Showing posts with label confusion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label confusion. Show all posts
Mar 12, 2013
Jan 24, 2013
execution
.
for the passed few days i've been hunched over projects, pulling things together that have sat, unattended, far too long and bringing them to completion. and hunched is exactly the right word. an old back injury has woken up as a result and i've spent the last several hours lying flat on my back in bed. i should be good as new by morning but it made today an utter pain in the ass. pun intended. still, i got out for a bit and took some lovely photographs of a broken mirror on the side of the road. the walking helped but i've been in a shitload of pain for the majority of the day. and actually, it's been kinda nice to just be in bed with a book. it's something i don't do enough these days. funny to think i used to curl up with a book nightly. was it really so long ago? a year. damn. a year...
as if the cycle of the seasons weren't enough to get my ritualistic brain humming. the new year finds us and 12 days later it's the 2nd anniversary of my mother's death. a week later on the 19th, it's her birthday. all these personal holidays. all these snaps of the leash. these markers of time are serious. and so... i've been thinking about grad school again. wondering about it is more like it. should i? shouldn't i? is it necessary for my practice? is it necessary in order to have a career as an artist? what constitutes a "career" for an artist anyway? i'll go on making things and writing things until i go blind and my fingers fall off regardless. and i haven't looked to any system to supply value to my work in a very, very long time. i'd just as soon climb poles and wrap my crochet around them or write poems on abandoned mattresses. i return to dreaming of New York; the Bowery, the Lower East Side and how magnificently at home i felt there. lately, i look at myself in the mirror and ask "what the fuck is stopping you?"
the big news is that i'm traveling to Europe for the first time this summer and i must squirrel away alottttttt of pennies between now and then in order to make it happen. no bouncing off to NY until after i have bought a passport and a plane ticket to Frankfurt. after that, who knows? i have a storage unit where all my books and art will be safe until i can collect them. i can go wherever i want to go because the truth of the matter is that i can both make art and wait tables anywhere. this is a fact i've been thinking alot about lately. A LOT. a fact that simultaneously makes me feel exquisitely free and exquisitely lonely. freedom is a barbed thing. still, i'd rather have the scars of liberty than the pristine surface afforded by security. i'd rather run this body in to the ground through love and action and adventure than preserve it needlessly through neglect as an atrocious shrine to Safety and Obedience. the only obedience i feel is Moral is to be myself. it is the pinnacle of honesty and truly the only thing any of us really have to offer anyway.
but i'm getting away from myself. the point was my slipped disk and how it fucked up an entire day. while laying on my bedroom floor, i read the first two essays in Chris Kraus's 'Video Green'. i like reading her thoughts on contemporary art paired with her exploration of BDSM. seems an unlikely pair at first but it's something i feel intrigued and comforted by. her level of self-exposure in what is technically an article/essay is astounding. it widens my view on what "serious" writing can be. the body is given primacy. especially the female body and female desire. it makes me think about blogging in an entirely different way too. the level of self-exposure i've attained here in the blackland is nothing compared to what i want to achieve in my art practice (of which this blog is very much a part) but it is leaps and bounds beyond what it was just 2 years ago. i suppose the answer is to simply keep pushing. whether it be grad school or simply relocating, i need to push harder at the seams of my practice, at the seams of myself. it is a lonely endeavour sometimes. painfully lonely. but then i think of all the artists i admire and i leaf through their books. i think of my mother at her sewing machine. i think of my brother on his motorcycle and my sister taking care of animals on a farm. i think of you reading these words and how much i'd rather be sitting on the arm of your couch, cocktail in hand, a laugh ready to burst and saying all of this directly to you and waiting for the heated breath of your response to find my ear, my neck, my heart.
remember what Jack said: to be an artist is a privilege.
.
for the passed few days i've been hunched over projects, pulling things together that have sat, unattended, far too long and bringing them to completion. and hunched is exactly the right word. an old back injury has woken up as a result and i've spent the last several hours lying flat on my back in bed. i should be good as new by morning but it made today an utter pain in the ass. pun intended. still, i got out for a bit and took some lovely photographs of a broken mirror on the side of the road. the walking helped but i've been in a shitload of pain for the majority of the day. and actually, it's been kinda nice to just be in bed with a book. it's something i don't do enough these days. funny to think i used to curl up with a book nightly. was it really so long ago? a year. damn. a year...
as if the cycle of the seasons weren't enough to get my ritualistic brain humming. the new year finds us and 12 days later it's the 2nd anniversary of my mother's death. a week later on the 19th, it's her birthday. all these personal holidays. all these snaps of the leash. these markers of time are serious. and so... i've been thinking about grad school again. wondering about it is more like it. should i? shouldn't i? is it necessary for my practice? is it necessary in order to have a career as an artist? what constitutes a "career" for an artist anyway? i'll go on making things and writing things until i go blind and my fingers fall off regardless. and i haven't looked to any system to supply value to my work in a very, very long time. i'd just as soon climb poles and wrap my crochet around them or write poems on abandoned mattresses. i return to dreaming of New York; the Bowery, the Lower East Side and how magnificently at home i felt there. lately, i look at myself in the mirror and ask "what the fuck is stopping you?"
the big news is that i'm traveling to Europe for the first time this summer and i must squirrel away alottttttt of pennies between now and then in order to make it happen. no bouncing off to NY until after i have bought a passport and a plane ticket to Frankfurt. after that, who knows? i have a storage unit where all my books and art will be safe until i can collect them. i can go wherever i want to go because the truth of the matter is that i can both make art and wait tables anywhere. this is a fact i've been thinking alot about lately. A LOT. a fact that simultaneously makes me feel exquisitely free and exquisitely lonely. freedom is a barbed thing. still, i'd rather have the scars of liberty than the pristine surface afforded by security. i'd rather run this body in to the ground through love and action and adventure than preserve it needlessly through neglect as an atrocious shrine to Safety and Obedience. the only obedience i feel is Moral is to be myself. it is the pinnacle of honesty and truly the only thing any of us really have to offer anyway.
but i'm getting away from myself. the point was my slipped disk and how it fucked up an entire day. while laying on my bedroom floor, i read the first two essays in Chris Kraus's 'Video Green'. i like reading her thoughts on contemporary art paired with her exploration of BDSM. seems an unlikely pair at first but it's something i feel intrigued and comforted by. her level of self-exposure in what is technically an article/essay is astounding. it widens my view on what "serious" writing can be. the body is given primacy. especially the female body and female desire. it makes me think about blogging in an entirely different way too. the level of self-exposure i've attained here in the blackland is nothing compared to what i want to achieve in my art practice (of which this blog is very much a part) but it is leaps and bounds beyond what it was just 2 years ago. i suppose the answer is to simply keep pushing. whether it be grad school or simply relocating, i need to push harder at the seams of my practice, at the seams of myself. it is a lonely endeavour sometimes. painfully lonely. but then i think of all the artists i admire and i leaf through their books. i think of my mother at her sewing machine. i think of my brother on his motorcycle and my sister taking care of animals on a farm. i think of you reading these words and how much i'd rather be sitting on the arm of your couch, cocktail in hand, a laugh ready to burst and saying all of this directly to you and waiting for the heated breath of your response to find my ear, my neck, my heart.
remember what Jack said: to be an artist is a privilege.
.
Jan 15, 2013
excerpt:
.
I sit across from the thin mirror in the corner. I am folded up like a blanket , all my limbs
arched and turned inward toward my form, shielding the delicate tips of
pink from all eyes. Even mine. I look at
my face. I see the red lines I’ve
allowed to be drawn across my forehead.
Examples of humiliation and confusion. Proofs. It’s all mathematics now. I stand up and walk to the dresser. I pull out the black sweater in the top drawer. I watch myself in the mirror. I count the seconds it takes. I recite my age. I am acquainted with enough years to make
sense of all the spinning. I turn the
knob and step out in to the hall. The
mirror stares after me. I am looking out
the window now. I can count the avenues
and detours. I pull the sweater over my
cold self and keep walking. Two sleeves
and a hole for my head. I can count
until I find myself outside your radius.
I can count rather than repeat your name. I can watch the clouds. I can count.
I can hope. A window. A window.
A way out.
.
Mar 2, 2010
mr. beckett
i couldn't find this piece all in one shot on youtube that wasn't cut short or started late.
this piece is sometimes hard to watch... the exaggeration of the expressions of the mouth. looking away might become necessary every now and then.
part 1
part 2
this piece is sometimes hard to watch... the exaggeration of the expressions of the mouth. looking away might become necessary every now and then.
part 1
part 2
Oct 7, 2009
a conundrum, a take-back, and good art...
coffee in hand and a near notebook.
a sleeping rottweiler on the big red chair.
and flipping through Ariel this morning
with my two elsie's governing the whole house from the top of the big bookcase:
i notice the love she had for horse hooves and poppies and the color green... what do you do with such things? how to honor them? a dead hero...
and anne sexton was jealous over it which makes me cringe and pisses me off. why talk shit like that over a friend's suicide? why make it about YOU? when there are two babies without a mother and a man crying in his sleep...
maybe they weren't friends after all.
she wrote a horrible, spiteful essay about sylvia's life and work in a collection of literary criticism called 'The Art of Sylvia Plath" published in 1971, 8 years after sylvia's death. in it, she talks about herself and casts herself as sylvia... speaks of the suicide as if it were her own, like property, and infested with jealousy. tacky and rude and it makes me want to read anne's work less and less.
it is a loss.
i have loved her work but anne sexton seems like a mean person to me today. i don't know what to do with that. is it possible to go on admiring a person's artistic capabilities once they've offended your core morality?
must you like the artist in order to go on appreciating the art?
in the end,
anne killed herself too...
maybe her anger and sadness was aroused by sylvia's success in the matter. maybe it wasn't jealousy so much as a horrible wish? anne left behind children too. grown children but children nonetheless. there is an entire family that morns her and misses her... and i, on my high horse, wondering if she was a "good person" or not. maybe i am the one offending my morality here. i am not offering the compassion i claim to believe in. my heart twists and i realize i'm being a big dumb baby over the clash that may or may not have existed between two, now, dead women. is it even my business... is it any of ours?
but this is the power of words right here. they go on. infinitely. as long as the pages are being turned, the age of the page doesn't really matter. and it hasn't really been all that long since these tragedies occurred. not really. sylvia plath killed herself in 1963. anne sexton did it in 1974. 11 years between each other. and only a little more than 40 years ago.
maybe my anger is the same anger anyone would have? the anger that swishes out of confusion and tremendous sadness... a need to find a place to rest the blame. more than 40 years and my finger is eager to point. more than 40 years and the wrestling continues. the argument goes on. and all this happened before i was even born.
this is the power of good art.
and so i need a do-over-
i take it all back. about anne. i will keep turning those pages and remind myself to find a path of compassion. i think it is one of the points of finding poetry in the world anyway: establishing a vehicle of compassion. and hope.
everyone fails.
and everyone shines.
everyone
everyone
everyone
and hopefully, me too.
p.s. does anyone else have big thoughts like this first thing in the morning? ha!
p.p.s. i forgot to mention it yesterday- check out the two AMAZING artists i blurbed about over at ANTLER. good stuff. heart-felt work and so full of longing. scroll down to yesterday's post and you'll find them.
a sleeping rottweiler on the big red chair.
and flipping through Ariel this morning
with my two elsie's governing the whole house from the top of the big bookcase:
i notice the love she had for horse hooves and poppies and the color green... what do you do with such things? how to honor them? a dead hero...
and anne sexton was jealous over it which makes me cringe and pisses me off. why talk shit like that over a friend's suicide? why make it about YOU? when there are two babies without a mother and a man crying in his sleep...
maybe they weren't friends after all.
she wrote a horrible, spiteful essay about sylvia's life and work in a collection of literary criticism called 'The Art of Sylvia Plath" published in 1971, 8 years after sylvia's death. in it, she talks about herself and casts herself as sylvia... speaks of the suicide as if it were her own, like property, and infested with jealousy. tacky and rude and it makes me want to read anne's work less and less.
it is a loss.
i have loved her work but anne sexton seems like a mean person to me today. i don't know what to do with that. is it possible to go on admiring a person's artistic capabilities once they've offended your core morality?
must you like the artist in order to go on appreciating the art?
in the end,
anne killed herself too...
maybe her anger and sadness was aroused by sylvia's success in the matter. maybe it wasn't jealousy so much as a horrible wish? anne left behind children too. grown children but children nonetheless. there is an entire family that morns her and misses her... and i, on my high horse, wondering if she was a "good person" or not. maybe i am the one offending my morality here. i am not offering the compassion i claim to believe in. my heart twists and i realize i'm being a big dumb baby over the clash that may or may not have existed between two, now, dead women. is it even my business... is it any of ours?
but this is the power of words right here. they go on. infinitely. as long as the pages are being turned, the age of the page doesn't really matter. and it hasn't really been all that long since these tragedies occurred. not really. sylvia plath killed herself in 1963. anne sexton did it in 1974. 11 years between each other. and only a little more than 40 years ago.
maybe my anger is the same anger anyone would have? the anger that swishes out of confusion and tremendous sadness... a need to find a place to rest the blame. more than 40 years and my finger is eager to point. more than 40 years and the wrestling continues. the argument goes on. and all this happened before i was even born.
this is the power of good art.
and so i need a do-over-
i take it all back. about anne. i will keep turning those pages and remind myself to find a path of compassion. i think it is one of the points of finding poetry in the world anyway: establishing a vehicle of compassion. and hope.
everyone fails.
and everyone shines.
everyone
everyone
everyone
and hopefully, me too.
p.s. does anyone else have big thoughts like this first thing in the morning? ha!
p.p.s. i forgot to mention it yesterday- check out the two AMAZING artists i blurbed about over at ANTLER. good stuff. heart-felt work and so full of longing. scroll down to yesterday's post and you'll find them.
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