An Attempt to Free This American Soul from Materialism
Don’t run my love
don’t run from
that quietude, embrace
this silence — without
it our voices could
not carry, let it be
the canvas on which
we paint our lives.
Take this cell for example. Its birth is violence, its product; beauty. Can you keep it. Can you hold the bursting. Hold it like the flame. Hold it, it’s yours.
We had a family art night where we tried out an acrylic pour technique and these are the results.
Sometimes I might buy an onion, or two, just to have out on the counter-top.
His old job as
a machinist: setting
up coordinates and
watching the laser cutting
through sheet-metal, in
his voice a longing, or love.
He liked that kind of
work because it required precision
(by him or by the machine,
I’m not sure). How
admirable.
Is there a more desirable
asset than precision?
A trait I’ve never had,
sloppy artist that I am,
in any of my work.
Except perhaps Poetry—
or at least I’ve only cared
about precision when it comes to
Poetry.
Poetry in this day and age (!)—
and for a middle-aged man, nonetheless.
I’m having dreams again, or rather I’m remembering them. Hold my breath, don’t dare tell anyone, in case they disappear. Up in a puff of smoke. Who’s that Italian broad, ran around with Andy Warhol? she was there. Sophia Loren? nah, fashion designer or something. While adjusting her garter she told me, work. work. work. All the great ones put in the work.
The only good drawings he’s managed to come up with over the passed few years, are the one’s in which he started with nothing. No plan. No concept, no idea of where he would go with it. Start with a few lines. Experiment with technique and try his damnedest to fight those inner demons, which, bubbling, always keep him on the precipice; the knife-edge of sanity. A shape materializes and, if he’s lucky, he’s off into the void. The void where ideas bubble up and he sees it.
It’s here that conceptualization actually works. If you try to start from a concept, you’re doomed to failure (no matter the outcome), you’ll never accept the outcome.
—Ah, so this is freedom!
(And here is where you realize that in order for there to be freedom, it all depends on the situation; the here and now; the original intention, and application, of the design in the first place. )
