Art and Conflict

Buddhist philosophy, Zen meditations, New Age mantras: these things don't work for an artist.  The artist thrives on conflict.  Not as an end in itself toward drama, but as a catalyst for the newness, novelty, originality that comes from the mixing pot of change.

Philosophy does not work for artists.  Art is something other than philosophy.  It is more vibrant, alive, because it is a thing alive.  It is not static, except insofar as a painting is static.  The life of art comes from its lack of stability, it's action as a cipher or funnel.  All that moves through it - thought, feeling, memory - speeds up, slows down, shifts, swirls, ceases to know itself within the chaotic realm.  Chaos is the wrong word.  It is life itself, in its need and propensity to move and change.  It is life in its vibrancy.  Within art, things shift and change, lose their definition, and become associative, malleable, and connected.  They become based on their ability to associate, rather than their ability to differentiate.

Art is the tendency to take two things, profess them as opposite, and then try to bring them as nearly as possible to on another, let them grace each other, pass by one another, to appear briefly as one and the same, without breaking the veil of illusion.

Art is an illusion.  There is always an artifice to art.  Art is alive in its Nothingness.  It thrives in it lack of being.  It is a ghost, a slight of hand, a suggestion of authenticity without the credibility.  It seeks to be real while professing to be false.  A truth within a lie.  It cannot speak its truth without its falsity.  If it were spoken truly, it would be offensive, or worse.

Language and Reality

An argument is a proof and a paradox. It says, if A then B, and if B then C, and so if A then C. The proof is a succession of A, B, C. But an argument is a paradox because it is a circle that does not close. It does not close because language is a self-suspended system. It relies on itself to justify itself.

Language is a closed system. It creates Rationality by agreeing with itself. It is a system that depends wholly on itself to make sense. It has no outer reference that validates it in the way that, for example, a person can refer to another person to validate their story. There is no point where language becomes real. There is no point where language and reality become the same thing. Another way to look at it is that language is a system of tools to create agreements between people. The only way that language can be validated is when people act according to what they say they will do or when life occurs in the way described by language.

People presume that language can define Reality, but it can't because language is merely a possibility for rationality. It is not rational in itself. It can create systems of rationality but it does not, as a whole, agree with itself. If you attempt to define reality there will always be a loophole, and that loophole is some other argument that contradicts your argument. People question reality when they see this loophole because they presume that language has a one-to-one relationship with reality, but reality includes sense as well as language. It includes sensory experience as well as linguistic experience.

The Elements of Drama

Art is subdivided into sections: one of them is drama. The dramatic art depends upon concepts of beauty and terror. All things on stage are suspended between the tension of beauty and terror. Tragedy is on the more terrible side, but has beauty behind it, giving it a reason to tell a story. Comedy is more on the beautiful side, but the terrible aspect is what makes us laugh. Now we have Romance, Thriller, Horror, Western, Science-Fiction. Our dramatic art has grown heads.

In reality, a terrible thing is only terrible. It has no beauty in it. In drama, all terrible things must have some beauty in them, and all beautiful things must have some terror. The beauty of a terrible thing is what makes us interested in hearing its story. Likewise, the terror of a beautiful thing is what makes us interested in hearing its story. A terrible character will not be appreciated without a touch of beauty. And a beautiful character will not be paid attention to unless there is some element in their life that is unknown.

Drama is, at its base, an event in language. It tells a story, and a story is an event in language. Even when the drama breaks off from using the conventional form of telling a story, the assemblage of images tells a message, and a message is an event in language, as well.

Adrenaline

I think that adrenaline is for creating focus. A normal person or a house cat has a short attention span, meaning it is impossible for them to maintain focus on a static, non-changing object for more than a couple seconds at a time. Inevitably, their focus will shift to some other world or mind object. A person cannot naturally think of only one thing for a longer stretch than a moment. It is impossible to do this. The mind is in motion at all times and cannot be naturally kept in focus on one non-real object for longer than it takes to think of an idea. This is because objects, in the mind, have no boundary or structure in the literal sense, and so are fluid and connect to other ideas without prejudice. Adrenaline functions when an animal needs to focus in order to heed toward their survival. The Adrenaline pumps in and an animal can then focus with more precision, over longer periods of time thus allowing them to survive in a world containing threat and danger.

Adrenaline allows us to focus in this way perhaps because the mind is moving faster when it is on adrenaline. It skips over rates of thoughts at higher intervals per second thus allowing the animal to quickly train their mind to focus on one object. Normal processes of habituating oneself take a longer period of time to train. But on adrenaline, the mind is moving at such a speed that the animal can to train their mind faster. Perhaps this is why motivation plays such a key role in learning. And perhaps it also explains a little why the source of our inspiration is such a mystery to us: it remains fogged by the unknown processes of our instincts.

This conversation perhaps lends itself to the notion that there are, indeed, frequencies of thought. But rather than adhere the term "frequency" to a non-real concept, such as is "higher orders of thought", we can adhere it to a measurable interval, which is real because it is mesaurable. This gives us a method for affirming the conjectures of our rational thought thus giving us a realm of knowledge, rather than giving us a term that is non-rational that we have to accept as rational thus making us accept something on faith in a realm where faith has no bearing.

The Engine

The Engine is the most romantic emblem of the last epoch. The defining character of its age, it encapsulated the rebelliousness and yearning for freedom that was caught, like a sparrow, in the bosom of young men. One wonders, in the Year of the Computer, where this rebelliousness and yearning has gone.

The engine's romance is stated succinctly by its power. There is a reason that inventors did not create a smooth-running, clean, and simple artifice, and that reason is that people like the noise. People like a heavy, complicated girth that roars, growls, and purrs threateningly. People like the spectacle of the sound. Push a button and it roars. The wall of sound is a monument to its pomp. It is unabashed. It is like a tiger who lacks the self-consciousness of his power. People are friends with this barrel-chested baritone with pistons festooned across his chest, clitter-clattering. Strap that to your back and hit it.

And here is the pie: when you are moving at a stellar speed, when you are tripping with ease and grace around elements and splitting the wind, the noise - the noise that is clattering and ricocheting off the blue arches of the sky - is in concert with your speed, part and parcel with your power. It is the mouth of the motion. The foot of the freedom. The stamp of the sprint.

An Amen

I thank you, God, for the piano.

My hands are together, raised to the sky.

My knees are on the ground, and I'm looking up in placid deference.

Thank you for that beetle with the black carapace

and those 88 clitter-clattering legs;

they sing in the wind when articulated like the crickets;

those eyes that peer at you with their whites from under a single stern brow.

Thank you for that noble, girthy elephant.

For that tiger.

I love you, Piano.

I want to make you scream and growl and chatter and gasp and sing.

The Birds of the Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary is actually a historical record of events. It is a recording, or a collection, of the times that words were used in history, and what those words were then made to mean.

I bet the process of creating the Oxford English Dictionary was like assembling the animals for Noah’s Ark. I bet it was like trying to organize the world. Every little thing in the world, corporeal and incorporeal, has an aspect and a name and it is jumbling around in your mind and looking at you with a different face until you let it fall into place and fall into families. There’s the Things You Do and then there’s the Things. There’s the People, and there’s the Animals, and there’s the Buildings. There’s the Things You Were Doing and the Things You Are Doing, the Things You Did and the Things You Will Do. There’s the Sicknesses and the Sports. Those are the big animals. And then there’s the strange and unfamiliar things that other people have done that you have never heard of. Those are the small animals. Those are the little birds that you take extra time with, to examine their unique plumage, to appreciate that this bird only lives on a particular tree in a particular forest and only a particular people hear it. There are limitless numbers of those little birds out there.

Music is Different Kind of Animal

Music is an animal that looks at you differently every day. Sometimes it has its back to you and you are looking at its hide. Sometimes it sits with you quietly. Sometimes it sits in your lap and you get to examine an ear or a paw. And sometimes it stares you dead in the face and you feel its spirit echo with yours.

Singing is a different kind of beast from acting. When I’m acting, I focus on a need and the need is what drives me to open up. Muscles activate that I don’t typically use. Ranges in my voice open up that aren’t typically there. It’s the commitment to the need that turns my body on.

But when I’m singing that need is self-created. It is fabricated or mimicked at a very basic level, almost remembered. And as I sing more and more, the need and the act of singing become the same thing so that I am singing need, singing yearning. It is the need for communication expressed for its own sake, the flower that blossoms.

The Word

The word is everywhere. It hangs obscenely from corners like a pitch of gremlins. It chatters between the buildings on a skyline. It gilds the mountains like fur on a camel’s back. It lays in the concrete like tiny packages of gunpowder that pop and snap underneath my heels. It gathers in the black storm clouds and all the “k”’s and “v”’s clatter and strike their sharp corners together. It snuggles at the bases of middle-aged fir trees in the twilight stomach of the forest. It shoots from my mouth like a hammer. It drips from my lips when I’m unawares.

Acting is a Pseudo-Science

I think acting is, right now, to art what pseudo-science is to science. It has not yet graduated past the level of astrology. It is still addressed largely in obtuse, metaphysical terms. It’s rare to speak in specific units of meaning on how to act. There is not a strong, prevalent language for it for communicating the skill.

You’re not in bible study. You’re not talking about religion. You’re not talking about theology. Acting is simple. It’s not complicated. You’ve got to reduce acting down to it’s most simple elements and, if you are going to set up an exercise regimen to exercise something, exercise those. You’ve got to get away from the peripheral, orbiting space junk around acting and focus on the basic elements.

I appreciate Mamet’s school because it creates a simple language to speak on the essential elements of the art. I think it is a strong step in the direction of making acting a fully enrolled art.

Lovely Little Words

Lovely little words

Like leaves in a tree

When breath blows through them

They flutter individually

Giving a song and accolade

"Meaningful things are happening!"

Drugs are hilarious. They just jack up the output of stories that you make up in your head and make them seem more real than you already take them for. So you've got this force of nature at your back and your mind is torquing out whatever-it-will like a spitfire and you're yelling, "Meaningful things are happening! Meaningful things are happening!"

The Most Perfect Toy in the World

Do you remember as a kid you saw that one toy that was the most perfect toy that could possibly be invented? Whoever created it took two things that were meant to be together and did the sort of common sense action that passes for brilliance and put them together. For example: Laser Tag. Whoever created that toy had their finger on the pulse of every American boy. Why this toy was not created sooner I do not know. As a little boy I didn’t think it could get ANY better than this. You’re actually giving me a Laser Gun? And I get to shoot other people with this Laser Gun and it’s going to register when I hit them? I get to turn off all the lights in my house and use the furniture as cover? Come here and let me tell you something: pass me granola bars every couple of hours and I will do this for my entire life. Give me my boots, holster, and cowboy hat. Give me a fog machine for my birthday and you will be my favorite person forever. I will put a framed picture of you in the center of The Narrows - I mean, living room.

That’s what’s great about kids. They are willing to take anything and find the element of it that is a game and run with it. Even something that, on a structural level, is based on violence. The violence is not the point. This became plainly clear to me when I saw a commercial for a line of toys for boys. It struck me right off the bat how the creators had set up some of the most compelling aspects of a good story so that a boy could just drop their imagination in and run wild. It’s a big playground. “Captain Zorg was a wise and honorable leader of his people” (Yes! I can identify with that!) “but he was betrayed and banished to the planet Blazkt” (Yes! Ostracized hero facing impossible odds alone!) “he must now gather together a team of rag-tag outcasts and save the universe from evil” (Yes! The Rag-Tag Misfit Band is one of my favorite elements! And saving the universe from evil is the perfect level of conflict!) “with the Spiked Korax Launcher and Azzabax Shield” (Okay, a little bit baited).

It’s just a big game with stakes that we love.

Children Are Coming; Cover Your Face.

A friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook of a little boy coloring at his desk. His mouth was open in this scream/smile - the one that kids do when they’re unexplainably feeling hyperactive and their actions start having the surprising, angular motion of insects. You don’t know what they’re going to do next and they are randomly emitting these piercing little screams as they skip around the room. You are trying to laugh because you think they are having fun, but your hands are coming up halfway to cover your face. 

So this little boy is screaming in that hyper way as he’s coloring and the caption under the picture says, “I FUCKING LOVE COLORING!” It’s pretty hilarious. And she had about 20 comments and every one was either a single or double worded exclamation including the word “Fucking” or an acronym that included the letter “F” to stand for “Fucking”. I decided that the best comment I could get from someone is that I’m “Fucking Hilarious.” If we ever have the “Siskel and Ebert” of our generation their stamp of approval will be “Fucking Hilarious.” “Well, Ebert, I thought this movie was Fucking Hilarious.” “I did, too, Siskel. I also thought it was Fucking Hilarious.”

Friends are the ocean in which I float.
Music is the mountain upons which I dance.

Life is Passion

Life is Passion

Fiery, smoldering love
that knocks your mind around
like wooden blocks

A great, red lust
that transmutes your muscles into
hard rubber
and has no life in the world
that you know

Frog

Frog
three-toed fry
vagrant, minstrel-boy
courting the wet nights.
you sing,
Come to me, my lovers
Come to me to lie
Come forward, all you lovers
This chorus needs your voice.
you've got your band of brothers
your poly-rhythmic jive
you wicked band of brothers
you all want love tonight.

Dog
you guard the house
you watch the door
from the threshold.
something's in the shadows
you can feel it in your bones
what's come inside our circle?
tell me, tell me all
so, strike your silver tongue
a velvet tremolo
a warning to the unwelcome
prime your rank throat.

I've got
six legs in a row
I know how to use them all.
I go where I want to
I go where looks good

The Cowboys

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