Ignorance

I once slept, and was kept. White and blue lines that were sewn into the moistened, sweaty skin. When we had only just started; to know the lines and the patterns that go smooth. Felt so smooth. Even the white scars appeared within my hands, and inked themselves into poetry.

..And poetry it fails, when the smile is locked and the sky feels like its sunny...when it never is.

..Ain't it funny how that goes.

...............When--how--we wait for the sweetest downfall for the words to come again. The art suddenly tidal waves-over my red eyes...that once had a mirrored set.

..Then it is that I can write again. Cause we're both in black again anymore.

And its me, I know, that now wakes with tremor in the night. Sleeping alone with ghosts of childhood ancestors.

Move on, its such dissipation.

Move like when we moved with ignorance.

Then. "Ignorance is [my] new best friend...".

Just tell me to START, cause the sun is rising and that's excuse enough. And I'll never care that she's there, so don't tell me. Don't even tell me anything because the words don't bring anyone.

Where does it hurt, what's been neglected?

.....Curve my back and away it goes....Wake, and it's just another nightmare made into a dream one night.

Its another hush, a bitten lip. Match the sounds on the otherside of walls. Aren't we all, can't we all, just match what never exists.

It's nothing new, there's no shock factor when it's all understood.

...Friends feels so much better than anything I've burned.

...And that sweet virgin Pandora, that Grecian girl with the lightest hair and darkest eyes; yes innocent Pandora held the scum of all of us.

Kindness you see, carries the thorns of our sickly sins.

The vapid Vodka czars.

The remedies that do feel so fucking good going down....

Yeah. Go down with me into the crevace where the historical building meets the leaf-covered cobble street. That is my birthplace. That my dear, is where IT can reside.

.....The muck can cover up a diamond broken off from a bracelet. Glitter how it does below the heavy-moving rain clouds. The hills of autumn leaves. The pit, the death place of a poet that no one thought to scrub clean. Took his name and cast his arm into a demise.

..Isn't that what we are? Or rather, do we---do we strive to be the dirtiest, cracked, treasure?

Innately that, as artists?

But hey. Hey there. You there. Can you hear it?

I've got a new character to play that I've read so much about. And let's be all those characters we can't be, let's do all the things people say we're idiots for.

..........The night still remains, my temptress, she gives window for the moments - that maybe I've never lived. Maybe all the fingers never were. All the best ones the same as all the poor ones.

But I feel it all. It tremors.

..Tattoo'd beneath my tongue-that "sensation is better than the convent".

Stories and secrets, you see, are my perched companions. Totally ok with that.

Make one up and we'll struggle through the schedules...into a drug for restlessness.

Daily headphones: "Ignorance" by Paramore, "Whatcha Say" remix by Jason Derulo, and "Heroin" by Velvet Underground

Art History Paper...Has Modernism Failed?

2 of the questions on an 11 page paper, relevant to the blog...

"[1. Just at the beginning of her book Gablik has included a quote from author Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift in which he describes art as a gift, not a commodity. What do you think? What does Gablik think? Is art innately noble? Are artists nobler than other people? As an artist, can you, or should you, work for money? Does money automatically demean you as an artist? Do you need to nourish your spirit? Do you need to do this more than other non-artists?]

I believe that art is actually a gift because, preciously, of the giving quality within the soul of the artist and his creation. That exchange of relaying a life, an experience, an emotion into a given media creates something that is simultaneously noble and destitute. The artist is in fact someone who must come to a realization at an emotional point, that they may be in constant battle, constant debate with the society that raises them into adults. The struggle in a revolving check and balance which always feels ever so slightly like a loosing battle, but a loosing battle for the purest of Kings. It is the art created, it is the emotion spilled and contained, that makes the artist dream again, and believe again, when everything in the world is blank. That, intrinsically is nobility. There is a grace that lies in every soul-consuming artist, in every person that looks at the sky because it calls to him, that looks through ancient history books of artifacts because they feel connected to the hands that sculpted those precious objects. Somewhere we make a choice that makes us into a kind of vague royalty, a blue-blood family so wrecked by the years and the desire to just once, capture everything you feel inside, and everything you see other people making so wondrously. We cannot therefore, deprive art of their “aura”. And money, somehow still needs to be defined because yes, you actually do need food in the fridge, a little bit of utilities, and even, a certain validation. Money of course provides things of survival and placement in societal traditions, but in the art world it works as a pat on the shoulder. It works, almost, because every artist still does want to feel artistic; we want to feel worth it. This of course falls short for the people who choose voluntarily and unemotionally to make art-things because of the monetary value, they become no better that the buyers who buy what they are told is worth it; leaving the artist’s worth separate, leaving the life separate. Gablik pains at this fact, and aches at the knowledge that money will always cause turmoil. She strives to promote pieces that remain, even if unseen, quietly by themselves. So this cavernous place we find ourselves in with the money, the pressure, the stereotypes, the history, and so much other dirt, is what cries for nourishment. Great art may just come from great experience, great love-that is, for what actually opens our eyes every morning. I constantly return to the fact, as Gablik described on p51, that conversations and community with artists of any sort, is something important. We should more often come out of those caves of ours and speak. We should speak about our art, our pain, and our obscure things running around in our thoughts that only very rarely materialize into words. Art therefore, is nourishment itself. What could be more noble? "

[16. How does Gablik come to the title of the book? What price does she consider us as having paid for modernism?]
The author comes to the pivotal question “has modernism failed?” through a variety of small steps. She leads, that is, through the various triumphs and perils in the post-modern world; while citing the nostalgic days-long-gone of Michelangelo, Monet, and many more. Keeping the reader on a journey of opinions-to nod to or scream at-that cause even YOU to actually reevaluate where the proper place to stand does lie. Until finally, we realize that there is (in fact) a bad taste in our mouths; that we do subtly look at the borders of being a working artist as a battle line.

We realize, that we may be at the brink of failure. Failure not at the ‘we’ll never get famous!” attitude, but at the very spot where such statements are the means and the end.

Head smacked against a wall made entirely of mirrors, because the price being paid is on our actual heads. Our work, our expression, and our very goals are in the balance. These things are being turned and sliced and shuffled in someone else’s hands. Gilbert and George, in their 1982 film, declare themselves to the viewer. They declare their roles, their categories, their feelings, to come to the final statement “we are artists”. They stopped. They gave their audience possibly exactly what was being craved; a birth of knowledge risen from the decayed environment of industrialism and capitalism. Maybe it is thoughts like these that prove art as an idea, because as artists we live within ideas about what we are, and what the world could be.

So, Gablik rallies along with me, that there should be a stand-however loud or not-against the failing grade on modernism. It is time for a new phase, it is time for a clean break. Artists may just need to break up with post-modern grime, we need to close the chapter, write a script on it, and leap. We must leap because we are fighting for our own salvation, our own price tags on the spiritual.