Future Present

About the Book

Synopsis of Future Present

This book, set against of the backdrop of his partner´s decline and death from AIDS, relates the review the author experienced of his life when confronted with this tragedy. It is told in anedotes, stories, and insights with his poems (18) and paintings (104) while relating how he found himself in a life of art, found his poetic and artistic voice, as well as his discovery of his sexual identity as a citizen of the twentieth century.

Excerpt of Future Present, Chapter 2, Awaiting The Message

I haven’t met much evil. Nor have I been involved with it. The closest act of evil that I’ve completed came through alcohol, self-loathing, precious love and fetid jealousy, and fatigue. Actually, not to water it down, the prank was more wicked than evil, evil being hell-bent and wicked just a treacherous warning. Evil has no escape; wicked’s wretchedness contemplates safety and pardon because of its cleverness.

I was living below the Smokies, below the spot Dollywood now stands and where one finds Cades Cove’s dead end--the first geographical dead end I’d run into, in the Riverhouse*. First floor, southern front apartment on a street paralleling the river in downtown Knoxville. With alcoholic, classical piano-playing Rick. We had fled across the country, drinking days into nights into street lamplight, and had managed to enamor a less-than-self-assured young college student to us by being “les deux avec les bon mots”--artists struggling through capitalism, lashing out in self importance. We were, at least to this bookish waif, the jetsam of an over-flowing tempest of corruption: too good to be noticed.

It worked well for us, being idols. We worked, Rick and I, diligently to dispel this false idolatry by long discussions of self-admonishment, hope and assurance to him that by being patient, he would find himself, and hence, we would earn his worship.

And Sam was sweet. Eager. A curly headed raggedy Andy. Floundering sophomore,lithe and with no distinct shoulders, waist or height: just there, big-eyed and listening. How he longed for acceptance--which he had at his very intelligent fingertips if only he’d relax--and for the excitement of being recognized. For what, I can’t remember, but given the stature of Rick and me in his eyes, I’m not surprised that we enjoyed him if the rest of the world had no defining shelf for him. At twenty-three, his was a big request.

Yet it was his whining that finally wore me down: he was once and forever aching over the non-events in his life. No matter that he was truly smart, could read and write in three languages and had the instinct of art. No. He was spinning as a moth on cold cement, no direction but the endless circle, flicking dust.

What I did was not in any way planned--our days weren’t: they revolved around the bottles we could score--but now I can recall that Sam’s haphazard appearances, rapping at my frosty gallery window, were beginning to interrupt the frequent painting hours I spent watchful for Rick to return from his shift of waitering at Annie’s Place. And Sam quickly learned the timing of being there, at the apartment just long enough before Rick arrived to deplete my concentration by questioning me about all the fine odds and ends collected in dust about the apartment. And how and why I was incorporating them into my still-life paintings such as Distilled Life* and Entente.*

I considered him primarily Rick’s friend, which allowed more than the usual annoyance. Why did Rick’s friends have to like me? He admired that I stumbled from painting subject to subject, seascape to still-life, and I remember that he had never known, until Notes Falling*, that calla lilies grew wild...somewhere. In Tennessee, they were imported from hothouses; it had not occurred to hi

About the Author

Morgan Burton Johnson was born in Santa Monica, California, on November 25, 1952 to parents Roma Burton (publicity: RKO, MGM Pictures; west coast editor, Seventeen Magazine) and Arnold Morgan Johnson (freelance Hollywood photographer: Modern Screen, Variety). He received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla in 1974 after attending the Lycee du Universite au Dijon in Dijon, France, where he received a Certificate of Foreign Studies in culture in 1968. Although he has received little formal education in art or writing, his artwork is refined and varied, including the mastering of the techniques of oil on canvas, linen, glass, cardboard and wood, watercolor and water media, palette knife, collage and encaustic painting. His styles range from classic realism, pointillism and fauvism to abstract expressionism and minimalism, all reflecting the diversity of the twentieth century. His impressionist and divisionist painting has been the object of his awards and shows, combined with his interpretive poetry. He has written four other books, Condemned To A Life of Painting Pretty Pictures (a trilogy novel with poetry and paintings), 1994; Trees of Other Colors (poetry with paintings), 1994; Circle of the White Buffalo (novel), 1996; and Memories of Aunt Aura (biography), 2000. The artist started painting at age eight, receiving paid commissions at age twelve. He has completed several murals, two of which are located at the UCSD campus in La Jolla, with one a competition design winner for Discovery Hall, Revelle College, 1971. He has been published in the San Diego Union (1971), the La Jolla Light (1976), the Advocate (1978), the Long Beach Tribune (1978, 1996), the Medford Tribune (1993), the San Francisco Bay Times (1994), National Library of Poetry (1997-2001), Who’s Who in the West, Who’s Who In America, and Who’s Who In The World (1997-2002), and is included in two books from American References Publishing: The California Art Review, 1990, and American Artists: A Survey of Leading Contemporaries. He has owned and operated the MorganJ. Gallery in San Diego’s Francis Family Building (1974-75), and between 1975 and 1990 worked in retail and manufacturing management. He currently works in fine art restoration, writing and painting in southern Oregon.