The view from my labyrinth, sometime after midnight on the first night of the year:
It was beautiful.
Painting, 12/31/09
After hacking away at several ELP studies, none of which are postable here, I picked up Field V and ruined it for a little while:
The red ochre was an unexpected and welcome surprise. The lines are still problematic. I may draw circles next.
Labyrinth, 12/30/09
I went out to prep the labyrinth yesterday afternoon for an evening with Craig, lighting all the candles as dusk approached so that I wouldn’t have to do it later.
I got to the men’s loo, and suddenly realized…
…there was no privacy. My neighbors had had all the shrubbery/underbrush cut down on their side of the fence. I don’t think it’s the Ellis’s exactly, they are not at home. I think it’s my other backyard neighbor, because all the growth on his side of the back fence is gone too. I think probably he did the Ellis side of the yard as a favor to them. (The dog pen in the area right there also appears to have been pulled out. I’d really like to buy that small piece of property. I’d really like to buy the shed as well, maybe have a studio or something in there.)
Here’s a view of the firepit area.
Well. One feels naked. As it were.
So now I’m in the market for artistic/nice ways to obscure the view here. More bamboo, clearly, although that won’t work along the western/back fence. Climbing vines of some kind, perhaps.
The floor is open for discussion.
Lichtenbergian Goal #6
Lichtenbergian Goal #6: in conjunction with all of the above, produce a lot of crap, i.e., produce boatloads of work
Right. This one may be the hardest one of all.
First of all, it requires time. It’s all fine and good to say that the more you produce, the more likely it is that you’ll produce something of value in the midst of all the crap, or that “10,000 hours of practice” blah blah blah and you get good at whatever it is you’re doing. But producing a lot of crap also requires that you have the time to do it, if you’re going to be mindful of what you’re doing.
And that’s the problem anyway, isn’t it? Lichtenbergians don’t really procrastinate, we just don’t have time available to us to sit down and work. Just now, for example, I was stopped in the middle of a sentence by the appearance of my lovely first wife with marching instructions for my day off. This is in my upstairs study, where she never comes, at a time when normally she should be at work. And that’s just for a quickie morning blogpost, never mind the ELP or the symphony.*
Real life intervenes. Leaf by Niggle. Family and friends. Nine-to-five. We wait for a block of time that never comes, and we keep pushing our hearts’ desires forever ahead of us, out of reach.
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* Polemics aside, I am bound in honesty to say that my lovely first wife is not a stumbling block to anything I need to accomplish. Quite the contrary: she is amazingly supportive in almost never demanding my presence when I’m trying to get something done. Just had to say that.
Clarification
When I said I had a “dread feeling” about getting started on A Perfect Life in the previous post, I didn’t mean that I have some silly premonition that I’m running out of time to do this. I meant that I have a real dread of the messiness, the incoherence of how I think I need to approach the project.
I have a vague image of what a finished version might look/read like, but of course I cannot sit down and start writing that finished version. First of all, I only have a vague image. Duh.
Second of all, there is no second of all. I only have a vague image of what should be in the book (“Everything!” is the only answer I can get out of the Muse), and absolutely no idea of where to begin.
So I must simply begin. Open the book and start writing about my life and how I live it, here in Newnan, on College Street, in the late 20th/early 21st centuries.
How I wake up and get ready. What College Street looks like, winter, spring, summer, fall. My study. Driving through downtown. Walking through downtown. Being married. Being a father. What I wear. What I don’t wear. Front porches, their decline and fall. School. Parks. The theatre. Lichtenbergians. Lichtenbergianism. The ELP. William Blake’s Inn. The changes in all of the above over the years.
“Everything!” says the Muse.
And that fills me with dread. My stomach churns and my shoulders tense up even as I type this.
“Everything!”
Lichtenbergian Goal #5
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
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!
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
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
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.