free associations

Freud reports that in the process of free association, the most important thing is not what is voiced, but what remains unsaid, where the resistance is. In a way, an idea from negative theology: the most important and true things about God are the things we don't say, that remain unvoicable. And in our society where we expect solutions and things being ready at hand, the notion that the important thing is eternally out of reach cuts against the flow of our desire.

And what we desire fails us again and again. The push through to satiation, to climax, finds us back again, in the land of want. What would the attainment of desire be? Immolation?

Perhaps this underscores the rational the ancients, including St. Paul, developed against desire; instead they counseled contentment. "Godliness with contentment is great gain." That sums up the attitude of the early church. To be content is to live in the present - whereas desire inflames and calls us to some other place, beckons us to the future before we get there - a future that takes us out of the present. Whereas contentment is a present that carries us into the future. Perhaps I simplify too much.

Outside my window the backyard is soaked. A cricket chirps, and there are more greens than usual. I see one and wonder why I haven't gotten it into a painting yet. Lately I'm seeing more greens and grays than I ever suspected. I could be the influence of Morandi. Morandi whose simple still lifes and landscapes haunt me. And I think I know what the connection between him and late Guston is: the awkwardness of presentation. Both exhibit an awkwardness front and center: presentation and line, color and composition, awkwardly there ThereTHERE. And what intrigues is that this is what most other artists strive to hide. Even De Kooning and Pollock present chaos and violence, but with a polish, an authority. There is nothing awkward in their work. But Morandi and Guston: how awkward and uncomfortable.

I'm listening to Boulez's Pli Selon Pli. My favorite piece of classical music. It folds upon folds, covers and discloses.

Otherwise I listen to Eric Dolphy's Far Cry. How I wish when I was buying CDs back in 1999 that I'd bought more Booker Little. Booker Little and Freddie Hubbard - my favorite trumpet players - more so than Dave Douglas now or Clifford Brown then - who I was more immediately attracted to. More than Miles Davis (except for Bitches Brew - an exemplary jazz album and I increasingly think, Davis' best). I also like Dolphy's Out to Lunch.

David Markson is onto something in his recent work. Work that resembles a literature major's notes. But something solid but hidden lies at the center. The great unnameable in his work.

Jung, Freud, Lacan, Klein, Bion: all agree. Not to cure, to fix, to make go away - but to integrate, to contain, to hold opposites in balance - that is the aim. The goal, the conclusion, is something else, a logical end point.

Desire whirls around a void, the drives, according to Lacan, for whom all drives are death drives seeking to break through the pleasure principle, regardless the cost. Deleuze would say that the drives are not voids but plenums, bursting with abundance. Neither concept invites touching - it would be like putting your arm in a turbine. Why would you do that? Isn't the point that you're getting energy and that it's the energy you should be using.

But this is what we get for thinking that our human predicament is something that needs fixing. We spend too much time trying to fix, to put into place, to fit in, all the conflicts and incongruities of our life. The question is What gives us energy? What takes away energy? What empowers? What deflates?

When Jesus says love your enemies, what if the scribe had asked, as in another place, And who are my enemies? And Jesus had responded with the parable of the good samaritan. Or would Jesus have held up a mirror?

Listening to Jesus, you'd think that his family, his disciples, all were enemies - except the Romans. He never says anything bad about them. Or the samaritans either.

We often take God's speech that she held out her hand to an ungrateful people as a complaint, but what if we hear that as discription. This is what God does: He holds out his hand to ungrateful people.

God doesn't seem to have enemies.

The very people Jesus is harshest with are the ones who insist that they're on his side. "lord lord didn't we do all so many good things in your name." These people, these early volunteers, he tells to scram.

Perhaps God would rather hear, "fuck off."

Perhaps he goes not to those who are well but to those who are sick because these people seem to have a clue.

The people who think they've got it licked, figured out the system: these are the ones who're off. He tells them, "since you say 'we see!' your sin remains."

I'm now listening to Andrea Parkin do weird things with the accordion: fold upon fold.