Whack a Banker machine from Tim Hunkin

I grew up enjoying Tim Hunkin's wonderful invention drawings each week in the Sunday Observer Magazine. If you should ever make it to Covent Garden, in London. There is a small museum of his work you must visit. I believe the lady is Joanna Lumley, from the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.

True Stories From the Five Boroughs-Occupy Comix, FAST and FURIOUS Comics, 99% Comics,

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Letter to the Bank Manager #90 (Art—Gadfly)

"A fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer"—John Donne

Dear BM,

Now whole towns and villages are beginning to yank their deposits from your holdings. Your thick skin may barely feel the pinch but this must register as a buzz in your ear. Testing—Testing—are we, are they, is anyone getting through? My constant refrain, the one I’ve shared with you over an imaginary pint, in a Starbucks over your non-existent latte, through numerous letters, is that you are out of touch and lack sensitivity. This has only worked to your best interests up until now. If you are without feeling and train your eye only on the growth of your portfolio you might miss the boat, the one that is emptying out your vaults—I know, I know, a grand, unrealistic vision—people with teaspoons, even townships with buckets, can hardly effect the oceans of lucre, the google of green, upon which your many dubious institutions float. I say your, but you know me. You represent many things to many people. You may be my personal financial advisor but you are also a chimera, defined by the Miriam-Webster as:

CHIMERA—
1: a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail b : an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts
2: an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially : an unrealizable dream
3: an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution


Somehow they all apply. You are friend and foe. You are therapist and, unbeknownst to yourself (there’s that thick skin again), you are therapee. You certainly need it. I’ll analyze you from every angle; I’ll lift the hood; I’ll shine a flashlight on the organism that is you, and perhaps we can work on some kind of growth other than the one you are overly focused on. Now that you as an institution have the rights of an individual, I, as an individual must expect from you the kind of behavior that oils our best institutions. You have great potential. You are a lion! Don’t forget that! Unfortunately you are also a wily old goat, almost impossible to trust (not good! Not good at all!), and lastly, your serpent like manner, your slipperiness no longer works in the backroom the way it once did with impunity. We’ve seen through the glass. We’ve observed you slipping into your fat suits with their gold watch chains and pin stripe vests. We know that the image you still hold up to the light is an archaic one and does not reflect reality. We know you are a machine. There is a ghost in that machine that we shall work on. We shall find its soul. We will work on your antisocial behavior. You are part of the pack now, at least in name, and the community invites you in.

We wish only to integrate you...and your money.

Yours sincerely,



Art O’Connor, gadfly.

Letter to the Bank Manager #89 (Art Rambles Poetic)

My dear Bullrider,

In efforts to penetrate your thick, tanned hide I’ll try anything. Art can change the world and will keep trying. Here I ramble poetic for your gain:

I stand here my severed head held high, grounded by circumstance, ready to occupy my space, resist ejection from a downtown park, surrounded by uncertainty, prepared to take the next step, side by side with my imagined friends. We have linked ourselves together, the chain fences behind us which stand with the respectable fronts of commerce. Their clothes are laundered only by the best, whitewashed by well paid cleaners who hang their heads slightly afraid to look you in the eyes, too delighted to have jobs once more, on the other side of the barricade. I-Pads and watch chains scoff given voice and thin personhood by the swagger of the model who wends down the aisle ready to marry a selfish dream to another reality. Protest signs sing off key, unified by discord, some loud and others meek, stumbling toward an articulation brewed, stewing toward fruition. Stumbling blocks are scattered by law to protect the public safety, a strange looking building that in general goes unnoticed. Tents and tarps are foreclosed on because bleaching time has come. Sanitized marble public see cardboard streets pulled down, communities dispersed for the common good of the comfortable. Safety concerns are overblown and don’t apply consistent. A park with drugs is given wide birth, and uptown thrives, ignored because few are strong or able, few have the fight, the courage, few can look in the dealers eye and say leave, say leave because the strong are nowhere to take up their cause. Out of sight, out of their minds because Europe isn’t helping the portfolio they staked their hollow souls upon. They’ve troubles of their own and need the distractions gone, that focus on equity when inequity is their role. The strugglers and the fighters are ready to drown out the shout of the mayor as he looks down from a mega-platform somehow smaller now. Proportion would seem, like rational thought, the place where opposites meet. We all see perspective only easy for some to draw and for others to distort.

I take a virtual stand on a shaky stage solid in my conviction that my messy arguments are as tidy as authority permits. My body weighed by black and whites dunked to the radio news sits safe with sound of smart conversation, panic, and looming clouds. Point by point an explanation is broken down to examine its component parts. Compliance is intolerable now. Some people have no choice but must resist the shelters and sleep in the slightly less dangerous parks. So many parks could do with a good clean to make them more sane for those who have no choice but to see them as their homes. I ask the mayor to continue good work begun and put resources into cleaning up all those neighborhoods falling into sad disrepair, suffering from poverty and daily loss. He is asked to hear the complaints of those on other streets where the anti-social behavior of the too well heeled reigns.

Hubris, Arrogance and Gall meander down the street drunk on champagne, arm in arm,and scoff at the filth, the dirt. The Dirty hold up a mirror so Hubris may straighten his tie and see his own pock marked visage.

I take my cake and, hat in hand, eat. Coffee thrills. The simple pleasures smile. The taste of cotton, of boiled leather, of dry wall, and grubs finally get their due.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #88 (Art Meditates on Bankers and Wild Beasts)

Maurice Vlaminck-The Circus

Dear Bouncy BM,

This is my SHUT UP letter. I tried it out first on an unsuspecting crowd and they were so loud I had to repeatedly yell: “Shut up! Shut up!” I must admit it was quite exhilarating in its own way but that said it verged on the rude. Anyway here, without further ado, the letter:

I think you’ll agree I’ve always been upfront regarding my own inexpertise when it comes to issues of finance. I specialize in exercising my right to talk about stuff about which I know nothing. It must drive you bananas. At least you are free to totally disregard everything I have to say as my outpourings are surely the ravings of a lunatic...nobody! I hope those two words strung together lean towards the poetic rather than the insulting but one never knows. Besides it is me I am being rude to so I’ll sue myself and demand an apology. I'll sue me before someone else does. When playing with words one steps into a minefield. They are explosive in their potential to do damage or offend. I’m anxious to cause damage without offending. I wish only to chip away at those edifices founded on utterly unsound principles, i.e. unprincipled. Financial institutions are overly revered. Out of them come a lie of expertise with which we are bombarded daily. One day the markets are great and strong, the next day they are shaky and nervous. Such market forecasts and readings have nothing, nothing to do with regular people. The experts talk about trillions here and a billion, or two there, knowing full well I cannot relate. It is like the opposite of small print—big print! Print so big we look on it and feel like little ants observing the bottom of a dirty boot! People who live with day to day realities of having to pay a mortgage, feed their kids, feed their souls in pursuit of their dreams, their art, a small organic farm, getting their kids...this one is a bit pushy...an education cannot relate. They must constantly deal with enervating forces imposed on them from without: Jobs they don’t like which fail to appreciate them for their best talents, health insurance supplied by a dubious industry that charges astronomical amounts of money to give one the lie that one will be taken care of in the event of one’s death. They’ll come through for you when you’re dead. Oh! You’re dead! Never mind then. Of course I exaggerate for effect. The cost of everything is getting everyone down, seriously down. People drown in debt as meaningless numbers get tossed around like confetti, numbers that are supposed to explain everything. If you don’t understand...well...you wouldn’t would you? You are not an expert. If you were you’d know how to make money and feed your family and keep a roof over their heads. You’d know better than to take on mortgages you can’t afford. You’d know better than to take on student loans. You’d know enough to not go get educated! You are a failure, a loser, a lazy good-for-nothing. It is easy to throw around putdowns and insults. My favorite insult for you is: Banker! It truly has become a dirty word. Not one to hurl insults I should stop using it but for convenience sake I shall keep employing it in the more traditional sense.
    So what else am I apart from being a loser? Oh yes! I’m: A liberal! A WPA wannabe (spit) artist! A s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t! Maybe! Probably I am—all those things and more! The list is massive. The labels go on and on and on. I am a self doubter—jeez! I suffer from scruples—nasty! Your put downs become my badge of honor*. Can I share with you one thing that really bugs me about bleeding hearts? They will not simply admit they care! I would like this government to take care of its poor and hungry, wounded and broken. I’m not sure where you stand on such issues. You are slippery. Corporate value systems are without principle, mutable, they change with the weather.

In my letters I’m trying to express, from every possible angle—like a car mechanic scratching his head in disbelief that he cannot nail down the problem—my continued amazement at an apparent disregard, indifference, to the human toll of the financial crisis shown by those who continue to accept those obscene bonuses with impunity, and by those whose job I thought it was to police them. I meditate on an image of a banker hoping he...the image on my wall is a he as it happens...might one day mutate into the banker of my dreams.

That is it in a nutshell. Of course it cannot stay in a nutshell. It must grow into a mantra. That is why I love the Occupiers. They won’t let this drumbeat stop. Some will try to paint the movement with a broad brush suggesting it is built on envy, is fringe, is the product of snarling fury. The spotlight must be aimed at those who try. The name callers must be outed! They are the modern day equivalent of strike breakers and agitators and  they should be pulled into the conversation whether I, you or they like it or not. With gentle persuasion we might just encourage them to go work in a soup kitchen instead of wielding pepper spray.

Boy do I go on! I bet you put me on speaker phone when I call. I would!

Yours most sincerely your good friend and conscience,


Art O’Connor

PS—Kristian might be back next week to regale you with stories of his travels among the dispossessed. I’m sure you can’t wait.

PSS—* The Fauvists, the wild beasts, adopted the name thrown at them as an insult and now their art is sold for millions! Art is always worth more than money in the end. When will you finally get to grips with this fundamental truth?

letter to the Bank Manager #87 (Art's Hostile Takeover Bid, or How to be Politely Rude)

Art's Hostile Takeover Bid

Dear Mr. Bullrider,

My notion of biting the hand that feeds has just taken a new twist! Apparently the famous chef, Mario Batali, unintentionally fulfilling Godwin’s Law, just described the bankers as being pretty much as bad as Stalin and Hitler for all the damage they’ve inflicted on the economy. The bankers are taking it rather personally (they protesteth too much methinks!) and are thinking quite seriously about boycotting his restaurants where the banking fraternity are major patrons. Who is biting whose hand I wonder? For better or worse Mr. Batali has apologized. To whom exactly it is hard to say. Having exercised my own chagrin at the generally unscrupulous nature of the banking industry in my numerous letters to you, my dear friend and nemesis, I empathize with Mr. Batali but am reminded that the name calling is a trap that will always backfire. Once again I must emphasize the importance I personally place on maintaining a politely rude stance at all times in order that our civil discourse may continue despite our profound differences.

Sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #86 (Guy Fawkes?)

Dear BM,

A couple of days ago in the UK they celebrated Guy Fawkes night. As a child I enjoyed the bonfires, the fireworks and the marshmallows. Burning in effigy a figure of Guy Fawkes once a year strikes me as a bit strange these days. He was part of a plot to  blow up the houses of parliament, get rid of King James 1st, and return a catholic monarch to the throne. Since then he has become a blank slate onto which people have projected many different agendas. Some prefer to burn an effigy of the houses of parliament, in general I’d say more creative (ever tried building a cardboard effigy of the Houses of Parliament?), and more about challenging institutions rather than attacking individuals—a big up yours if you like to the power of corporations and government, or powerlessness of government given that corporations hold the purse strings. Currently his visage is popular within the Occupy Wall Street movement. Why is harder to answer, a question I’ll leave others to try and answer for now.

Meanwhile today is /Leave Your Bank Day! I’m feeling a little shy on this front, torn even. As not only my dear bank manager and mentor, you are also my nemesis. That I bank with you, one of the big five banks, is a source of deep embarrassment. You know all to well how complicated it gets for people to simply up and change their accounts over to a credit union. Online banking is both a convenience and something of a trap. Life is complicated enough without diving in to the sisyphean task of trying to swap out all that information, let alone find ATMs when you need them, if one should choose to move over to a credit union, none of which are easily to be found in my neck of these troubled woods.

Yours remaining reluctantly loyal,

Art O’Connor