Re: Artists

["Ronald W. Garrison" <rwgarr@intrex.net>]

Karen Newcombe wrote:

> >Come on now, don't you
> >really wonder *how she does it*? How can she be "in the world, but
> not
> >of the world", as some religious people put it (usually without
> living
> >up to it very well, either).
> >
> >--Ron
>
> I know how she does it.  I do it too, and so do some others on this
> list.
> You take your pencil (or piano) in hand and work.
>
> I think the point I'm trying to make is perhaps better made by the
> following, about writing, but it extends to all art:
>
> "A writer's pulse, the beat passing through the work that makes the
> work
> her own, is the only signature she needs.  Shakespeare is the best
> example
> of a writer about whom we know almost nothing and yet whose voice is
> so
> distinctive that if we met him on the street we are sure we should
> recognise him at once.  Shakespeare's impersonality is not lack of
> personality in fact, the everywhereness of Shakespeare in his plays
> has
> encouraged endless attempts to reconstruct the man.  But what can we
> say
> about him?  That he is a Royalist and that he is not.  That he belives
> in
> Order and that he does not.  That he despises women and that he
> venerates
> them.  That he is an advocate of excess and lectures against it.  That
> he
> believes that some murders are justifiable but that no murderer is.
> Like
> The Bible, the Works of Shakespeare can be used to prove anything.
> Like
> the massive central presence of Godhead in The Bible, the central
> presence
> of Shakespeare is all pervasive, but what is it?  As we conficently
> come to
> talk about the solid presence that meets us at every performance, at
> every
> reading, we find we cannot talk about it at all."
>
>                                         -- Jeannette Winterson, Art
> Objects
>                                            "A Word of My Own"
>
> Karen  kln@staralliance.com

...This makes a lot of sense. Actually, it begins to sound like a Zen
koan, and probably for good reason. The truths that seem the most
elusive are often the ones that are staring you right in the face.

I can relate very much to the issue, too, although I'm not in an
"artistic" profession, by any usual criteria. I just consider the
question of how one can make a living in today's society. One can be
willing to do what no one else likes to do--that's one way, and it
works, to a degree--it has to, for most people wind up relying on it.
You can manipulate the system in various ways. Or you can do risky
things. It's all a matter of tradeoffs. You can accept a lower material
standard of living in return for getting to do what you like to do.
*Or*, last but not least, you can follow the path that is the best of
all, for those who can stay on it--you just get so obviously masterful
at what you do, that you can write your own ticket. And maybe there
would be a lot more who could negotiate that path, if they just resolved
very early on to never listen to all the siren songs that tell them to
do something different. And we all know that the goddamned sirens
*never* fall silent.

--Ron

--
http://www.intrex.net/rwgarr/