CHANGING FOCUS OF ATTENTION

 

nude descending a staircase

marcel Duchamp

A picture book, large paperback, good quality paper and printing, has been staring at me for some time wanting to spend time on my lap. It is the works of Marcel Duchamp with text by Pierre Cabanne, whose book of interviews with Duchamp has a place in my house about like the Tao Te Ching, though not for the same reasons. Picking a random page in the Duchamp interviews is something like reading a few small verses by a Japanese monk, Ryokan, Basho. Duchamp does not wax Nineteenth Century deep about Truth and Beauty. Duchamp's art was of the mind. It takes the eyes for the mind to see it. In his found art series, "readymades," the object is divorced from its associations, like a bottle rack, a bicycle wheel, a snow shovel, basic shapes, and most famous, the urinal with its story, designs associated with function. Take away the function and see IT, the thing itself, separate from considerations of taste. This is such an over-simplification I beg you not to mistake it for information. I bought the book at a very reasonable price several years ago, had it down from the shelf recently looking at some of the images, reminding self Cabanne wrote the text. It is a book-length essay illustrated with the body of work. I picked it up today with intent to read the text. Very readable and insightful. I've been looking for something to read lately that will make me turn the pages. Thought I'd try a Tom Clancy. His stories have the reputation of page turners. The first page was enough for me. Never turned to see what page two said. Did not want to know. I could not read 700 pages of that prose. I tried a John LeCarre. Again, did not care what page two said. Cabanne has pulled me in like I hoped he would. Cabanne has studied Duchamp all along his way, knew Duchamp, his world and his language.

 

readymade

marcel duchamp

 

Julio Cortazar has found his way off the shelf again. Haven't read his beautiful writing in way too long, long enough that I've forgotten the stories and can read them freshly now as new. The first story I went to was, End of the Game. I will go back and read it again. It was like seeing a fabulous movie and wanting to see it again right away. Three young girls strike poses of well-known statues, and an attitude at the same time. Two of them dress one of them who strikes a pose in some spontaneous outfit beside the railroad track when the passenger train goes by at a certain time each day. May dive next into The Gates of Heaven, a tango dance parlor in Buenos Aires. It has a good chance of being next. I discovered Cortazar's stories after seeing Antonioni's film, Blow-Up. The film was an Antonioni remake of the story his way. It is one of the few films I must see every now and again to keep it fresh in memory. It never grows old. I had the good fortune to see it in a theater when it was making the "art house" circuit. I like Cortazar's story too. The film is not telling the story the same way. They are two entirely different versions of the same brief outline of a story. Both tell the story beautifully. Cortazar's original title for the collection was End of the Game and Other Stories. The movie created the market for a paperback, which the publisher changed to Blow-Up and Other Stories. The film has kept the volume of short stories in print. Reading today, I was getting frequent reminders of why I love his stories so much. I've taken another volume by him off the shelf, 62: A Model Kit. It is a "novel" composed of 62 unnumbered sections, stories, chapters? He recommends they be read in any order the reader chooses. Thought I'd read a few of these stories too, just read them as independent short stories. Mainly for the joy of reading his writing. I'm not going to get into it's better if you know Spanish and translations miss everything important. I'm all with translations. How else could I read Pierre Cabanne and much of the most beautiful writing I've read along the way?

 

fountain

marcel duchamp

 

Another one that found its way to the reading stack is volume one of the discourses of Upasni Maharaj. He is an enlightened master from the western part of India, inland a ways from Bombay, a place called Sakori. I'm looking for a place on the wall for a painting I made of him for myself. I think I know where I want it to go. It's just a matter of doing it. I like his discourses. He defines words breaking them down to their simplest parts. He says rock and wood are the most intelligent beings. Everything we know, we learned from rock and wood. He wore a sack-cloth draped around himself like a small toga (1870-1941). I wanted to read one of the discourses again about the City of the Dead. He talked about the spirits of the dead being among us. We don't see them. I'm wondering if these are different dimensions he is talking about. It mystifies me. Makes me think of Apollinaire's poem, La maison des morts, The House of the Dead. It's too much to even start attempting to give a brief. Mannequins step out of their showroom windows and join people passing by. I'm making a logjam for myself. Back to Maharaj, I like his perspective. It's straight-forward and clear. I'm in a time now of wanting to spend less time reading TruthOut articles online and seeing clips of Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. They are funny and I like the way they approach current events as comedy, but I'd rather read Julio Cortazar. First I let go of paying attention to the glorification of ignorance, and now want to let go of the parts I like as well as the parts I don't like. I like facebook for the personal interactions with others, friends, and don't want to give up facebook. Not that I'm a facebook junkie. I find it a fun way to keep in touch with the people I keep in touch with there. It is the political I want out of my mind. I'd rather read good writing for the sake of good writing. It will give me a change of perspective for the better.

the large glass

marcel duchamp

I'm in the middle of a Japanese film that is four fairy tales, Kwaidan, 1964, almost three hours long. I watched the first two and took a break. Will see the other two tomorrow. They are ghost stories. I was a little hesitant to put it on. The hesitation did not last. Right away I saw this is going to be something special. I flowed in the beauty of it. The visuals are constantly stunning. The scenes are like stage sets, Japanese style. The stories are tales of karma. Do somebody wrong and they come back to haunt you. Each story is uniquely itself. One of them, The Woman In The Snow, stays with me and will. They are stories of karmic self-creation. Classic old stories that director Masaki Kobayashi made into exquisite film. 1964 is half a century ago, but it is not dated. It seemed as contemporary as if made in the last decade. I cut it in half to savor it, enjoy some one day, and some more the next. It is too beautiful to watch without full attention and Caterpillar on my lap. I was wasting too much time and mind on people not worth a second's thought, even the ones I think I like. There comes a time I want less Rachel Maddow and more Julio Cortazar, less Jon Stewart and more Apollinaire. Makes me think of the UNCF ad slogan, A mind is a terrible thing to waste. It sure enough is on people like in the media spotlights. Al Sharpton is even taken seriously now. I think of a sign I saw on facebook, Stop making stupid people famous. Then I ask myself, has it ever been otherwise? Just reading what little bit I read today about Duchamp inspired something within. Reading the Cortazar story excited something within that reminded me I have several of his books I can read in any time I want. John Kerry in Ukraine telling Russia, Don't do as I do, do as I say, makes me laugh with derision. Why pay attention? I have a choice. I can flow in the story-telling mind of Julio Cortazar and I can see what Pierre Cabanne has to say about Marcel Duchamp. I don't have to worry my mind with the Koch brothers and the rule of mthe rich. I want to do like a tortoise and pull my head back closer to home.    

marcel duchamp himself

 

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THANK YOU FOR THIS DAY

 

raoul dufy

Day 4 of blogathon, the prompt is lists of future artistic goals over the next five years. First thing to mind was McKenzie Wren's opening to Day 2, the chorus from David Bowie's song from the early 1970s, "We've got five years." The other association that popped into mind almost simultaneously was the Soviet Five Year Plans. Through the 1950s and 60s, American propaganda was fixed on evil Communist Russia such that it became reality: Communism = Evil, Five Year Plans are stupid. It's what Communists do. You have to be of a certain age to remember that time, like in my generation you had to be of a certain age to remember the Depression. Nobody bothered to notice what the Soviets were doing was not Communism, but that was neither here nor there. Actuality has no role in propaganda. Calling orange juice ketchup doesn't make it anything but orange juice. This is where a five year plan takes my head. It doesn't mean I agree that five year plans are stupid or Communism is evil, only these are my associations. The language of propaganda. It's not that I mean it really is, only that it's my historical association. It's a bundle of personal and historical associations that makes it an unreality for me to say I want to make the world a better place or I want to spread joy or I want to be an ambassador for good, whatever that is. It doesn't even mean I disagree with people who see the good as something laudable. This is illusion, good is not always "good." Uplifting is not always elevating. I'm getting into splitting hairs territory; it's time to abandon that line of thinking. It leads ultimately to the brain is a universe of atoms floating in spirals through nothingness, which leads to looking out the window at the snowbirds hopping about in the snow the other side of the glass picking up their daily seeds. Caterpillar just now appealed to me for attention, Mao. Took a moment to rub the top of her head and her neck, tell her I love her from the heart. I took the moment to bring my own head back to the world of perception where seeing is believing, leaving off that believing doesn't have much to do with reality, and reality is different from individual to individual. I mean the reality we collectively agree upon, like gravity keeps footprints off the ceiling.

 

raoul dufy

 

My entire childhood was spent in a church where I was told several times a week that I might not be alive tomorrow. Any moment may be my last. It stuck. I've never been able to imagine a future for myself. I've seen too many variables flying about every situation and have lived long enough to see that even Noam Chomsky doesn't know the future. One unforeseeable moment can change everything. Like the assassination of Archduke (?) Franz Ferdinand with an improvised explosive device set Europe into a "World War."  The rings that go out from this one splash in time will continue to the horizon. I have a really strong feeling such an unforeseeable moment is around a nearby corner. 911 was not it, because it was foreseeable and seen coming. "We didn't have any intelligence." Duh. A child raised believing the Truth in the likelihood of not waking up in the morning, plus we might get nuked any day, I've lived with "no hope of tomorrow" as evidence of the importance of living my life today. I've also lived long enough to notice that it aint necessarily so. I woke up a lot of mornings. The last thing I had to say to that argument was to an old preacher's wife, one of the really old-fashioned kind, of which we have many today, a haughty old thing pretending humility, the worst gossip in the church and kept a smokescreen of piety about herself obscuring the inner bitch, the self her husband and kids knew well. She was on the verge of feeble when, going out the church-house door, I assisted her descent of the four steps. She thanked me. I said, "See you next time." She said, "We have no guarantee of that." I thought, Lord have mercy, don't I know it,  and said, "I'll pretend I do, and if I don't it won't matter." She didn't even give my clever young frivolity an harrumph. It was the last time I saw her. She wasn't able to leave home soon after, then hospital and nursing home. She was steeped in a lifetime of old Calvinist, Puritan mind of post-medieval northern Europe and Britain, like her husband and her daddy, believed anything fun was the devil himself, the kind of thinking that pushed me toward atheism. The moment with her on the church-house steps was after my awakening. I don't mean awakening here to mean enlightenment, only the kick-start of awareness. The awakening turned me away from heavy serious thinking to a more light-hearted attitude toward experience. I don't mean Boca Raton Barbie, nor do I mean System Of A Down.

 

raoul dufy

 

In the past I attempted to make some plans, but didn't believe them. In late-Twenties I bought a two-volume set of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, to save it for old age. It was something I wanted to read in my later years. I have two sets of the two volumes. I've never opened any of them. They are preserved on my bookshelf. In the mid-1980s I discovered Australian writer, Patrick White and read him, one after the other. Came a day I did not want to read everything yet and be done with him. I wanted to save the rest for my later years for something I know I will enjoy to the max. Neither White nor Proust appeal to me now as something I want to read. I want to finish a couple books by Chris Hedges I'd begun at the same time. I want to finish a history of China that calls to me. I want to find a good history of the Persian Empire. I'd also like to find a history of Kazakhstan before it was broken up into the -stans. I have a wonderful history of the Ottoman Empire that I want to read again. I'd like to reread Diana Eck's beautiful book, Banaras City of Light. And there are so many I want to read again. I want to read more poems by John Berryman. I want to finish the four volumes of Andre Gide's Journals. I want to read more in the discourses of Upasni Maharaj. I want to reread some plays by Harold Pinter. I don't have time for Proust. He's too far down the list. There's no way this body will hold out that long. A few days ago I was thinking I want to take Julio Cortazar's novel, 62: A Model Kit, off the shelf, not to read all of it, unless I choose to, but to read a few pages at a time randomly. The novel itself is in 62 sections or chapters to be read in any order the reader chooses. Thought I might read a few, I love his writing, for the joy of reading his sentences. I went to the shelf and took it down. It's nice to see it again. Too many years have gone by without reading him. It may end up in a stack on the floor, but it was a good feeling to touch its cover and flip the pages. I don't dare say I will indeed read in it. Tomorrow I may say tomorrow. And I may take it as soon as I'm finished writing to the reading chair, put on the reading glasses, have a cup of hot chocolate, feet up off the floor, and read for an hour in bliss with sunlight to read by.

 

raoul dufy

 

As you have accurately guessed by now, this mind doesn't do well with goals. I could plan a goal today and next week it will be something that was important a week ago. For appointments I write in black or red on a wall calendar with inch and a half by inch and three quarters rectangles for each number. If an appointment doesn't get written there, it's forgotten. I've never taken to goals, goals being a sort of plan, the carrot on the stick to keep the donkey going. I can't even conceive imagining one goal, certainly not five, and then five more goals for this year, in addition. It makes my psychic bodies explode. Goals are motivated by desire for success. I'm recalling in ninth grade running around the football field track at a tournament chasing the guy running in front of me I had to beat to win. I never liked that feeling, having to beat somebody to win. It didn't feel right then, doesn't feel right now. It's the winning I have no desire for. I don't want to win a lottery because I don't want the trauma of overnight unlimited wealth and every snake on earth having a bead on me. I like my life on Waterfall Road where I have a hard time finding the money every year to pay property taxes you'd laugh at in awe for being so little. I never wanted to climb the ladder of success. Soon after high school I tried to go against that thinking by reading Atlas Shrugged and Think and Growä Rich. It all made me gag. What do I give a shit about a bunch of rich people needing to live underground because they hate everybody else. I'd rather read Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums. At least reading Dharma Bums made me feel cool. Think and Grow Rich made me feel poor and worthless. I could not give my mind to continuous meditation on money and/or success. Robert Lowell was an uber-successful American poet with plenty of money, his name in perpetuity on his chair in the inner sanctum of American Poetry, and he went *pop* that's it cat shit. It evidently didn't mean all that much to him. John Berryman too. Randall Jarrell jumped in front of a car on the interstate at night. They had caught the carrots on the stick they started out wanting, fame, to be well thought of, and in some cases money. Like, Wow. I don't want to find my life so regrettable I need to bail out and see if I can finish saying Geronimo. I'll just take it a day at a time and play like I'm doing something spiritual.   

 

raoul dufy

 

 

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THE NEWS IS THE BLUES

     winter trees by tj worthington

A few minutes ago I saw a headline that said, Cockroaches and traffic jams are more popular than Congress. It told me there had been some kind of survey. I felt like it was obvious, decided not to look at the article. Then I thought about the survey part and decided to take a look. It might have something interesting in it besides the obvious. It showed a clever graph in relation to percentages of what a test sample of people thought of varieties of subjects besides Congress. It came up 48% of the people tested preferred lice to Congress. And 38% like meth labs less than Congress. Corny bunch of statistics, but clever. It does make a picture. It's like the republican party playing all or nothing stakes with a pair of twos. I have to say that after watching the systematic dismantling of American Democracy by republicans over the last 32+ years, they do not represent their constituents.  If republicans are the party of the rich, they don't give a very good show for the people they represent. As the republican politicians represent the rich, they make the rich look dumber than I'd thought. Money and intelligence don't necessarily go together. They make it certain we understand clearly they do not represent us, the people that work for a living. Nor do they represent the middle class, the management class.

I've not looked into it with fact-checker, but came across a statistic a few weeks ago saying Turtle McConnell's fortune six years ago amounted to three million. This year it's 24 million. Evidently according to tax records. I don't think the Senate pays that well. Except under the table. Good boy. Just say No. Of course, it's above-board, within the law. I trust the democrat party is preparing to defeat McConnell next election cycle. Boner too. They'll be replaced by just as bad or worse. So it really doesn't matter. It's not like they have the cream of the crop to pick from. It's more like they pick from the dregs. For one thing, to be a republican, you are expected to reject the scientific method, take your cues from Rush Limbaugh, demonstrate disdain for education, and call absence of intelligence patriotism. It goes past my understanding that the republican half of the Congress has been to college, some to law school. They do not represent American advanced education well. Did all of them pay somebody to go to school for them? Looking at the Congressional republicans as representative of the American people (I don't mean actively representing in Congress, but representing like a mirror image), we are a stupid bunch of self-centered goose-stepping ass-kissers that only lie when we speak. N'est pas?

I used to believe that when things got so bad, it would be a natural next thing for a turn about of fortune. Our government doesn't operate that way. It's done by propaganda. The republican party is not in danger of going away. Only in danger of not being able to get 51% until they come up with new strategies not based in the same lies. Artful propaganda will take care of it. When a certain kind of propaganda ceases to work, a new one steps into its place. It's a world created by the mind that is totally of the mind, changes as fast as flashing lights in Las Vegas, and the rules are rules of the mind with little to no relation to the world of gravity as we know it. They'll find a new line of nonsense to spin into the illusion of substance and get back the people they alienated. If they went away, just faded out, the democrat party would split the way churches split and we'd have the republicans again. There's no going away. In a way, I don't care. In another way, I do care. When I see that I do care, then I look at the situation as it is. I have no power and never wanted power. I have no money and never wanted money. In America power and money are the same. Which is to say, I am not a player. Therefore, it is not very mindful to complain that I have no power behind my voice where DC is concerned. All I'm doing is tapping into that mind game with my mind and riding it like a merry-go-round. John Lennon's voice comes to mind, I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round. I really love to watch them roll.

Wouldn't I do better to focus on the sculpture and the life of Constantin Brancusi? I'd do better to look through a world atlas with satellite images. If I really thought about the value of what I let my mind follow, I'd be ignoring the news and looking at a book of Larry Rivers images. I'd be reading essays and looking at pictures in the extraordinarily beautiful book, The ART of ZEN. I'd be reading essays by Ajit Mookerjee and looking at pictures in YOGA ART. I'd read again An ART Of OUR OWN, by Roger Lipsey, a view of the spiritual in 20th century art. Maybe instead of reading it straight through, I'll read it an artist at a time. Skip around like in a Cortazar novel. Julio Cortazar. It wouldn't hurt to reread him. He tells a good story. I could look at pictures by Kurt Schwitters and read about his life. Quite a character. I could read some more in a couple of books I have of David Hockney, one by him. I could finish Duchamp's biography. I could look at the Motherwell book or the Malevich book, pictures of minimalist art, Greek art, Andy Warhol, Franz Kline, Jasper Johns, Duchamp, Max Ernst, Gorky, Whistler. All this within reach of where I sit and I listen to the news like there is something to it. Considering that I have an unknown but limited time of future left in this body, why am I listening to the news? Why do I care about being represented by Virginia Foxx in Raleigh? She does not represent me in any way. I daresay she's never listened to Jane's Addiction.

The news really does bring me down. I hear about Israel blowing the hell out of Gaza and rockets. Syrian army targeting children, American republicans dismantling democracy viciously with hatred for the working poor, American aggression, sex crimes, kids killed at school. Surely, to balance the negative vibes of the events that get on the news, there is the same amount, at least, of events that are to our benefit. Media is not a place to go to find such. Internet maybe. Funny how we have to look for the good news. When we find it, it's boring. Who cares about a third grade girl in 4-H raising a show bull? I visit friends Justin and Crystal watching football on tv. After the games, I've come to like shows of the guys in Louisiana swamps catching alligators, and one called Moonshiners. Hillbillies on the one hand and Cajuns on the other. The Louisiana accent has subtitles on the screen. I like seeing regular people, the kind of people I know and live among, have come to value and appreciate, the people that don't pay attention to anything outside the immediate world of their neighbors, the people they work with and are kin to, the kind of people you find all the way up and down the Appalachian chain. I understand the Cajun culture of Louisiana is a world of its own, too. We have pockets of traditional and non-traditional music all over the country in rural areas and cities. What we have access by media to is music as product. The good news is that wherever you live, there are people playing traditional music of your region someplace. You may have to drive a ways, but probably not more than fifty miles. I drive forty miles to Woodlawn almost once a week for music that is worth every minute on the road.


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