Here's a recent poem:
Dead
Hell, they’re just black savages.
3,000,000 / Belgian Congo
The virile Mao took an annual swim
in his river of blood.
56,000,000 / China
Would the rotting corpses, end-to-end, reach the moon?
And their stench reach the nose of the Emperor?
1,750,000 / Japan
A carpet of dead bodies
so a few could wipe their feet.
20,000,000 / World War I
How many disemboweled bodies, hearts exploded,
brains splattered, souls lost in frozen mud?
25,000,000 / Soviet Russia
Men, women and children became meat.
Spirit became meat. Victory must be fed.
55,000,000 / World War II
.
Killing neighbors, friends, brothers, children,
really meant killing themselves.
600,000 / Spain
Severed limbs and hacked bodies. Blood-screams
of hate and powerlessness. Whispers of non-violence
1,000,000 / India-Pakistan
Whomever you kill, bathe in their blood, lie in the grave with
them. Explain the madness.
4,000,000 / Korea
Some died in vain. Some innocent. Some scared. Some in battle.
Some believing. Some by their own hand. Some heroes.
Some still remain the living dead.
3,000,000 / Vietnam
Their mourners, flies and maggots. Their shrouds, parched earth.
Their coffins, the arms of their mothers.
8,000,000 / Nigeria
Night after night…TV. Piles of empty eyes
at the moment just before…
2,500,000 / Ethiopia
Rouge. Red. Blood. Stains. Spurts. Warm. Spill. Soak.
Hack. Slash. Wash. Eat. Drink. Piss. Fuck. Die.
1,700,000 / Khmer Rouge
Each bullet propelled by a good cause. Each body torn open
for the very best reason. Each child dead for the political good.
1,700,000 / Afghanistan
God permitted us to shoot them down, to cut them down,
to rape them down, to stand tall on mountains of their dead flesh.
1,000,000 / Iran-Iraq
Dead.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Being Human
Being Human
What it means to be human has always been a fluid thing. Few of us have recognized that, and fewer of us have recognized that we have a part in determining it. But now the chaotic, screaming, absurd, demented spectacle of life doesn’t give us much choice. We can either hide and, cower or we can fling ourselves headlong into the struggle—and what the struggle requires--to be fully realized, contemporary human beings.
We used to be able to look in the mirror of the God we had created to understand who we are. But now that mirror is so faceted and shattered that it’s hard find any God there. We used to search for deities and their hideouts in nature. But now a universe of unimaginable expansiveness seems nothing more than matter following elegant, but predictable, laws. We used to find God in our own mysterious and magical creation. But now we begin life in Petri dishes and will soon clone ourselves. We used to admire our own flesh-and-bone beauty. But now we are made of plastic and metal and synthetic chemicals and silicone and computer chips. We used to take great pride in the brains that affirmed our human potential. Now we fry them with drugs, and in a century we may find that they played the greatest trick of all on us.
I believe that in any age few find their way to the awareness and the practice of a deep and full humanity. But I also believe that any person with just a drop of true awe before the world can take on that journey. I believe we are presented with a dizzying number of social, cultural, moral, ethical, physical paths to being fully human. And I believe, traveled at the deepest level, they are all the same and lead us to the only God that can save us, the God within us. But when the stakes are as high as they are now, I wish I could believe that we will all get there together.
What it means to be human has always been a fluid thing. Few of us have recognized that, and fewer of us have recognized that we have a part in determining it. But now the chaotic, screaming, absurd, demented spectacle of life doesn’t give us much choice. We can either hide and, cower or we can fling ourselves headlong into the struggle—and what the struggle requires--to be fully realized, contemporary human beings.
We used to be able to look in the mirror of the God we had created to understand who we are. But now that mirror is so faceted and shattered that it’s hard find any God there. We used to search for deities and their hideouts in nature. But now a universe of unimaginable expansiveness seems nothing more than matter following elegant, but predictable, laws. We used to find God in our own mysterious and magical creation. But now we begin life in Petri dishes and will soon clone ourselves. We used to admire our own flesh-and-bone beauty. But now we are made of plastic and metal and synthetic chemicals and silicone and computer chips. We used to take great pride in the brains that affirmed our human potential. Now we fry them with drugs, and in a century we may find that they played the greatest trick of all on us.
I believe that in any age few find their way to the awareness and the practice of a deep and full humanity. But I also believe that any person with just a drop of true awe before the world can take on that journey. I believe we are presented with a dizzying number of social, cultural, moral, ethical, physical paths to being fully human. And I believe, traveled at the deepest level, they are all the same and lead us to the only God that can save us, the God within us. But when the stakes are as high as they are now, I wish I could believe that we will all get there together.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Answers
The fuzzy mythology about the lives of artists makes us believe there is magically tragic artist life that we somehow grow into or create as an identity. I believe an artist's life is authentic to the artist in forms that are myriad. Then I ask myself if there a core of values or characteristics that define this authenticity. I suppose I could just ask myself that question answer it for myself and assume I had the answer for everyone. And maybe that's all I could do and the best I could do. So I'll give the big answer a try.
-- Art should be wrapped in a creative approach to the world.
-- Hold on to personal integrity as an artist for as long as possible.
-- The desire and passion to do art are not enough, even if practiced. The intention must be to seek something profound.
-- Art must never lose sight of its humanity.
-- Art must never lose sight of its responsibility.
-- Art must never become complacent, spoiled, condescending, flabby or compromising.
-- Art should be wrapped in a creative approach to the world.
-- Hold on to personal integrity as an artist for as long as possible.
-- The desire and passion to do art are not enough, even if practiced. The intention must be to seek something profound.
-- Art must never lose sight of its humanity.
-- Art must never lose sight of its responsibility.
-- Art must never become complacent, spoiled, condescending, flabby or compromising.
Living the life of an artist
Recently, I've heard or read from students that they want to live the life of an artist. Is the the life of inspired madness and eventual suicide of Van Gogh? Is it the corporate marketing of America's most collected artist spilling over onto tea cups and lounge chairs? Is it the drug-fed-art-super-star life of Basquiat? Is it the obsessive and closeted life of Henry Barger, only becoming an artist after his death? Is it last year's hot artist of the moment, written about and endlessly examined into oblivion? Is the artist whose coffee table book status made him status quo? Is it the artist who will have no life until he is dead and discovered?
I've got to go now. Answers to come later.
I've got to go now. Answers to come later.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
10 Ways
10 ways to know if it's really art:
1. It makes you envious.
2. It makes you want to rush home and make art.
3. It's confusing, but in a brain-activating way.
4. It's embedded in you somewhere.
5. You keep returning to it.
6. You want to own it.
7. You feel a little (or alot) different since you first experienced it.
8. You still haven't gotten all you can from it, and you probably never will.
9. You're discouraged and elated at the same time.
10. You wish you had done it first.
1. It makes you envious.
2. It makes you want to rush home and make art.
3. It's confusing, but in a brain-activating way.
4. It's embedded in you somewhere.
5. You keep returning to it.
6. You want to own it.
7. You feel a little (or alot) different since you first experienced it.
8. You still haven't gotten all you can from it, and you probably never will.
9. You're discouraged and elated at the same time.
10. You wish you had done it first.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Response to Clayton Eshleman's question
What might a responsible avant-garde in visual art today include?
1. Radical, investigational image making that is raw, often wayward, in process: art as an intervention within culture against static forms of knowledge, schooled conceptions, cliched formulations (both inside and outside of art itself).
2. Art that evinces a thoughtful awareness of racism, imperialism, ecological issues, disasters, and wars and wants to do something about it.
3. Multiple levels of language--the arcane, the idiomatic, the absurd, the erudite, the vulgar, the scientific; relentless probing; say anything once, but say it a second time only if you believe it; not just "free speech" but freed speech, taking the consequences of its freed-om.
4. Transgression, opening up of the sealed sexual strong rooms; inspection of occult systems for psychic networks; the archaic and the tribal viewed as part of everyone's fate.
5. Treating boundaries like stage scenery, necessary but illusionary and not permanent.
6. Exploring what it means to be fully and deeply human.
7. Seeking out mystery and its rewards.
8. Living the consequences and responsibilities of the avant-garde.
1. Radical, investigational image making that is raw, often wayward, in process: art as an intervention within culture against static forms of knowledge, schooled conceptions, cliched formulations (both inside and outside of art itself).
2. Art that evinces a thoughtful awareness of racism, imperialism, ecological issues, disasters, and wars and wants to do something about it.
3. Multiple levels of language--the arcane, the idiomatic, the absurd, the erudite, the vulgar, the scientific; relentless probing; say anything once, but say it a second time only if you believe it; not just "free speech" but freed speech, taking the consequences of its freed-om.
4. Transgression, opening up of the sealed sexual strong rooms; inspection of occult systems for psychic networks; the archaic and the tribal viewed as part of everyone's fate.
5. Treating boundaries like stage scenery, necessary but illusionary and not permanent.
6. Exploring what it means to be fully and deeply human.
7. Seeking out mystery and its rewards.
8. Living the consequences and responsibilities of the avant-garde.
Friday, April 4, 2008
The failure of contemporary art
In the beginning of the 20th century, art had the hubris to plunge into the chaos of a world in transition. It thought about the mind, about space-time, about power and energy and about the human condition. But science moved on, changing the world at every turn, while art moved inside the white box of its own concerns. Progress in science is in the access it gives us to new mysteries. Progress in art is in its discovery of the profound. The purest science is measured by the kind of answers it brings and questions that tumble from them.
The purest art can be measured by the same standards. In art, like science, true beauty is elegant and deep and so endures. The rest is just pretty. Art that endures as part of the experience of being human in the universe must ask profound questions, embrace mystery and never back down.Too much of contemporary art lives by the white box, feeds on its own self, asks small questions, offers only entertainment and comfort, believes cleverness is enough, is self-congratulatory, and views spectacle as depth. It's not humble, and doesn't stand in awe before anything.
The purest art can be measured by the same standards. In art, like science, true beauty is elegant and deep and so endures. The rest is just pretty. Art that endures as part of the experience of being human in the universe must ask profound questions, embrace mystery and never back down.Too much of contemporary art lives by the white box, feeds on its own self, asks small questions, offers only entertainment and comfort, believes cleverness is enough, is self-congratulatory, and views spectacle as depth. It's not humble, and doesn't stand in awe before anything.
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