lawrence
you said many things that make me want to be there with you and
actually talk, simply because each phrase you write could start an
all-night conversation. But i will just offer my little stone in this
house we are building:

I do not believe in self-expression, at least past the age of 20. I
believe in mediation, i agree with Plato and what he writes in his
Ion, even though i thought he was crazy (or a stupid old man at least)
when i was 20. The body of the artist is spoken through and when one
loses oneself (without escaping it of course) is when one really finds
oneself and meets others as well. Enough with the personal, enough
with the trauma. Processing yes, but profound one, worth writing,
painting, acting out. Beyond personal history, and always including it
(how else?) Yes, there are many selves and many voices within me that
belong to others. And this full version is me, deep in time, wide in
space.

Documentation is the trend of today's art. I think exactly because the
world has become too fast to process in real time, so we save our
experiences in fosil-poems so that we process them later, or our
childen will. The input we receive, we are not designed to digest - we
overdose on information, stimuli, input. Which is why we need
collective rituals - art. A way to process collectively & deal, even
if we are each in our own living room while we do. I hope it makes
sense... What i speak of now is so deeply embeded in my consiousness
that i find it hard to articulate it... The most profound and vital is
the obvious, which we fail to see and therefore cannot talk about, as
Wittgenstein says. What is this we know but we cannot define to
someone who does not? he asks. I have no answer to offer at this point
either, i am afraid.

Last, my definition of art: What causes inner thought. Or what makes
one feel & think at the same time. In other words, what transcents.

Joseph Campell said once: the most important things in life cannot be
talked about, becaus ethey transcent thought. the sencond most
important one can be talked about but cannot be understood. The third
most important ones are the things we talk about.

Oh, and i think there can be poets who never wrote a word. Being a
poet is about HOW you perceive and how you process, not nessesarily
how you come out. That is technique. Of course, nesessary for the
artist´, but my Ideal Poet,  is not defined by what he writes, but by
who he is. I do not mean if he is a good or bad person (!), i mean how
he understands himself, others, the world and how his understanding
comes out through everything that he does, says, writes.  Rembau
changed poetry with what he wrote before the age of 20. And he was not
just self-expressing. His last writtings were about the futility of
writting. He should not write any more, he concluded through his
poems. And he didn't. And the fact that he didn't, but moved on to
Africa to taste the fruits of life in full juice, is his greatest
poem.

eugenia


On 7/18/05, Susan Pritchard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> OK..would you like to offer a definition of your own?
>  
> 
> 
> Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I don't think that is a good definition, Susan; and I don't want to draw
> conclusions from it
>  
> L
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Susan Pritchard <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Monday, July 18, 2005 11:04 AM
> Subject: Re: [WDL] The problem of making 'art'
> 
> 
> One of the better definitions I have ever heard of art is .. a presentation
> of life/reality or some element of it seen/heard through the perspective of
> the artist'
>  
> So there are two elements  what is being expressed and how.
>  
> And like the song says, it ain't what you do..it's the way that you do
> it'..if you do it well enough..anything..however trivial it may seem to, can
> become art. 
> 
> 
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-- 
"And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been
created to teach us that first of all."
             -- Antonin Artaud, "No More Masterpieces," 1938.

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