Last night was submittal night for the NVFAA show judged by Lawrence Alloway - and for me, it was the first evening of spring. As I stood outside John Arcuri's beautiful old apartment bldg in my old denims, with blowing hair and sprouting mustache in the arm gauzy light, I felt rebirth and energy flow through me. The ride down the daffodil lined roads of Rock Creek Park and beside the silver Potomac, passing joggers and bikers, was as dramatic as the cadmium orange ball of the sun painting all the river backwaters near National Airport. After leaving our paintings we returned to John's to reinforce our waning glow with still more sherry. On my way to pick up Sharon, I was moved by my annual (approximately) whim to wander again down the basements of McClean Gardens. Ah, roots (ah, bunk), I could see again the spaceships, submarines and tunnels of my youthful fantasy in those fine old sinuous, up-and-down basements with all their exposed vitals of steam piping, conduit, panels and gauges. I spent many hours of rainy, and even sunny, days with my friends in that subterranean labyrinth. It felt good to see it again. I did notice that the good old apartment hallways seemed much more like those of Hyattsville and Mt. Rainier than those of the "home" of memory. Also, they had cut down the rose bushes where we would see the Japanese beetles of summer drowned in little kerosene traps. (A memory like that is like an Indian Head penny nowadays).
21 April '75
I would not have been so long away from my writing had I not mislaid the notebook and been unable to find it for a week. It was, naturally, under a pile of papers and detritus in the studio.
Like being newly in love, or like a recent convert, I find all my thoughts these days occupied by "creation," a subject (feeling?) as wide as life itself. There isn't 15 minutes of spare time each day (not to mention much time at work, cleaning house, eating) that I don't think of painting, or cartooning, or composing. Creation is the source of my happiness, the irrigation of my love, my proof against bitterness and ennui. Like a love anew, it causes me to regard the world anew. I see my friends and either applaud their projects and energy or hope that they will yet discover life. My God, how can the Dave and Nancy Snyders of the world come home and watch TV each long evening - how can a Kathy Lyons find primal satisfaction in her job as a government administrator? It boggles the mind.
I remember how blithely (a scant two months ago) I was resigned to doing no music, because I was a painter, because there was only time to paint. I remember how the cartoons had bloomed and withered within me starting with last year's impeachment hearings, but were left undrawn (despite strong encouragement from Sharon and from Frank Bowie) because there was only time to paint.
I was wrong - there is time to do what you want in this world; there is plenty of time for cartoons, painting, and songs because there must be, because creativity is life. For years, Sharon and a few others (Dolores, Frank Bowie, John) have encouraged me to go pull steam, to not deny myself, and they were right. The weeks-old change from "painter" to "person" has been a shock like going to sleep at home and waking up in the woods. I wouldn't have thought that such a naturally happy person as myself could have found this joy - I didn't even know that there was so much more joy to be found.
It makes me realize that the next discovery of personhood will be the regaining of the woods. I haven't been camping in 3 years although I have all necessary equipment, although I have experience, although thinking of camping (and then never doing it) is like a kick in the heart. Seeing this month's Nat'l Geographic feature on the Adirondacks didn't help any, either (ah, New England; Ah, upstate). This solemn pledge I make: From March thru October each year from now on, I will get in 6 weekends of camping. That's not even a weekend a month, and that's not even cold weather ( I've slept in the frost before). And I can do it. I can do anything - I know that now.
Ah, but there's the rub.
There may be enough time in life for the work of creation, for love, for smoky mornings beside the lake, for biking the C&O Canal, for seeing Europe; but there is not enough time for "WORK." Work is a thief - it subverts your time and energy away from life, and all that is dear thereof. I work to be pain, period. I regard an office an a warehouse, a supply source of art material, xerox copies, long distance phone calls, and whatever else will better enable me to complete my own projects. Work is but a small adjunct to real life - never could I measure my life by my job, not if it were in a studio. I pity those who work on other people's projects 5 days, and spend their most precious commodity, their own time, in spendthrift TV viewing and "relaxation."
Not that I knock the noble process of unwinding; I too, drink, smoke, and spend time away from the studio in non-productive pursuit. But I spend all the time I can creating - witness the languish of this diary as I have begun to use those daily commutes for music writing. When I arrive home from "work," I still have plenty of energy for work.
How I pity those who spend all that is good within them on other people's projects, who have only "relaxation" to look forward to, who eat, sleep, and work never knowing what it is to feel themselves expand, grow tall, and become aware of the beauty of all life through the power of creation, the work of the soul.
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