It seems to me that real art spills from the conflict with the daemon--what Yeats called "the antithetical self." Recently I met with a successful designer in a Midwestern city. She is a fellow graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute and I approached her for some part time free lance design work. She boasted that she has developed and designed websites for two "big" artists based in her city. I hadn't heard of the women but was piqued by the claim of their success. When I finally got around to looking them up I was somewhat angered by the falsehood of the designer's claims--that these are "big" artists. Truth is I was envious. I wish that I could make crap work that might be so easily marketed and that I could make lots of money and move to some far away place where there are flowers in bloom year around...

Their work is of the ilk of so much one sees--recognizable, affordable and plenteous. The sort of work decorators love. Easy to decorate around--and not too imposing or ponderous.

Good luck with that big art.

(it should be obvious that I am not referring to this artist in the above...image: Don Baum The Hammer Gallery, Chicago, www.hammergallery.com

The Choreographer Works Too, 1996 Polaroid from the film, "Giovanna d'Arco al Rogo" a.k.a. Joan of Ark (Ingrid Bergman)
glue, oils, varnish and latex on found book

(private collection)

The Choreographer Works Too

(under development)

Still no word from Roshi Joan Halifax who remains sequestered in her summer intensive in Santa Fe. Her silence leaves me with all the familiar demons of uncertainty and doubt that I’ve come to know so well. I'd written her several times receiving brief but kind emails. I read somewhere--I guess it was in the forward of "The Reenchantment of Art" that she is/was (?) Suzie Gablik's spiritual teacher. Joan was most supportive of my ideas--but was unable to offer much more...She revealed to me that she only gets a few hours of sleep in her schedule of intensive practices, teaching and duties as Roshi of a sizeable community. On top of this, she gets hundreds of emails a day--and just like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, she is diligent beyond words.

Learning to hold doubt gracefully seems closely linked to a willingness to apply real rigor to my practice—to transfer some of the self-centered concern and anxiety to a sense of devotion and trust in process.

Narrator

woman's voice--british accent

After morning rituals and breakfast he ambles over to his computer to check emails. The video artist, Bill Viola springs to mind. He Googles “bill viola” and soon lands upon a passage which seems to characterize many of his own leanings. In spite of these, his long term project of building support for and participation in an org that might offer new pathways to collaboration and integrative studies remains amorphous, vaguely theoretical and essentially ineffectual. It's like a dike full of holes:

“The spirituality of Bill Viola’s work draws inspiration from Christian mysticism, Zen Buddhism, Balinese and Javanese music, Sufi poetry and many other sources. He uses everyday images and, by drawing attention to the ordinary, and to neutral states of mind such as sleep or stillness, he opens inner doors to our own psyches. Using the familiar and modern medium of video he creates an intimate and moving experience.”

And so he begins writing another poem as he reflects that as of the perhaps hundreds of poems he’s written—almost none remain—some were stolen by an acquaintance back in Austin, some were burned in an impulsive but perhaps worthwhile sacrificial ritual in his parents downstairs fireplace, and a good number were devoured along with fifteen to twenty gigabytes of work he’d failed to back up on external disks…his super geek programmer friend Derek theorizes a cyber Jihad was loosed upon the western world’s computers in mid-early July in response to Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah neighborhoods in Beirut. Who’s to say? In this land of information we all exist in—there seems to be more questions than ever before…

So anyway he begins writing:



In a baritone black man’s voice a girl in an abandoned theater hears:


“Struggling...

with the fatigue

of unmeasured exertion,
compromised eating habits and self doubt
there’s been a ground swell
of concerted actions and risks accumulated

Of recent failures and successes"

(But he watches his breath returning to this moment)

Commingling as rusty dump trucks filled with refuse converge upon an isolated field of roses
The stench of the rejected remnants of a fast food culture on the skids descends upon the perfume of all we had once hoped for one more time…

Gurdjieff’s “Law of 2nd Force” is in place is sung by a blond boy on a skateboard. “You know…entropy, man."

Disbelief has been our friend and shield from the manipulative and cold hearted while intelligent sophisticates and black clad* art grad hipsters plot their career courses of conquest scribbling upon maps of California or New York

*That hip disaffected heroin look popularized by many of our ubber sheik cultural icons

A car drives by and one hears Bob Dylan on the radio

(And thus he prays for direction)
But it has crippled us who are old enough to know better too leaving us lifeless and disenchanted and anemic with boredom. Some people are too tired from it all to change their bong water. At least until someone ridicules them sufficiently for it.

Coy and stylish and grave
But unwilling to risk anything really
We sip the newest caffeinated concoctions and complain of the greed of politicians
However we tire quickly from the smoke we bonged a while earlier
And lust for one another’s mates
Dissipated and distracted we entertain ourselves with innuendo (sometimes Nintendo)
And exotic sweet poisonous snacks and occasionally other things more dangerous and fun
True some of us are impervious to toxins—but we remain ineffectual
Like wax heroes
Standing with the frozen and dumbfounded
Hiding among the ignorant lining sidewalks

The specter rises in the distance only glimpsed in moments too shattering to reckon
And so forgotten and ignored
Gaining speed and altitude in geometric fashion the abomination enchants
Rousing our sex and ambition and sense of pride and power
We are Americans
Like a shiny outdoor family friendly country music show
Loud and upbeat with colorful lights and cool backdrop videos
Cold Bud and warm pretzels with mustard

(Change scenes seamlessly like Syriana or Traffic with new lenses colors denoting continental location change)

All the while soulless lobbies edit scientific findings earning them second homes and legacy track prepaid entrance to all the right schools for their kids
Grease the wheel buying teen escorts for senators and dealing them aces in poker from the bottom of the deck
Trading their souls for the occasional private jet ride on white Italian leather and old scotch passing high overhead
Like dark gods in fire white Gulfstream chariots at just under the speed of the their own sound
Off to celebrate the provisions and itineraries of the anointed

Heard as if through an airport loudspeaker with echo and reverb

“6.19 Dinner in Casablanca
6.20 Opera in Milan
6.21 Golf in Edinburgh
6.22 Board meeting Manhattan”

Whilst the game show public turns their attention to the newest snack forms with coupons and diet promises
Bovine and slow empty eyed leering at their newest flat screens
Learning more and more about cold case forensics and celebrity scandals
Sunken into surround sounds and oversized sectionals charged without interest (for 24 months!)
Retracted and disabled contained in clean row houses with well edged lawns


The water is rising as the poles silently melt away and polar bears drown without incident

In presidential tone: (Isn’t Kyoto some where’s west of Fort Worth?)

So the illumination came many years ago
And for a time the boy hero stood freed from the wall of illusions that had been his life
And saw that there was only love behind the parade of this world
Of this and that and all we categorize as desirable or that to be rejected
And finds himself exhilarated to the point of shock and awe
He stays with it all with breath and prayers
And remains perched upon the apex
As long as he can hold up.

To be continued…time for housework

(IF INTERESTED IN THE FULL TEXT YOU CAN EMAIL ME)


This is autowriting for a performance coming up…which I might not be able to participate in because of finances…


I listen to this great song on the radio coming through my computer from San Francisco

With a harp accompanying I hear this wonderful voice:


(The South Nine Lives)

You ask about forgiveness

Of not to find the watchin'

A chance to set you back straight

A chance to find some feelin'

You say you will come home soon

We'll see you most the weekdays

Miss you at the best of times

You help me walk that fine line

Sometimes

You pay a lone reflection

This walking figure

Might have nine lives

Sometimes

You pale with desire

Don't know whether

You've used all your lives

We'll talk about forgiveness

I'm here to find the meaning

I miss you at the best of times

You help me walk that fine line

Sometimes

You pay a lone reflection

This walking figure

Might have nine lives

Sometimes

You pale with desire

And I don't know whether

You've used all your lives

You might have nine lives

You've used all your lives

You might have nine lives