Below is the old stuff from 2005.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Revelations
While I still haven't touched my painting "in progress" and it has been two days since I posted my inaugural blog I am feeling just a nano-bit better about my creative block. At least I haven't erased the beginning blog. And here's another entry.
About twelve years ago in San Francisco I went to a few meetings of a twelve-step group for artists who were blocked. We were self identified artists. And self diagnosed blocked. It is my opinion that artists who don't do their art are not artists. It's like saying, "I'm a pilot. But I'm afraid of flying, so I don't do it." It is well documented that many artists who suffer from depression and anxiety still manage to produce something upon which to hang their claim to be creative people. The blocked artists group didn't help me. I rebelled against identifying with losers who found the time to rail and whine about their inablity to produce anything, but couldn't apply themselves to actually doing the things they claimed they wanted to do. Or maybe I just saw too much to identify with. What I got was an even greater fear that I am a fraud. A wannabe who only wants the glory without the work. Anyway, it seemed a perverted application of the twelve-step program. So I fled.
I recently read an item by Saul Bellow about how he got a grant to go write in Paris for a year. And he was blocked. He was depressed. He got hung up on writing something deep about two dying men in a hospital and it wasn't going anywhere. One early morning while walking the streets of Paris he received a moment of enlightenment. He realized he didn't have to write The Magic Mountain all over again. He didn't have to emulate any other great writer. He only had to be true to himself and write whatever came out of his own experience. So he went back to his studio and chucked several hundred pages of the depressing hospital manuscript. And he began writing The Adventures of Augie March.Well, I'm a lot farther along in life than Saul was when that happened to him. I used to feel I hadn't lived enough to have anything meaningful to say. Now I've lived quite a long time and I'm still afraid I have nothing meaningful to say. Could it be that writing nothing is the most meaningful thing? According to Gore Vidal, civilization only has about 100 years to go before it destroys itself and most other life, so what's the point of creating anything now? The composer Philip Glass (was it he?) wrote a piece for the piano that was ten minutes of silence. The pianist just sat there for ten minutes and did nothing. Did the audience applaud when he was finished? How did they know when he was finished? Well, that's been done now. I don't see how I could put my name on a non-existing manuscript. Where would the signature go?
When I was in high school I would for a time leave my name lying around on pieces of paper. I thought people would see the name and wonder who that was. I would have a certain kind of fame. I wouldn't be annonymous, but I would still be incorporeal. I was pretty much invisible at that time of my life.
Now I'm sending this blog out into the cybesphere and I have no idea who will find it. I don't know how to link it to any search engine. It reminds me of another phase of my youth, age about ten. I would visit my grandmother's tiny third floor apartment in Portland, Oregon and draw cartoon strips on her kitchen table. As each strip was finished I dropped it out the window above Taylor Street. I thought these bits of flying litter might be picked up by passersby and they would be amazed at the talent and humor of the unknown cartoonist. This blog is like that.
About twelve years ago in San Francisco I went to a few meetings of a twelve-step group for artists who were blocked. We were self identified artists. And self diagnosed blocked. It is my opinion that artists who don't do their art are not artists. It's like saying, "I'm a pilot. But I'm afraid of flying, so I don't do it." It is well documented that many artists who suffer from depression and anxiety still manage to produce something upon which to hang their claim to be creative people. The blocked artists group didn't help me. I rebelled against identifying with losers who found the time to rail and whine about their inablity to produce anything, but couldn't apply themselves to actually doing the things they claimed they wanted to do. Or maybe I just saw too much to identify with. What I got was an even greater fear that I am a fraud. A wannabe who only wants the glory without the work. Anyway, it seemed a perverted application of the twelve-step program. So I fled.
I recently read an item by Saul Bellow about how he got a grant to go write in Paris for a year. And he was blocked. He was depressed. He got hung up on writing something deep about two dying men in a hospital and it wasn't going anywhere. One early morning while walking the streets of Paris he received a moment of enlightenment. He realized he didn't have to write The Magic Mountain all over again. He didn't have to emulate any other great writer. He only had to be true to himself and write whatever came out of his own experience. So he went back to his studio and chucked several hundred pages of the depressing hospital manuscript. And he began writing The Adventures of Augie March.Well, I'm a lot farther along in life than Saul was when that happened to him. I used to feel I hadn't lived enough to have anything meaningful to say. Now I've lived quite a long time and I'm still afraid I have nothing meaningful to say. Could it be that writing nothing is the most meaningful thing? According to Gore Vidal, civilization only has about 100 years to go before it destroys itself and most other life, so what's the point of creating anything now? The composer Philip Glass (was it he?) wrote a piece for the piano that was ten minutes of silence. The pianist just sat there for ten minutes and did nothing. Did the audience applaud when he was finished? How did they know when he was finished? Well, that's been done now. I don't see how I could put my name on a non-existing manuscript. Where would the signature go?
When I was in high school I would for a time leave my name lying around on pieces of paper. I thought people would see the name and wonder who that was. I would have a certain kind of fame. I wouldn't be annonymous, but I would still be incorporeal. I was pretty much invisible at that time of my life.
Now I'm sending this blog out into the cybesphere and I have no idea who will find it. I don't know how to link it to any search engine. It reminds me of another phase of my youth, age about ten. I would visit my grandmother's tiny third floor apartment in Portland, Oregon and draw cartoon strips on her kitchen table. As each strip was finished I dropped it out the window above Taylor Street. I thought these bits of flying litter might be picked up by passersby and they would be amazed at the talent and humor of the unknown cartoonist. This blog is like that.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
In the Beginning. Second Try.
I erased my first beginning. I erased the photos I put in too. Now I wish I could erase the title of my blog and choose a more original one. Maybe shouldn't have a picture. Should be more like Pynchon. This seems to be where I have always stopped. At the beginning. The unimportant details. It's terrifying! I've finished paintings, but only under extreme duress. The painting I'm working on now has been in progress for going on three years. The words "working" and "progress" have to be taken lightly.
I began a journal many years ago. There are about 100 entrys in the first year. Then sporadic jottings over the next twenty years. It's hardly a journal. There hasn't been anything added now for more than ten years. When I look at what's in there I realize I mostly wrote when I was feeling the worst. Hopeless, suicidal, lost soul stuff. Once I felt better I went on with my life, not needing to record the stable times. I'm not a manic depressive. More of a passive depressive. Getting excited beyond passive scares me into depression.
Now I have a blog. Nothing should be easier. I just sit down here and blog away. No need for paper, pen, typewriter, files. I can review, edit, spell check. Erase! Still my best thoughts come while I'm not sitting here. I compose great stuff while soaking in the tub. Or while lying on my sacred sofa. But getting it from my head to the keyboard is just as ephemeral as getting the paint from the tube to the canvas. There are a thousand distractions between the idea and the evidence of it. Another cup of coffee. Ginger needs a walk. I need a walk. Piss break. I need to file my income tax for 2003! Worry about global warming, climate change, George W., Intelligent Design, the War on Terror, preemptive war, Abu Ghraib. Oh shit. I'm getting sleepy. The sacred sofa is calling me to take a nap!
But first this is getting published! No more erasing.
I began a journal many years ago. There are about 100 entrys in the first year. Then sporadic jottings over the next twenty years. It's hardly a journal. There hasn't been anything added now for more than ten years. When I look at what's in there I realize I mostly wrote when I was feeling the worst. Hopeless, suicidal, lost soul stuff. Once I felt better I went on with my life, not needing to record the stable times. I'm not a manic depressive. More of a passive depressive. Getting excited beyond passive scares me into depression.
Now I have a blog. Nothing should be easier. I just sit down here and blog away. No need for paper, pen, typewriter, files. I can review, edit, spell check. Erase! Still my best thoughts come while I'm not sitting here. I compose great stuff while soaking in the tub. Or while lying on my sacred sofa. But getting it from my head to the keyboard is just as ephemeral as getting the paint from the tube to the canvas. There are a thousand distractions between the idea and the evidence of it. Another cup of coffee. Ginger needs a walk. I need a walk. Piss break. I need to file my income tax for 2003! Worry about global warming, climate change, George W., Intelligent Design, the War on Terror, preemptive war, Abu Ghraib. Oh shit. I'm getting sleepy. The sacred sofa is calling me to take a nap!
But first this is getting published! No more erasing.
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