May 24, 2011

The Imitation of Nature

Two apparently irreconcilable notions exist in me: (1) the life-lesson that what I say, my point of view, is not necessarily correct--is not the only one, and (2) the desire for a colorful and decisive personality, and artistic productivity. Nothing is uglier than a certain type of intellectual who prevaricates endlessly, who accepts everything as valid, and who seeks only "more information." The act of reading and exposing oneself to unlimited information, forever a sponge, becomes an end in itself. One never leaves the library.
     In developing myself as an artist (and in the broader sense, as a person) I decided to accept and act upon only what seemed certain. I refused to "reach." Too many people reach--they try to handle material that doesn't belong to them, or about which they do not have a complete understanding. In a strictly artistic sense, I always felt this watered down an individual's own, powerful pigments. I look inward first. Needless to say, I am not a newspaper or magazine reader.
     At the same time, I delight in changing my mind. There are too many examples in my life to name, of times when I have embraced a person, place, or thing that had initially failed to appeal to me. Such moments are a special sort of joy. There is perhaps a religious sensation of having "seen the error of your ways." One repents.
     My writing and artwork all begin with a solid foundation in what I know. I know few things. Though I play two musical instruments, I do not know the different keys ("F sharp major") and refuse to learn their names or use them descriptively. I don't know geography (despite my large vintage globe) or current events. I don't own a (roadworthy) car and refuse to sink money into payments or maintenance. I don't like codified or snobbish artwork or writing that considers itself above the pleasure (or understanding) of the viewer. Beyond kindness and charity, I do not know what love means. 
     My development as a writer began when I needed to draft business letters and emails. The uncomfortable circumstance of having to tell an author his corrections could not be made because they were submitted late taught me to strip away everything casual from my text. I learned to make fewer words work harder. Today, I am impatient with a self-indulgent writer. He's got 15 minutes. 
     Then, of course, I wake before dawn thinking that grouchiness and insularity are serious errors, easily made. Is age calcifying rather than coloring me? Maybe.
     I remember being young and wanting everything. At 25 one yearns to subsume into one's personality all the best that life and history have to offer. I often smile to think that every day some new young person discovers Billie Holiday, just as I did at age 12, sitting in front of my mother's massive maple HiFi. I couldn't tell the sex of the singer because of the veiled and mournful tone (and the scratched-up "six-eye" Columbia LP). The name "Billie" was no help because that was my grandmother's name for me.
     My age and the decline of my physical appearance put me on a desperate campaign to "brand" myself, but by a procedure that was a perfect reversal of the 1940s thrift store wardrobe and first-edition Virginia Woolf novels I amassed to help identify myself at age 20. I had carried the culture in my stomach through my twenties and thirties and, fully digested, it seemed time for me declaim, to pontificate, to demonstrate.
     Of course, as I look back my raw skills were in place long ago ... a rather sad realization. That is especially true when I view my old drawings and paintings--much less so my writing, which tends to be pretty but aimless. What seems to have accrued over the two decades--what has been added to my limited but handsome gifts--is a story of sorts. It's a (delightful) strain to get the details right, and I am both writing and remembering it. For example, I can remember that all my lovers were rather cold and deliberate people, but I am writing when I say that they needed an ambitionless and compliant partner ... or that I needed to borrow a bit of their spine.
     And it's this writing that can sometimes be dead wrong, but which is also the fun part ... the assertion, the art itself. Pencil in hand, one dares to draw a line across the paper.

May 23, 2011

Fresh Canvas

After infatuations with C.S. Lewis and Virginia Woolf, the poet Robert Lowell became my favorite writer and remained so for the rest of my life. His 1959 ground-breaking book "Life Studies" was at once a perfect fit for my (many) expressions and experiences, both painting and writing. 
     Just as in college I was unable to paint or to draw without my subject directly before me, so as an adult I cannot create fiction. In order for me to write, I must be talking about something I know, something I witnessed--something from real life. So I return to blogging, always admiring my Internet friend Alex Gildzen's long-standing blog, mainly about poetry and the movies. 
     This new blog, like the last one (that no one knew about!), will exist to help me write larger pieces but will not be so formal as the last one. Like Alex, I may just steal here to write a few lines ... thoughts that are increasingly absent from my Facebook account. Though I crave an audience, my weaknesses make me increasingly silent among my friends. If I speak now, it is not directly into their feeds. They may come here if they wish. 
     These are my own "life studies."