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Write No Cliches ... Pull No Punches ... And Keep Going All Night

The Urban Artist Group's Page

the Urban Artist Group

About The Urban Artist Group

the Urban Artist Group: Male
City Earth, United States

Bio: My name is James G. Carlson and, quite simply, I am a lot of things, including a writer. Well, that's slightly misleading, as I suppose my artistic experience is a good bit broader than I would have most people believe. That is, I am a writer, true, but I am also a musician, a painter, a photographer, and a...ah umm, whatever you'd call that individual who sketches random images and mini visual masterpieces on barroom napkins and such. Of course, I am none of those things professionally. Writing is the only artistic medium that brings me any work at all, and while the money is nothing much to speak of, the overall experience is rewarding enough to keep going on with it. I suppose I just love words. Words as a mode of expression. Words as an art form. Words as a revolution of the mind, heart, and soul combined. In a way, writing is taking all of that inward stuff---love and loss, hope and despair, fear and bravery, joy and sadness, clarity and confusion, and the many other contraries housed within the depths of our beings---and pouring it out onto the page. Catharsis is just one of many reasons I write, though. In fact, one of my main reasons for writing, which is also the simplest, is that I love the way words sound when spoken, the way they look on paper, the way they convey thoughts and feelings, they way they help human beings relate to one another, the way they can be as vicious as a wolf or as gentle as a sheep, the way they can be as savage and complex as a piece of Improvisational Free Jazz or as tame as simple as a brief rainstorm in early autumn, and so on.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is the city of my birth, though I have lived all over the country during my wandering teenage years and irresponsible and restless early adlulthood, with brief periods in San Francisco, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Birmingham, and New York City. Sometimes I refer to those years as my Kerouacian "On the Road" type years. In fact, to some degree it was his book that inspired my insatiable need to hit the road and see the world. After all, he made America out to be this wonderful, almost magical place, where the East and West Coasts were as different as continents separated by massive oceans. His America was wild and unpredictable, romantic and endlessly full of poetry, new and spontaneous and infinitely fascinating. And while my America turned out to be somewhat different than Jack's, I wouldn't take back my years of backpack wandering for anything. Now, I never did get out of the country much, only to Mexico and Canada, which are both extensions of America in that one can simply drive across the border. Still, I long to cross the oceans to faraway places, like London, Paris, Amsterdam, and all the other places that have appealed to me over the years, even India and Japan, as well as Thailand and Africa and...well, many others.

At 31, I have temporarily lowered my figurative anchor in the bay of Pennsylvania, floating calmly in the waters of life, slowing down and watching the world from a whole new perpective. Of course, my journey is far from over. And there are undoubtedly many chapters yet to be written. But I am currently working on a project to which I have become quite attached---an independent piece of "anti-journalism" that I've titled: the Urban Artist Group presents...Sounds from the City Earth Underground. To get an idea of what it is, visit our Webzine at: http://www.theurbanartistgroup.com/

Genres: Poetry. Prose. Fiction. Short Fiction. Anti-Journalism. And Experimental. Etc.

Main Website:: www.theurbanartistgroup.com/

Other Websites: www.myspace.com/bruisecoloredhorizons

Influences: The Lost Generation. The Beat Generation. And the Suicide Generation. Poetics and Classic Literature. The Visual Arts. Traveling. Music (especially: jazz, indie, punk, folk punk, acousticore, gutterbilly blues, anarcho, troubacore, gypsy punk, etc). Friendship. Lovers. Old photo albums. Half forgotten personal journals. Coffee and cigarette in the booths of all-night grease pot diners throughout America. And so much more.

Favourite Books: The Dharma Bums and On the Road by Kerouac. The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren. You Can't Win by Jack Black. Marriage of Heaven & Hell by William Blake. A Season in Hell by Rimbaud. Tales of Ordinary Madness and Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Bukowski. Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. Etc.

Writer, Prizefighter, Or Caffeine Inspired All Nighter?: Nightfall has crushed all hope; this is when the fever comes.

Just Brewed

the Urban Artist Group's profile changed Dec. 22, 2008

Paul Grimsley left a comment for the Urban Artist Group Dec. 21, 2008

the Urban Artist Group is contender #124 of Writers Prize Fighters And Caffeine Inspired All Nighters. Dec. 20, 2008

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At 3:00pm on December 21st, 2008, Paul Grimsley said…: welcome, good to have you here!

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