(George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey's, 1909)
I made it through the first round yesterday. I'll come out for the second. But I have to tell you in all truth--I'm wiped. I have had to divert and double my energies. Now I'm depleted. And I wonder what for? You've all felt it, questioned what you've done and why? Was it worthwhile? Was it the right thing to do?
Working for the show has depleted me. But it is not over. I must make prints. I had so many grand delusions about the work. I don't have the ego for what I would need to do next. Oh--I have an ego, but not the right kind. I wonder too much about things. I'm never certain.
Have you ever seen the film "White Hunter, Black Heart"? There is a line in it that haunts me. For a long time, I couldn't get my mind around it. Try as I might, I couldn't understand what it meant. Then I asked a rascal friend of mine, and he drew himself up to full height, his eyebrows pointing up like Salman Rushdie's, and he growled, "You know what it means." Suddenly, it was clear. He had done it often enough and he had been tutoring me in its lessons.
"Sometimes," says Clint Eastwood directing himself as John Huston, "you just have to do the wrong thing."
That's one of my favorite paintings -- a good friend of mine is related to an Ash Can School painter --her aunt was a student of Bellows. They have hundreds of paintings, unframed mostly and kicking around various attics in their family. I keep trying to tell the to organize a show.
ReplyDeleteThanks for putting it up. :-)
I have trouble deciding what the wrong thing is...
ReplyDeleteL, You know the most interesting people. I think you should curate the show for them. Become the agent. Promote.
ReplyDeleteR, Oh. . . you know. . . afterwards.