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Seven Questions
Apr. 28th, 2006 01:20 pmJohn Clancy has posted the following. His blog doesn't allow non-Blogger comments, but since I noticed this after writing most of the following, I decided to just move it over here . . .
I found these scribbled in a notebook. I assume I was asking myself. Any answers would be most welcome.
1. Did you choose the stage for vanity?
2. Did you think it was a place to hide?
3. What makes you think people have time to sit and quietly admire your beautiful work of art?
4. What makes you think you have time to sit and carefully craft your beautiful work of art?
5. When Artaud called for no more masterpieces, did you see some sort of exception that applied to you?
6. Why spend your time saying dead men's words, whispering bedtime stories to a bored and sullen elite, when you can speak your own words, shouting terror, joy and revolution in front of enemies and friends?
7. If you're not entertaining an audience, what exactly are you doing out there?
My answers (for myself of course):
1. Perhaps, doesn't really interest me. That was probably part of the choice at one point, but if it was, that was a different time and a different person.
2. Doubtful, but not entirely impossible.
3. Because I have time to do the same for other people's art.
4. Because as long as I have time in this world at all, nothing else is as important.
5. Why should I care for even one moment what Artaud or anyone else calls for? I'm old enough to make up my own rules and declarations. I make art, whether it's a masterpiece or not is out of my hands or judgment. I just want it to work. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure I've made a masterpiece, which is a good feeling, but I didn't do it by trying to.
6. Sometimes dead men's words express my thoughts better than anything that comes out of my mouth. Sometimes bedtime stories contain the greatest, most profound, and even scariest truths. Sometimes the whisper cuts deeper than the scream. Sometimes the revolutionary must move among people like a fish among water. Sometimes a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Sometimes the elite matter. Sometimes my friends and enemies are in the number of the elite. If they are bored and sullen, I'm not doing my job right, unless that is a necessary component of the artwork.
7. Providing something that, if I've done my work properly, will -- whether "entertaining" or not -- make the viewers glad that they saw it, and feel that there was no better way they could have spent the same amount of time in any other activity.
I wish now that I knew exactly when it was that I stopped caring about not only what other people thought, but about what I thought about myself and my work. No more second-guessing. No more theory, except in retrospect. Internalizing all that I know and have thought about in my life up until now so that I can simply just move forward and DO THE WORK without having to think what so-and-so or whoever would POSSIBLY think about it. Perhaps reaching an age, with grey in my beard and spreading, joints that ache all the time, and understanding how little time I really have left and how much time and energy I have squandered in the past. Now, I just KNOW what will be a worthwhile use of my time, what work brings something CORRECT into this world, and I DO these things and don't bother with the rest.
Somewhere, somewhen, I grew up and became me. I don't know where and when. I'd like to know, though I suppose in the end it doesn't matter. The work matters. I matter only insomuch as I make the work.
Okay, enough of that, time to pick up the car from the repair shop and go get the wheels aligned. Things have to get done to get things done.
I found these scribbled in a notebook. I assume I was asking myself. Any answers would be most welcome.
1. Did you choose the stage for vanity?
2. Did you think it was a place to hide?
3. What makes you think people have time to sit and quietly admire your beautiful work of art?
4. What makes you think you have time to sit and carefully craft your beautiful work of art?
5. When Artaud called for no more masterpieces, did you see some sort of exception that applied to you?
6. Why spend your time saying dead men's words, whispering bedtime stories to a bored and sullen elite, when you can speak your own words, shouting terror, joy and revolution in front of enemies and friends?
7. If you're not entertaining an audience, what exactly are you doing out there?
My answers (for myself of course):
1. Perhaps, doesn't really interest me. That was probably part of the choice at one point, but if it was, that was a different time and a different person.
2. Doubtful, but not entirely impossible.
3. Because I have time to do the same for other people's art.
4. Because as long as I have time in this world at all, nothing else is as important.
5. Why should I care for even one moment what Artaud or anyone else calls for? I'm old enough to make up my own rules and declarations. I make art, whether it's a masterpiece or not is out of my hands or judgment. I just want it to work. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure I've made a masterpiece, which is a good feeling, but I didn't do it by trying to.
6. Sometimes dead men's words express my thoughts better than anything that comes out of my mouth. Sometimes bedtime stories contain the greatest, most profound, and even scariest truths. Sometimes the whisper cuts deeper than the scream. Sometimes the revolutionary must move among people like a fish among water. Sometimes a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Sometimes the elite matter. Sometimes my friends and enemies are in the number of the elite. If they are bored and sullen, I'm not doing my job right, unless that is a necessary component of the artwork.
7. Providing something that, if I've done my work properly, will -- whether "entertaining" or not -- make the viewers glad that they saw it, and feel that there was no better way they could have spent the same amount of time in any other activity.
I wish now that I knew exactly when it was that I stopped caring about not only what other people thought, but about what I thought about myself and my work. No more second-guessing. No more theory, except in retrospect. Internalizing all that I know and have thought about in my life up until now so that I can simply just move forward and DO THE WORK without having to think what so-and-so or whoever would POSSIBLY think about it. Perhaps reaching an age, with grey in my beard and spreading, joints that ache all the time, and understanding how little time I really have left and how much time and energy I have squandered in the past. Now, I just KNOW what will be a worthwhile use of my time, what work brings something CORRECT into this world, and I DO these things and don't bother with the rest.
Somewhere, somewhen, I grew up and became me. I don't know where and when. I'd like to know, though I suppose in the end it doesn't matter. The work matters. I matter only insomuch as I make the work.
Okay, enough of that, time to pick up the car from the repair shop and go get the wheels aligned. Things have to get done to get things done.
