My Art is a Phoenix

 

And so it is that in the history of art,

everything arises from loss,

tragedy, or unhappiness.

Art is a phoenix.

When was good art ever made from happiness?

Who works when they’re happy?

So this is the dilemma:

How to make art

and still be happy?

 

If the most vulgar transmission of knowledge

is the spoken word, then

the highest may be sitting in silence

without a word uttered between

student

(viewer, reader, seer, listener)

and master

(artist, God, teacher).

With that kind of communication,

an object between observer and observed

may be unnecessary.

To sit and contemplate

a leaf, a rock, a cloud,

it becomes possible to commune

with what is

without an intermediary.

Much like the concept of pure cinema,

the attempt to return to the medium’s

elemental origins,

feels nothing less than avant-garde.

 

God creates things

therefore, I create things

because it is in my DNA to do so.

God creates things for us.

Did you think he was doing this

for himself?

God is not self-absorbed,

he longs to share everything,

to have his creation seen,

heard, felt, smelt.

God, what an inadequate word

for thee supreme artist.

God, the very word tastes

medieval in the mouth.

 

An artist is appropriately possessed

and completely diseased by

creativity and ideas.

For that, he is willing

to sacrifice everything.

There will be pain.

Perhaps there must be pain.

 

How to live with pain

so that it strengthens and informs

and makes me more present

to the beatitude inherent in every moment?

Beauty is not an object apart from,

but a way of perceiving.

Is beauty beautiful

if no one’s there to perceive it?

Take that old chestnut:

Does a tree falling in the forest

make a sound if no one is there to hear it?

Is the sky at dawn spectacular

if we are fast asleep in our beds?

The world demands our attention

and beauty is spiritualizing.

That way we play a part in it.

It is connective.

Beauty is a vocation;

a calling I feel I must answer.

Otherwise,

I risk being a factory run by a tyrant,

a memory afraid to be erased,

a heart at odds with desiring,

a mouth without need for a face!

 

And finally,

of all the plants I planted in my garden,

what I did not plant has flourished the most.

Either seeds were hidden in the soil

or the wind carried a spore willy nilly

to my little plot of ground.

So often that’s how life feels.

I plant and sew and plan and then

something unexpected springs up

so easily on its own.

 

11/23/23