To victims of horrendous child sex abuse like me, in particular those surviving in the streets tonight. I Was Like You. I advocate crafting art pieces by hand, heart, eye and soul like some wannabeatnik swamp coot under an overpass on the Hollywood Freeway, then selling your pieces in the "street" (and by that, I mean, "E-street to Broadway"). This will get you off the "street-street," and build a life. I advocate this, because it's what worked for me and I don't know anything else.

Today, young artists can make good money, because the more high tech things become, the more valuable True Art Objects become. True Craft was never thrown away really, just driven back into the forest where it came from to begin with, then starved nearly to death, (because the forest was shrinking), and I might add, driven back by a bunch of pimple-booted chump-changers who never made an honest object in their lily-livered lives.

If you want to "make it" in the arts today, you must ramrod your backbone, fasten it down with stainless steel wing-nuts and lock-washers, then charge out of the forest with the good stuff. As old Frank Buck, the world adventurer of my youth used to say, "Bring 'Um Back Alive!"

Nerve is essential. Making ART takes a kind of nerve. Georgia O'keefe said that.

Aggression is key. Aggression in ART did not used to be key, say in the '50's and 60's, and earlier, but nowadays it is absolutely KEY. In the old days, there were few artists, so most of them did well. Today, there are a million artists (100,000 art school grads a year in America alone) so you must get out there and push.

Hell, even if the pain of child abuse never completely heals as it does for some, at least, making art with your hands and heart, coupled with "making something of your life," will transmute much pain into rent, food, clothing, appreciation, hope, heart, emotion, intellect, body, spirit, caring, kindness, adventure, love, growth, artist friends, and hey, lets face it, there is a lot of good to be said for that.

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