RUDIMENTS, pt. 337
Making Cars
Sometimes you can stop on
a dime, other times you can't.
And still other times you cannot
stop at all. I think that sums up
the manner in which people get
overwhelmed, debilitated even,
by their own selves. I saw a lot
of that on the 1990's, people
killing themselves in the sense
of becoming useless, not dead,
and mostly from cocaine. Which
must have been the most useless
and stupid drug I've ever seen.
I'd see perfectly good guys, who
I knew, turned into frothing idiots.
Coming out of bathrooms where
the white line of powder was lined
up on the back of the toilet top.
Their mouths wouldn't close, and
with sudden sniffles and gasps,
with sudden sniffles and gasps,
they'd start talking like idiots, a
constant jabber, a stroking jab
of conflict. Everything would
change, and they'd not even
know it but just go back for
more. We'd mostly be drinking
all day anyway, and these few
would punctuate it with sniffing.
Run it all down to a complete
insensibility. I could never get
through to anyone, and just
always wondered why they
even went on living.
-
A real person never got that
way, at least that's how I felt.
I'd been around, and seen lots of
a'holes on trips : All those 1960's
bingeheads were always trying
something, claiming (or confusing)
excitement and enlightenment -
as if the two had anything to do
with each other. The cheapest way
out seemed to take the ever-longest
version of a holding pattern. It was
the always the stupidest, most pain-
in-the-ass people who'd stay around
the longest, never leaving, inflicting
their disservice on everyone else.
Boy, did I want to kill, lots of times.
Guys - males, I mean - kind of
made me sick. I never liked men
much, never even that much liked
being one. That was confusing
though, because it had nothing
to do with being gay, which I
wasn't, and never was either. The
fact was, I loved women - all
the things about them attracted
me. Men were always just stupid
lunks, by contrast. I got along and
all, yes, but if a guy had a female
with him, I immediately felt
better with her, and with that.
What's a guy do? Sit around,
talk about exploits or sports or
motors, or some crazy feat. It
was always something to surpass
or better. There was never anything
passive about them, and I was
all passive. Sensitivity ran in
my bloodstream; none of that
other stuff.
-
I came to think, eventually, that all
that was Art; and it made the crucial
difference. Paul Bunyan never
painted a picture. All those big,
doofus, barely lingual, oafs had
not a fine bone in their bodies.
It was all push, shove, smash,
and careen, and I found myself
not being about that at all. I'd
much rather just sit off and think,
write something down, draw, talk
to myself. (Pretty much that was
the only real conversation I had).
I used to make up all the most
outlandish things, and write
them through, work with them -
once ejecting judgment, it became
easy. It's only when you stop
every other moment to go over
what you've done in order to
make sure it's fitting some
'category' of something or
other that's things fall flat -
because you've lost control.
You've let 'others' have control.
Real control is getting rid of
control. Most people are afraid.
Painting, writing. art, music,
even photography, they each
have to be done with a wild
abandon; past all categories.
Basically, that's what the New
York school of painting did;
they just went at it, formulating
outside of rules and categories,
and making the essays and the
theory then fit the art. They
were a tight clique, and though
they fought among themselves,
it most often was over the theory
part, not the art part. They lovingly
accepted what each of them was
doing - all the cross-purposes
and wild experimentation had
merit. It was only when the
ideology of the work stepped in
that the bad times would start.
The critics, people like, and
including Clement Greenberg,
and Harold Rosenberg (wouldn't
you know it), men who'd never
lifted a paint brush in their life,
they started running the horse-race
and commandeering the theory.
That's the way it always goes.
Purity is in the doing, not the
explaining.
-
Well, that's how I felt anyway
and I was determined that I'd
always stay on the purity side
of the fence. My disdain wasn't
complete - I mean I read all this
stuff, and those guys made good
sense and explained it all well,
but still it was 'books about books,'
so to speak - an outsider writing
about something he really
didn't know jack-shit about
except to go at it like some
twisted Talmudic sage just
running off, missing the Jesus
bus entirely and still ranting
about the god from from the Old
Testament. The new one had
run them flat down. And they
didn't even know it. They'd all
gotten rich and famous, yes;
but there really wasn't a shred
of credibility left - just old
Jewish guys making shit up.
-
That's a hard peanut to open.
I wasn't having much of it -
my life was, right then anyway
- on the streets and in my
little cabin of space at the
Studio School. Everyone else
had a hundred other things
going on. I had one. They
had loves and adventures,
sex, romance, and food. I
had one. I'd eat what I
found or that which I could
scrounge. I'd get a 25-cent
knish, and love it - rolls
and coffee, another 25 cents.
My old, shaky, Polish guy,
the one with the numbers on
his forearm, the concentration
camp survivor, he'd take care
of me. He had a little diner
type place at the corner of 11th
street and 1st Ave, or maybe it
was 2nd. It's hard to say now as
most of my brain fragments have
been put to other uses - it's really
amazing sometimes how things
go away. They get settled, and
taken care of, yes, but they just
don't stay around much. It seems
as if I'm always losing something
and then standing around trying to
recovery what it was I'd just been
thinking of. That never use to
happen. It's a bad sign. I sense
losing my own control. The
one thing I never wanted.
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