I don’t own a TV anymore, so I read too much. Wallowing in escapism begs the question, "What am I escaping from?" What here am I trying not to write by putting this down instead?
Tell me, tell me. I don’t know.
I don’t know what I’m doing but I know how. Sort of. I do not know what I’m talking about but i think i can figure out just how to say it. What does it prove? I’m not out to convince you or even me. How many bells is that? Is it noon or one? It’s Four. Four bells toll for thee, I am not Hemingway.
I do not know what I’m talking about. If I had it all figured out, I wouldn’t have anything left to say. Is it about the questions? Track record shows it sure as hell isn’t about the answers. Looking back over a year’s work and a decade’s sketches, it all has the flavor of a beam of a flashlight casting around so that I don’t hit a tree in the dark.
If there are moments when any of it turns out looking planned, it feels like sheer luck and in most cases where it’s botched or skewed, it’s just as we always suspected.
How many times do I have to go through it and why do I always set myself up for the disappointment? How did I ever get the idea that this one or that was so important as to spend months working over it? And if it were so important, why the hell doesn’t it all look as though I cared enough to give it that kind of quality? An idea worthy of execution is supposed to carry with it all the energy necessary to make it real. So, how does all this other real crap come into being if the ideas aren’t worthy to start with?
Oh. It’s worse.
I really don’t know what I’m saying, and, I can’t stop.
Just quit. What are you afraid of?
I am not afraid. I’m protesting.
Enough of this crap about protesting death. You’re not Homer. You’re not Hemingway. When you die, all your papers yet unburned will NOT go to the University of your choice but be shoved into a couple of suitcases in the basement of your nephew’s house and will remain there and mold until he and his wife are senile and you have been gone for a couple of generations and it will all get thrown into a dumpster so their kids can sell the place.
All you have is now, and not much of that by the look-around. Starting a bookstore? How many of them have you actually read? And what would you really have if you’ve read them all?
In the end, isn’t it not so much about what you make or what you leave behind but what you get out of he process, the invention and the endeavor?
By this measure maybe art is more just a record of life lived in a frame of mind in which something gets made. A record of your perceptions lying about in boxes, or somewhere slipped into a poly-bag with a cardboard back. Evidence at least that you maybe weren’t so clever or talented, not that you had so much to say, but at least you were paying attention.
