(In response to some current reading...)
An artist’s studio is a reflection of the mind, but it doesn’t stop there. In the end, he’s cleaning up the spots, smoothing over the edges, and consulting with his inner journalist all in an often terrifying but beautifully fulfilling attempt at exposing himself to the public. But as much as he strives to make them see, what they see will never be what truly exists within the artist’s space.
The author of Studio and Cube examines the studio as the "mind" of the artist and through an extensive look at images of different artists in their studios, he is determined to draw a line between two very distinct roles of the artist’s “mind.” Is it his “attic” or his “prison cell?” Mr. O’Doherty, it is both.
The artist lets down the ladder and each time he starts his climb, he hopes upon hope that the aged birch slats will withstand just one more trek, at least until the next one. With the fastened joints whining, he reaches in cautiously and almost timidly, searching for something no larger than a shoestring dangling in the dark. Now with a familiar path of dim lighting and somewhat polished services, he may start to explore and dig away at yet one more layer. Everything he’s ever set aside because he might need it again someday. Or did the artist at some point know that he’d find himself here, just like this, sprawled out upon this little pasture he’s carved among the residue, trying to make sense of it all.
This is his mind’s attic, and there’s so much left to be resolved.
An artist is tormented by this. Let me repeat that. An artist is tormented. Every memory, every experience, every touch is laboriously dissected. Every word, every token, every time the night falls so prematurely. And when the air speaks, he listens. When the moon glows, he extracts. And when the pin drops, he’ll trap himself in a small translucent box, still in the absence of noise, waiting for the aftershock. All of these things are gathered together, welded together, and placed in his attic for further comprehension and resolve. The ferocity with which he makes a canvas out of all things will surely prove an object of derision, but wheedle as you may, it will cut you like a knife. And as you seep outward, he will fill up a hundred resealable bags. Might the artist ever find resolution on a surface? No, I think not, but he’ll certainly take his last breath with a comforting sense of despair in that you’ll never understand but his efforts will never cease.
In the artist’s inability to have you drink from the very glass he conjures and know at once the tactile sensation of wetness at the back of his throat, he has then created his very own prison cell, nestled snuggly within these misshapen and dusty walls. He knows how it got here and likewise, that by sheer mass and measurement, it is forever trapped in that narrow space between his mind and his masquerade. He holds the brush, but a control beyond his holds the stroke, the most perceivably accurate sum of all that he knows, all that he has collected. Sometimes the artist must sit in abeyance and allow things to move without picking them up and placing them on the other side of the room.
And reductive the artist shall remain, in his mind, his attic, his self-inflicted prison cell, all that come together and make up his studio.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The Story of the Unfurling
The light is streaming through this day, and I haven’t seen you in seven nights, the air is dry on this sidewalk and everyone is suffering, it’s painful to watch. I can’t breathe without reliving your tracing of my flesh, a portrait of stills you can taste in my mind and every time I say a word aloud. Fingers to lips and it’s just you and me, I’m begging you don’t make this just another meaningless event locked up in your grandmother’s spare bedroom with an old wooden chair shoved snuggly under the latch. It’s so dark in here and I think I need to go, but just stay awhile, I’ve been waiting for you.
Don’t kiss me with your mouth open, you’re not even paying attention to the way my limbs shutter at the thought of it. Enough of this euphemistic shit, is this what you wanted? If desire were your meal ticket, you’d starve in your meager three-walled closet, the salt welling up in the back of your throat and you can hear the carols being sung under the street lamp outside. You’re shaking and rocking and the blisters are sprouting up at every inch of your body. Today is like any day, and I’m just like any girl who cries out on the inside because she’s craving attention and you know it. This is your modus operandi, quite cowardly for a man with eyes that tell a story never told, one that will ultimately mean nothing more than those black and red flannel undies you ripped off of my tender, milk-fed body.
This is the meeting mister, you’re scribbling something hard and fast and the lines start to disappear, or do they run away in fear? This is what you showed me once, we were kicking the sand out from under our toes with the night staring down on us, and I swear with your head back and laughing, I convinced myself I was wrong. I’d touch your face and I was touching my own, staring into a world of. My life was predicated on writing the storybook pages in black and white, and you illustrated the silhouette of my lips with your eyes closed and your heart stopped, the night stopped, where are we?
“It’s OK, she can’t hear us.”
“Where should I put my bags?”
“I’ll take them. You need a bath, so I’ll sit right here.”
“Are you just going to watch me?”
“You’re beautiful, and I can’t help but watch you. Here, let me help you with that.”
“No, it’s fi—“
The buzzer went off, and I knew our time was up. That was thirteen years ago, and call it just two or a few months or it was yesterday, it was a different time then and aching says it’s so. It never happened, and it will happen again, and again and again and this is what creeps out from under our beds at night, never casting a shadow and self-deconstructing as it plays to the sound of my heart beating so rapidly, I think I’ll die right here with my eyes wide open and my teeth clinched on either side of these blood-stained sheets.
You lie there, pale green is not very flattering on you, neither is the rest of the world or anything else for that matter and I hate you for what you’ve done to me. It was warm in that backseat, my skin came up out of itself, this audacious display of your sickness and you shared me with crushed velveteen and midnight passersby. I waited for it, and I had once or a thousand times calculated every moment, every time you touched me and made a woman out of my girlish hands.
I, just like all of the others.
Don’t kiss me with your mouth open, you’re not even paying attention to the way my limbs shutter at the thought of it. Enough of this euphemistic shit, is this what you wanted? If desire were your meal ticket, you’d starve in your meager three-walled closet, the salt welling up in the back of your throat and you can hear the carols being sung under the street lamp outside. You’re shaking and rocking and the blisters are sprouting up at every inch of your body. Today is like any day, and I’m just like any girl who cries out on the inside because she’s craving attention and you know it. This is your modus operandi, quite cowardly for a man with eyes that tell a story never told, one that will ultimately mean nothing more than those black and red flannel undies you ripped off of my tender, milk-fed body.
This is the meeting mister, you’re scribbling something hard and fast and the lines start to disappear, or do they run away in fear? This is what you showed me once, we were kicking the sand out from under our toes with the night staring down on us, and I swear with your head back and laughing, I convinced myself I was wrong. I’d touch your face and I was touching my own, staring into a world of. My life was predicated on writing the storybook pages in black and white, and you illustrated the silhouette of my lips with your eyes closed and your heart stopped, the night stopped, where are we?
“It’s OK, she can’t hear us.”
“Where should I put my bags?”
“I’ll take them. You need a bath, so I’ll sit right here.”
“Are you just going to watch me?”
“You’re beautiful, and I can’t help but watch you. Here, let me help you with that.”
“No, it’s fi—“
The buzzer went off, and I knew our time was up. That was thirteen years ago, and call it just two or a few months or it was yesterday, it was a different time then and aching says it’s so. It never happened, and it will happen again, and again and again and this is what creeps out from under our beds at night, never casting a shadow and self-deconstructing as it plays to the sound of my heart beating so rapidly, I think I’ll die right here with my eyes wide open and my teeth clinched on either side of these blood-stained sheets.
You lie there, pale green is not very flattering on you, neither is the rest of the world or anything else for that matter and I hate you for what you’ve done to me. It was warm in that backseat, my skin came up out of itself, this audacious display of your sickness and you shared me with crushed velveteen and midnight passersby. I waited for it, and I had once or a thousand times calculated every moment, every time you touched me and made a woman out of my girlish hands.
I, just like all of the others.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Taking the stage, this is merely your introduction.
Even in the most catastrophic wreckage, I stop to do a head count and realize we’re all here. Everything is right. Hours upon hours of mirror conversations say it so, and if you’re not putting it down, then shame on you for such selfishness. We are born seers, and may we all die sayers with not a penny in our pockets but a multitude of wealth in the words we’ve strung together for the next generation of visionaries.
And how did they find themselves so entangled in this web? If that were me looking in on something so positively self-assured, I’d find the nearest book of unlined paper and take notes. So that’s the difference between you and me, them and you, me and the rest of the world. So self-possessed and amused by the categorically opposing definitions of just one word, I do sometimes struggle with sword and shield, balancing them with the torn covers, the ink stains, and this meager cup of white, granulated sugar. It’s a neighborly thing, and if I have hope, I concede it all to everyone in life finding just that. And what is any of this without hope.
No one ever appreciates the utility of a ribbon hole, but some of us do, in deed, look to the future and remember the days of wood splinters and now seemingly futile bits that blend into the ground and alter the reflection in your eyes this eve. When you look out onto that horizon, brace yourself, for all that I’ve known is unrepentantly staring back at you. I may be mad, but in truth, I stand neither here nor there. It’s some place in between, and I can bring you to your feet to see as I do see. Lie still, breathe deeply, and let down your hands when you’ve come to photograph this place. Let down your hands, and you’ll know that these are the images one never forgets. Let down your hands, and might you see for the very first time?
And how did they find themselves so entangled in this web? If that were me looking in on something so positively self-assured, I’d find the nearest book of unlined paper and take notes. So that’s the difference between you and me, them and you, me and the rest of the world. So self-possessed and amused by the categorically opposing definitions of just one word, I do sometimes struggle with sword and shield, balancing them with the torn covers, the ink stains, and this meager cup of white, granulated sugar. It’s a neighborly thing, and if I have hope, I concede it all to everyone in life finding just that. And what is any of this without hope.
No one ever appreciates the utility of a ribbon hole, but some of us do, in deed, look to the future and remember the days of wood splinters and now seemingly futile bits that blend into the ground and alter the reflection in your eyes this eve. When you look out onto that horizon, brace yourself, for all that I’ve known is unrepentantly staring back at you. I may be mad, but in truth, I stand neither here nor there. It’s some place in between, and I can bring you to your feet to see as I do see. Lie still, breathe deeply, and let down your hands when you’ve come to photograph this place. Let down your hands, and you’ll know that these are the images one never forgets. Let down your hands, and might you see for the very first time?
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