I watched a fetching film today from a story by John Steinbeck - i was transformed back to life, and i am grateful · “Red Pony” I have struggled for overlong to be approved. Any more, i could give a fuck about your opinion - that is not to say i do not care about you, i do, but what you think has only to do with your behavior, not mine. Albert Einstein - “All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” For all its bluster and promise digital electronics drag us daily further and further from this simple fact.” For days, weeks, months and years i have disciplined my life to fashion the highest art i know - and what i have managed is far better than nearly all i’ve witnessed · For anyone who knows me, they would understand how difficult a statement that is for me to make, not because i’m not an arrogant prick who routinely burns bridges - i am, but Because my standards are nearly impossible to acheive and my ambition for excellence is relentless. Years ago that narrow allegiance to art de-coupled from the sinking ship our planet is yoked to, and simply became a question of raison d’etre.
If we are not here on this planet to help each other survive, why not just surrender now and accept Jim Jones and his Kool-Aid fix¿?
For my part it is because my story is unfinished. Just now standing at the back window where i smoke and drink all the sentences i would share rose and fell in quick succession, i didn’t run back and write then down because of fear - fear that you would see me clearly and not like what you see. It is an honest reaction; the dysfunction in my family communication manifested in derogatory remarks like “everything you say begins with ‘I’.” like that is supposed to be a bad thing. Any other notion i expound on about another or circumstances in general is fantasy, so what is left to speak about? We as a civilization have created a body of fiction in substitution for our fears. Homer’s “Iliad” is based on our mortal fear of confronting our basest instincts and so we substitute fictional characters to act out our primal emotions - all great literature and expression is based on this sleight-of-hand.
We love poetry because it is alleged to be distilled language devoid of subterfuge, yet even one of the greatest of the Western Romantic Poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley couldn’t get his heart buried based on ______fill in the blank. How fucking gory is that to have to collect your husband’s dead heart based on a fictional novel your mother wrote? What if Mary Shelley had simply dialogued with her mother Mary Wollstonecraft about the “Rights of Women” and let the dead rest? How much different are we today struggling to resolve the Poetry of the Great Ho Chi Minh or to understand the dialectics of Chairman Mao, much less resolve what the fuck the founding fathers were thinking parsing people of color into 3/5s of a person. You can begin to see why as i close in on my death what you think about what i write or what i’ve expressed about what i’ve witnessed grows less and less pertinent with each breath i take.
Rather my entire focus is shredding the chaff of socialization and de-coupling from the demands the few make on the many while tuning my ear and my resources to serve the greater good in each of us. And again the irony being the only logical way to accomplish that is to alter my own self, for every defect that others seem to possess in adequate quantity to offend my unctuous sensibilities is never their offense, but always my own supercilious reaction to another. That is goofy, and i only know this because it is always the mote in mine own eye - as the good book says. But enough with good books, if we don’t find a way to clue the young to bullshit games empty souls will play to gain an upper hand in daily dealing, we're fucked.
“Empty Souls” is a harsh and unnecessary brand to be throwing around when i declare my purpose is to attenuate hatred and encourage kinship. I can only attribute my use of such an inflammatory expression to my years of experience in the essentially dishonest discipline of rhetoric and advertising. I am ashamed to admit it has become 2nd nature to use language which rather than encourage learning and sharing is designed to ridicule and diminish - the very same language and behavior i rail against - that has to tell you something about my myopia · it may even be a terminal case, and we all be dying of one thing or another.
jts 30/11/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
all rights reserved
∞
No comments:
Post a Comment