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John Lurie: I spend most of my time out of New York, on this island where I do most of my painting. I come back here from time to time to take care of stuff and also paint when I am here. I worked on Still Life with Disappearing Snake in four different trips to New York. The first problem I had was painting the table. You would think something like painting a table would not be so difficult. But it was such a disaster that, in frustration, I wrote, “What kind of an idiot cannot paint a table?” directly on the table.Sometimes when I get really frustrated with a painting and lash out at it, the results can be great. In this case, the writing was a mistake. Getting rid of it took quite a bit of work—to obscure the writing without making a blob that made no sense. Then there was the problem of the snake. Its red color was several different paints that I had mixed together and, on subsequent trips to New York, the paint had dried and I couldn’t match it again.
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I think I have only listened to music once while painting. The loss of music because of my advanced Lyme is a very painful thing. For a while, because my nervous system was such a mess, music became more like fingernails on a chalkboard than music. That is better now, but music is a difficult subject.Do you approach painting with a similar type of creative energy you used to approach acting or music, or is it just its own beast?
Yes, the best music and the best paintings —the essence of them—is like something that passed through me. My job was to have enough technique and facility to not wreck it. At some point about five or six years ago, painting became what music once had been to be.That's great. But how do you tolerate art world people?
Is there any evidence that I have ever tolerated people from the art world?

I do, from time to time on Twitter, and then usually delete it an hour later. But not in the paintings. When something I find really outrageous is happening and people seem to think it is normal, then I speak out. But the responses are so irritating that I usually delete it.
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Sometimes they flow out. A few have had eight different titles and my poor assistant has to keep track of the last one.The painting called:We want the funk
And some other stuff
We want some other stuff
Just normal stuffHad two previous titles. One was, If all the passengers on a flying plane jump in the air, does the plane weigh any less? The other one was, Are you liking the purple? too flashy? Either of them could have worked.

The general consciousness of humanity can be disheartening. Twitter has a way of making that very apparent. Though it can be great. At the opening the other night, there were several people that I only knew from Twitter. They felt like old friends.Lurie’s exhibition, There Are Things You Don’t Know About, is on view now at Cavin-Morris Gallery until October 25. And there are still tickets left to Strange and Beautiful: the Music of John Lurie at Town Hall in New York on Saturday.
