title : we’re all americans now
medium : oil, newspaper & sticky canadian flag on paper
dimensions : … aprox. 3 1/2′ wide x 3 1/2′ high

This was completed in 2003. The title is taken from the media mantra which spread all over Canada in the months following American planes crashing into American buildings, killing so many people. North of the 49th parallel anyone who would not bleet along with all the other sheeple, anyone who tried to examine a bigger picture was smeared with the meaningless name anti-american. Those who wished to prove their love popped up everywhere shrieking “we’re all americans now”.

Those people are not wrong. We are also servants of the empire. It would seem that a disturbing majority of us aspire to nothing more, nothing like freedom. Freedom and flag-waving are mutually exclusive in my dictionary. But we cannot even have the conversation I’m imagining due to exploding semantics. Words have become disguises. The expression “face-value” is very useful if you are not so unconcious as to accept the world as such. Are you sleeping?

I am comforted because though this picture is real enough, it is only one layer of the onion of the present. It is not the future. It is a dead-end.

I fear not. I see what I see. I seek and I find.