Posted by giveawayboy on August 23, 2002 at 20:32:45:
In Reply to: Warning - kinda went off into my own world here... posted by Bob - the Alien on August 23, 2002 at 13:59:37:
: I think the key to pulling together in a state of semi-organization is your reason for doing it.
: Based on who I know and what I have read, most people here want to do creative things for their own self improvement and happiness. There is some desire involved to get positive feedback from others, but that seems secondary to the actual act of creating.
Agreed--I feel that anything creative is part of ongoing creativity. Or could be. I feel that we can choose to create with a 'concert' mentality. we can generate creative gifts that advance the rest of the ongoing creation out there all around us. or we can make perishable monuments. we can connect to all life or we can be narcissus and adopt an inward bending posture. hmmmm.....now i'm lost in MY OWN LITTLE WORLD........
: Because of that, my recommendation would be to go about creative efforts the same way students do -- semi-formal critiques. I think that everyone should go off and do their thing, but come together weekly for organized critiques. The critiques should provide both positive and negative feedback. When something works, say why it works, but also say how it could be even better. When it doesn't work, say so. Give reasons why. Pull something positive from even the failed efforts and work on that aspect.
: Above all, always give reasons for your feelings towards creative works. Mindless statments of "oh, that is beautiful" don't really help anyone grow as an artist. Quite the contrary, it makes people stagnate because they feel they just created a masterpiece.
I love this. :) C.S Lewis and his mates, Tolkien, Barfield and others, used to do this. They would share works in progress. We have many of those very works to this day.
: I honestly wish that I could be part of such an effort. But that is not to be. I do hope everyone sle comes together on something
Bob, you are, your impact is real! You have had more impact on me than I ever realized. I mean it. And you communicate life to me now. It is an ongoing process and geographical proximity isn't always a necessity.
: As far as creating a 'scene' goes, I don't think this group is even thinking along those lines, based on what I have heard from people. (Which is admittedly limited.) Bill, I think that you specifically focus more along those lines than at least I do, but I can't put my finger on why that difference exists in our thinking patterns. I don't think you hold any higher value towards such labels or even, dare I say, paradigms. :)
Yeah, I long for the organic experience of something vital. I want to be a part of that. I am not trying to encrust myself in my own little kingdom. Actually, I want to be a part of a roving tribe. Cari wants this too. She is a poet. Many of our local friends (this is not limited to church walls) are poets. We have Kathleen and Kristi and Suzy who all write great poetry. We have G who has a gift for working w sound and websites. We have it all around us. The thing is NOT SEEING THOSE THINGS, THOSE GIFTS AS PROCEEDING FROM THEMSELVES. WE MUST NOT SEE THEM AS INDEPENDENT ENTITIES. THE WHOLE THING IS A HUGE CONCERT. There can be dissonance in it too, but it IS a concert. Our friends are writers, they are actors, they are filmmakers, they are great thinkers, they are singers and dancers and visual artists and hopefully giant metallic monster sculpture makers too. I am no more into creating a scene than I am about calcifying in the middle of Yee-ha Junction, but I am all about finding the branches of coral, the fork in the antler, the hidden arteries that carry the life. I am all about finding community and identifying it. Identifying not to market it or cause a kooky bandwagon effect, but to celebrate and participate. I am all about NOT BEING SCARED TO IDENTIFY IT since I think it is vital and it has worth.
But I do think you notice things on that level first, and then break them down as you integrate things with yourself.
Yes! I am very much like this. It has it's catches too, but it helps me to approach things like models or schematics and then to get down to the nitty gritty. I can't tell how much that has helped me with things like love and romance, or financial security, but it has contributed greatly to my sense of who I am in this universe. As far as breaking down and integrating....my first roommate, John Sexton and I used to sit up for hours (til 3 or 4 am, sometimes all night long) coming up with these charts that would show someone we felt had alot of artistic or intellectual influence and then through a sort of spiderweb effect, show all the lives we knew them to be influencing either directly or indirectly. Some might have called our business anal or gnit-picky, but it really showed us alot. We began to see men like Warhol or Ruskin or in the case of more popular music, Byrne, as great hubs of creativity. It was actually sort of a playful business, and yes serious, but once you get the principles behind the 'connections chart' (this was our term for these) you don't NEED the CHART. The Chart was a vehicle to this more dynamic way of seeing the interconnectedness of all things/people. I see all things connected, so for me, a movement is not something to be scared of. It's trying to freeze a movement in time that is horrifying. Let me illustrate. One day, outside of our church building I saw a pumpking stem. Earlier that year we had had a pumpking patch for Halloween. Well, here was this dried out pumpkin stem. It was a most beautiful object and the more I held it in my hand the more I realized that in effect it was a sort of conveyance vehicle left over from a prior relationship between a mother plant and a growing fruit. It nourished the growing fruit in much the same way that an umbilical cord would nourish the life of a growing child. So, at once I saw the movement of life that was there. I saw that life or movement was undivided from the life in all mothers in all creation. It was all one life conveyance. It was all one great gift, shattered through time, yet organically and elegantly. Check this out. That was in some sense a 'dead' stem, but was it? It would be gifting itself to the elements and contributing once again to the concert of the ages. I thought of the mother pumpkin and where her life came from. I won't take it as high as God since not all of us will agree on God, but there is some ultimate reality or Mind at work here. And my realization was that that mother pumpkin, who was busily recreating other pumpkins was also being nourished by sun and soil and wind and rain. Her life was the life of all things and by being most like herself she gifted herself over and over again throughout the ages. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that the movement is important. The concert is important. That is what I aim to celebrate. I don't want to generate cultish behaviour in artists. I want artists to see the value of sharing work and also to see the interconnectedness of all things. Sorry, if I am rambling, but I feel the need to say these things. They are like life to me.
Even our artwork shows this...you are consciously derivative of Haring, for example. Whereas I don't even know who I am derivitave of until someone else points it out to me. From an art criticism perspective, you are better than me in that arena, as you can better make a conscious choice to move your works closer or farther from your influences.
I am actually kind of clueless too. I feel that Haring set me free to see the marker as a valid tool for art. I see Haring as a vehicle of permissiveness for me. He allowed me to step into the place of 'participant'. I see Howard Finster this way too. However, I have never consciously tried to be Haring-esque, or Finster-esque. I find that often there are echoes of them in my work and this does not bother me. It would trouble me if it was an obvious comparison and I had 'gone for that effect' on purpose. I am really trying to find out my unique voice, my own dance steps. It's not easy. But, I'm starting to catch glimpses. Once again, it took John Vaughan and John Sexton, Mike Pennington, Chris Kingsford and others doing odd things like criticizing me, telling me when I was strong and couldn't see it, telling me when I was weak and didn't care, kicking me in the ass when I needed it, praising me when that would lift my spirits. It took them cutting up my poems ( see William Burroughs) to show me how to WRITE A POEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. It took them loving me and sharing passion with me and not being scared to do their own work and believe in their own work. Now I see others doing it. I'm excited by this. I want to recognize it, but not so we can all sit on our asses and think we've arrived. Bob, I want to somehow make this local to you. I keep talking about all these people you have only heard about. Well, a few you may know.
: Hmm....I'm totally just ranting stream of consciousness here now, but this difference has made me wonder. How do we all focus on the world around us? Which of us groups things together, then break them down, and which of us go the other way? What impact does that have on both our creative works and on our outlook in general? Are there any things that we should be careful of from any approach to viewing the world? Does one way of viewing things blind us to some aspects of life?
I'm sure we can always find some more blinders to remove until we reach full enlightenment. I'm always open to the way of more and better questions. This is one thing I love about Steve Meigs. He is not the kind of person to try to lock you into a pleasant little aesthetic category and insist on everyone dwelling there w/out THINKING. Steve has given me the great empowerment of being able to say I DON'T KNOW....or not having to have answers for everything, or not even having to have amazing responses to WOW people with. Steve has given me the great empowerment of being able to WONDER and LEARN and RETHINK things. Steve has truly challenged me at every step to think for myself. I have seen Steve wonder about things, learn about things and rethink things himself. He is a much better man for it. And when you are around people like him it is catching. By the way, everything I'm saying in this not has different levels of interpretation. I am realizing this now as I write it. So, take it for what it means to you. You -- in this case--means Bob, but also means whoever else might be reading this. The message is for Bob but Bob is not removed from all other entitites, so it is for you too. In a general or public sense.
: In some ways, I feel like a child who doesn't quite understand the world because I really don't notice trends within pop culture until someone points them out to me. But its not my priority either. But the people who are so in tune with such things can certainly use it to a greater advantage in their thoughts, actions, and works.
Yes. I feel the same, not having a television or car, I am lost on an island away from much of pop culture. Most of what I get is from magazines, but even then i'm selective and read mainly spiritual journals, science magazines, the ADVOCATE and art stuff like JUXTAPOZ, and of course any thing with men's fashion in it. But, overall I'm unaware of pop culture. I don't know the slang anymore. I lost track of music styles in the 90's when dance music splintered into so many different things. I am with you though that people can know about trends or as I say, waves or motions, and embrace them in ways that benefit others and help interconnect us to a more connected reality. In the meantime it's sad to see how we have become so disintegrated.>/b>
: So has this rant gone on long enough that it has totally drifted into obscurity? Or does anyone else have any ideas, thoughts, rants, or outright rejections of my thoughts?
: Or has everyone quit reading long ago and I am just writing this to take up more network space? :)
Bob, this is one of the most significant posts I've seen on this site ever. It is a gift to everyone. It is dynamic and potent. O.K. Bob, like the stem of the pumpkin, it is composed of various elements and brought together through processes of growth to become the vehicle of life. So, with your words, your thoughts, various serif characters, various 1s and 0s, this document comes together to be the vessel of life for me and others, it becomes a clarion call for the arts, for life, for community. if in one millisecond, a heart was warmed or a mind illuminated, even briefly, it communicates to the ultimate enlightenment of all, since we are all interrelated. So, there is worth here. I just hope I'm not losing sight of it by all my wordiness. I just happen to be real excited about today's posts.
Bill