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In later years of life I've gotten in touch with my art side, and even sometimes consider myself a pop artist who uses Amazon book covers as a medium. My own art education is a tragic story. In high school the art teacher let kids play whatever music they wanted to, but they had horrible taste and I am a musician, sensitive, so I was angry; I kept talking in class and pretty soon was assigned to write a 500-word essay on "why you shouldn't talk in art class." I wrote it all in one sentence, and my art career went downhill from there.

Fast forward to today I'm a 71-year-old with business in the University of Iowa Hospitals and while in town I try to find an artist, another TL, to ask him a couple of questions about people he knows, my first girlfriend, and a woman who died recently who was his father's personal assistant. His father was famous, you can probably already put two and two together, so he was born into the art world. He started a gallery in Iowa City in a pretty redecorated building just south of the tracks.

But here's the thing: the art world has just undergone a huge crash. Apparently people were rolling in it just a couple years ago, and now nobody can sell anything. None of the high rollers are investing in art at all. Now I guess if you're really rich you just ride it out and the art will still be there when this is all over, but who knows. I peer into the windows of his gallery and it's locked, again, with a single mattress in one of its main rooms. Maybe it's open by appointment. Maybe he's found another way to make money. I'm not sure what's going on. There were a few cars in the driveway, as if someone is using the back part of the gallery to live in.

It's curious, the world of art. I should make an appointment, but I don't want to buy anything. Also have an aversion to phone calls. I emailed him but he didn't answer.

Instead, I just head home to make more of my own art. To be continued.

book covers as media

Let's continue on what I was saying before: I am a pop artist who uses book covers as a medium.

Now it's true that I had to write 28 books, give or take a few, to have any kind of range out there in the world. There are four or five that I've taken off the market, not because I didn't like the art, but more because I didn't like what I had written within them. Or, it was old, or stale, or whatever. But the art wasn't. There is a sense that the art is secondary: that I choose it only after I have published something, or while I am publishing it.

Sometimes when I'm about done with a book I start fishing for cover ideas. I have a consistent font and a consistent style so I have what amounts to an exhibit, for sale on Amazon. Pretty sneaky way to get your art in front of the public, eh? If I were a better writer there would be people all over my art.

I have new books coming, so that keeps my pop mind alive. In addition I find myself changing covers on some of my books some of the time. This makes the older stuff inherently rarer and harder to find.

I could use that kind of reverse marketing to make it. Warhol made it, in end, as a kind of belwether for the pop market. One could do worse. He however is not around to enjoy his fame.

Here's my elevator rap. It's what I'd tell you about myself very quickly, if I want to impress upon you that I'm a pop artist.

My medium is book covers. So, if I have a book about McDonald's, and I come up with some new pop art on the subject, I can and do exchange an old cover for a new cover. Some of the books that I own are unique - there isn't much out there that is exactly the same. But when I make a good one, I hope it lasts for years even if nobody cares that much for the stories within.

Lately I've been drawn into the national politics, which has rendered my writing somewhat pointless. I was a big fan of the USA and now all I can say is, boycott the heck out of us. Don't let us have any of those rare earths, we'll just use it to invade Greenland. I take pictures of the demos and hope they get bigger. A nation that has gone fascist is something one doesn't want to take in silence.

If I make some of these covers, what should I put in the books?

My pleasing, humorous look at the US in better times just makes me uncomfortable; I don't even want to market it. But what do I really want? To warn the world of the rising fascism? to mock it?

The pop art will keep coming, I hope. I'll work on what to put in the books.