14.~~~~~~~~


Genres are publicly acknowledged categories that, among other things, guide readers and writers as to how to understand a text. New genres are occasionally named when critics recognize that the known categories are inadequate for valuing a variety of work that can be grouped together. Without any intention to create anything new, I find myself working in an "area" or dimension of writing that is in the middle of genres. It is neither fiction, where you can be extremely bold in the handling of reality, because you can't be held accountable for it as literal event or person. Nor non-fiction, where you assert only what you consider a valid truth about the world common to others, and are assumed to be pleased if others agree with you. Nor is it autobiography, where you are permitted to speak honestly on the assumption that you hold some prior significance for others. That is, others must consider you a model to project themselves into, and yet one of a kind. I write with some aspects of all these, where I am completely free, imaginatively seeking to discover and test my actual thinking, but do not advocate myself or my thought as a model for others. This is privately generated, without attempting to change or hope for change in others and with no thought of being a writer in any professional (competitive) sense. Yet it is public writing, in which I share my thoughts, allow myself to be seen, and value what I've done on some level as I would value an artwork I choose to present to anonymous others. And I can imagine others doing something similar, that this is not a one of a kind activity but a discipline that requires careful choices.

Part of this discipline is based on the desire for the writer truly to know his or her own thought, and to face it as part of the reality of one’s particular being. The discipline is a humility in front of oneself, before anything goes to others. For instance, each time you share something you've created you are potentially engaged in a compromise, at least the hint of a lie. That is, you have to ask yourself, do I want to be understood, and if I do, then how far do I go to achieve that, how may I have unthinkingly begun with an image of what a reader might understand and worked backwards to my own thought. Are the deepest mysteries that I face in my self--this, my self, every self—are they communicable? I think of Americans especially as being unwilling to imagine that they are not. For us, communication is everything, and to hell with what cannot be understood. So in seeking your thought you must doubt or at least wonder if it is truly yours, and this takes you deeper into your being.

The discipline of this kind of writing is to stay focused on expressing the true thought that you have, and not drifting into the effect of thought, or effectiveness of the writing. Working with that thought, finding the motivation for it and stepping outside it freely as if it were not your own--this communicates something of value apart from what is effective. Effectiveness is tied to what will accord with the greatest or at least a sufficient number of imagined others. Or will irritate, in a way that creates a controversy, hence a public. You are effective as a writer if you make yourself in some way an object for others, to slide along with or rub up against. To do this you must want to make a difference, whether it is a lofty ideal or a personal ambition. And this is what I do not want to do.

For instance, I almost said, "for years" I have been working on this certain kind of writing, etc. That would be true, but I know I would add that only to give weight to what I'm saying. It would fit as an autobiographical statement, but would not add anything to what I wish to express. It would be a kind of boast, and I know how much I would like to boast and be considered an important person by others, how sly I can be. So if I have the chance to control that, then I cannot allow it to appear. I cannot allow myself to be proud of my writing in any way, any more than of my music. Simply put, it detracts from what is really most important to me, which is, to work through whatever "stuff" I am working on in an honest way, finding where it takes me.

Clarity is another matter, it is a practical matter that cannot be dismissed. When I go back over writing I’ve done in the past that I have not edited for clarity I often do not understand it, or suspect a misunderstanding. One thought does not flow from another, and I wonder what fills the gap. I cannot assume that I am the same person that wrote it, and I want to know that person. There are many ways of reading, but one of them is to attempt to know the writer’s intended thought as accurately as possible. If pronoun references are ambivalent then one might easily project into it what one would like the writer to be saying. If you write first for yourself then you would want to know where your mind was going. As you approach greater clarity you often discover hidden contradictions, willful obscurity. And if you’re sharing this it is necessary to imagine it read by another, if you don’t have a trained editor working on the text. The distance from one’s thought, needed for self-development, is complemented in a more mundane way by the skill of editorial distance. This aims at a text where thoughts flow from each other, that reveals meaning rather than obscures it, and yet does not sacrifice meaning for simplicity. Easier said than done.

I find this a compelling question, even if rhetorical, that arises from this sort of writing: what good does it do us to discover what we believe to be true? Next, do we really want to be responsible for what we think--what is our motivation here? And why should we want to share this process with others, when we eliminate the desire to do them some benefit? Are we prevented from sharing this because we can’t find a satisfying reason to do so?  ¶ 7:40 AM 0 comments

  13.~~~~~~~~~


[reading Walter Benjamin, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Production" in Illuminations ] Reading art through the lens of the social conditions or mode of production at the time it is produced makes art an it apart from the artist. This might seem to be a painful alienation but paradoxically it can free us (the artists) to construct our own standards of value. How so? Because if we aren’t responsible for the conditions then we can treat them as imposed against our will. Once separated we can side with our will in its individual complexity against the generally imposed form, which tends to be univocal. Mechanical reproduction, like any mode of production, spreads out from its beginnings as novel invention and becomes the standard, defining art for an Age, part of the code outside of which one is not to be understood by others. The effect is first noticed, then assumed and ignored as the necessity of progress. Yet the possibility exists, once this code and its roots are identified, for us to realize that we are already outside it, forced outside by virtue of perceiving how mechanical reproduction, for instance, has become part of the code of art. Driven by the desire to become fully responsible for what we do (indeed, this is one of the contradictions which is bundled in the code) we can feel the pull generated by social forces. Our alienation from the code of how art is defined, hence potentially from our own artwork and the forces motivating it in ourselves, far from being denied as foolish ("how can we help being determined by the Age") might be reinforced and justified as the foundation of its advance. That is not so far-fetched, since Western art has generally been considered as the history of progressive alienation from the dominant code, a history of transgression rather than the continual elaboration of a singular tradition.

Thus we, as the artist, are turned inward rather than outward towards market forces, toward an always unstable reconciliation with ourselves rather than with the Age. This enables us to define ourselves as giving and communicating without dependence on being received and confirmed. This is love without looking for a return of love from the outside, yet an absence of regret, anguish or resentment, because the terms of inner reconciliation have been met.

In older, more religious terms that cannot be restored--and art has its origins in the cult, before it was called art--we create out of the purity of the heart; the opening to divinity is the road to our communication with our world. When we want salt at the table, we must say so to our neighbor and be understood by our common utterance; when we want art, which is a self-reconciliation no one else can give us, we turn to ourselves and stretch ourselves to the most profound self-understanding of which we are capable, a thrashing about or a recovery that is truly awe-ful. Others will understand our strange behavior to the extent they share this experience in themselves. We do not make them understand, we respect them enough that they should understand themselves.

In cult art "what mattered was [the art objects'] existence, not their being on view." (p.224) Cult art arose in the communal context, in which it was shared and not evaluated or owned by individuals, valued in a way that would not be considered value today. This is a world we can barely imagine. But as artists we can each see ourselves in the position of that community, even though we cannot accept the terms. What we create is not for us a commodity value, for the market, but of use for ourselves, like growing our own vegetables. As de Kooning said, "I paint to have something to look at”; exactly what one wants to look at is constantly subject to doubt and change.

This describes an improbable possibility, the route one would have to take in order to be free of the pressures of creating what is of value, as defined outside ourselves. It is equally improbable that our age, along with its confusion of art with its reproduced and marketed facsimile, also yields artists who resist the urge to create things of value, or to be "contemporary", and yet it does.  ¶ 9:23 AM 0 comments