Ketchup and Dogma

Play like a Surrealist.

Photo by mitchell nijman on Unsplash

I’m a sap for those who reach acclaim and thank a former teacher who proved influential in their life.

(I’m not crying. You’re crying).

Seriously though, we all move forward carrying pieces of the past - some positive, some not so much, some so obscure that when revealed, it makes a person wonder.

Where did that come from?

How did the micro flashes Ketchup and Dogma break past my internal formal writing constraints and on to the page?

Ketchup and Dogma appear as part of SORTES 21 .

Thank you, editor Jeremy Tenenbaum for publishing my work. Please follow the link here to check out the issue in entirety.

I’m both energized and scared to death by the direction my writing is taken.

What well inside me is this new way of seeing bubbling from, will it run dry and who can I thank as early influences?

I think maybe, my elementary school teachers.

Back in my day, art was taught by classroom teachers. Fun, hands on, cognitive-shaping art. I specifically remember my second grade teacher walking to each student’s desk and sweeping two random pencil marks on each paper.

Draw a picture using these two lines.

Another activity involved coloring an entire page heavily crayoned with different colors, followed by thickly obscuring the work with a black crayon. After inspecting our efforts, my fifth grade teacher handed each student a paper clip opened just enough to make a nice scratch tool.

Draw a picture using the paper clip.

Imagine thirty plus antsy kids waiting in line ready for the dismissal bell led by a tired teacher who really knows how to engage students.

The teacher - with dramatic flourish - holds a hand to his or her ear like a telephone.

Shh. I’m making a phone call.

The teacher whispered a message in the ear of the first student and that student to the next and so on and on until reaching the last student who would proudly announce what started as “Salvador Dali is a famous painter” became somehow misconstrued as “Kiss my grits.”

Everyone remembers the one squirmy kid in the class. The one who could not sit still if paid to do so. The teacher would head over with a box of art ephemera.

Make a sports car.

Automatic Drawing. Frottage. Telephone. Involuntary Sculpture and Collage.

Kid-adapted games of the Surrealists.

“Surrealists believed that by breaking free from the rational constraints of everyday life and embracing the irrational and absurd, we could tap into deeper truths and unlock our true creative potential.”

“Play Like a Surrealist: 13 Surrealist Games and Techniques to Unleash Kids Creativity” Art Sprouts, September 4, 2023 Last Updated on March 24, 2025.

Thank you, my long ago elementary school teachers for providing tools of such wild and wacky wonder.

Thank you for unlocking my brain then and now.

(And thanks to my children (to include my daughter-in-law), for keeping the arts alive).

“You may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?"