil.” But this love without discernment seems hardly like love at all just a way to avoid making choices…to hang onto the mast of love in the storm when the ship is sinking. That said, “down,” is not an awful direction to go in, but knowing when to stop seems important.
Anger can help here, saying things like: “No. No. No. This is not it. No, I’m not going down with the ship, however noble a death it may be. No, this isn‘t food…this is just a picture of food. This is a bag of poop, not a beautiful songbird.” This Via Negativa, although not always comfortable, seems like a necessary step on the road to discovering what you truly love…what you can say yes to with your whole heart and being.
I would rather not float, swim, sail, or drown nobly in an ocean of love. Give me a small home on solid ground and a glass of distilled water when I am thirsty.