I once ran in Death Valley at noon in the middle of summer - just to be able to know i could · that was a scant 9 years ago; today i can barely hobble from my bicycle to the porch without evincing wincing pain; see what you have to look forward to. I cling to the illusion i am not decaying piece by piece by holding to a routine and monitoring my changes in capacity from day to day. I measure my ability to work by these 5 paragraphs, and how challenging they are to produce. This morning the workman installing the canopy over the patio of my new digs arrived not entirely unexpectedly, but threw a monkey wrench into my fantasy of an orderly transition from one home to the next, and left me with the quandary about leaving doors open if i were to go on my morning cycle; instead i chose to whine to the neighbor lady about how there were no pots and pans in the new house when all i was really doing was procrastinating about moving the balance of things because i didn’t want to track construction dust into the new house which was really a ruse to keep me from finishing a move whose wisdom i was beginning to question.
This from a man who would spend weeks on the road following my nose under the guise of a quixotic search for the “perfect studio” which was really a ploy to distract me from the real question of selling art. In the end, i never made a living as an artist though i devoted every free minute i could shoehorn to carving stone, painting and drawing while earning a living, an English degree, and 3 divorce decrees. I’d always felt at some point the sheer gravity of my relentless quest to make the finest art i could manage, would, excuse the ironic expression - trump · the paucity of quality art being produced at the turn of the 2nd millennium. I was wrong. H.L. Mencken said “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” Having overestimated that taste - i can say he knew from what he was talking about.
And i’d do it again in a heartbeat; i think i could have done it a little longer had i been less of a purist, but that is just what all the artists do - whack off a little integrity here, concede to a patron there · pretty soon you have made your bargain with the devil and whatever was recognizable about your spark is dimmed and dead. What’s left for me is figuring out how to or whether to destroy the carvings i’ve made so that the predatory billionaire class cannot exploit a creative process they refused to support in my lifetime - yes i have some self-respect left to me. Somewhere on a documentary about my clandestine art career i am recorded saying that “i will destroy all the carvings before i die.” This was after 9/11 and before _rump’s secret police kidnapping of 'merican citizens off the streets of Portland.
Sitting here foggy from a late ride in the noonday heat - think 101 degrees · followed by an anomalous burger and beer, i’ll be lucky to get the doors closed and the gate locked behind me before i collapse into a fitful sleep worried about all the loving i left undone today. What strikes me dumb is how fucking lucky i am and still manage to find something to grouse about. Late last night was the first time i gave myself permission to listen to the Ho’ponopono spiel - i didn’t dislike it. Anything anymore that is making an effort for us to come to grips with our confusion about loving to be alive while others around us are loving to kill is of use. I cannot, nor would i change you - if you wish to kill me · have at it you stupid motherfucker. My greatest satisfaction will have been that i spent no more time than the writing of this sentence to consider your silly ambition · i’m gonna die anyway and you wasted whatever precious minutes you possess to make that happen; i’m laughing out loud to myself just thinking about it - mean i know, but still it’s funny.
I value my time in Viet Nam for her relentless embrace of the unknown - she waged an un-winnable war and won · if you don’t love that kind of shit, i’m not really too interested in much else about you. And zuké you a punk; she deserves much better than your fucking hubristic pitch about revolution and your pissant empty gestures toward helping her people. If you and i are ever sitting in the same room, know that i’ll be doing my level best to demonstrate your cowardice to her - one way or the other. These are called the “extinction chronicles” because we dying, our species is running off a cliff, for no better reason than to keep a handful of greedy human beings convinced they aren’t wrong. Fuck, i am wrong, i’ve been wrong since i learned the difference - but i am fucking trying. _rump and company are not even doing that - i include you zuké in that category, not because you couldn’t have, but because you didn’t · you lack my respect and while clearly that is meaningless to you; to me it is everything, mine is based on self-respect while yours is based on greedy delusion. Know this, i am a judgmental fuck - you may not be · so there is hope.
jts 22/07/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
∞
No comments:
Post a Comment