The further we move toward our reckoning - the less confidence i have about a suitable outcome, and this will come to head just about the time i’ll be shuffling off this mortal coil · go ahead and tell me g_d is not a woman with a fulsome sense of irony. It is 12:33 and i put off rinsing the sweat from my morning ride expecting my friends would want to deliver earlier, than later, i was wrong. I have convinced myself the best way to stimulate the local economy is by spreading money where i can in copious quantities, but people being what they are and behaving how they’ve been trained that is a mixed bag at best. One young friend, abruptly found herself out of the optimum position as clerk in a homestay, filling the desk so the Madame could be gone from the yoke of the hospitality demand. A good gig for all as long as there are customers to fill the rooms. My friend now finds herself with child number 2 and no longer collecting a check; i help how i can but that doesn’t always square with expectations of others. She got it in her head that an Arcadian Cafe by the canal would magically fill the empty coffers, and that my skills would provide the necessary design; but when i asked point-blank questions, and suggested less expensive transitions - she closed off communication. It has to be an extremely difficult time for her, and my heart feels sorrow for her suffering, yet i am doing her no favor to encourage a project which she will not discuss, or confront alternatives.
Another leader in the local economy also found himself upside down by a change in location that was bogged down by severe restrictions of movement during the Covid-19 crisis, and now finds himself facing a deadline which cannot be comfortable any more than the arrival of the baby due for my other friend. It seems deadlines are all around us and not necessarily providing efficiency or good service. We have grown so far from the necessities, people no longer realize just how little is required to exist: food, clothing, shelter - what am i missing? Okay - i’ll give ya’ that · it would be nice to have the internet as part of our future; but is it really essential. i have spent one month out of the past year without internet, i am neither scarred, nor deprived. The people i’d like to communicate with are occupied, or i have mistaken the interest they had in maintaining a relationship with me. As to the language barrier - having translator has just made me lazy and arrogant. I attribute misunderstandings to my own impoliteness and lack of sensitivity - if you want to understand another, there are always means to be understood and ways to learn what the other requires or is trying to say.
Our world is lacking substance, more and more. I watch the farmer couple next door - more like i hear them over the wall · their life is rich and full, their family stays close and they love their babies’ babies. There is dissonance and tragedy, as there is in everyone’s life, nor are they immune to the impulse to spur their children toward better lives - one had the largest spa in the resort town i live in. However we spoke just after the shutdown from Covid-19, and he owned there was no time to see his parents when business was full. If time is the ultimate resource - he is now richer than he was before the shutdown. His father is indefatigable - out the door by 5:30 am; i’ve tried working with this man 5 years my senior, and i am humbled by my own poor choices which prevent me from making any real contribution to his work. For what? - i have a pension, and Social Security. It is not affordable to live on Social Security in the country i grew up in, were that that is the only impediment to living in the U.S. The corporate thugs have so surrounded the mind of the common man, i doubt if they could tell you up from down without turning on a screen of some sort.
However this is not a life i recommend to everyone; for the longest time i deluded myself into believing i was on a creative mission - that what i sacrificed years out of my life would eventually be recognized for the sincerity with which they were created. It isn’t gonna happen, and no amount of wish fulfillment is going to alter my work’s role in the history of culture from this obscure annotation in a digital media that will soon become indecipherable from shoe leather - if you can find that anywhere anymore. Gucci, i know sells shoes, but i’ve worn hand-me-downs loafers from my step-father the CEO, and i’d wager my 15 year-old, thrice re-soled sandals from Bali got more miles left in them than a brand new pair of Gucci loafers. I know my neighbor certainly has more years ahead of him, than i - but how do i translate that simple fact into cogent prose that might allow a younger member of the audience to repent their wayward consumer addictions and sedentary lifestyle and find a farmer they can intern with who is not spraying her field with glyphosate, and has incorporated yet?
I consider myself lucky to have been bypassed by the dream-machine; to have been forced to find meaning in dreams more basic and real than fame or fortune. I look at the work of known artists out of the modern epoch and find it staid and formulaic. I can barely sit in a gallery and listen to the effete discuss the finer points of any art on a wall, and it is a rare privilege to find anything reflecting a tangible struggle within the delicate ego-informed work that passes for avant-garde (having said that - know it is more a criticism of my own work than any honest evaluation of another’s efforts. The pinched, dried out lump that used to be my loving heart has been transformed into a hardened shell of delusional self protection waiting for the spark of life to vacate withered frame - Leonard Cohen had the courage to cleave to a spiritual discipline; whatever pact Bob Dylan at the crossroads, he’s honored by cranking out albums at 79 years of age, i’ll be lucky if i get through my bicycle circuit without accusing some unsuspecting passerby of committing every heinous act my tired mind conceives but won’t hold up to the light of reason long enough to verify - fact from fancy · i guess we all have our cross to bear . .. ···
jts 28/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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