Thoughts on Productivity

A telegram from Dorothy Parker to her editor, 1945

"I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are -- an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew. When Natasha bites William she's saying only part of what she wants to say to him. She's saying, William! Wake up! Remember! But that gets lost in a haze of pain, his."

-- Donald Barthelme, "Jaws"

new, terrible obstacles seem unsurmountable 

when rising up

but then, after showing teeth, fall back 

and circle, distracted.

on days when i cannot paint am i still 

a painter?

on days when i do not make anything 

am i still one of the good ones

leaning imperceptibly into the green?

my identity as a maker grids everything, 

allows for the job,

the sadness. makes poverty bearable, 

though it still hurts.

everything hurts but not as much as we 

think it will. a little less.

or, if two things hurt, the relief of one, 

especially before relief was expected,

feels better than anything.

the gods which guide my happiness are 

carved from rock and far away, 

faceless walls of sediment shifting 

in their beds, drybrushed.

sleeping on the couch does not 

make it easier.

sometimes i think that because i have

not yet done all that i am capable of

i am nothing. this is the kind of shit that 

gets me into trouble. 

but you see where it comes from. if we are

makers above all (are we?)

and we do not make, or do not make

the best we can make, 

then all of our losses lose their reasons.

we want to feel like this is worth it. 

but that's only if you 

think of a loss as one half of a ratio, 

when really it's more like 

the animals we sleep with, 

who have no reasons for being born 

but still give us comfort and 

companionship in the night. we love them

for being with us.

we can love our losses in this way too.

i believe i am worth the same no matter 

what i do. a steady line. 

i learned that in a self-help book but it's true. 

there is more in what i paint than my life

as a painter and i pray for the day 

i lose track of my hands like i've always 

dreamed of. 

then i will be, not new to myself, but old 

like a god, like a huge forever iceberg in antarctica,

and i will navigate around myself like an 

off-course fishing boat, 

big men standing on the deck, looking up

and then, slowly, down.

Truth and Markmaking

a mark i've kept

i'm aware of directness as a conceit in writing, a tool, as useful as metaphor or voice. ariana reines sometimes uses all caps and that makes me feel like she's speaking straight from the hip with no editing, a message sent through her like a prophet, but i also know that she's a craftswoman of language and i'd guess that her process curls back on itself like a snake spitting. eileen myles does it with run-ons and inconsistent capitalizations like she has to get it all out before it dissolves. there is truth and style in both of these ways of writing and i'm not even suggesting that truth and style are on opposite poles. and can you ever be without style? the way i move my hand when i paint, is that style? 

i always thought of writing as work and painting as the guiding of a force, especially in later years when i paint in a fever, surrounded by mess and coffee cups and rolls of wax paper half-dipped in blue latex, trailing. as though the mess and urgency kept me closer to something, but what? i do want truth, and i do think it exists, and i do think it exists in painting. but not because it aligns with something i already know is truth, or because it has the look of truth, or because i felt truthy when i made it. markmaking is a writhing pit and i am happily lost inside it. moments of clarity rise up and i stare at a line for days, trying to see what it is revealing to me. so many things in the visual world seem like they are opening themselves up to me, hoping to be seen and understood. the best of these are the things i make myself, because in their unfamiliarity i feel a rush of love, like my little brother doing calculus. a thing that is part of me surpassing me, becoming other. 

but painting has just as much fake-directness as writing does, if not more. all those men strong-arming their way into the canon, mistaking adrenaline and privilege for truth. and it's clear that writing toes the abyss just as painting does, the inconceivable possibilities of letters, the way a poem vibrates in the mind after reading it, the long, looping lives of characters that exist beside our own. when i finished dostoyevsky's "the idiot" a few weeks ago i sobbed in the shower and i wasn't even being self-indulgent. those characters deserve my sadness. their loss is real. this is why i keep the marks i make, the ones i have no practical use for, the ones no one else will ever see or buy. they are as real and living in the world as i am. unlike dostoyevsky, i'm the only one looking at them and usually i'm the only one who knows they are worth looking at. if you are an artist, you have these marks too, and you honor them in your own way. you know there's something there, truth or whatever, you don't need to call it anything. pink beside gray or black beside black or white beside white or a picture of a banana beside a weird purple or a thin line of something, you don't know what it is, you found it there on your palette like your palette was a doorstep.

Painter as Jedi

In a passage from one of the kitschy “Expanded Universe” Star Wars novels that I love to read, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker addresses his new pupils during their first lesson.  Even though Luke is talking about Jedi mind techniques and lightsaber dueling, I felt a kinship with what he was saying.  I’ve replaced “Jedi” with “painter” to make the metaphor that much more apparent:

          “I have brought you here to study and to learn, but I myself am still learning.  Every living thing must continue to learn until it dies.  Those who cease to learn, die that much sooner.
          “Perhaps it was misleading when I called this an ‘academy’ for [painters].  Though I will teach you everything I know, I don’t want you merely to listen to me lecture.
          “Your training will be a landscape of self-discovery.  Learn new things and share what you have learned with others.  I will call this place a praxeum.  This word, made up of ancient roots…distills the concepts of learning combined with action.  Our praxeum, then, is a place for the learning of action.  A [painter] is aware, but he does not waste time in mindless contemplation.  When action is required, a [painter] acts.”[i]

I have two thoughts on this quote: 1) even though Luke is clearly a master in his field, he is humble and wise enough to recognize that learning lasts a lifetime, and 2) the role of the peaceful warrior is very similar to that of an artist.  I didn’t realize how resonant the last two lines of the quote would be for painters until I switched out the words.

Cover art for Dark Apprentice

We don’t paint for the hell of it.
Our brushes are our swords.
We swing them, and they cut.
We hold them close, and they are quiet.
They can be honest blades.
We will act when action is required.
We will know when.

---

[i] Kevin J. Anderson, Dark Apprentice (New York: Bantam Books, 1994), 68-69.