pro...these three letters appear as I attempt to struggle through my blogging exercise without benefit of a fully functional 'mouse'...the little 'golf ball' inside the bugger has become weighted, as they do, only had this one a few months, and it's optionally disfunctional (wonder should dysfunctional have a 'y'...looks like it does).
So, that begins the topic of the nature of art..the struggle to connect with one's tools, to enhance the progression of the process, and the basic contentment that the process provides, not unlike a religious satisfaction, that one has met one's obligations in that regard, and lived by that rule, that it is must be done, or else the soul is unsatisfied and does not live in a state of grace. Well, self-indulgent as it may seem, it is essential that the need to produce, to express what is observed (I want to say intrinsically but I don't know the word intrinsic to express just what I am explaining)..observed meaning that every element of one's consciousness is obligated to be part of the process, what one has consumed, physically, mentally, the environment. Without the process of expression, to the artist, well I do think I'm going out on a philosophical limb here which is probably the biggest mountain of all to climb in terms of the right landing place in which to express 'the art'...the artist is somehow stifled, inhibited, ah...ungrown?
Not all of us have a problem with that...nor do I other than to observe my own progress and progression in living with the idea that I am a creative person and I have to be responsible to my need to do that. There are desperate elements to the way we live, there have been since we lived in caves..even that gets argued, did we live in caves and look like monkeys? Or does it matter, what is history anyway? Who's that guy Jesus? So on...better to say my belief is my belief and yours is yours. For the artist, the belief is that there is something going on inside one's head that insists you record what you are seeing and hearing..somehow. For writers it is the story to tell for painters the picture to see for photographers musicians actors same thing different medium.
So I'm a multimedia artist, as I discovered in the days of the artists' cooperative I participated in in Washington DC back in the late 1970's early '80's. I'm glad I missed a lot of the mainstream culture during that time because as I look back on it now, my pinned together tuxedo pants from the '30's and my painted clothing were much more interesting than the heavily padded shoulders and strict lines of the fashion dictates (on the superficial level)...on the more culturally obtuse level, Desert Storm and the rise and fall of intense Republicanism in the Mideast was something that started for me in a rattletrap van somebody had that I rode in so that one of us could snatch the garbage from the back of Henry Kissinger's rowhouse a block over from the White House. Can't be fashion conscious when one of us is getting the goods on a political advisor. Turns out the garbage was chockablock full of Prep H cartons, all empty. Amazing, we thought. Guy must be doing some heavy lifting. It was a good laugh, finding that but one that for the early morning hour it was, eight am or so...and us driving off in a huff with the black plastic bag containing the goods, the definite underbelly of American politics, and one which you wouldn't think would get you in any trouble but the truth was that the neighborhoods like that, just crawling with people representing themselves as National Security types, or what have you.
Washington DC is lovely in the spring and summer. Rather warm come summer but spring is divine, heavenly with blooms and reasonable temperatures. Not like here where one day the rain is enough to drive you inside and the next it's dry and you can finally attack the weeds beginning to assert themselves in the garden. There's not a lot of warm weather here but summer does tend to hypnotize you into thinking it's utopia. Factor in the absence of traffic, overpopulation, crime and so forth and you begin to realize that while you have been exposed to the ultimate population densities of New York and DC and the East Coast in general, not to mention somewhere like Tokoyo or a large city in India like New Dehli where I dreamed I was living in a cardboard box and woke up when it was time to light my fire, hehe...this little town that is my home has got it all..a nice little cooperative grocery down the street from the studio (the Reef is being referred to as the 'little house'...), several well attended churches, a fascinating library that is also well-attended, strands of beach that dispute the notion that we've reached the end of our accessible wilderness and some good food.
People are friendly here in a way that makes you feel you've earned their respect. They're tolerant if gossipy and very considerate. Well, now..I was on about the progression of art and the need to express it if you're of the artistic type and here I am talking about the weather..hehe...what does that connect to it? Ok...you don't have to think of the aspirations of someone like Van Gogh who was very rampant in his need to convey what he felt...gestures and so forth asserting the need for expression (to the max in his case)..but you have to think of the healthy channeling of those creative expressions for if they're not allowed ability to expound, the process of creation is very much disturbed and I would say Van Gogh is a case in point.
How then to breed and foster a creative person? Oh, and I might as well throw this in as well, artists should be in charge of running planets because they're always ahead of their time and have the most benevolent view of their fellow man and his environment. Hmmm...my self-critical process tells me I'm writing from the feminine side but I can't help it, it's who I am. Finding a creative person in our midst, we should be aware that little geniuses like baby Mozart and his twinkling stars weren't just for us but for everyone who comes after us because that music will live on. There's a key there, finding those among us, realizing that while we have a joy in our existence, they know from whence comes that joy and it is a voice inside them. Nobody but Jesus was Jesus I always think so don't pretend you are anything but yourself but these guys, they talk another language and it's all about interpreting who the rest of us are. Fascinating I always think because sometimes they more than anyone else feel the process of the rest of us and what we go through, more than we do.
So it's important these creative sorts are happy because in them is our joy. It's like the Star Wars line '..a disturbance in the force'. Which I think is what happens when someone like Van Gogh gets so overwraught that he cuts off an ear. The motivation behind something like that, or Heath Ledger getting the big o.d., or Elvis or whatever else...it's not cool but it happens so we should be considerate of it, maybe not so tolerant of the indulgences some of the more famous but to be aware of the little ones coming up that may be of this category so that they are aware they need to stick with it and let it speak from inside them so they'll be content in their ability to do this and not be frustrated that they don't understand they can.
Not complicated to me but one wonders why if my son just called with news of some great disaster somewhere that may affect his living in Maui, i.e., the possibility of a tsunami (and here as well he relates)..I haven't dropped everything and flipped on the news on the radio or the tv...well, I left my disaster radio at the studio because I know that if we fiddle while Rome burns, and Nero perhaps was the ultimate identity of the creative process stunted...it's not really going to burn for a little bit and that's how essential the need to be creative is for creative people.
We probably all have a little of it inside us, our ability to make the best biscuit or mow the neatest lawn, yep...we're trained from birth to do well at whatever it is we end up doing for the rest of our lives. Selfdeprecation gets in the way a lot. Art deflects selfdeprecation by getting the mind off the hypercritical aspect of introspection. Art repositions the sense of self-worth in the individual. It makes the mainstream collective consciousness a worthy endeavor the sociological body of man identifies himself through. Not all of us relate, of course. But the more we put art up there with religion and politics the more we'll see that art really does rule better than anything else. Well, next to God there is art. Nice three letter word isn't it?
Hmmm, feeling teary eyed at identifying what it is I believe in. I shouldn't ever expound on religion because that's the truly private domain of the individual and his Maker. Politics I've made a study of and it's all about the great confounding to get the job done. Art is a fluid process that defines all of it, the Pieta talks about the crucifixion more vividly than sermon or biblical text, encapsulating and making material the factors of the event in a way that transcends time and makes eternal our universal knowledge of our belief systems generally. We don't all subscribe to the events that created the Pieta or the need to create the Pieta or even to find it relevant to our daily existence. But enough of us do that the rest of us don't even need to consider it. Those are the artists, they know because through them our life-string is always connected to the theology of existence, the reverence for life and the need to protect it, to shelter it even.
My hands have taken a beating the last day or two. Truly, I am treating the landscape of the Reef like an external palette upon which to create an ongoing canvas of growing things. Starting out I am replanting the original garden and have installed two older rhodies from the yard here on the little ridge in the front yard where it slopes into the backyard. Behind these there will be a riesling to grow towards the garage from the sidewalk at the backdoor, also on the little slope where hopefully it will get nice sun in summer and some beach shells when we get to bringing those home. Right now I've not been to the beach too often but I will. What I've done lately is soak up the puddles where the backfence used to run. That's going to have to go because I'm told the easement that was is no longer and the creeksides are ours to navigate as we see fit. What I see is an absence of nice border rock and a deluge of silt which needs to be scooped out, so that'll come along as I get closer to it. I broke through to the waterside with much effort and found a roll of chainlink fence that I'll have to yank towards the yard probably with a tow line on the truck at some point because it's massive for one person to shift. There are wild roses in abundance and their thorns more than two inches long...like that's the sort of thing you want to get scraped by on the way to the creek's edge. For now I've been cutting back a cluster at a time of those things and there's a great line of brush in the really dripping part of the yard at the back fence. This I call Stalin's mound, not for any reasonable purpose other than to get myself some credit for working diligently at resetting the natural boundaries of the property in terms of enhancing the creative process engaged at it. The yard is integral to that due to its view, its natural aspect, if you will. It's a bit dumpy at present, the fish pond only has sufficient water when it rains heavily and though I bought some 'weed out the chaff in the fry' meds for the water, I haven't used it yet. The pond is only a third ringed with rock and the iris are beginning to come up, as is the blackberry and wild rose and salmon berry. I'm saving the beach grass for now, tall canes it becomes in summer, with a frond not unlike pampas grass. I do intend to mow and there's got to be a place for the dogs to be let loose so they'll be fenced in and not go eating the raptor center's chickens, like I saw one of them do the little brat. hehe..how unforgiving is nature. So I have some fence along the back and the side yards are totally encumbered by encroaching brush and I've gotten six bags of cement to set in posts but it's raining cats and dogs so the cement won't set until it stops raining but there's wire in the garage and beachwood for the rails so I think the materials in hand for the dog fences and I do want a trellis for the rambling rose that grows under the front bedroom windows with some aclarity...is that a long sentence or what...how my mind works, yada and yada...at the back of my thought process is the news about the big earthquake in chile ... 8.9...which I ought to go learn more about or at least find a website here that might tell me something but it's happened and that's about all there is to know at this point...so we'll see...meanwhile, the Reef looks as though it's endured numerous disasters of that sort and all I need is to put pontoons under the house and she'll just float out to sea as nicely as you like...with the moat that occurs in these heavy rains, in the basement, you'd think she was at anchor presently, just waiting for some desperate input like a tsunamic warning. Well, I'd guess that my emergency preparedness training is kicking in and I'd better get on the news channel and see what the alerts are. My son says Maui is sitting tight. I should like to think that we here are too. So what's the point of it all? It's not the French Revolution but I've been through the Sixties Movement and come through to find the light at the end of the rainbow. That light was the double rainbow I saw over Sekiu the other day on the way to my art group. by the time I got to the painting session, a cloud had pushed over and covered the rainbows and dumped rain by the bucket. Didn't matter to me, I'd seen the light.
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