WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY

matisse

Another writer I hold almost the equal of Tolstoy in depth, breadth and beautiful writing, Patrick White, of Australia. He caught my attention when he received the Nobel in 1973. I first read The Eye of the Storm, the novel written after the prize, fifteen years later. From first page to last, it was the most amazing story I'd ever read, and writing as beautiful as Tolstoy's, though mid-Twentieth Century Australian English, instead of 19th Century Russian in translation. A quarter century has gone by since reading it and I can still see the characters, the images as I saw them in the mind's eye, remember the story as if I'd just finished it. I've thought of reading it again, but know it so well, I don't feel need for a refresher. It is the story of a woman in her 80s, the richest and once the most beautiful woman in Australian society, confined in bed with a form of dementia, unable to talk or move on her own. Parts of the story are written from inside her mind, her thoughts, memories, from a clear mind. The characters are the four round-the-clock nurses with their own stories, the woman's accountant, and later, her son and daughter, son from London, daughter from France. Son was the Olivier on stage of his time. Daughter was married to a French prince. Brother and sister hate each other. They don't like mom either, and she has no use for them. No one in the story is likeable. And all the characters dislike the others. They're every one flawed, vain, realistically illustrated characters. It caused me to realize the people I can't like have good and valid stories, like the people I like, maybe better. 

matisse

Another one I loved by White, the Vivisector, a fictional biography of an Australian painter of abstractions, so beautifully written each page is a wonderful place to be-here-now. Another one, Riders of the Chariot, brings memories of the characters, a curious variety of people that come together for a symbolic crucifixion. White's writing is concise, clear, devoid of flourishes, trim and spare. A verse I believe attributed to Kabir, "Dive deep, O mind, dive deep, in the ocean of God's beauty. If you dive to the uttermost depths, there you will find the gem of love." White dives deep into his characters and writes a living story of people you can't help but care about for knowing them so well. I'm not pointing these writers out as the best ever, etc. These are the ones who have made a major difference in my reading and my view of the world. I've come to see that reading has been one of my life's major purposes. Reading and the pursuit of inner growth, it turns out, have been my life's purposes. Reading feeds the growth, fertilizer. Before 1970, there weren't many books available of spiritual writings from the East. Since 1970, we have a major market of books concerning spirituality that get into something beyond you-better-not. I read the discourses of masters from India, Meher Baba, Upasni Maharaj and some others. Zen writings, Sufi writings, Tibetan writings, can be found in abundance now.  

matisse

Without books, my interior growth would have been restricted to having to learn everything by direct experience. I can read Tibetan writings, journals by Zen masters, Buddhist sutras and other writings. At least to be familiar. All my life I never understood people who did not want to read. I take them for not very curious people. I'm ok with people who lack curiosity, considering they're the majority. It's the nature of the world I live in anywhere. However, I cannot limit myself to the incurious state of the people around me. That they're not curious about much is theirs, not mine. Mine is to take care of my own interior needs, concern myself with what's mine, not somebody else's. Everybody has their own shit to go through, reading or not reading, and how they take care of their own lives is the only part that matters. Same as with myself. Before coming to the mountains, I felt separate from everybody else for reading. I can't talk with people I know about books I'm reading. I learned a long time ago never to mention a book, reading a book or the existence of books. I've learned it so well, it has inhibited writing about books and reading here. I do, but not much. Once I started writing a few days ago about reading, I realized y'all who read this are readers. I can talk about reading with you. 

matisse

This is part of why I like writing to y'all. You have become the ones I can open up to, reach way down inside when necessary to look for something obscured deep in the interior Marianas Trench of experiential memory. I can't talk with anybody about any of what I talk to y'all about. I live in a world of interests totally different from mine. My friends have families, shoot deer, drive power pickups, watch tv football, fish, have all kinds of interests that are not mine. And I have interest that is not theirs. We balance well. I like to listen to friends tell hunting stories and archery tournament stories, and I like to hear about working on cars, though it's not an interest of mine to do. I tend to appreciate in my friends their abilities that are not my own. Like Philippe Petit, who walked the wire between the WTC towers. I totally admire what he did. It is something I could never learn the rest of my life if I were to practice every day. I hear a fiddler, or violinist, and listen in awe. It is something entirely out of my possibilities, no matter how much training and practice. I like to read about Crazy Horse, who shot arrows accurately from the back of a running horse in a herd of stampeding buffalo. And he got that rascal Custer. Got himself bayoneted in the back inside an American general's office immediately after a truce. I've learned from reading that Van Gogh did not kill himself, but was shot by somebody he knocked to the ground after an insult. I like knowing such sorts of things. I like access to what other people have to say. Many tell a good story. 

matisse by matisse

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THE INTIMACY OF READING

ralph stanley and the clinch mountain boys

oil on canvas by tj worthington

A facebook friend posted today his thoughts and experience on a lifetime of reading, looking at the books, in particular, that were important to him, that stay with him. Like I look at a bookshelf and my eye falls on One Man's Bible, by Gao Xingjian, a Chinese dissident living in Paris. I feel the same glow in my heart as when I gaze at the window and see a squirrel at the birdfeeder, tail curled behind its head, nibbling a seed. The spine of the book reminds me of the content, as powerful for me in the time of reading it as Henry Miller's Colossus of Marousi in the time of reading it. James Lord's biography of Italian/Swiss/French sculptor, Giacometti, was important, because I came to know him, admire his mind, his vision, how simply he lived. At the end, Giacometti died and was buried. I closed the book, sat in the chair and cried for half an hour. It was the same as hearing of the death of one of my closest friends. I see a piece by Giacometti today and feel his presence in it. The only tool he used was his pocket knife, which inspired use of minimal tools in my own art making. I use a drill, a saw, a brush, and a palette knife, wood glue. 

philippe petit

I see the title, Man On Wire, and remember Philippe Petit, who walked the wire between WTC towers. I have three newspaper articles I've kept because they said something powerful to me. One was an article from the Village Voice when Andy Warhol was shot. Another, Philippe Petit's amazing event walking the wire. The third, an article from a newspaper about Johnny Weissmuller, a famous Tarzan from the Fifties, kept alive a vegetable in an Acapulco condo on the beach, tubes and round the clock nurses. Couldn't talk from stroke after stroke after stroke, unable to die because heart was so healthy from a lifetime of rigorous exercise. All he could do was give out a Tarzan yell from time to time and run shivers through the whole condo. I think the Tarzan story told me exercise aint what it's cracked up to be. Why was Petit's event so meaningful for me? He walked a wire between two buildings that sway, up high in the wind above the city of canyons. I know that I could not even stand on the roof of a skyscraper, could not step out of the elevator or stair well door. I sure as hell could not stand at the edge and look down at the street two tenths of a mile below. I don't know all there is to know about self, not even close, but I do know that. Him crawling over the edge and just stepping onto the wire rates my total respect. I'd rather read about him than Henry Kissinger. 

johnny weissmuller

The Lance and the Shield, by Robert M Utley, a biography of Sitting Bull, hit me as deeply as the Giacometti biography. By the end, I knew Sitting Bull, the man himself, who he was. I felt something I had never before felt from a biography, that I knew this man, knew him well. His values were mine. He seemed as familiar as reading a memoir by someone I already knew well. Like Wendy Salinger's, Listen, a beautifully written memoir of living through sexual child abuse by daddy, illustrated for me why my friend Wendy was wired tight as a banjo string. Sitting Bull, I felt I knew as well as I knew Wendy. I spoke with a woman friend about it who was somewhat psychic. She told me to ask him. I said I don't know how. She said, Yes you do, just do it. Later, at home, I went into a kind of meditation, settled down, and appealed to Sitting Bull in spirit. He appeared. We were in his tipi, either side of a small fire in the center. We smoked the pipe. I was in awe, hesitant to speak. I was thinking this is about more than a silly question. Eventually, I asked him why he is so familiar to me, why I know him so well. He said, "I am your real father." We spoke a little bit more, though mostly sat in silence. I visited him a few more times, no more questions and answers, only silence. I painted a portrait of him that is on the wall maybe four feet from where I sit. My version looks more like Gregory Peck in brown face. 

The Lance and the Shield was reprinted years later with new title and some places rewritten, Sitting Bull. I read it. And found later, a book of stories from the life of Sitting Bull that were passed down through the family, by his great-grandson, Ernie LaPointe. They're among the book treasures in the house. Another treasure in the house is Ralph Stanley's memoir, Man Of Constant Sorrow, written for him by Eddie Dean, who wrote it in Stanley's own words, as if Stanley, himself, wrote it. I have to credit Dean, because it is so beautifully written. I carried the copy to a show at Fairview and asked Ralph to sign it. I couldn't speak. I knew if I spoke a word I'd break out in tears that wouldn't stop. I asked him to sign it by opening the book and putting it before him. He got it. He wrote his signature in it, and that was all I wanted. I'm not one to ask writers to sign books, but this was necessary. I painted a portrait of him and his band playing at Fairview Ruritan, drove it to Clintwood, Virginia, and gave it to the Ralph Stanley museum in appreciation for his music. Asked if I'd like to meet him, I declined. I said I'd turn to jello. They said, he's just a man. I said, I know. He's also Ralph Stanley. A biography of the Carter Family, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone, opened their music to me, one of the great gifts of my life. A few days ago I started Philip Glass's memoir, Words Without Music. I can see already it's going to be one of those books that is a treasure for how deeply it speaks to me. 

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RULED BY HYPOCRISY AND LIES

     bullhead from air bellows



As I hear people talk on the radio, journalists largely, and as I talk with friends about what we see taking place in the world we live in, I hear much talk about how it's not government, it's not this, it's not that, it's everything going at once. We've become internationally interdependent through the corporations using cheap labor in Asia, Africa, the poor places where people will work for next to nothing. This, of course, brings our standard of living down, because American jobs have been "out sourced," to sweatshop labor in the poorest parts of the world. What's puzzling me is how it appears everything is crumbling at once, everywhere. I can't help but think of the end of a casino game when it's time to pay up. Credit, hypocrisy and lies have been the order for so very long that the world hypocrisy and lies created is, essentially, a house of cards. It's like the wind blew and the house of cards is falling. I talk with friends and the view from conservative and liberal is that hypocrisy and lies characterize our so-called representative government. Our representatives represent the ruling class, and that's it. They do not represent nor do they recognize the working class.



The Wall Street demonstrations are interesting, but I've seen in the past the corporate power of the press belittle and demonize the demonstrators, ridicule them powerless, infiltrate and arrest. I've heard speculation that these demonstrations, if they continue to grow, could become a political force. Like the demonstrators in the 60s/70s, they're naive, spontaneous, unorganized and easy to manipulate. Like the Indians, whose manner of warfare was individual, unorganized and spontaneous. The organized Army succeeded because the Indians were entirely unorganized. The corporate press and corporate control isn't going to back down from a bunch of completely unorganized non-rich people. They also control the military. They have the concentration camps waiting. Army might not open fire on Tea party activists, but they sure as hell will on Wall St demonstrators. This weekend on one of the comedy weekend shows like Whadayaknow?, somebody young was talking about the demonstrators, what the people were like, what they were about. Somebody my generation said to him for a moment of levity, "They shot us." Laughter of recognition from the audience.



One of the best demonstrations I've known of was the one documented in Michael Moore's FAHRENHEIT 911, the inauguration parade in DC after the Bush Administration coup by judicial fiat. That's the only place I've seen or heard of the demonstrations that day. The people all along the parade route were hostile. Corporate press didn't do much of a job of covering it. Like corporate press ignored the Wall St demonstrations as long as they could. I thank God for Michael Moore. He has put himself out there for character assassination and the very likely possibility of a hit by a "lone gunman," as happens in America. Johnson told the press what to report before the 1968 Vietnam demonstration, and they printed it as he directed. What the corporate press reported had nothing to do with what happened that day. And thank God for Norman Mailer writing THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT where he told what happened at the press conference. He was there. He was independent of the corporate behemoth, even had his own power.



Whatever is happening, a big change is occurring. It's kind of like everybody's hand in a poker game is called at once. Time to pay up. We're in this crazy time of prozac and zoloft and viagra, crystal meth, etc, and our humor is all canned now through television. I've been seeing videos by a French guy, Remi Gaillard, who does something off the wall in public with a video camera watching, a surprise moment that is actually funny. Like doing gymnastics on the overhead rings for passengers to hang onto in the subway. He might snatch something out of somebody's hand and run off with it. It's zany, silly, goofball, everything he does. In one of his videos, Shark Attack, he put on a furry shark outfit like a clown and ran up to a guy fishing and sprayed him with shaving cream. He ran to somebody else standing nearby, squirted shaving cream on him. He ran and the man ran after him.



I've been fascinated by a trend that's been going on quite awhile in the big cities of the world, some people of an artistic mind create public events absolutely devoid of meaning, absurd moments in public for the entertainment of whoever happens to be there at the time. Sometimes they get arrested. A bunch in New York called Improv Everywhere. You can see them on YouTube too. In one, they put somebody dressed like a jockey into a merry go round situation, where he rode one of the horses pretending to be riding in a race. A couple guys had set up a temporary sports announcer spot where two guys called the race on the merry go round. The kids on it and the parents were laughing over what had become of their ride on the merry go round. At the end, they declared the little boy riding the rabbit the winner of the race, gave him roses and a trophy. The kid didn't know what was going on, but recognized it was nutty and fun, and he went with it, played his part.



There is Philippe Petit who stretched a cable between the world trade center towers and walked back and forth on it. He also did impromptu events by surprise in cities. He'd dress in black with a tophat like a mime, and ride a unicycle, especially good for a quick getaway from cops. I saw him once in NY walking around the lip of a fountain in robotic style, a smooth flow, unreal balance. He's as comfortable on a thin line as I am on the ground. I didn't know that was Petit I saw at the fountain until I read in his book MAN ON WIRE that he did things like that in NY. He was arrested regularly. Photographs of him in that time tell me it was him. He puts on a moment of street theater to lift the spirits of a random selection of people by surprise.



I can't help but put the two together, that "the end of the world as we know it" is here, a time when the absurd has meaning. It's like Yeats said at the beginning of his poem, The Second Coming,

     Turning and turning in the widening gyre
     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world;
     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
     The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
     The best lack all conviction, while the worst
     Are full of passionate intensity.



I like the comedy of people like Remi Gaillard and Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere. We have so little public art in our cities and towns and so little access to art, and we carry so much time-sensitive matter in our heads it makes us numb to whatever art we might see. Out in the world of other people and suddenly, out of nowhere, a bunch of people start singing and get the attention of all around, a performance, and then it's over. No admission fee. A moment all that witness it will never forget, like I never forgot the Philippe Petit moment. I'm glad civilization has reached a place where we have people who do these things. It had to get so bad we needed comic relief, so I can't say I'm completely glad. But it's the nature of how things are. Like it's cold in winter and warm in summer. I'm grateful to these people with that turn of mind to think up these clever things to do and set them in motion. We don't have street theater in the modern world. Against the law, I suppose. But we have these guerilla street theater artists and we have YouTube at the same time. It's not all bad.



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