Category: Goby’s Journal

Nature is a haunted house…

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In a letter, Emily Dickinson wrote: Nature–is a haunted house–but Art–a house that tries to be haunted.

@Poetry tweeted this quote, and I can’t get it out of my mind. Haunted–by what? A house that tries to be haunted, would seem to be empty–in need of being filled with… what it lacks, but nature has. Has, but as something which is and is not there. Nature’s house we did not contruct, but find ourselves within it. Are we, then, that which haunts it? And the house of Art, a strange sort of house, though we build it, we cannot dwell in it, as we do the house of nature. In our very building of it, it pushes away, keeps us outside, with every word we add, with ever new stroke of the brush, and though what we would render is within, what emerges is yet another surface, and other wall, another door, though we imagine it to be open, but cannot enter.

In nature’s house, we wait for death, and paint the house that refuses death entrance, and us… unless (ah, the paradox!) we empty ourselves of the death that haunts us, and enter, not as ourselves, but only with the emptiness of what we have become, when we have ceased becoming.

What is the Subject?

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This is not a post, its a question. Does that make the question the subject?

What is it? Someone asks, when they see a work of art.

I like what you’ve done, but don’t feels strongly about the subject.

I haven’t given much thought to this, because I thought the question had been abandoned long ago. But having recently heard this raised–the question about the subject, it’s been troubling me. Most of my work has no subject, not one that I think about. But some do. And then, there’s conceptual art–which I haven’t given much thought to in relation to my own. Maybe I should.  Continue reading “What is the Subject?” →

Revolutionary Narrative

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Revolutionary Narrative… what makes a story that does more than rearrange the conventions we use to reinforce our assumptions about the world? How do we find our way to stories that refuse to confirm our expectations–but rather, shatter them with the unexpected–not simply of ‘incident’… of what ‘happens,’ but of the very structures of reality?

Someone I once knew challenged the merit of Joyce’s Ulysses because it doesn’t exist as a completed whole. His argument went something like this: in the thousands of minor and some not so minor differences in the existing manuscripts and proofs, there is no way to decide what a definitive, authorial edition would look like. What we have, then—is a collective assemblage representing no single aesthetic vision, and therefore, does not exist as a unity. Setting aside arguments for how collective, even accidental productions, might come together as unified systems—which is how I would have responded at the time—the more basic, and unexamined assumption here, is the idea of unity itself—that there can ever be such a thing as a ‘whole.’

There is no such thing as ‘a’ novel. Or poem. Or story or… as a single, aesthetically (or otherwise) coherent, systematically organized structure or system, such that every part relates to every other to create a unified, and unifying whole. And it is this, not because there are as many readings as readers, or because every possible interpretive translation (all interpretations are translations) is necessarily limited, that we can never comprehend a literary production as a whole—as convincing as these arguments might be—but because there is no such thing. It does not exist. That is not to say, Joyce’s Ulysses doesn’t exist. It does. In different versions, and each version is made of parts that are always greater than any hypothetical, always inconceivable whole. I say ‘inconceivable,’ not that we can’t conceive of the possibility of an aesthetic whole—but that it will be impossible to point to what that might actually be. Sort of like the way we talk about God. Imaginable in general, but inconceivable in the particular. Or for that matter, how we think of collectives of power… of the State…which has more than a little in common with the way we think of God.

Our Collective Death Wish

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I’m more and more inclined to think we’re programmed to self-destruct, to commit collective suicide. Maybe we’re picking up signals from all the other life forms on this planet–realizing how much better they’d be without us… we’re on a mission, a collective death-drive. Almost did it once.. but then, backed off… maybe it was too obvious… i mean, the Cuban Missile Crisis. So now we have… global warming, where we can blame it on ‘Nature” (whatever the fuck that is).. .and meanwhile, exhibit our symptoms … like Israel in Gaza. “Warning signs” … that no one wants to read, and if anyone does… no one has the number of the suicide hot line.

History affords us nothing toward understanding what we are, what we might be–only what we have been. I’m thinking of the bloodletting in Gaza, and the larger conflict of which it’s a part.

The antithetical interests, wishes, needs of the parties involved, the real suffering, deaths, lives, the terrible losses, the fears & ambitions real & imagined are of the here and now, creating the here & now of the future, immediate & remote, because if there’s any ‘history’ existing now—that’s the one, the one that belongs to the future, and maybe the only way to get to the present is to get free of history—or rather, of the tangled, mutilated, psychotic pseudo-histories that pass as explanations, rationalizations, justifications—because, lets get this straight—history is not capable of explaining anything but…. history: what has already happened, done, achieved, been explained already a thousand times before. History can do only that: explain & re-explain itself, but it will not, cannot, explain us to ourselves, cannot explain who & what we are–& least of all, what we want. What we really desire. For that, we tell stories.

Stories we give the name of ‘history,’ call ‘history.’ But are not, history. they are stories—stories of how the Zionists colonized Palestine (named for a Roman colony), & drove the residents by FORCE from their homeland; stories of how the Jews of Europe, despairing of there ever being an end to the pogroms, persecution, humiliations inflicted on them by Christian Europe, came up with the idea that a dream of a place of their own might be real if only they would find the courage to FORCE it into reality; stories of how that dream became a nightmare of bloodletting & terror & dislocation & generation upon generation of refugee camps; stories of Jews who had lived for millennia across North Africa (since Spain kicked them out in 1492 as Columbus set sail on his mission to colonize the Americas), across what archaeologists felicitously called ‘The Fertile Crescent,’ (fertile creation of Empires conquests exiles and colonization), & were in turn driven from their homes, seeking refuge in Israel (becoming the most militantly anti-Arab class in their new homeland); stories of how the international anti-communist, capitalist class, with blessing and billions from the U.S, would use and exploit all of this to turn what had at least begun as a small socialist state into an American land based aircraft carrier in the Middle East & one of the most economically un-equal of all the developed nations—and that, not even counting the Arab & non-Jewish residents.

The stories go on. Sound & fury… fog & tear gas to cover the human reality, the mothers wailing for their children, the olive trees… my god, the olive trees! The living soul of the land itself—outliving generations, sustaining generations—bulldozing the olive orchards, building obscene walls, the buses exploding on busy streets, the real needs, wishes, aspirations of living people…

… of all those stories, that a careful understanding of history—history that cannot explain or justify or rationalize—but only struggle to point out what ‘is’.. .the helpless infant truth we would, if only we could, believe in… of all those stories, the one common element…

FORCE, as Simone Weil understands it in her essay on The Iliad, The Poem of Force.

The FORCE that belies, that lies, that turns all it touches into ‘things’, the tool that turns the user into the very thing they most hate & fear.

FORCE—which weaves for us, stories in the shape of the wish that lies within us, the wish for Death… for collective suicide.

… and who, who will rise up to tell us … to begin to tell us… stories for Life? And who will have the power to overcome…

Continue reading “Our Collective Death Wish” →

Gaza, 50 Years Ago, as Today: It is the conditions that have become our Masters.

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…the process (capitalism, colonization… ) is itself as much actant as process. It’s not as though the former creates and realizes the latter, so much as the other way around. It is the conditions that have become our masters

Some thoughts on the Ken Knabb piece linked below–which is the best damn thing I’ve read on the current horrors in Gaza… even though (or maybe because) it was written 55 years ago. I think we make a mistake naming the State that has made itself the instrument of colonization, as though the former were the actant and the later a kind of verb–what the actant does, when the process (capitalism, colonization… ) is itself as much actant as process. It’s not as though the former creates and realizes the latter, so much as the other way around: it is the conditions that have become our masters, and to break from their control it’s not sufficient to name the primary instruments that are the means of of their mastery. We don’t need to create or posit an enemy, to demonize this group or that State, to recognize the horror of what they do, the injustice of the consequences is enough. If we are locked into a mental state where we must have victims and executioners, and assume that distinguishing the one from the other amounts to understanding the conditionis that create the injustice, we will never be free. To be–in Camus’ phrase, neither victims nor executioners, we cannot invest our whole identity with either–our only hope lies is forging solidarity with that which is neither. This is the root of the failure of cycles of vengeance and retribution. This is not a MORAL failure, but a failure of vision, a failure of creative imagination… of making real a world–forging actual relationships that know no borders, that disavow the distinctions which perpetuate the conditions of injustice and violence, seeking out those, individuals and collectives, with whom we can lay the foundations of a new reality.

The Ken Knabb piece linked here i

To be–in Camus’ phrase, neither victims nor executioners, we cannot invest our whole identity with either–our only hope lies is forging solidarity with that which is neither. This is the root of the failure of cycles of vengeance and retribution. This is not a moral failure, but a failure of vision, a failure of creative imagination… of making real a world–forging actual relationships that know no borders, that disavow the distinctions which perpetuate the conditions of injustice and violence, seeking out those, individuals and collectives, with whom we can lay the foundations of a new reality.

The End of the Genre Wars — Please!

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Moving Forward by Moving Back

Bridge over Outlet Bass Lake

Bridge over the Outlet, Bass Lake

From December 31, 2012: The Ox

Okay–so it’s arbitrary. A change on the calendar that means nothing but what we want it to. But I like these marker times… not the holiday stuff, which makes me feel profoundly alienated, but days where I can check where I’ve come to on the ascending (or descending) spiral… where I… we… all of us, have come to occupy the same space again, a place–which is not the same at all.
Years ago… pretty sure is was Martin Buber (I was in thrall of him in my 20’s), said something to the effect that ones life is never over so long as one has the capacity to begin again. This year I made one of those life change moves… from a little too expensive efficiency at 13th & Morris in South Philly, to an old, unheated warehouse on N. 2nd St… sharing space and life with some 20 others… all many decades younger.

This was like… and has proved in one other profoundly significant way, a move back by moving forward… or the other way around. I lived in a commune from 1966 to 1970. Here I was again.

At that time, I was painting… in oils. Had many hours and courses in art behind me–from children’s classes at the Art Institute in Chicago… where (like the Nelson-Atkins Gallery in Kansas City years later, I was able to wander the halls and bond with the art as a child… with almost adult privileges. Sunday at La Grande Jatte … was like something in my second living room (all the museums in Chicago were like that, thanks to an unmarried Great Aunt who lived nearby).

I gave it up… for 8 years or so, to make pottery. And then… some dumb ass wish to be respectable (?)… merged with a genuine passion for intellectual pursuits… I gave it up.

After moving into the Ox… even before–the first view from the roof, I knew… that with space to work, and tools. I moved quantum leaps forward by moving back.. this time, without the pretensions, the inhibitions of what it meant to make ‘art.’

In June, I walked to New York from Philly with Occupy Guitarmy.. and everything I saw made me want to go back and start putting things together. THINGS. Objects. Street junk. It was an act of pure pleasure. With no sense at all of where this would take me. But I kept doing it. And found that I was .. surprised, startled… by what was happening. What I was making. It began to sink in… that yeah (still hard to use the word)… I was making ‘art’ … and it was, like .. ok. I mean… maybe better than ok

It’s become an obsession. On a day when I make progress on a piece, or finish one, or begin another… I’m happy! I mean… as happy as I’ve ever ever been in my life! And on days when I don’t… ?

So here I am. End of this arbitrary number (2012)… having begun again. Half way through my 72’nd year. Thinking… this time, it’s to the end. It’s all the way. Maybe… before 2013 has passed… I’ll be able to think of myself as an ‘artist’ without irony, without self-consciousness. Not just all those museum images.. it’s family. Really talented family… never felt quite up to snuff. Mostly, cause I was trying to do what I thought OTHERS judged worthy. Now… I’ve found my own way. I’m so glad I lived long enough.

Drawing is the Mother of All Visual Arts

 

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I sit in the El. I look at the man in the seat across the aisle. I see lines, mass… shadows. He leaves at the next station. A young women takes his seat. I watch, but from the reflection in the window. I don’t want her to think I’m leering at her.

It’s what I do when I’m drawing—working intensely at learning, doing studies from photos, coming back from figure drawing classes at Fleishers.

It becomes a mode of seeing. Seeing. Not representation. Seeing, and process. Like Chinese brush work.

Though most of my finished work is abstract, I think of drawing as the mother of all visual art. Nothing else schools you, trains you—molds your very brain to a way of SEEING… to an attention to vision, like drawing. Nothing.

I’m getting better. I’ve said this before. It’s an obsession with me. How 40 years ago or more, I gave up on being a visual artist. Because, I thought… I couldn’t draw. Not well enough. Not with the apparent ease of my mother, my uncle. I thought it was.. just ‘talent.’… and I didn’t have it.

I didn’t understand.. it was about work. Practice. Drawing bones. Learning anatomy. and just drawing… everything.

Looking back—I had the “talent” thing. But talent.. whatever the fuck that is, might be the difference between commercial skill, and “art”… whatever the fuck that is… but there’s no way to avoid the work. A musician… you have to train your fingers, your voice, learn scales—even if you don’t know the words for music theory.

I do constructions. From found objects. Nothing to do with drawing that you might imagine… but it does. It’s not different, but as one medium differs from another, as charcoal differs from pencil from pastel from pen and ink.. from paint.

Drawing is the mother of all the visual arts—because nothing, nothing so intensely trains the eye to attention, to see…. to see… to see

Every work of art, every poem… is an investment

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from October, 2010

I walked down Passyunk to 5th, and then to South and the Eyes Gallery. 42 years ago, Eyes had been open… maybe a year. A proposal to build an exit from I95 to South, fought and delayed for years, had driven away old businesses and made rents cheap: perfect for Artist Urban Pioneers like the Zagers.

1968, I walked into the Eyes with my wife, then five months pregnant with my oldest son. We left with a birth announcement, a wonderfully visceral silkscreen of a newborn, Oct. 29. Ezekiel Zager. A few months ago I came across this print and thought of how many photographs, mementos, drawings that I’d done, had been lost over the years. Not surprising if Julia and Isaiah had lost the last of these. Today, being the 29th of October, I walked the mile or so to the Eyes Gallery. I saw Julia, who now manages the business there. Said, I may have something you’d be interested in… and took out the print, gave it to her.

She thanked me… and remarked on my Spirit Stick, and seemed pleased. It was like returning something that I had held in safe keeping–but was never mine. I can visualize the image without it.

This is what life is meant for… to return what we’ve been loaned, without ceremony. No one ‘owns’ anything. We don’t always know to whom or where to return what we hold in trust. It’s a great moment, when we are able to to make good on the loan.

For me, every work of art, every poem… is just that. Returning what we’ve be given… for temporary safe keeping. The interest… how I’d understand the parable of the talents in the Christian bible… about interest on the talent, not as profit… but creative investment. We give back… with what we have created out of ourselves from the seed of the gift.

Art in Service of the Empire…

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When I’m intensely involved on new art, the pleasure expands way beyond the time spent physically working on a piece. I walk down the street, imagining what I can do next, experimenting in my mind. I try this color combination and that, discard one idea and take up another. Thinking in both images and words, and not quite either, the one flipping to the other and back again. Then when I get back to the easel, it’s all visual.

I feel somewhat conflicted. I love painting… working with color, but it takes money and space. I see work in museums that I admire, but am deeply troubled. They belong to the elite. The monied elite. They are the property of those who would own every THING and every ONE, who are destroying our public schools, growing fat on their perpetual wars, privatizing every last vestige of the public commons and with it, any sense of community not owned and made serviceable to their interests.

I’ve looked at paintings I’ve done, and destroyed them—because I could imagine them on the walls of corporate board rooms. . I play with the idea that I might go back to doing nothing but constructions… and that, with materials I find… not even Modpodge. Wire and nails from the street and junk yards. What kind of artist am I, that I depend on working within the supply and material conditions of a system I despise?

How am I any better–pining for a nice well lit studio–than those capitalist feeders who produce huge expensive works with grants and contracts gained by doing stuff to entertain the Empire’s ruling class?