WORDS WORDS WORDS

my Talent of the Room finds me and every morning i spend a solid 2 hours writing in my diary at the kitchen table as i sip my coffee.  i look out the window onto my busy street.  i listen to the cars and people rambling by.  i feel the sun on my legs and the pen in my hand.  soft pleasures.  necessities.  i can't imagine ever being without this little waking ritual of mine.  i can't imagine ever giving this up.  these hours behind the pen, inside language, inside the inexplicable twists of dreams and memories.  there's nothing "little" about it.

i've fallen back in to a phase of self-investigation and exploration.  i doubt one's need for such things ever really goes away and that's probably a good thing.  as i gain insight and information, i recalibrate.  as i pick up moments of confusion and wonder - or even doubt and fear - i use them to look a bit closer at my own motives and desires.  everyday i seem to be learning more about myself.  i feel like i'm growing up in a totally new way.

i finished reading the second volume of my 2012 diary yesterday on my train to work.  going through these pages is an integral part of my current round of investigation.  i feel so lucky to have such a tool at my disposal.  i can't explain how amazingly valuable it is to be able to read exactly what i was thinking about and wrestling with on THIS DAY one year ago.  it's a fantastic was to measure change.  but also, i return to the idea that to keep a diary is more than simply recording one's thoughts and activities.  it is a life's work.  i've said so many times here that words make the world and i truly believe that.  language is a living, nebulous thing and our use of it impacts how we see ourselves and the world we inhabit.  it determines the world we create.  my attractions all have a root in Language.  from the look of a person's handwriting to the particularities and lilt of speech to the a person's command over poetics or even just the maintenance of a deep, strong vocabulary, my interest is ensnared.  i have deep attraction to people who have big vocabularies and can use them effortlessly, who don't sound pompous and puffed-up.  even the sound of someone's sigh is attractive to me and a good laugh is a very strong aphrodisiac.

all this to say- language, in all its forms, the very act of and desire to communicate with another human being is something i've always been attracted to and is a basic building block of my own personality.  as i look back and re-live certain experiences through the lens of my diary, i see how necessary certain types of connection are to me.  i need conversation, intellectual engagement, philosophic enterprise, and poetic experience.  simply put, i need passion.  i am not a simple person who can be satisfied by simple relationships.  i'm not difficult either but "difficult" is not the only opposite of "simple".  complexity is also an antonym.  i like complex people.  i like the mysteries they contain.  i like not knowing the next thing that might shoot out of a person's mouth and i appreciate people who know how to hold up their end of a conversation. 

sounds simple enough until i look deeper at the statements that i just put forth.  it is romantic to say that i want a passionate life.  but in accepting a passionate life, one also accepts the necessity of pain.  one must accept certain risks and that sometimes the gamble will be lost.  i won't always come out on top but, thankfully, i'm the type of person that can turn almost any negative in to a positive.  i'm not thankful that other people have mistreated me and i would probably never thank someone for their atrocious behavior regardless of the good that may have ended up flowing from it later on.  but i am thankful to be the kind of person that can take that hurt and allow it to polish me rather than become embittered against others.  it's not so much a point of forgiving others as it is a matter of forgiving myself.  i'm not exactly sure what that means or how to accomplish such a thing other than learning from my own mistakes and not allowing myself to slide back in to familiar, yet harmful, patterns. 

it's difficult to know, though, when i'm being smart or when i'm running scared.  certain emotions make me feel foolish now and i've noticed lately that i run from them.  i play it cool and not a single ripple of embarrassment or heartache will show on my surface if i can help it.  i have no problem showcasing pain in art or writing or even here on the blog but i do not put that shit on display in front of many other people.  there is a very small handful of people that i am close enough with to really lay my emotions out in front of and, within that group, still fewer that i would actually allow to see or hear me cry.  but i suppose that feeling foolish (or even actually being foolish from time to time) is going to be part of the ride.  necessarily so.  but i don't know how to uproot this idea that seems to have grown in me that others will find my emotions to be repulsive.  i don't know how to counteract my experience that people run away from the darkness a human being contains.  i don't know how to stop believing that most people are fair-weather friends.  somehow i must unlearn these things and manage to become brave enough to risk feeling foolish. it's the next step in becoming a better friend and a better artist.  risk is mandatory. especially for someone like me who wants to know about the world and establish meaning in life.  especially for someone who doesn't think before she writes and puts all this shit out on to the internet for anyone to read. ;)

kitsch???

i've been following this discussion about kitsch and its "poetry roots" for the passed few days and i find it so compelling. totally intriguing. and there is such a huge possibility for this kind of discussion to blow up, morph, twist, writhe, and then maybe create a site for a bit of understanding too.

i went to leave a comment but my comment got so big i decided to just stick it here. :)

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mmmmmmm... Greenberg. i have issues with Greenberg.

a lot of his theories are based in class/social systems/beliefs: those who can afford leisure, those who have time to become educated about art vs. those who don't. and he is quite blatant in his theories that poor people are stupid because they can't afford to become un-stupid: they're too busy working and scrubbing and scrimping.

i have deep, angry issues with Greenberg.

and so, based on his theories of Art: rich people have art. poor people have kitsch.

did poetry fall in to the hands of The Poor? did Poverty impoverish poetry? did The Poor infect it with their "bad taste" and lack of education? is it "fraudulent" to be poor? or... is it the social pressures to HIDE poverty that make one's actions (poetry) appear "fraudulent"? is it "evil" to be poor? and therefore, Evil to express poverty? or, by way of lack of access, to function within/expose a language of impoverishment? dirt offends. that's why The Angel of the House never did any cleaning. women are expected to be "pure" and not offensive. and so she had some other Poor Woman to do the cleaning for her, touch the dirt, finger the grime. status in direct connection with one's proximity to dirt. to cleaning. to scrubbing floors.

and so i really like kitsch described as an "ineradicable residue" - dirt that cannot be removed. a grime that does not go away. a stained language. or the language of The Stain.

there are only two choices then: to ignore it (which has been the case) or to reckon with it (war or acceptance).

but, since the era when Greenberg was shoving all this out in to the world, the middle-class has become the biggest class in America. they create(d) a space between the extremes of rich and poor. but... a person of The Middle Class does not ever want to be mistaken for "Poor". if anything, a person of The Middle Class would love to be perceived as "Rich". and so i wonder... is kitsch, now, a sort of keeping-up-with-the-jones's value system? is it a new breed of disdain for The Poor? that we are soooooo taken in and harnessed by the appearance of wealth (not necessarily actual wealth, just the appearance of it) that people who have the means to emulate wealth, do? or at least attempt to? is kitsch a Faux Elite?

if so, would kitsch, then, be an object produced that, through simulating the appearance of wealth, actually makes Greed concrete?

is kitsch, in essence, a representation of envy?

and therefore: shame.

an object or language that feels bad about itself? an object or language that refuses to accept itself as is, and wants to be perceived as something else? a play of pretend? a conscious action of trying to "trick" the sight and perceptions of others? a "poser"?

sight is the most easily tricked of all the senses: if you look like you have money, people will think that you actually do have money. kitsch understands this but somehow manages to miss the mark. there is the "ineradicable residue" of self-loathing (an acceptance of the ideology that "Poor" is a crime) on the surface. it is, somehow, an anti-reality. it doesn't understand The Myth of Photographic Truth.

Bertolt Brecht said, "realism is not what real things are like, but what things are really like"

i have to read that statement out loud most of the time to get it. but once i catch what he's saying, it makes such wonderful sense that it is the only way for me to describe my personal experience of what Kitsch "is". it does not attempt to describe things as they actually are. it describes its own desire to be something it isn't but hopes to be mistaken for. it is Frailty made visible. it is Inferiority-Complex made visible. it announces its complicity with regimes of wealth, power, and desire. it agrees that individual human value can be determined through the appearance of wealth. and, at this stage in the game, the actuality of Poor and the appearance of Poor (in its extremes) line up and therefore have an authenticity that kitsch will never have.

the Language of the Stain has honesty in it. art can be made with such humble materials. it can transcend its physical components. kitsch does not have the power of transcendence because it attempts to mirror what it sees to be art, not what art actually is.

Greenberg had it wrong. poor people are able to see and know art. they make it. they live it.

envious people have a hard time knowing what art is. an envious person spends their time in anger and fear, not learning.

a person becomes a leader by leading. not by making a knock-off of the jacket the leader wears. maybe kitsch is a physical manifestation of a NOW NOW NOW quick-fix culture?

it is an object that wants YOU to believe it has value. and kitsch is conscious of this. it is conscious of its own desires, shame, and motivations. it actively seeks to be perceived as The-Something-Else it admires.

this is not an effect of poverty itself. it is the effect of making being poor a blemish, a crime, something to be ashamed of... and the people who have become complicit with this outlook.

if people were not ashamed of poverty and did not try to hide it...
if people were not ashamed of the struggle they face...

??????


what would kitsch be then?





all this is preliminary. i'm just thinking out loud. this is such an interesting topic and i can't wait to see where johannes goes with this.

the language of kitsch is quite compelling and i think it can be harnessed to create tremendous works of art, and maybe even a new language.