Oh what a slippery fish sincerity is when speaking of creativity. For my
practice, the 'true facts' are my basic sincerity, as I see them or
remember them, written in plain language - that provides the sincerity of
most of my writing, but there are exptremities. Two anecdotes may suffice::
Once, in the darkest pit of night and emotions, I wrote words which tumbled
out of me onto an envelope, all over it, inside and out. It was a mess, and
my head was a mess, and I went back to bed and fucked my (then) wife as
hard as I could (gentle creature that I usually am). The next morning my
wife made me breakfast and I worked on this jumble of words. It turned out
to be not one but two poems born at once! I shuffled one out of it as
SITTING TOGETHER and found the words and lines I had shoved to one side
came to exactly the same length of poem, and was about SITTING ALONE. A
truly given poetry and absolutely sincere in word and image.
The other time, a more established poet than myself related an event of
racing himself to hospital because of a suspected coronary occlusion, with
his nurse wife by his side, a passenger because she doesn't drive, when his
old car gave up the ghost on a small hill before the hospital, a tree-lined
road where the Catholic cathedral stood between the T-junction and the
Emergency department. From there they had to walk, he worried about the car
and she worried about him. Both where mended and out on the road in no
time, but ther story of the drama lingered and he told it so passionately
that I urged him to write it down, just as he told me. But he wouldn't, and
didn't. Weeks went by and I took the unusual step of writing it for him as
if I was the subject of the drama and the narrator. I was surprised at how
well it worked - it was published somewhere in a journal and subsequently
in a book of mine. Was it 'sincere'? In some way I feel it was because I
felt so much for him and his near escape from the grim reaper. Is it just a
well-intentioned confidence trick?
Andrew
On 16 March 2015 at 08:53, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Mm. Have to think on this some, Doug, Max. And when I say think, I mean
> ruminate and I suppose I mean explore from what I think I know or can
> recall from experience or having read. That process may be pre-linguistic.
> Sincerity, it strikes me, is a mood as much a stance or a 'technique'. Kind
> of an emotional readiness for truth as you see it.
>
> Can sincere art be produced by an insincere artist or an artist who is not
> sincere at the time of creation? Not sure. But equally not sure that my
> individual cache of words will help me draw a conclusion. I'd be making a
> judgment I suppose. Yes, sincere, or no, not so or not fully so. And 'yes'
> and 'no' are words of course but what if my head inclines to nod or begins
> to shake from side to side. Is this a whole body rejection or affirmation?
> Where do 'gut feelings' stand? When it comes to sharing such thoughts, of
> course, I realise, as here in this format, I am confined to words.
>
> Bill
>
>
> > On 16 Mar 2015, at 2:20 am, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> >
> > Sincerity is a very dangerous & difficult concept in art. It's the art's
> sincerity that counts, not the artist's.
> >
> > And, I have to admit that the words come first for me: "no ideas but in
> words'?
> >
> > Doug
> >> On Mar 14, 2015, at 4:55 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> When one has begun to write, the hardest thing is to be sincere.
> Essential to mull over that idea and to define artistic sincerity.
> Meanwhile, I hit upon this: the word must never precede the idea. Or else:
> the word must always be necessitated by the idea. It must be irresistible
> and inevitable; and the same is true of the sentence, of the whole work of
> art.
> >>
> >> Guilty of selecting and including words before ideas, at least
> sometimes, perhaps more often than I care to admit.
> >>
> >> Bill
> >
> > Douglas Barbour
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> > Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation
> 2 (UofAPress).
> > Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
> >
> > There is no life that does not rise
> > melodic from scales of the marvelous.
> >
> > To which our grief refers.
> >
> > Robert Duncan.
> >
>
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
'Undercover of Lightness'
http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
'Shikibu Shuffle'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
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