Troy

Bronx, NY

Doodling ≈ Free Association; my doodling knows no bounds. Alison Bechdal’s drawing for The Great Studio 360 Doodle Dare evokes for me an image of one of my heroes, Professor Judith Butler of U.C. Berkeley. Like her I originate from Cleveland, Ohio and have always thought smart people derive from there. She is proof good things come from the heartland. Her work brings a great depth of understanding to our contemplation of this postmodern age in social-psychological, ethical, political, and philosophical terms. Not unlike her contemporaries Jacque Derrida the father of deconstruction and Julia Kristeva the neo-Freudian “freedom fighter”, Professor Butler enables critical thinking. Also, I am a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Gods of Mars and for some reason or other, whether I am on the subway or walking down a street or waiting on line for coffee or even at the gym, I often doodle in my mind sketching one-liners in my thoughts, barbs and jibs that appear as acts of verbal sparring between my heroes and the rich characters in Burroughs’s fantasy Sci-Fi series. Salmagundi is just a mixture of stuff and as such is the title of a literary journal whose name ironically enough gets reused now and again; in our nation’s history of literary journals it appears more than once with no prior affiliations or affinity except for literary journal. Artist Alison Bechdal’s drawing provided for me a point of departure for my mental doodling or only slightly literary imaginings. Many thanks!
Troy Longmire
Bronx, New York