Tuesday, October 31, 2017

10,116. RUDIMENTS, pt. 121

RUDIMENTS, pt. 121
Making Cars
It's pretty weird right now, in my
later life, to still be doing all this
crazy writing. I would really never
had thought this would be going
on, had you asked me in 1968, or
any other year from anytime back
then.  By the time I got through 
the 1990's I was pretty burnt, 
unsettled, and almost numbed, 
and that slows you down a lot 
in your writing-reactions to things. 
In order to really 'write' while 
looking back along the way to 
reflect and make anything sensible 
out of both the urges and the messages 
that come through, one has first to 
have had developed a one-step-back 
sort of detachment. I'd think, anyway. 
It's a very odd concept I'm working 
with here  -  let me put it another 
way. In old landscape paintings, 
right up until Cezanne, when you 
viewed the landscape there was 
always a 'way in.' There was always 
a spot the eye was led to, to walk 
into, to enter, to be brought into, 
this landscape of the painting. It 
wasn't until Cezanne that the full, 
flat, frontal presentation of the 
'landscape,' (it was still called that), 
no longer really presented a way 
in at all. It had been 'abstracted 
out,' let's say. I think of course 
that's sometimes what people 
begrudge abstract art for  -  no 
way in. It's no longer 'nice' to 
them, it doesn't welcome them 
in. It's no longer like a calendar 
picture. Well, what I'm saying is 
it's like that with writing too. 
Cezanne wasn't abstract at all, 
but he was the very beginning 
of that breakaway fashion of 
presentation that segmented 
into planes and blocks and jagged 
fields, what it is that we see and 
call the 'world.' I once had a long, 
tedious discussion with some 
flubhead who claimed there had 
never been the equivalent of 
abstract-expressionist art in 
writing. I begged to differ, and 
went right at it. He remained 
unconvinced. (He's gone now, 
so no matter). 'Hell yeah there 
has...' was my starting point.
-
Maybe to the uninitiated, or the 
non-writer, it's not seen, and just 
comes off as something too difficult 
to read, to scattered and dense, as 
in 'Huh?'  -  it happens, yes. On the 
other hand, in reading 'poetry' and 
any of that 'sensitive' heart and 
soul crap writing that comes 
through today, most of THAT 
is unreadable. Everyone's got 
a damn heart, and broken heart, 
and longings, and remorse, and 
wishes and tenderness and baby
 emotions and yearnings and 
starlight and moon and distant 
skies and beaches and turtles 
and beautiful birds and designs 
in the sand. And, really, who 
the hell cares? I certainly don't. 
That's all literal, soppy writing. 
Not 'abstract' in that sense, and 
goes absolutely nowhere. They
can't writ with knowledge of the
language they're using, nor can 
they parry and thrust with the 
words and ideas at their disposal. 
It's all the same, usual rubbish. It's
all like a ladies club for mourners, 
or some guy's club for the effete 
and the gourmet-sensitive twerp 
who probably drives a New Beetle 
with a plastic flower in the dashboard 
cup. Either that, or everybody calls 
their rhyming couplets, rock and 
rap lyrics, poetry  -  and they give 
freaking Nobel Prizes now to the 
doers of such drivel. Hard to take.
-
I lived and breathed, in those days  
-  as I do now, but differently  -  the 
ideas and the rolling solace of Art 
and Writing. They were my own 
twin goalposts and to Hell with any 
other sort of football. I recently 
wrote a piece entitled, 'I Ran Into' 
which pretty well embodies my 
own personal sort of writing now, 
in the form I mean. You may say 
it allows no way in, runs amok, 
drives in ten different directions; 
but I would not say that. To me, 
it's a Cezanne. It's post-abstract 
landscape painting. That's a true
piece of writing as abstract-expressionist
as can be. Completely defensible. It 
doesn't 'have' a way in  -  like Cezanne, 
doing away with any church-guided 
tours of the soul, this is the real soul 
of what we live.
-
Th old world view of things  - politics, 
religion, and the rest of the social state 
which was early civilization, could 
best be summed up by the church. 
Everyone was in the dark, confused. 
Like an old-style landscape painting 
the church presented people with the 
way in, the entry-point was clear, as 
was the path  -  you do this, listen to 
this and to Him, imbibe the Dogma, 
and that righteous path will bring you
to 'where' we say it will. In his way, 
Paul Cezanne did away with all that,
almost Luther-Like  -  just throwing all
that stuff right out to you, 'here' catch'
and allowing you to find your own way
into your own manner of understanding
your own world. Matter-of-factly, he
may has well have been speaking for
REM  -  'It's the End of the World As 
We Know It....' As for myself, in the
same vein, I was set-free to roam and
think all this through. All the old entries
and doorways I'd ever known were gone,
by my own doing, and I had to find my 
own, new ones. I never knew what 
hara-kiri was, until about 1970 or 
whatever it was, that Japanese writer
named Yukio Mishima, did it to himself.
It's a ritual form of suicide, very formal,
with procedure, ritual steps, fabrics,
moves and motions, a swords. It's like
a staged even, in protest, in front of 
others. Ritual disembowelment. After 
a final speech, outlining the point of 
view, and the personal beef, and the 
rest, the individual very carefully takes
a well-honed sword or saber, whatever 
it is, and with complete deliberation, 
gores himself, drives in into his abdomen, 
with twists and turns, and disembowels 
himself, and dies. It's totally massive, 
and a monstrous death. Mishima did it, 
in front of his followers. it was a huge,
and scandalous, event in Japan, back then, 
literary circles and more. I felt I had done
the same to myself, all my past beliefs and
thoughts. That was all dead. It was a new
world, with all new entry points.







No comments: