RUDIMENTS pt. 1,100
(the monster, the colossus, the octopus)
I always wondered why it was
that some people 'clicked' and
others didn't. I don't mean in
romance or friendship; rather
I mean writers and artists. It
was always one of the unchecked
boxes in my 'completed' list. The
idea that, at a certain level, at
any one time, there are 20 or 100
people pretty much undertaking
the same thing - why does a
William Faulkner take off, and
a Frank Norris not? It works
that way in any sphere - art,
music, writing. etc., and I
never got to the bottom of it.
There are 'gestalt' streams, I
always felt, from which all
these people draw their water,
at one, same, contemporary,
time. But, some make it to high
times, and others flail about. It's
never been a question of quality
or skill. Honestly, there's a
persistent level of adeptness
by which everyone gets by, and
those, in fact, who sometimes
seem the least adept - as far as
drawing, line, color, context -
are the ones who go the farthest.
Perhaps it's some exemplification
of an almost daring and child-like
stab into unknown realms? The
premise behind accepted 'quality,'
after all, is consumerism. In this
day and age it goes that anyone
can be convinced of anything if the
correct media-blast and acceptance
level is properly composed - witness
movies and television and music,
to name but 3, wherein most any
crap gets pushed hard enough so
that pygmies bearing names like
RapperLG or Dominda Manifusco
(sample nothing names) can braise
their airwaves with their steadied
drivel. Keith Haring, anyone?
-
If you scratch beneath the surface
of whatever it is - nowadays called
craft, or artisan, level stuff, and
'curated' too by beanbags of
nothingness - you'll find a pretty
even kingdom. I've always liked
'interesting' things - I write to
be interesting, to pique peoples'
further interest, stirred on or
made inquisitive themselves by
something I posed or said or
included. That can get fairly
'uneven' - so that I myself have
never 'considered' myself to be
part of the evenflow of regular
thought or writing. Thusly, many
of the irregular names my stuff
has been called can probably be
validified to type (a pun?).
-
Way back in my seminary days,
I ran across a small series of books
by one Vernon Parrington. A very
lovely, three-volume, compact
paperback set (I now have two
sets of them, with the original).
Along with The Education of
Henry Adams, and another book
called, 'The Machine In the Garden,'
these comprised a real majority
of my 'socio/historic' learning
(all self-imposed), in those seminary
years, when, to be truthful, anything
of real value was simply NOT
covered at all. In any case, the
gist of Parrington's review of
American history was a quite
resourceful and smoothly-evolving
process which eased the nation's
way into its 'modernity' phase. To
him, there were none of those
inherent contradictions between
the 'Garden' and the Machine.
America's easy growth contained
multitudes - industry, labor, growth
development, takeover of land and
resources, railroads, etc. - all the
general paraphernalia of today's
gross world as it was building.
-
I eventually learned it was never
so. There was always a fierce
contradiction, in fact a fierce
struggle, between the coming of
the new and the curt dismissal
of the founding ethos of the
nation, with its ideas of small
farm, rural life, quaint and
distant communication, and
local hegemonies. n some sense,
we never got over it, even though
it's now all buried and forgotten
about. Certainly the mechanistic
end of everything won out.
-
Here's Frank Norris, in a book of
his called 'The Octopus' - a sort
of allegory for rational, mechanistic
power and its subsuming of America.
(1901) - His main character, a poet,
here named Presley, is waking at
sunset, in a lovely, mild, evening,
with everything still (allegorically,
a pastoral Eden version of America:
"But suddenly there was an
interruption, and in the advancing
darkness its advancing eye, Cyclopean,
throwing a glare far in advance" comes
thundering down the track and
smashes into a herd of sheep..."The
iron monster had charged full into
the midst, merciless, inexorable. To
the right and left, all the width of
the right of way, the little bodies had
been flung; backs were snapped
against the fence posts; brains
knocked out. Caught in the barbs
of the wire, wedged in, the bodies
hung suspended. Under foot it was
terrible. The black blood, winking
in the starlight, seeped down into
the clinkers between the ties with
a prolonged, sucking murmur." Sick
with horror, Presley turns away. "
The sweetness was gone from the
evening, the sense of peace...stricken
from the landscape, a terror of steel
and steam, the locomotive was a
symbol of a vast power, huge, terrible,
flinging the echo of its thunder over
all the reaches of the valley...the
leviathan with tentacles of steel
clutching into the soil, the soulless
force, the iron-hearted power, the
monster, the Colossus, the Octopus."
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