Hello! Yes, you’ve got it exactly, I wrote that in Intelligencia on Abbott Kinney. Thanks for reading! I love your images.
“You can measure time in wrinkles, bursts of clarity and insight, warm beds, waiting in line at the bank or the distance between two kisses.
It stretches and shrinks and sometimes even bends.
That’s why your heart will always keep better time than a clock.”
—The Units of Measurement: I Wrote This For You (via prima-volta)
Artisan coffee. I’m partial to french red white and blue
Savory brew, crack for the plaid clad crew
Whirly-gig machines, magnifying glasses
Used for exaction, to separate classes
Those who have taste and those of the masses
bask in the principle of cultural perfection
minutiae of urban physical affliction
he sips and sings and bends my way
I’m not in the mood, at least not today
coffee rings and hopeful flings
let’s all pay to pretend and drink til the bitter end
Do not be troubled for a language, cultivate your soul and she will show herself.
Eugene Delacroix
Firstly, I am so pleased that Delacroix calls language a female. He is such a romantic- the idea of giving an abstract noun a sex, most importantly, calling it a female. Language is, in essence a display of compassion, connecting- a female principle in itself, and in its most primal basic essence, women teach language, bond with their children and foster communication … Even this little utterance of assigning ’language’ a sexual origin, describing it like a muse displays Delacriox’s affinity for the romantics- his obsession with Byron and the whole lot… (Yes, the romantics were a group of men.. but a group of men who at least aligned women with a spiritual and transcendental realm….) But that’s another tale… (I should write once again about his personal journal… one the pivotal texts of my college experience…. )
Secondly, I love him. He is by far my favorite painter. And one for whom I wept at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery…. But also besides the point….
Delacroix spent many years brooding over the fact that Poets received higher recognition as artists than painters did. His personal journal often argued for the superiority of visual arts to the spoken word. This argument about the hierarchy within the arts, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis’ was a hot topic in the romantic age- with roots in Lessing’s Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) and originating from Horace’s Ut Pictura Poesis (18 BC).
Anyways….. I keep getting away from what I wanted to say about this quote…. as I am trying ever so not so diligently to write everyday using 1 qoute as a jumping point into an abyss of creative bliss……
I am all of a sudden very concious of my failure to get into a rapture of thought… to just write without an agenda besides… ‘running with a qoute…’ I am not running. I am standing.
Oh. my.
And it’s come back….
I have spent so much of my time seeking the best medium through which to create… am I a painter? am I a sculptor? am I a designer? a writer? a dramaturg? How will I communicate and make my impact on society? I envy people who know that they are good at landscapes, and they will only paint landscapes…. or they like to build buildings so they become architects…. I envy people who can praise god, have admittance to a group— identify themselves through a commonly shared belief…. ’God made him the play the violin…’ ’Singing was her calling…’ ‘He was made to do this…’
I am so… sprawled in my passions. Frozen when trying to find my langage, my vehicle for expression, my interface with the outside world. What will live when I die? I hope to eternally enter the grand dialogue of human existence.. if even on a minuscule scale, I want to say, I have lived, I have seen and I have shared, I have expanded human experience, or at least find a way to record it, and translate it into an art form…. in a way that hopefully will elevate or ameliorate the existence of others. How can I do that? What medium?
I recognize that currently I am criticizing my desire to create, and this is in essence creating, however this kind of writing or thinking isn’t getting me anywhere… this is not the kind of thing that makes me passionate, or makes me feel like I’ve seen god, or makes me feel truly alive… this is the kind of obsession that feels like a plague, a disease… a.. Handicap that comes with old age, aging—- loosing my innocence, loosing the freeness of childhood, loosing Life in the present. This is certainly no language to share….
So….. yes. Delacriox says not to worry about the language…. that we are to cultivate our souls and She will show herself…. did he mean the soul will show herself or the language will? I hope I am not looking into my soul right now… I sure hope this isn’t the language of my soul… oh my.
OKAY. Delacriox, how do I cultivate my soul??? Please help!
True I talk of Dreams,
Which are the Children of an idle mind
Begot of nothing but vain fantasies…..
-Romeo and Juliet
Dreams are the children of a free mind. An unencumbered mind creating all sorts of connections
My mind is idle. The vital essense of life is never idle.
Nature abhors a vaccum.
But my essence lies cluttered in dust, how can I awaken the lust of thought. The yearning for knowledge?
Strip away the parasites and dust of daily existence…
My mind is a decomposing bog, stultified yet churning, fermenting
An aging capsule deep in a catacomb, sunk in a barrel
Degenerate sediment untouched by consciousness
How can I awaken, dry the moldy dampness and burn the ashes
flush the Blacksmith grime and Braddock slime
Strike and mould, will to fold and find a feature
entice an ember, bate the gnarling creature
the human capacity, caged within its mortal skull
Yearns for transcendence, glory and resurrection
I want the rush of creative conception
birth a a vehicle that exists outside myself, my body
Which will stand and speak as my lips decay.
Which will join the lexicon of human record
the godly codex of I AM I AM I AM
Here in the game. Pick a quote… that inspires you… and let it be the seed for a new idea, let it awaken your mind. Each morning wake. Open a book. read part of a page and choose a beautiful idea. And run the other way.
“An Idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate upon it, it becomes transformed by thought.” - Pablo Picasso
That is power. To transform and take the reins of an idea, to amass something in the present from particles from the past. My body is composed of atoms and molecules and proteins and god know what else that used to be apart of a dinosaur, or a tree, I eat things from all around the world. Coconuts from the indies, peaches from chile, spices from india, seaweed from russia. I am a living breathing collage of creation. The beauty lies in the union of unsuspecting things.
In ‘The Life of Cowley,” Samuel Johnson noted that in poetry, “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.”
“The Emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what it to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but what is already living.” T. S. Eliot
Too often have I studied philosophies and critical theory and found my own voice drowned dead behind the statutory products of grand literary minds. How is it that Nietzsche and T.S. Eliot are able to articulate exactly what I think, only in proper language? I am left feeling dwarfed by ancient ideas, stunned in their glory. I am too small of a person to transform ideas into contemporary currency.
I find that my mind likes to collage ideas. It likes to find overlays of sentiment, color, Symmetry of ideas, shadows of thought resonating in various cultures. I like to see critical awareness resonating in seemingly unrelated schools of thought. And that makes no sense… but I can see it visually…
I am trying to figure out my creative process. What gets me thinking. What makes me move. This ‘blog’ is not a display of complete ideas. It is a stream of imperfect thought, a struggle for knowledge. A yearning to capture the creative impulse, or at least a map to draw the faries of creation, and follow them to godliness…
“For it is not the greatness, the intensity of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.” T. S. Elliot
T.S. Eliot
EXT.- AMERICAN RAG CAFE- HOLLYWOOD- DAY
Colleen (23, a “painter”) and Trisha (23, “writer” i.e. a T.V. production assistant) sit over mimosas and a langorious brunch at a typlical LA hipster hot spot. Colleen wears a dramatic hat, dangly earings and a sunny shift dress and leather flats, Trisha a lacey maxi dress and huge coral stud earings and a sharp bun.
COLLEEN
It’s like… I could get so much work done if I didn’t have to work, you know?
TRISHA
I know! making a sensible living gets in the way of creativity.
COLLEEN
But it’s worse… like working twenty five hours a week doing menial bullshit makes me want to just eat coconut dream cream and watch Notting Hill.
TRISHA
That is your favorite past time.
COLLEEN
But— It’s not like I don’t have a work ethic— I went to a top univiersity and I was so pumped to do eighty plus hours- busting my ass… finding challenges around every corner… but no.. no one trusts you when you’re twenty three. You gotta do the shit.
TRISHA
I mean at least you don’t actually have to work…. you could quit. Your parents did buy you a house in silverlake. You could just paint all day.
COLLEEN
It’s good to have a schedule.. And I can’t force myself to do things. I need someone else to tell me to. I need external influence.
TRISHA
Or internal. What about Blake?
COLLEEN
You are so filthy. Yeah… he’s basically moved in with me.
TRISHA
Really?
COLLEEN
Yeah- it used to be a treat to have him around and now he just leaves mushy cereal bowls everywhere.
TRISHA
Ew.
COLLEEN
Today- no joke… in the shower. there was like one plump soggy fruit loop oozying down the tile… and then I looked up slowly and saw the whole bowl was on the shower window sill..
TRISHA
Ew.
COLLEEN
Yeah.
TRISHA
Isn’t he in real estate?
COLLEEN
Yeah.
TRISHA
I…
COLLEEN
Dont. Get. Me. Started.
TRISHA
Well I’d love to not have to worry about rent. Fuck you.
COLLEEN
I’m just wasting away… like cereal particles dissintergrating into the milky abyss….
TRISHA
I’m glad I got you out of the house.
COLLEEN
(beat) There is so much mediocrity in the world.
TRISHA
I always think that.
COLLEEN
Like…. Why don’t people have a sense of taste? Like… I’m driving sometimes and i see people… and I can’t fathom what kind of life they must lead to think that what they’ve curated themselves into is desirable.
TRISHA
Well, not to you apparently
COLLEEN
Come on Trish… just look…( points at a horribly dressed cholaesque woman) what was her mother like? Wasn’t she told not to wear her breasts like that? Or does she have such a low IQ that she can’t understand social mores…. those jeans… that hair style…
TRISHA
…I wonder about the homeless.
COLLEEN
I can’t even look.
TRISHA
I refuse to give them money. Does that make me a republican?
COLLEEN
It’s honesty..
TRISHA
Which excuses me from apathy.
COLLEEN
I donno about repubicanism.. They’re usually not the honest ones, right? Democrats want transparency in governemnt… repulicans want…
TRISHA
Guns.
COLLEEN
Well, apathy excuses you from a sense of responsibility.
TRISHA
Responsible for the homeless? It’ they’re own fault! It’s not my responsibility!! I work. Why would I give money to someone who begs?
COLLEEN
Maybe they were abused as a kid..
TRISHA
Colleen. You cannot sit here and justify drug attics and lunatics but not tolerate poor fashion sense.
COLLEEN
True.
TRISHA
LIke.. The other day I was running errands for work at costco. Fuckign writers room wanted chocolate pie. Had to be costco german chocolate caramel pie. … whatever. And I’m pulling out and there is this young guy with a sign that reads
(she writes this down)
Testing for randome acts of kindness.
COLLEEN
Ran- dome.
TRISHA
Fucking idiot.
COLLEEN
So now grammar is inexcusable as well.
TRISHA
We’re tough critics I guess. Humanity just not cutting it…
COLLEEN
I swear… sometimes I think we’d solve all the worlds problems if we just killed off all the stupid people.
TRISHA
And then you think… oh. Hitler?
COLLEEN
Yeah. And then I have to take a shower and eat coconut dream cream. I didn’t mean yeah hitler like the jews were stupid.. it was like… not the same…
TRISHA
(not listening) But so… I roll down the window and say. RANDOM IS NOT SPELLED WITH A SILENT E.
COLLEEN
Hah
TRISHA
And I honestly felt good about my act of kindness.
COLLEEN
Education will fix societal ills.
TRISHA
It’s all about consciousness and education.
COLLEEN
Not communication and undestanding?
TRISHA
America’s punch line was initially “life, liberty, and the pursuit of property” and then some hippy masonic leaders were all like… hey— not everyone can obtain property. Even if they try.
COLLEEN
Whats the next best thing
TRISHA
Happiness.
COLLEEN
Don’t cost a thing
TRISHA
I’m not really happy.
COLLEEN
I’m not either.
TRISHA
I just wanna go back to college
COLLEEN
Where you’re safe and surrounded by ideas… and smart people from a similar demographic…
TRISHA
It’s really lala land isn’t it. Hollywood isn’t doing it for me.. Real life isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be.
COLLEEN
They really made us believe we could make a change. Contribue to society.
TRISHA
I’m getting cakes for crass tv writers.
COLLEEN
I’m working at a tanning salon. and pretending to be a painter.
TRISHA
I dono if we’d pass the you can continue living because you’re smart enough test. You know, if you turned into IQ hitler and all.
COLLEEN
Honestly, It’s not my responsibility.
TRISHA
Honestly, we’re just apathetic.
COLLEEN
Another mimosa?
TRISHA
Yeah. I’m supposed to be back at work in 20.. But it can wait.
COLLEEN
Yeah. I’ve got no where to be either.
TRISHA
Life really does suck
COLLEEN
We’re just trampled upon, treated like dirt. No good jobs in this economy.
TRISHA
Yeah it’s not our fault its the damn economy. And China’s fault.
COLLEEN
I think I’m going ot register for unemployment and clear my mind.. You know? Take some meditation classes, decide wht I want to do wiht my life..
TRISHA
We’re fucked.
COLLEEN
Cheers.
The other day I was driving behind a truck that said” “We recycle TV’s” after leaving the farmer’s market where they were selling “Pune’s, Potatoe’s and Peach’s” So naturally, I thought about how Apostrophe feels about this.
What will happen to people in a world where grammar isn’t taught, it’s just auto-corrected by computers? Will language cease to have specificity and belong to us? People don’t remember numbers anymore, cell phones just save them under names. Without my phone, I can’t call anyone. Without my GPS I can’t get anywhere. Without my calendar that beeps at me I won’t arrive anywhere on time. I have to count numbers on analog clocks because I’m so used to digital. Prepared food lets me get through the day without taking time to cook. Cars let me travel all over the place in a time span that was never before possible. Life is faster and more complex but our skill sets aren’t significantly more advanced. Computers do it for us. Technology enables efficiency without the user having to be more efficient. I guess I feel okay about modern advances of transportation and basic organization. However I worry about technology’s impact on basic communication….
- John Keats
Driving across Indiana…. June 2010
Manufactured rows of kindergarden green- a scientific feat over nature. It’s suffocating to see— all these pristine green stalks. The earth cut and pasted together like a child’s construction paper project- a lattice work, patches. This parts yours and this one’s mine, let’s draw a line.
Scars… I look out the window wondering how we humans came to be so manipulative. ”Don’t play with your food,” we’re told. What about, “Don’t play with where your food comes from”?
Look how we have partitioned the land, pruned back its tangled and natural foliage— brutally exposed it’s raw umber flesh.. raped and pillaged.. injected the earth with fixed ammonium nitrate fertilizes to boost crop yields— Is it any wonder that “fertilizer”— steroids for the earth— also developed with the same technologies that created the first bombs? We’ve poisoned whole bodies of water- manipulating their meandering- penetrated the groundwater as it lay in the deep curious crevices… Oh earth… oh how we’ve disgraced our mother…. She must be thirsty for retribution, longing to be cleansed of our childish and brutish play…
And, it’s all for the sake of production. The means of production must be in constant revolution, we must keep making— making things— buying things— making jobs…
I look out at the fields as we drive by, one by one, I can only look so far until we’re into another row— It’s like an optical illusion… You could get lost… looking at the rows.. Millions and millions of ears of corn… A miracle of modern man they say…
Acres and acres of one singular genetically modified product. Not plant— it’s a manufactured product. A USA Pioneer Hi-Bred 34H3 Maize species. A bastard child of the Teosinte plant, The golden grain of the sun…
(these are some corn people I drew… )
I think about all of the horrors of modern agriculture. Yet, as my eyes scan the rows arching over rolling hills in the distance, with the sky streaking and twisting its own expanse above, my heart aches with a desire for sublime simplicity. It is beautiful. My brother and I are driving through miles of corn with the bible belt radio blasting…. Looking at the pastoral greatness beyond the single lane road- Looking at the agricultural necessity- simplicity. It’s calming to see a process with distinct and actual restrictions, explicit yields, an art of curation, creation. An annual economy of sun, soil, water….. Or so that’s what I’d like to believe I’m looking at….
Corn.
Corn Corn Corn….
Most farmers today live in a food island. That is to say, they do not grow enough variety of food to sustain their own nutritional values. They grow corn, or soy— miles and miles of corn and soy. Iowa imports 80% of its food— most of it traveled from all across the world to get there… to a farm.. so that the farmer could eat…
A farmer— the most ancient and necessary occupation— to till the land… to grow with the earth…. To sustain and be sustained by the ground beneath you…. Somehow… we really fucked up this relationship.
Today, we export enough corn meal to “feed” the world- that is, to be imbeded in every other product as a thickening agent, a sweetener— Malitol, derived from starch— used in gum, candy, “baked goods”….. used as an emulsion for plastics, Ethanol to power automobiles…. This all seems too complicated…..
Mind you, I’m now eating a Trader Joe’s Fruit leather… and.. yes… it contains corn….. The sun is setting and the sky bleeds, vibrates, and shakes. It takes its last powerful gasps as the sun dips in the distance. The shadows are long and folding over the road before us. Yawning, wanting to swallow and suckle upon each surface they splay across. The dark consumes the day like a hungry infant yearning for warmth. The green rows stand erect, diligent soldiers marching into the night.
We pass a farm house with its yellow light romancing and calling us. It glows and murmurs wearing it’s wrap around porch like a leisurely lady in her costume diamonds… Elegant and homely. A farmer sits on the porch swing- wearing plaid- it’s almost too perfect. I wonder if they have lace curtains and mason jars of preserves and old riffles next to the wooden staircase….. And then I stop pretending. I wonder if they get their food at Giant Eagle or Ralphs, or are there Stop and Shops out here?
Corn.
Processors and Grain exporters profit from over production (i.e. low prices) of corn. The government began subsidizing corn production to enable a quick influx into the economy— Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon, saw international corn exports as a good boost to the American economy. Today, America produces over 40 percent of the world’s corn….. There are only 2 million farm in the USA. About 3% of the population grows food…… to feed everyone else…. And we’re not really eating food….
Even if a conventional farmer today wanted to grow his own products, the grain elevator wouldn’t buy anything either than a specific modified species, conducive to processing… In 2005, it took about $2.50 to grow one bushel of corn, Processors and grain elevators were paying 1.45 per bushel. The government pays 5 billion dollars a year to subsidize corn… The Nutrition and Food Product Industry is nearly worth 115 Billion Dollars…. A farmer here in Indiana, in Iowa… sees none of that… nor can he even recognize his hard work in the food we eat today….
Agriculture and the land itself used to be somewhat protected… in the New Deal Farm programs… there was a soil conservancy service… however the 1973 Farm Bill further destroyed America’s relationship with agriculture… Forcing a natural, linear system to become a capitalist, explosive and constantly growing economy…. The earth can only produce so much food (so we thought), Americans can only consume so much food (so we thought)…… We must keep the means of production in constant revolution—-we need more more more….
Corn…. Not enough… we need to refine it!! So people will spend more money on it!!
