10,925. RUDIMENTS, pt. 358

RUDIMENTS, pt. 358

Making Cars

One thing I always liked was the

way Art fell apart. As I progressed

along it, it fell apart, as idea : pretty

simple stuff, even when repeated

twice. I learned once that, before

Cezanne, when you looked at a

landscape painting there had

always been a place where the

'viewer' could walk into the

painting. There was an entrance,

you could go there, as if 'entering'

the park. He was the first painter

to actually block that, cut the

entrance out, by virtue of having

abstracted the context. It was, I'd

been told, as if 'you could no longer

walk in them, they could only be

entered by leaping.' That was

pretty cool. What a concept of

dynamism and strength, and,

I also felt, it went for a million

other things. Things like words,

and opinions, and attitudes. Doing

something like that is really a

keynote function, or a keystone

idea, whichever you'd rather say.

(I'll get to that in a minute). Once

something like that occurs,

there's no going back. The world

has changed. Every so often there

are moments like that, but they

are never realized until later,

when some deadhead gives an

era a convenient 'name'  -  the

Renaissance, Grand Enlightening,

the Abstracted Moment. Some

totally useless academic prattle

so they can go on and teach about

it and just make more stuff up. I

think at the base of everything,

at the bottom of all history, is a big

Nothing. People just going about

their business, doing their lives,

running things through with their

moments. No one stops and says,

"My goodness. That was such an

enlightening thought, I think

I'll call this the Enlightenment.'

-

Well, listen up: People get

carried away with that 'Art'

stuff  too. I also had people

say  -  which I thought was

a little much and fairly stupid

-  that 'when Van Gogh loaded

his palette with pigment he

couldn't afford, he was praying

in color. He put his anxiety

into pigment. Color was

Salvation. It had to be thick

and tangible.' Oh, please.

-

Maybe when any of those guys

painted a slab of beef they were

hungry? Or when they made

fruits and things in their still-lives,

they were dying for a snack.

Nudes? Oh boy, we better not

even go there. They were the

first guys too, to paint from tubes.

Before that an artist had to mix

his own colors, from pigments and

oils. It was way too cumbersome

to take all that stuff out into the

field, as open-air artists. So, in

some fashion, they got their

colors into tubes. We still have

that today. Another cool thing,

they were the first guys to have

smokestacks in their paintings.

Hello Industrialization! (I wonder

who first painted a parking lot?)...

-

The only painting I ever saw

in Avenel was maybe house

painting. My father was always

up to something with that, on

and on about painting this or

painting that. One time he'd just

completed hand-building this

elaborate white picket fence,

the entire front and sides of

the house  -  post-hole digging,

setting them in, each post had

a nice little mitred post-cap, good

height, nice wide pickets. It was

a dream, and it even had a double

gate for driveway entry, and

another single gate for people.

Then the whole idea started

that it  had to be kept constant

with  coats of fresh paint. What a

nuisance that became. It was

a steady make-work job, because

once he got to the end, about

a year-season later, he'd just

begin again. Monstrously

unnecessary, and I didn't see

how anyone could purposely

walk into such a self-created

ambush. I helped, every so

often, but hated it. Each picket

had sides, thin and narrow,

the undersides of the horizontals,

all sorts of potential mind-crazing

junk to do. The first year it was

erected, finished, and put up,

that was the same year, at the

end of February, that I got

creamed by El Loco-Motive

(that's what I called it), and

thankfully that pulled me out of

the fence-paint scheme for a

long time. Avenel handicrafts

sure didn't need me.

-

Sometimes people set themselves

up for tasks only because it's all

some figment in their mind. Like

my father  -  he treated this little

slab of property amidst 160 other

houses exactly the same in their

'small-square-boxity,' like it was

some Cos Cob, Connecticut

palatial estate. Perhaps to him

it was; up from Bayonne,

claiming his piece of the world

with a view towards pride and

accomplishment. I never saw it

that way, but, whatever. The

mental fence he'd constructed

ringed his 'ranch'  -  probably

hundreds of acres of dreamland

on some vast Texas range. All

he ever seemed to need was a

hose, for the lawn, a box of

Shop-Rite ice cream, (88 cents;

he loved that stuff and would

spoon it from a squareish

cardboard box, three flavors

in one. It was a ton of ice

cream for that little price),

a lawn chair, and some beer.

You had a couple of choices

out front of 116 Inman : watch

the grass grow, watch the fence

grow (?), or its paint age, or

watch the neighbors and the

passing cars. Rock-ribbed fun,

man. Avenel rang the bell. Of

course, if most of it was of

reclaimed swampland in need

of a good, American-Indian

burnover, no one ever said.

-

Anyway, later on as I grew up

and out, I could see in retrospect

how such a place could become

an all-consuming dead-end. There

are people here who've never left

it, and rolled from the yearly

quadrille into some fitful job

adequate to where they were.

That's a pretty cool thing, and

we all should be so lucky; BUT,

it should never become so

all-consuming that your own,

personal dead-reckoning becomes

your own personal dead-end.

Whatever you're doing, you better

concentrate on perspective (like

the old painters did). That works.

Once you begin breaking your

realities down (I was so guilty

of all that, and so early on  -  even

though I had help from guides and

spirit lights in another realm, from

being in a coma for a few large

calendar turns), that Cezanne

landscape you've been visualizing,

yeah that one, uh oh  - has no way

in, but also has no way OUT.

There's your problem. That's when

men (and women) turn to drink,

drugs, pastimes, and things like

the Elks Hall or somesuch, to make

patter with their own emptiness.

-

The fiction was  -  in Avenel anyway  -

that no individual should ever have

a need to reach that 'keystone' point

after which one's entire worldview

and functional viewpoint about things

changes. They wanted  -  even though

they had no clue they wanted it  - a

very arch-conservative view, even

amidst the changes they themselves

had wrought in the town by arriving

there, changing thus the landscape

and woods and building propositions.

In that respect they were all as blind

and ignorant about themselves as

moles. family moles, perhaps, with

some form of good intentions, but

moles nonetheless. It was a hopeless

scene, and contribute greatly to

me three  -  at least   - attempts to

get out of there immediately :

Train wreck, seminary, and then

New York City, to simply name

three that arose in a row. As Bruce

out it : 'In the day we sweat it

out on the streets of a runaway

American dream. At night we

ride through the mansions of

glory in suicide machines.

Sprung from cages out on

highway 9, chrome-wheeled,

fuel-injected, and steppin'out

over the line. Oh-oh baby this

town rips the bones from your

back. It's a deathtrap, it's a

suicide rap. We gotta get out

while we're young; cause tramps

like us, baby we were born to run.'

A shitty poetry, for sure, but
the paradox for me is : Here I
am again, one part of me anyway,
right back where I began. The
full-circle completion of a
quite interesting flight.