Lichtenbergian Goal #5

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian Goal #5: begin work on A Perfect Life, my proposed description of what it’s like to live a life like mine
Longtime readers may remember that last June I bought a huge handmade journal. My stated goal at the time was, and I quote:

I want to write a book called A Perfect Life. I want to document my life in general and in particular. I have a phenomenal life, one that by any standard on this planet is enviable. I am materially comfortable, my environment is great, my family and friends are wonderful, and I am intellectually and creatively alive. That’s what I want to do. Whether I will cast it as a journal, or essay, or fiction, I don’t know.
But I do feel compelled to start telling what it was like to live in this time, in this place.

I still do not know how I want to do this. But I think I need to begin. I have a dread feeling that I just need to fill the book, fill it completely, a patchwork of observations, descriptions, sketches, literal drawings, literally a patchwork on the page. Let the editors sort it out.

It will be my Red Book. Only different. (Not this different, although that would be a fun project as well. Lichtenbergian assignment, maybe?)

Lichtenbergian Goal #4

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Lichtenbergian Goal #4: write one good short story

I had ideas for three short stories last year and began working on one, but in true Lichtenbergian fashion never got beyond abortive fragments, plus vague outlines for the other two.

I’m not sure why I have this goal. I’ve never been a fiction writer. Sure, I’ve written fiction (Twelfth Night, New Day, anyone?), but it’s not something I feel compelled to do like art and music.

Yes, it was very flattering when Nancy Willard said I should write, but the very thought of struggling with characters and plot and style and language terrifies me in ways that I’m guessing would surprise most people who know me. (This is cool: when you do a Google image search for Nancy Willard, guess what the very first photograph is. Go look.)

So I’m not sure why I think I need to do this. More than likely it’s just my attempt to stake out territory in every single area of the arts. It’s a pissing match, not that anyone’s competing.

Also, as I prepped the labyrinth this past Monday, I found a cigarette butt when I was raking leaves. I’m pretty sure it came from a nephew who led some young relatives on a smores outing in the labyrinth on Thanksgiving evening, but still, it gives one pause when one’s house has been broken into, and before I knew it a narrative had formed in my brain.

Now it’s a challenge: can I take the rather nice idea for a story in my head and actually turn it into an effective piece of writing?

Ho Ho HO!

Posted on by Dale

Look what I got for Christmas:

Look what my lovely first wife has given me: the reading cat/rat carving from Mengei World Arts in Decatur!

This little charmer is by Sergio Santos from La Union in Oaxaca, and like Calixto Santiago, he appears to be somebody in the carving world. In fact, here, about halfway down the page, is an almost identical cat, minus the rat.

Isn’t that great?

Lichtenbergian Goal #3

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian Goal #3: compose one complete work

I’ll take anything. Really.

By “complete work,” I am talking about something serious, not just an SATB piece, but something that you could apply an opus number to: the symphony; the trio for piano, trombone, and saxophone; the bassoon/string quintet; or something new that I don’t even have any inspiration for yet.

This is one of my stretch goals, although it shouldn’t be. This is how far removed I’ve become from my own compositional process: I have to stretch just to get something written.

As usual, I will be writing without any hope of performance, although the requestor of the trio I think would play it. The symphony? Who? The quintet? The Waltz movement was supposed to be under consideration for this fall, but that didn’t go anywhere, and there’s no evidence that two or three more movements would increase its chances.

However, it doesn’t matter, of course. I shall be happy to get back into the struggle, eventually.

And of course I will have the opportunity this summer to explore the hypothesis that my major stumbling block is the lack of time (as opposed to the lack of talent). Yes, I have some major landscaping to do in the back yard, but on the whole my plan is to make time to compose in a serious way.

It will be an interesting summer. Discipline or death!

Lichtenbergian Goal #2

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Lichtenbergian Goal #2: restart the 24-Hour Challenge.

The 24-Hour Challenge was my solution to the psychological/artistic impasse I found myself in after I abandoned the Symphony. For a long time I was unable to write anything, and the Challenge allowed me to get back into the groove without the pressure of having to write anything that had to be completed. Or even any good.

Essentially I used my readers as a randomizer: you emailed me three numbers, which I used to find a line of poetry in one of five books I had selected for the purpose. Once I posted a selection on the blog, I had till midnight of the following day to set the line(s) to music for baritone voice and piano or string quartet.

The complete rules can be found here. Do not send me numbers. I’m not ready for them yet.

As a project, it was really successful. I was able to spit out eleven fragments of varying quality. Some were really good, others not so much. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was churning out notes and learning more every time I did it.

Creativity being the bitch that it is, of course I was able to see putting some of the fragments to use. In fact, part of the therapy of the thing was that every time I felt the tug to complete one of these shards, I could quite honestly tell myself to stop it. Abandon it. Get it up on the blog and move on.

Still, I was able to take one of my favorites and turn it into this summer’s Waltz for string quartet and bassoon. So the project was not only cathartic, but productive.

I missed it when I had to stop because of the pressures of GHP, but somehow I never found the time or focus to pick it back up, despite the fact that I have three sticky notes that have been stuck to the bottom of my monitor since May, waiting for me to put them out there.

Now I want to force myself to get back to work. I still don’t have any real pieces in my head battling to get out, so I might as well go back to churning out the trivial little fragments. It kept me busy, and it kept me exploring styles, harmonies, compositional strategies. I found myself getting bolder and bolder in what I would try, because it didn’t matter. It was my own private composition class.

Finally, I think it delighted people to see what I would do with “their” fragment. There was always an audience of at least one for these bagatelles, and that’s got to count for something! So as soon as next week, perhaps, look for the series to continue with #11, a verse from a snarky poem by Horace, from Mike Mathis.

Then, and only then, can you start bombarding me with new sets of numbers. Thank you.

Lichtenbergian Goal #1

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian Goal #1: to continue my painting/drawing, which has two avenues at this point, and I’m thinking of adding a third.

First of all is my Field series, which began with a couple of news photos the composition of which I thought would make a good basis for abstract paintings. Those first two were based directly on the photos. Indeed, the first one I actually painted over the photo itself.

The main issue I’m exploring now is how to create these compositions on my own without bogging down in the “figures playing in snow” motif. (That’s exactly what the first two were based on, of course.)

Many of the avenues I’ve tried recently don’t really work, which is the point. Keep exploring until you find something that does. Then the problem is how to use that which works without it becoming cliché. It’s the accursed cycle of creativity.

With the portraiture, I have two problems I need to solve. The first is the ongoing issue of verisimilitude: does what I’ve painted accurately reflect the subject? Can you “tell who it is”? That’s what I was working on fairly assiduously in my sketchbook, until it dawned on me that it did me very little good to be able to draw Jeff’s face if I had then to turn around and use paint to achieve the same goal.

(Which is not to say that the drawing is not critical to the painting. It is: it allows me to see in a more leisurely and forgiving, and cheaper, medium how faces are put together.)

The second issue is that of style. If we assume that in this best of all possible worlds I will end up with a eight-foot long oil painting of the Lichtenbergians standing in the labyrinth, then what do I want it to look like? Caravaggio-like finish? Rembrandt? Renoir? Bacon? Hockney? Something new, readily recognizable as Lylesian even?

What kind of stylistic approach will best achieve my goal, which is to show a group of men who have a certain authority just by dint of having lived? To show the aging of the male body not as a matter of decay but of changing, even growing, powers? Can I even do that?

With the Field series, my plan of attack is to continue working on the pieces I have currently going, i.e., IV and V, then grow from there.

With the ELP, my plan of attack is two-fold: quick stylistic studies, and slower, more layered attempts at verisimilitudinosity.

I foresee two stumbling blocks that my Lichtenbergian self will seize on as excuses not to proceed, and that is that I am already chafing at the size restrictions with the Field series, and at the limitations of gouache as a medium overall. However, I have no room for larger canvases/boards, and I certainly cannot afford to fill them with oils, which have environmental issues of their own.

Onward.

Oh. The third avenue. I may start exploring collage. That is all.

Lichtenbergians, part two

Posted on by Dale

Before I write about each of my Lichtenbergian goals, I need to explain why this group means so much to me, if I can.

As part of our discussion Saturday night, Craig kept asking why, given the Void that is ignorant of our efforts, is it useful at all to talk about our creativity? Jeff finally replied that it provides us with a sense of community, that we are not alone in our efforts. There are others like us.

A truism, of course, since the other side of our discussion was the idea that we are evolutionarily compelled to create the thing-that-is-not, but sometimes in our modern world we can forget that. Especially as men in small town, middle class America, we find ourselves on the outside, wondering indeed whether all the time we scrape together to pursue our art is worth it.

So this group of men meets fairly often, but especially this once, to say those things which rattle around inside us, to share the ideas and theories and plans we have, to meet and understand that we are not alone, that what we feel we must do is in fact understandable by someone else.

And this night, the Annual Meeting, with all of its made-up ceremony and ritual, is the most important night. Because that ceremony, that fake little ritual, requires us to present our selves as Accomplished. We must drop the pretense that we’re not really artists and instead proclaim what we want to do in the coming year. We must bind ourselves to our fellow Lichtenbergians in a trust that demands that we regard our creative impulses as legitimate and not merely impulses, but imperatives.

This is the third year we’ve done this, and I have found my three lists to be interesting in their arc. Last year I had seven goals. I don’t even remember what all of them were, but I didn’t meet a single one. It was stinging.

And so I lowered my sights. Last solstice I set only four goals, and they were ones I knew I could meet. And I met them, all four. It was stinging.

I felt as though I had cheated, as if I had lowballed myself and the Society. I did not feel accomplished, smug, or even happy that I had made all four goals. They were measly goals, cramped, little things that might have made others proud, but not me.

This year, therefore, I made some goals I felt would be honorable to make, and some more that I felt would be honorable even to fail at.

Because when I bind myself to these guys, it means something.

Brief Labyrinthine note

Posted on by Dale

Craig had asked if we could get together tonight in the labyrinth. He was feeling that he needed to be in the space more, and of course I said yes.

Alas, he was detained at a worksite and won’t be able to be here. But it’s too beautiful a night not to be out here: not too cold, perfectly clear sky, a peaceful moon and the labyrinth looks gorgeous. So even though I thought I’d stay in, it would be a shame to waste the opportunity.

I want to write my next blog post about my Lichtenbergian goals, walk the labyrinth a couple of times, and just generally be grateful for the universe. Not a challenge, actually.

And who knows? Maybe someone will see the open gate and walk in.

Lichtenbergians

Posted on by Dale

This past Saturday was the Annual Meeting of the Lichtenbergian Society, a top-secret organization for creative procrastinators. That is, creative men who procrastinate, not men who procrastinate creatively. We celebrate the virtues of procrastination. We are a veritable support group for procrastination. With drinking.

This Annual Meeting is one of the most important evenings of the year for me. Even though we gather often during the year and are companionable and argumentative, even though we have a website through which we communicate our ideas and passions, still this particular meeting stands out, because it’s the only meeting in which we have a ritualized ceremony.

We toast our genius Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German physicist, aphorist, and satirist, and inveterate procrastinator. We submit Corroborative Evidence of our Claims, i.e., creative works the creators of which would have been well-advised to have procrastinated over a good deal longer. Then we Consign said Corroborative Evidence to the Flames.

Next comes the part that means the most to me. We have a journal in which the recording secretary has recorded each member’s Proposed Efforts the preceding year. The secretary reads out the list of what we thought we might accomplish this year, and to each we have to respond: “Accomplished” or “Cras melior est” (our motto, which means “Tomorrow is better”). After everyone has confessed responded to the secretary, and there’s a lot of discussion and commentary, we stand and have a silent meditation on the Year’s Efforts, followed by a silent toast.

This year, I am ashamed to say, I accomplished all four of my goals. Last year I was zero for seven, which is also pretty bad, but at least had the virtue of making me an exemplary Lichtenbergian. This year I felt cheesy, as if I had cheated somehow by choosing easy-to-conquer goals, and as if I had not set goals extravagant enough to be worth attempting. Success did not make me feel as if I had accomplished anything.

So in the next part of our ceremony, I was determined to challenge myself more. This is the Engrossment of the Proposed Efforts: each Lichtenbergian states for the record what he hopes to accomplish creatively this year. This is an awe-inspiring exercise, because you know that at the next winter solstice, you’re going to be confronted with your claims and have to acknowledge your success or failure.

After everyone is done, we have another toast, to the Proposed Efforts, followed by the agenda. This year’s topic was “compulsion and void,” revolving around the polar ideas that a) we are compelled by our nature to create, and b) we are confronted by the void which renders our creations pointless. How do we deal with these ideas as artists? And it may be that more toasts are made as the evening progresses. You get the idea.

What were my Proposed Efforts?

  • continue my painting, both the abstract Field series and my studies for the Epic Lichtenbergian Portrait
  • restart the 24-Hour Challenge, which to my surprise I had proposed last year to do only for six months, which is just about what I managed
  • compose one complete work, any description
  • write one good short story
  • begin work on A Perfect Life, my proposed description of what it’s like to live a life like mine
  • and in conjunction with all of the above, produce a lot of crap, i.e., produce boatloads of work

I think what I’ll do is blog about this for a couple of days. I need to write more anyway, and I need to set forth some ideas about this whole process and each of the particulars.

Labyrinth, 12/20/09

Posted on by Dale

I haven’t posted good overview shots of the labyrinth in a while.

Settled in for the winter. The grass is still sparse in parts, but when the weather settles down I can overseed with winter rye. I probably need to put some wheatstraw over the peacock moss on the bank and center mound to protect it for the first winter. I’m also looking at one or two more ferns, probably ostrich ferns, for the back corner, but that planting will be for the spring.

My main projects for the winter are the stone circle for the western portal, the mirrored gates for the back corner, and figuring out what to do for the eastern portal.