9/30/05
And now it's down the sunny slope from Summer into the cool valley of Autumn.
Lots of things coming and going, which is really odd. I'd thought that Spring was the season of change. But, no – it's a Fall Pageant this year, as every little thing that had been hovering offstage in my life decided en masse that it was time to make their appearance on stage. A huge chorus line of change, without the Hamlisch tunes.
How do you react to these sudden, from-all-sides, seismic moments in your life? Run and hide? Pretend it isn't happening? Ride it like a stoked surfer? Welcome it with open arms?
As an artist, you're supposed to react to life by processing it into art. When life hands you lemons, paint a still life!
Seems sensible – but I've never personally been that in to the whole ‘tortured artist’ theory. Seems like too much of a Calvinist/Capitalist approach to be art, doesn't it? Calvinistic in the sense that a ‘tortured artist’ perceives the world as a veil of tears, constructed solely for human misery, where the best you can hope to do is suffer as quietly and in as dignified a manner as possible. Capitalist in the sense that if the only way you can produce art of real substance is to hate every moment leading up to it, on some level, you're encouraged to keep yourself miserable so that you can produce as many masterpieces as possible.
On the other hand, it's true that some of the most compelling art ever created is by artists who've been feelin’ blue – sometimes going far beyond mere melancholia into severe physical impairment. There may be people out there who prefer Goya’s early, colorful slices of pastoral fluff to his later ‘black period,’ but they're probably really dull people who aren't worth talking to, and would much rather hang a Thomas Kinkade than a Goya, anyhow.
I mean, seriously: the guy was going blind, and when they found the paintings after his death, they had to CUT THEM OUT OF THE WALLPAPER BECAUSE HE’D PAINTED THEM ON THE WALLS. Meanwhile, Thomas Kinkade has a retail outlet at a mall near you.
The experience of seeing all of Goya’s work in chronological order is about as harsh of a crotch-punch as great art can deliver. Room after room at the Prado of healthy, fit, pink-skinned bourgeoisie traipsing around sun-dappled canvases, dipping toes into unpolluted arcadian pools, laughing, playing, etc. Then you turn a corner, and you’re confronted with Saturn /Kronos, the granddaddy of the universe, nude physique knotted entirely of rotting pork, tearing the heads off his children with his powerful jaws, his eyes twin maelstroms of furious madness blazing through the shifting gloom of the black void in which he squats. “You’re dessert, buster,” those eyes say, “I’m microwaving some Smuckers Fudge just for you!”
Still, when calamity comes calling for me, the LAST thing I can think of is making art out of it. I instead do the emotional equivalent of taking the phone off the hook. Pardon my appearance, I’m experiencing technical difficulties. Technically.
But close the door and suddenly you notice what's been going on out the window the entire time. Disengaging from serious reality means that all the other information that's constantly coming at me that I normally filter out comes through full strength. Those songs on the radio that usually play unnoticed by me suddenly catch my attention... how did I never notice before how insanely brilliant “Hot for Teacher” is? Now, that’s art! And I’m pretty sure no-one in Van Halen was losing their sight or undergoing chemotherapy or had to have a foot amputated to facilitate its creation.
And it’s just as true as the darkness of existence that Goya revealed. Yes, yes – the universe is a bleak empty place, we’re all going to die in pain and then shuffle off to eternal oblivion. But! It’s equally true that I DO have it bad, have it bad, have it bad… I really AM hot for teacher! So to speak.
So, my prayer: let me just have peace, contentment and goodness in my life from here on in, and I will create glorious works to sing the praises of my joy so that all the peoples of the world may bear witness and perhaps grow a little happier themselves from the sheer euphoria radiating from my works of ecstatic genius!
I’ve got my pencil. Now, gimme something to write on!
Link: A two-fer.
Some card who obviously has watched too many misleading movie trailers put this one together: Kubrick would be amused, I think.
And for that queasy feeling that probably doesn't have a name in English: The Germans no doubt call it "Fallendebeschämtefrau."