THE SON

Some say Burkhart is a real SON of a bitch. The tragedy is that he even believed that himself for a long time, being told that his mom abandoned him when he was two because she was "a bitch and a whore." Actually she was a war bride and her husband went off to defend our country. When he didn't come back home, she threw in the towel, as well as the young Burkhart, and took off for whereabouts unknown. That's what the growing boy was told back then. The full truth was that his father was the one that abandoned him and his mother during the height of World War Two, thereby condemning them both to a life of separation and misinformation. Father had gone elsewhere to begin a new life for himself, but it was made to appear as if he was missing in action.

Still, the young Burkhart grew up with admiration for his "missing" father, an interest which soon lagged once he learned that the man was still alive and fostering another family, having fathered a son that went on to play pro football for the Pittsburgh Stealers. How apt. He had stolen Burkhart's childhood and given it to another Stealer.

"Freddie, did you ever find out what happened to your real parents?" asked the 86-year-old foster mom on one gray Mother's day in `97. "Sure. I found out that my dad never really died, but was alive and well: Captain Burkhart, chief engineer on the S.S. Ontario, and a family man." "Well, no, I mean, what really happened to your mother. did you ever find that out?" "What do you mean, 'What really happened?'" "Well, do you remember when you first came to live with us, you were nine, and we used to take you to the Frisch's Big Boy Restaurant every weekend, and there was this real nice waitress there who used to bring you toys?" Oh no! Realization came in a flash! "Don't tell me that was my mom?!? But how could you justify keeping us apart?" "We thought it was best, Freddie."

No, his mother had not abandoned him, as it turns out, but through all those lost years was still living in the same neighborhood where he grew up. For (still) unfathomable reasons, he was denied any contact by the foster family with his grieving mother. But the real irony, the boy later learned, was that he had been adopted by his father's brother! Yes, Burkhart had been living with his Uncle and Aunt the entire time, accepting the lie fostered on him about his true father, when in fact the man had abandoned ship and was not very worthy of the favors these humble people honored him with.

Apparently they had invented the ruse to protect the family name from question. Nevertheless, Burkhart grew up to abandon the years of coalmines and riverboats and hidden intrigue, reaching out and beyond for a name more worthy of his true feelings, one that would ultimately honor his true mother, the dear woman now long dead and forgotten, forever denied the love she felt for her son. The realization came slow: it had been she who was denied and abandoned for all those years, not he.

Unfortunately, as a result of his misguided youth, Burkhart subsequently turned his back on every institution that might have loved and nurtured him. It was a desperately difficult choice that took on the absurd proportions of a life lived in the shadows, without love, without support, without any light. Yet out of that desolate landscape, he pioneered an art of hope, relying on his own resources - by placing his faith in God's abundant promises.

The year was 1979 and the original grant ($250,000) was divided between eight artists - who received a combined total of $68,000 - and six administrators - who received the remainder of the money, a whopping $182,000! You do the math. Burkhart did the obvious: spent a $1,000 on some darkroom equipment and a case of cheap whiskey - and returned the rest of the money to the State! No one had ever done such a thing before, and the Ohio Arts Council threatened to sue the artist. But then the State had never done that kind of thing before either, and so, after advice from their attorneys, desisted from lawsuit and blacklisted him instead. Alas, in so doing, he had thrown away an exhibit at the Contemporary Art Museum and an acceptance that most artists work a lifetime to achieve!

To tell the truth, Burkhart spent most of the grant money on whiskey, wine, beer and hash, to the combined suffering of his art and his self. Permanent tissue damage was immanent, and the daily blackouts and withdrawals grew worse, the jail sentences longer. What began as a rebellious facade in his teenage years had finally grown in grotesque proportions to reveal its insidious nature to the world as mockery: the true creative Spirit long since bottled up inside and replaced with a constant 100 proof imitation. Burkhart, being finally overwhelmed, began to manifest sickness and dis-ease within his body and world.

On one such visit to jail, Burkhart had had enough and literally drew his way out of jail. Assigned to the laundry detail, he began to sketch the prison walls on a piece of tattered cloth that had been torn from a bed sheet in the out dated machinery. It became his Shroud of Turin, on which he smeared the blood of 17 ball point pens. In translucent shades of blue and green and violet, he depicted the cracked windows and deteriorating walls of the old Civil War Penitentiary in Cincinnati Ohio, in which he had come to be locked for a 30-day sentence of public drunkenness. When one of the guards confiscated the drawing as contraband, the undaunted Burkhart continued his rendering on an equally contraband sheet of meat wrapping paper supplied from the kitchen by a cell mate. Burkhart once referred to the drawing as a "unique blend of a 30-day sentence and a prayer, literally drawn by the Hand of God." He was fond of quoting Walt Whitman in this context: I discovered that the hand of God is really my own hand, and that the Spirit of God is my own brothers - and all the women, my sisters and lovers! goes the remainder of the quote.

On the 17th day of incarceration, Burkhart ran out of ink. He contacted the young public defender assigned to his case and was granted an immediate audience with the original trial judge. As Burkhart boarded the bus back to court, the inmate population laughed as he waved good-bye and assured them that he was through serving time and would not be back to finish the 13 days still due the State. They weren't laughing at him, but with him, because they too could see that he was done with the derelict's life and sought redemption elsewhere. However the judge wasn't so easy to convince: "Mister Burkhart, didn't I just sentence you to 30 days at the Workhouse?"

"And so it seems, young man. Just see that I get a copy of the drawing for my chambers. Thank you and good day." And that very day Burkhart walked out of the court room a free man. To borrow the words of Bob Dylan:

Just then a bolt of lightning
Struck the courthouse out of shape,
And while ev'rybody knelt to pray
The drifter did escape.

That was 1976, the end of an era. But it was still only the beginning of the end, as the artist had yet to overcome the pain that an earlier error thinking had fostered on him. And so he used his newfound freedom to lock himself tighter into another jail - his continuing addictions with drugs and alcohol. "Those fucking hippies ruined me," Burkhart ruminated on a life gone badly. "Rich kids appeared momentarily in the streets to rip off that knowledge, only to use it for safe return home to their parents. Naturally they left the rest of us to pay the piper." It was true that they had stolen the wisdoms that wise men often become fools to communicate. Yet these young punks of both genders had been careful to remain free from incarceration or responsibility, as they pursued their tyranny and overthrow of the only government they had yet experienced - their parents!

To Burkhart it was all bizarrely reminiscent of the Circus Maximus, the old Roman Court where the Christians were fed to the lions. It always was the same old story: the truth being eaten alive by liars. The hippies smiling stoned, as they watched from windows covered over with the purple haze of their free love and drug euphoria, while sick and dis-eased men like Burkhart and the other "criminals" continued to pay the great and combined karmic debt for a society in perpetual denial.

Considering that a whopping 85 per cent of the incarcerated are there for alcohol and drug related issues, the real crime has always been allowing these young people to return home, their own drug use unreported, to take up their hypocritical places within a phony society their own parents had likewise built on the same dead premises. It's the Devil's Design all over again, created to cover the truth at any cost. Meanwhile they continue to live in the lap of luxury, while their newly formulated languages of political correctness provide them with the necessary appearance of concern.

But for the Prodigal Son Burkhart, when he finally left the jails and institutions, there was no place to return . There was still no family on the horizon, nor was there yet any appreciation for the sacrifice he had made of himself, through his art, towards a greater community. "Why not create a family out of the misplaced dreams of the Hippies!" he reasoned: "A true communal life that opens its doors to everyone - not just the handful of handsome young people pursuing ecstasy on testosterone and LSD."

Love generation? Shit... you can go to a Klan Rally, drink beer, smoke cigars, and toast marshmallows at the foot of a burning cross if that's all it takes to be part of a Love Generation. It's really quite simple to gather yourself around like-minded people who care only about their own interests to the exclusion of all others. Like most people on this planet, the Hippies generated about as much separatism and alienation as they could in order to support their own narrow perspective, by denying the credibility of all others. If you agreed with them, you were in; if you didn't, then you were the enemy. How loving!

But let's face it: in a true and loving community, nobody is the enemy. How misled were poor Adam and Eve, our early examples of the original parental formula on which the family is patterned? They so wanted to know Good and Evil that they "begat" two sons to live out the dichotomies in their stead, so they could stand back and take notes and theorize about evolution of the fittest and the like. From Noah to Darwin, from Freud to good old Cliff Note, the supposedly superior parents continually define their own status by cataloguing the mistakes of their children.

Life is always lived vicariously in a world that rejects the truth by imposing its own shallow understanding. Over and over, parents exercise genocide by forcing their deadly views on newly forming children, meting out the appropriate rewards or punishments as a formula they call "love." Alas, the children always come to their own - when its finally their turn to start begetting!

But Burkhart's version of Utopia exists as the Burkhart Underground, an ongoing coffeehouse and art gallery devoted to the emergence of youth. It's a return to the original formula: revelation; in this instance, mapped out by a small child who came to live with him for nine years - his daughter - to show him the way back to the Garden and the Father's revelation. Although the child is gone now eleven years, he continues to welcome her every month in and as the hundreds of young people who appear at his door with their friends, as if to say: "Look who we've brought home this weekend, dad!" And so he gives them a place to express themselves, to share what they have learned since the last visit, to give him a warm hug until the next time. They leave their artworks on his walls, awareness that makes the walls transparent with their fantastic visions of another world beyond the narrow one he inhabits. Have you ever visited the Burkhart Underground on Sunday? Then you know what I mean!

And as unappeasable as he is sometimes, you have probably come to like this Burkhart. Because he likes you, no matter whether you are likable or not. No matter whether you like him or not. He takes you at your face value; that is, on your own terms. When the worst of the worst appear at the Underground to play music or recite poetry, Burkhart sits rapt and at attention, and gives them his all, allowing the images and sounds to wash over him and through him, taking the same delight as they, even though others in the room are covering their ears or leaving to go upstairs. "How can you listen to that shit, Burkhart?" they later ask. "Because it is what I do best; because my home and my foundations are not built on judgments."

When he was 14, because his adopted parents did not understand his talents, they signed him away to three years in a Reformatory, to re-form him in their own image. Of course he never went back to their home. Rather than being re-formed, he became all the more committed to the form he was assuming. As a creative and collaborative soul, Burkhart wants you to assume your own form too. That is why some people like him - because he allows them to be themselves.

Perhaps they are in need of teaching, that's all. Who are they that take issue with a momentary state of awareness expressing itself? They need teaching, that's all. Because all life is about learning to move past oneself and into greater degrees of awareness. And what is the pathway to greater awareness? To include more of the other person's viewpoint is the way to increased awarness.How simple is that!"

When I was in grade school I had no idea that they were infiltrating me with the doctrine of a flat earth upon which anyone who approached the edge was punished. Later, as I entered high school, I understood immediately that they would inculcate me in the notion of a round earth, on which I could repeat over and over the same cycle of vanity on its face. Armed with that foreknowledge, I quickly exited their teachings and schools and stepped out into a world of my own making. And that world is all things: flat, round - and yes, hollow! Everything depends on who or where I am on the globe, and with whom and at what moment we interact.

Reincarnation? "Move over a few inches, buddy." We are no longer stuck in a straight line to nowhere, like in the game of checkers, destined to be crowned continually with a past life once we reach the finish line. Instead, we are capable of heading anywhere the Eternity advertises itself: forward, backward, sideways. And so back to the beginning Burkhart went for instructions, and has began again to receive them.

When King Solomon sought wisdom from God, at the beginning of Ecclesiastes, he was in possession of everything else that defined a king. "Solomon..." God asked him, "You have served me well, so how may I reward you?" "With wisdom, Lord..." And lo and behold, in the very next verse, Solomon begins to squander his kingdom, beginning a twenty year episode of drunken debauchery in which he completely throws away his kingdom and enters the world of the commoner, a journey which coincidentally took twenty chapters to describe. At the end of the book, God comes again to Solomon and finds him lying there on the side of the road, broken, beaten and finally sobering. And God again spoke to Solomon: "Solomon, Solomon, what have you gotten yourself?" Today he would've gotten a bed in an alcoholic ward, or a prescription for Prozac. But Solomon rose to the occasion and also spoke: "I have gotten the wisdom you promised, Lord. I have seen and experienced the world as other people do."

He was quick to understand that living with people is not an occasion for judgment, but for learning. As Solomon himself stated: "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. I have learned that the only salvation is to do your work and acknowledge God as the doer." Anything else is to partake of vanity. The all too familiar I am okay, and you are not is the conclusion. I am right, and you are wrong. Well, come on now, aren't we all really just two sides of the same coin, minted by a God who is both the Congress and the Federal Reserve rolled into one, authorized to spend our lives in purchase of a new world for the children to explore. Well. aren't we?

In the final summation, Burkhart is a Modern Icon. Partly because Burkhart is writing this, yes. But more to the point, because he is no longer part of the equation - playing the part of one who equates - but has removed his designs to allow the Spirit transit. That is the point of the formation of all formulae in the first place. He does his work; he thanks God for the doing. He is famous - or infamous - but has no use for its false benefits. A benevolent Creator meets his needs, and if anyone else benefits from it, then blessings to them as well. He has no issues with a fame that will take place after he dies, because he is fully concerned with the present life and the making of icons that will occupy future generations with their unraveling revelation.

Is this the beginning or the end? Each of us has that (continual) decision to make, to honor the Ancient Debt, like Jesus took on the Cross, to live & die for the sins - ignorance - of the world in which we find ourselves. Me, I'm going outside to do it right now, to shovel 16 inches of snow from the front of Burkhart Studios on this wonderful morning, January 31st, 2002. It is a job that the caretaker is being paid to do, but always succeeds in avoiding. The thanks I will receive for fulfilling his duties in his absence will be the wonderful smiles of the very old women who pass by and whisper to my 60-years of vigor, "Oh thank you, sonny, for thinking of us this morning." (And by the way, it's now 24-hours later and I shoveled the snow from the combined sidewalks of the entire half block of property that is owned by my landlord. so happy I am to have a home.)

Appointment: 1228 N. Noble St. (coach house) Chicago, 60622 (773 348-8536)

e-mail contacts:

Fred@BurkhartStudios.com

BurkhartStudios@gmail.com