Don't tempt me. I have a lot of them.
I've been thinking about "The Glass Menagerie." I want to live like Laura for awhile in a made up world. Send me to typing school. I'll go sit in the park. Leave me at home, and I'll play with my things. That is what I am doing this weekend. I've hermetically sealed the house. I stopped at Whole Foods last night on the way home from work and bought everything I could imagine I wanted. Exhausted, I put on my pajamas and fell on the couch. I watched episode after episode of "Tosh.O." And later, "Austin City Limits." I didn't eat a balance and healthy diet. Sometime, I don't know when, I fell asleep on the couch, woke, and stumbled off to bed.
The morning breaks cloudy and gray. I hope is stays that way. I will read and nap and watch television. I'll grow plump as a pasha. I think I can get reruns of silly old t.v. shows online--"Route 66," "77 Sunset Strip," "Surfside 6," "Banacek," and "The Rockford Files." Things will be O.K.
The heater hums and bumps. The cat is a comma on the couch. The smell of last night's garlic lightly lingers in the kitchen. Coffee drunk. Now there will be thick milk and heavy slices of banana bread slathered with melted butter. Eggs and bacon and toast. The windows are dirty. The car has fallen apart. The driveways need to be mulched. The girl in picture is just a dream, a fragile illusion, a suggestion of desire, an ironic reference to the outer world, a repudiation of reality, a ritual, a nightmare memory. . . .
"Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands."
Go ahead. You may. Blow out my candle.
Do you know Britney Spears is 29? Shit where did that time go.
ReplyDeleteI received a wonderful critique yesterday on a poem written 3 years ago and included in the "Manuscript That Hasn't Been Returned." I thought maybe I should get some more reaction before re-sending. It was wonderful and I loved it. I'll share:
you're good. you're a lover of poetry.
but it's boring as fuck. I'm quintessentially horrified. i feel like I'm getting carved up again. at least that makes sense. a knife to the chest, the ignorant, arrogant violence of people everywhere. what the fuck are you saying? why are you saying it?
and the backlash i suppose...
silly fool oughn't read.
I think he's probably right. Though he wrote to say later he was drunk. But I'm sure he's probably right. Ah well.
Do you think the cave painters at Lascaux thought they were making art?
It's life scribbled into the stone so that we have a record. It's an escape from life so that we can go on living.
It doesn't matter what you name it or not name it. That stuff whispering/screaming/singing between your ears.
Yes. Yes. Try to kill it with bad TV and bad cholesterol. Put on some Adam West. He cures it all for me.
KAPOW.
xo
ps
ReplyDeletethat moon.
last night it was so low it nearly flattened me.
Are you sure your friend wasn't being sarcastic when he said you were lucky to have us?
ReplyDeleteI don't call what I do art, I call it what-I-do-to-stay-sane. But weekends of food and old tv works too!
L, Most criticism is shit. It doesn't help make art, it helps you to make stuff that is like what came before it. Most of what we make is shit, too, so there is the shitty criticism and the shitty stuff all mixing up together. All shitty criticism does is oppress production which is probably a good thing in some ways as it cuts down on the shit people produce. But if you want to make something whether it is shitty or not, you can't listen to critics. You just have to work and think and work and think and not quit. And then 999,999 out of the million of us who do that will still produce shit of some variety. But some of it is entertaining shit for awhile and it is a record of sorts. On a personal level, it probably enhances our awareness of things, and that is important and we are attracted to those whose awareness is above average. I am hoping my shit is above average.
ReplyDeleteI didn't watch t.v. at all. No Adam West. Rather, I got my new camera and went for a drink with a friend. First time I've been out in months. I kind of liked it. I may go out again sometime.
R, Nope, he wasn't. I had a drink with him yesterday. He's a straight arrow for that. And he's right.
L, Most criticism is shit. It doesn't help make art, it helps you to make stuff that is like what came before it. Most of what we make is shit, too, so there is the shitty criticism and the shitty stuff all mixing up together. All shitty criticism does is oppress production which is probably a good thing in some ways as it cuts down on the shit people produce. But if you want to make something whether it is shitty or not, you can't listen to critics. You just have to work and think and work and think and not quit. And then 999,999 out of the million of us who do that will still produce shit of some variety. But some of it is entertaining shit for awhile and it is a record of sorts. On a personal level, it probably enhances our awareness of things, and that is important and we are attracted to those whose awareness is above average. I am hoping my shit is above average.
ReplyDeleteI didn't watch t.v. at all. No Adam West. Rather, I got my new camera and went for a drink with a friend. First time I've been out in months. I kind of liked it. I may go out again sometime.
R, Nope, he wasn't. I had a drink with him yesterday. He's a straight arrow for that. And he's right.
Oh I love criticism -- all of it. Not the gushy gush stuff though. I don't trust it. I feel best with "Good work --" then a bit of how I might improve the piece.
ReplyDeleteBUT I use every bit of it-- for inspiration. Absolutely. I eat up criticism -- I want to cause a fight about my poems - I want to incite people. In any direction. I NEED that in order to go on you see. Go one to the Next.
See -- I don't get the "I don't want to make art -- I'm not trying to make Art" shit.
I don't believe Art is democratic. art maybe-- sure. Art nope.
I actually WANT to write a poem -- make something that people are still talking about in 100 years - I fully admit it.
I don't write for "fun" or because it is a hobby. I hate it mostly. I sometimes pray for the itch inside to go away. Let me be "normal." Go away.
So all this "I'm not trying to make art" shit
just irks the crap out of me.
I hope you go out again soon. :-) I drove around yesterday in the freezing cold staring at the Cape Cod landscape with the car stereo blasting.
kiss kiss
Lisa.