rumination

I woke up this morning thinking, like every morning as far back as I can remember. I've been thinking of Barth's statement in CD III 3 about how are lives are bracketted by two events, birth and death, and it is these limitations that give us a history. Without ends we would have no story. I am born and have no consciousnous of before being born. I had no choice in that. I remember no felicity or torment. I appeared on the scene - things were already going on: the civil war had happened; immigration from Europe had happened; the Bible had all happened. I learned English in the American South among people who were upper working class/lower middle class; people with prejudices, weaknesses, and limitations about their own best interests - as well as good hearts, loyalty, and pragmatism with a sense of play.
And here I am, 49 years later. The old house is a used car lot; the old farm is a subdivision and day care center; the old south is now infused with diversity.
I am part of a human organism. An organism that began forming 6 million years ago; that began creating art 25000 years ago.
I am consciousness in matter and I can't say how it might be that matter is conscious. I can't say that a tree, though living, is conscious, or that a bird is conscious - the bird, like a dog or cat, is capable of attachment and recognition.
I am in ostensibly the same body I've always had - but it is not the same. My body has changed and grown with little input from my thoughts outside of exercise and diet.
The matter of my flesh and the matter of the air and the matter of this desk are all composed of energy in positive and negative charges, attracted and repelled, solid liquid and gas. Mathematically the room I'm in could be represented by a matrix of ones and zeroes. And how does this matrix change when I'm in the room and move around? Ones and zeroes are added and subtracted along a curve of time. Along that curve of time my consciousness expresses itself, and , as Merleau Ponty says, extrudes time behind.
My self itself is made up of conscious and unconscious. The unconscious does what it does, thinks what it thinks, with no prompting from my conscious. My conscous can only discover what is in the unconscious through projection and free association. If I repress anything, it is my ego's desire not to change that holds it secreted. Since I don't want to see this repressed thing, the unconscious plays about with it - perhaps the unconscious doesn't want it either.
What is the meaningfulness of life among these facts?
Am I being myself? Or am I lost in distractions?
Looking at a photo the other day, a photo of something I thought I remembered well, I was struck with how much was contrary to my memory. I thought, "life, reality is a Russian novel, and I've constructed a comic strip." Of course, the comic strip is now in the novel.
I think this is the thrust of some sayings of Christ: What will you give in exchange for your soul? for instance. Every day I feel that I've exchanged my soul for something. I once had a job that I felt absolutely ate away at my soul. When I was laid off, I felt that I'd recovered my soul, even though I'd lost my livelyhood. Another saying: If you lose your life you'll find it. Perhaps this is a contrast of the Life we find ourselves pursuing, wherein we ask ourselves, What are we doing? The life that after 30 years we ask ourselves, What happened? How did I get here? Did I just give this in exchange for my soul? What was it worth. And a final saying, Except a grain fall to the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it falls and dies it bears much fruit.
And that is the conundrum. We fight that feeling of being alone. We are part of a million year old organism, of which our part is maybe 70 years. In that 70 years we may have a few real connections. Perhaps 50 or more years with a lover, a spouse, a friend.
We abide alone, afraid to die, to give up our hold on what we think is life - a career, a social standing.
Whatever distracts us from who we are.
The question is How to have the career and social standing while at the same time being aware, living, relating.

Thinking of best pictures

After Titanic won in [whatever year that was] I did a series of satires on what drawing should have been done in the drawing room scene. The drawing should capture the over the top, lead the audience by the nose plotting, idiocy of the film [more aptly titled "kitschfest 1997"]. I've posed Rose cleaning her teeth after finishing her fries and coke; you can see the 'stahr odie oshun' round her neck; and behind the bed is an African mask signifying the inspiration of Picasso, who oddly enough has made no impact on the ersatz modernist inspired artist who then drew bland charcoal sketches [that somehow weathered 80 years submersion] as an expression of his grand passion. George aptly characterized this movie on Seinfeld, when he said, "so that old woman: she's just a liar isn't she?" LA Confidential came out this same year, an actual movie with plot, character development, and a good noir feel.
But then I feel a bit cranky about it. Someone might ask me where my irrational expectation that things make sense, that the powers that be and the populace at large be conversant in discerning and avoiding kitsch, comes from. Perhaps I have failed to live up to the impulse of modernism myself. And I feel that way at times, aware of what I could have done, should of done, in terms of pushing my work more toward experiment and engagement with issues of personality and identity. Could I have been more formalist in my approach? Could I have been more historically aware and conversant with issues? For instance, how could my work have been more a commentary on the Male Gaze? How could I have been oblivious to it all the years of my formation. I certainly see it in retrospect: the influence of advertizing, patriarchy, growing up in the South.
But I can't talk about it all in the past tense: the future holds much more. I feel that I am on the cusp, now more than ever, of work that is exceptional. As Jung might say, I've outgrown some of my fantasies and am now ready to embark on something new. Of course my friend Mark has heard me talk this way before - and each time, I have done something different, an alteration of my approach and change in my outcomes. So I hold out this hope that each day will bring something new in my art. Each drawing is done on a clean piece of paper and each drawing has that potential that I've learned from the past and discovered some new direction - or that I'm now ready to let myself discover the new and different and embrace them. Nothing could be more modernist.