Zbigniew Herbert
from the poem "In the Studio":
When God built the world
he wrinkled his forehead
calculated and calculated
hence the world is perfect
and impossible to live in
on the other hand
a painter's world
is good
and full of errors
And then this, from Robert Rauschenberg:
"My paintings are an invitation to look some place else"
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
The Kingdom of Nirvana
I think one of the things I really enjoy about my blog is that I never really started blogging to say any one thing and in the process made my blog a catch all for everything. It is good for me, because I am not a writer and I don’t routinely jot down my thoughts in journal, instead I get to talk about what interests me and I don’t have to worry about anyone judging me because my blog isn’t enough about art or parenting or anything else, and at the same time the blog is about these things, because, ultimately they are part of who I am.
I suppose in an odd way if you wanted to know me, or at least what interests me, all you have to do is read the blog. Except that the really personal stuff doesn’t make it in here. Usually because it is too painful or to humiliating or something, and really how much do you want to know about a person?
And then I read this piece by my friend the unreliable narrator, or this blog about the life and writings of my friend Oleoptene, or this blog by my friend Stuart and I see them routinely holding out their flaws and inspecting them, sometimes for insight, and sometimes for humor, and I think “well, I have done that” the thing is, they routinely are able to pick up the little nuances of their life and hold them to the light for the precious jewels that they are, and I don’t think I can.
I am both supremely confident, and horribly insecure simultaneously. I want my blog to be ABOUT something, and I don’t. I want to share a PART of myself, and I don’t. I mean, how much of yourself do you share on a routine basis? and with whom?
I have maybe a handful of close friends that I could call up on a moments notice and say, “I’m scared” or “I’m pissed” or “I’m drunk.” And they would totally understand. But mostly I think this is really so much masturbation and I can’t, or really I don’t share myself. Again me being both confident and simultaneously insecure.
The irony is I am a gregarious, often outspoken individual who sees himself as shy and insecure. So, is the problem that I don’t have enough friends or that I don’t “share” myself with others, or is the problem really just a problem in my head?
The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that it is all in my imagination. But then really this in not a problem of my not being open, it is a problem of me getting caught up in my head, and it is a fairly typical problem for me. The more I think about a thing, the more I think I am convincing myself of the truth and, ironically, the less “real” that thing is.
I can sit here and convince myself that I am this or that but the truth is I do not have a realistic picture of myself in my mind, and the more I think about myself in the abstract, the less real that image of me becomes. Perhaps this is why the Buddha would discourage his disciples from engaging in abstract philosophical talk, as reason tends to focus on and extract singularities from a great multitude and hold it up as a truth, when in fact, nothing exists in a vacuum, not even Nirvana.
Nirvana is probably a really good example of what I am talking about here, because most westerners don’t really understand Nirvana and tend to think of it as a kind of vacuum attained by the extinction of all desire and as the penultimate experience of a world denying religion, when in fact Nirvana is probably more aptly defined as “pure presence.” In Nirvana the meaning of life is discovered in openness to being and “being present” in full awareness.
Thus the old t-shirt adage applies: “To be is to do. To do is to be. DoBeDoBeDo”
Both Buddhism and Christianity agree that man’s present condition is not in right relation to the world around him or the things in it. If I can’t even think about myself and form a “real” picture of who I am, how much less real is the world to me? Mankind bears a propensity to falsify his relation to things and spending inordinate amounts of energy justifying those claims. The Buddhists call it Avidya and the Christians call it Original Sin.
The noble truths of Buddhism begin, life is suffering and suffering is caused by desire. My experience tell me that this is true, especially when I think about myself reasoning myself out of a problem. It is the equivalent of desire desiring itself out of desire. It is unattainable.
In yesterdays post I talked about “change happening all at once over time.” If I am uncomfortable with some part of myself, then I have only to look at myself as the source of discomfort. If I am uncomfortable with some aspect of the world (traffic, school, people) again, I, not them, is the source of discomfort. I choose to be uncomfortable. I am responsible for my own feelings.
In my last post I said, the answer to the problem of change is time. That is all there is. The more I try to grasp and contain the feeling, the less I am able to experience the feeling for itself, as I am busy "thinking" about the feeling and not actually going through the motion of feeling frustrated or insecure. The more I try to form a picture of myself as that person, the less like that person I think I am and thus the more I perpetuate my own problems. The folk adage is "time heals all wounds" and I would add "and reveals all shortcomings and defects of character."
Life is not about the trifling of my problems and my joys, Nirvana, say the Buddhists, exists in the world around me. The New Testament says as much about the Kingdom of Heaven(Lk 17:21). It is here. It is now. I just have to shut up and enjoy it.
I suppose in an odd way if you wanted to know me, or at least what interests me, all you have to do is read the blog. Except that the really personal stuff doesn’t make it in here. Usually because it is too painful or to humiliating or something, and really how much do you want to know about a person?
And then I read this piece by my friend the unreliable narrator, or this blog about the life and writings of my friend Oleoptene, or this blog by my friend Stuart and I see them routinely holding out their flaws and inspecting them, sometimes for insight, and sometimes for humor, and I think “well, I have done that” the thing is, they routinely are able to pick up the little nuances of their life and hold them to the light for the precious jewels that they are, and I don’t think I can.
I am both supremely confident, and horribly insecure simultaneously. I want my blog to be ABOUT something, and I don’t. I want to share a PART of myself, and I don’t. I mean, how much of yourself do you share on a routine basis? and with whom?
I have maybe a handful of close friends that I could call up on a moments notice and say, “I’m scared” or “I’m pissed” or “I’m drunk.” And they would totally understand. But mostly I think this is really so much masturbation and I can’t, or really I don’t share myself. Again me being both confident and simultaneously insecure.
The irony is I am a gregarious, often outspoken individual who sees himself as shy and insecure. So, is the problem that I don’t have enough friends or that I don’t “share” myself with others, or is the problem really just a problem in my head?
The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that it is all in my imagination. But then really this in not a problem of my not being open, it is a problem of me getting caught up in my head, and it is a fairly typical problem for me. The more I think about a thing, the more I think I am convincing myself of the truth and, ironically, the less “real” that thing is.
I can sit here and convince myself that I am this or that but the truth is I do not have a realistic picture of myself in my mind, and the more I think about myself in the abstract, the less real that image of me becomes. Perhaps this is why the Buddha would discourage his disciples from engaging in abstract philosophical talk, as reason tends to focus on and extract singularities from a great multitude and hold it up as a truth, when in fact, nothing exists in a vacuum, not even Nirvana.
Nirvana is probably a really good example of what I am talking about here, because most westerners don’t really understand Nirvana and tend to think of it as a kind of vacuum attained by the extinction of all desire and as the penultimate experience of a world denying religion, when in fact Nirvana is probably more aptly defined as “pure presence.” In Nirvana the meaning of life is discovered in openness to being and “being present” in full awareness.
Thus the old t-shirt adage applies: “To be is to do. To do is to be. DoBeDoBeDo”
Both Buddhism and Christianity agree that man’s present condition is not in right relation to the world around him or the things in it. If I can’t even think about myself and form a “real” picture of who I am, how much less real is the world to me? Mankind bears a propensity to falsify his relation to things and spending inordinate amounts of energy justifying those claims. The Buddhists call it Avidya and the Christians call it Original Sin.
The noble truths of Buddhism begin, life is suffering and suffering is caused by desire. My experience tell me that this is true, especially when I think about myself reasoning myself out of a problem. It is the equivalent of desire desiring itself out of desire. It is unattainable.
In yesterdays post I talked about “change happening all at once over time.” If I am uncomfortable with some part of myself, then I have only to look at myself as the source of discomfort. If I am uncomfortable with some aspect of the world (traffic, school, people) again, I, not them, is the source of discomfort. I choose to be uncomfortable. I am responsible for my own feelings.
In my last post I said, the answer to the problem of change is time. That is all there is. The more I try to grasp and contain the feeling, the less I am able to experience the feeling for itself, as I am busy "thinking" about the feeling and not actually going through the motion of feeling frustrated or insecure. The more I try to form a picture of myself as that person, the less like that person I think I am and thus the more I perpetuate my own problems. The folk adage is "time heals all wounds" and I would add "and reveals all shortcomings and defects of character."
Life is not about the trifling of my problems and my joys, Nirvana, say the Buddhists, exists in the world around me. The New Testament says as much about the Kingdom of Heaven(Lk 17:21). It is here. It is now. I just have to shut up and enjoy it.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
If you meet the Buddha, kill him.
So I am flipping through channels the other night and I landed on a scene in the Matrix where the Oracle is telling neo “we cannot see beyond choices that we do not understand.” And I think about for a few days and I have decided that for me “choices” is really “control” and that I cannot think beyond situations that fall outside of my control, and that really situations that fall outside of my control paralyze me because suddenly all of my energy and all actions are somehow spinning around the solution “how do I get past this?”
You might think that, having had this realization, I would feel better or feel comforted in the gentle glow of self-realization, but I wasn’t. Seldom do self-revelatory thoughts provide manuals instructing me how to change my behavior. Instead they leave me feeling more hopeless than ever that the possibility of change will free me of my “character defects.”
That being said, I have had moments of clarity in which I realized that some character defect, which had previously been plaguing me, was no longer present. But that it was not the moment of clarity that freed me from this action, rather it was time. Someone once said to me, jokingly, “change happens all at once over time.” That pretty much sums up my experience.
Self-revelatory moments can be profound. I remember one time I was walking through a park in Santa Fe when it occurred to me that creation, imbued with the spirit of the creator, was looking at me. You might say I stopped looking at the world and began to perceive myself through the eyes of the universe. It was an ecstatic moment, and one in which I wandered around that park for several hours sitting on benches, starring at the stars, and hugging trees. SO powerful was the experience that for the next several weeks all I had to do to summon the experience was to revisit the park at the same place at roughly the same time each night. Sadly, eventually the experience faded and new ones came and went until all that is left is of that moment resides in the faint glow of a memory.
“If you meet the Buddha, kill him.” Is a Zen saying used to caution the practitioner to become detached from our everyday conception of ourselves as potential subjects for special and unique experiences, or as candidates for realization, attainment and fulfillment. If you have an idea of what it is like to be enlightened, you probably aren’t, you might find yourself, like me, clinging to a moment or worse falling in to complacency as the ego assumes its place in spiritual glory.
In fact many spiritual traditions equate spiritual transcendence with negation of the self, i.e. Self as Void in the Zen Buddhist tradition and its parallel in the Christian tradition as “I live now not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20) Where the Christian faithful empty themselves of the contents of ego consciousness and become void in the light of god where the infinite reality of his Being and Love are realized.
The realization of a transcendent reality could perhaps be more easily described as what it is not, but for me it is an existential transformation, one that is realized not in trying to attain the Void or the Spirit, but in the recognition and especially the acceptance of humans as imperfect beings.
You might think that, having had this realization, I would feel better or feel comforted in the gentle glow of self-realization, but I wasn’t. Seldom do self-revelatory thoughts provide manuals instructing me how to change my behavior. Instead they leave me feeling more hopeless than ever that the possibility of change will free me of my “character defects.”
That being said, I have had moments of clarity in which I realized that some character defect, which had previously been plaguing me, was no longer present. But that it was not the moment of clarity that freed me from this action, rather it was time. Someone once said to me, jokingly, “change happens all at once over time.” That pretty much sums up my experience.
Self-revelatory moments can be profound. I remember one time I was walking through a park in Santa Fe when it occurred to me that creation, imbued with the spirit of the creator, was looking at me. You might say I stopped looking at the world and began to perceive myself through the eyes of the universe. It was an ecstatic moment, and one in which I wandered around that park for several hours sitting on benches, starring at the stars, and hugging trees. SO powerful was the experience that for the next several weeks all I had to do to summon the experience was to revisit the park at the same place at roughly the same time each night. Sadly, eventually the experience faded and new ones came and went until all that is left is of that moment resides in the faint glow of a memory.
“If you meet the Buddha, kill him.” Is a Zen saying used to caution the practitioner to become detached from our everyday conception of ourselves as potential subjects for special and unique experiences, or as candidates for realization, attainment and fulfillment. If you have an idea of what it is like to be enlightened, you probably aren’t, you might find yourself, like me, clinging to a moment or worse falling in to complacency as the ego assumes its place in spiritual glory.
In fact many spiritual traditions equate spiritual transcendence with negation of the self, i.e. Self as Void in the Zen Buddhist tradition and its parallel in the Christian tradition as “I live now not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20) Where the Christian faithful empty themselves of the contents of ego consciousness and become void in the light of god where the infinite reality of his Being and Love are realized.
The realization of a transcendent reality could perhaps be more easily described as what it is not, but for me it is an existential transformation, one that is realized not in trying to attain the Void or the Spirit, but in the recognition and especially the acceptance of humans as imperfect beings.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Chariot
The earth calls.
Youth stretches out her wings to soar, and like Icarus we are called home.
Might Jatayu's eyes fluttered “It is finished--come home.”
Close your eyes, for mine are closed. We are about to walk on holy ground. Shut them quick least you be tempted by lesser metals.
We are on a voyage of self-discovery. Most open their eyes in amazement, but the lover smiles, for s/he has already beheld the beloved.
Flames lick the embers of the sacrifice. The sweet smell of jasmine fills the air. Nothing beside remains.
Youth stretches out her wings to soar, and like Icarus we are called home.
Might Jatayu's eyes fluttered “It is finished--come home.”
Close your eyes, for mine are closed. We are about to walk on holy ground. Shut them quick least you be tempted by lesser metals.
We are on a voyage of self-discovery. Most open their eyes in amazement, but the lover smiles, for s/he has already beheld the beloved.
Flames lick the embers of the sacrifice. The sweet smell of jasmine fills the air. Nothing beside remains.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
An Apology
“Apology” is an interesting word. Most use it as in “I’m sorry” but it has an older meaning namely a defense of ones words or actions, as in Plato’s Apology in which Socrates defends his actions to the state. Thinking about the entomology of the word "apology," somewhere along the line “self-justification” became “explanation” which became “explanation with regret.” Looking hard at this transformation I see a kind of spiritual journey evolving here: from all devouring pure ego to ego relinquishing itself to the world, to the moral negation of self to other; or something along those lines.
Do you know how I tremble and shake at the thought of the Christian fundamentalism? Not that Christianity has the exclusive on religious conservatives, but that I see in the Christian fundamentalism a kind of fanaticism that I can’t see anywhere else. Check that. Not that it doesn’t exist anywhere else in Christianity, but that I can’t see it because I am myopically set against this one little segment of an otherwise vast religion.
Listen in, if you want, on the bile that my mind spits out on a regular basis: Fundamentalists are judgmental. They think everyone that isn’t like them is evil. They view the world through a narrow vision that is blinded by xenophobic hatred. They hate people of different color, of different nationalities, of different religions. They claim a spiritual awakening through the love of Jesus to the exclusion of all else, and for this they cannot be trusted.
My mind spits out so many stereotypes. Some correct, some incorrect, most only hitting the mark in the most peripheral way. A sad way, yet oddly satisfying. I find that feeling both comfortable and distasteful. It’s a strange thing sitting in the seat of judgment hating someone for being judgmental. It is an ugly moment when you realize that you are a lot like the thing you hate.
One of my favorite lines from the movie trilogy “The Matrix” is a conversation in which Commander Lock says “Damn it Morpheus, Not everyone believes what you believe!” and Morpheus’ response is “My beliefs don’t require them to.” This is not a statement of compatibility, but of toleration. There are competing beliefs, different faiths, different churches, so it is nature to wonder which is right? The answer is clearly that power should go to the true church and not to the heretical church. Another Lock, John Locke attempted to tackle this question in his writings on religious toleration. He writes that every church believes itself to be the true church, and there is no judge but God who can determine which of these claims is correct. Thus, skepticism about the possibility of religious knowledge is central to Locke's argument for religious toleration.
The problem is that most adherents to a faith are not skeptical of their religious knowledge, and so have no reason to be tolerant. Locke notes this saying “that ecclesiastical authority had adapted itself to the “ ‘different whims or fancies of monarchs, changing their decrees, their form of worship, even their articles of faith to fit the current vogue’ ” Thus notions of tolerance will shift with the prevailing whims of culture.
Another problems is that Locke’s definition of tolerance and society’s definition of respect in no way prove to be identical. The English words ‘tolerate’, ‘toleration’, and ‘tolerance’ are derived from the Latin terms ‘tolerare’ and ‘tolerentia’ which imply enduring, suffering, bearing, and forbearance. Locke’s use of the word “tolerance” implied that there were some religions so inferior that they had to be “endured” or “suffered” with. One also cannot disregard the fact that toleration is directed toward something perceived as negative. The lives of the persecuted were made no better in that they were simply shunned secretly rather than persecuted publicly. Simple toleration, then, is not the answer.
I think that Locke’s attempts to rationalize religious tolerance are well meant, even though he did exclude certain groups, particularly those groups that he saw as dangerously bridging the separation of church and state. Tolerance may be a means to an end, but in my mind, it is not the end we seek.
In my own experience I may encounter beliefs that I do not agree with. I may even be righteously offended by these ideas and categorically reject them, along with the people who espouse such ideologies. In these cases, tolerance is not a vehicle that enables me to live peaceably with these people, as I still hold them at bay and distrust the ideologies. At best, tolerance is a way of defining boundaries between my ideas and those I dislike or even find abhorrent. For me the only true was to rid myself of the negative, even repulsive feelings I may sometime have is to stop holding them at bay through tolerance and to release them.
Locke points out that neither persuasion nor force can make someone adopt a moral value to which they do not agree. My feeling is that religion is not about what the other person believes, but about what I believe, or more specifically, about my relationship to God. Negative, sometimes pessimistic feelings do nothing to strengthen this relationship, and so by tolerating others I only separate myself from god.
I owe an apology to those that I have tolerated, I have done it with the best intention, but I has served neither them, nor myself. And so I pledge to be more understanding and to work harder on acceptance.
“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I could not be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.” -Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
Do you know how I tremble and shake at the thought of the Christian fundamentalism? Not that Christianity has the exclusive on religious conservatives, but that I see in the Christian fundamentalism a kind of fanaticism that I can’t see anywhere else. Check that. Not that it doesn’t exist anywhere else in Christianity, but that I can’t see it because I am myopically set against this one little segment of an otherwise vast religion.
Listen in, if you want, on the bile that my mind spits out on a regular basis: Fundamentalists are judgmental. They think everyone that isn’t like them is evil. They view the world through a narrow vision that is blinded by xenophobic hatred. They hate people of different color, of different nationalities, of different religions. They claim a spiritual awakening through the love of Jesus to the exclusion of all else, and for this they cannot be trusted.
My mind spits out so many stereotypes. Some correct, some incorrect, most only hitting the mark in the most peripheral way. A sad way, yet oddly satisfying. I find that feeling both comfortable and distasteful. It’s a strange thing sitting in the seat of judgment hating someone for being judgmental. It is an ugly moment when you realize that you are a lot like the thing you hate.
One of my favorite lines from the movie trilogy “The Matrix” is a conversation in which Commander Lock says “Damn it Morpheus, Not everyone believes what you believe!” and Morpheus’ response is “My beliefs don’t require them to.” This is not a statement of compatibility, but of toleration. There are competing beliefs, different faiths, different churches, so it is nature to wonder which is right? The answer is clearly that power should go to the true church and not to the heretical church. Another Lock, John Locke attempted to tackle this question in his writings on religious toleration. He writes that every church believes itself to be the true church, and there is no judge but God who can determine which of these claims is correct. Thus, skepticism about the possibility of religious knowledge is central to Locke's argument for religious toleration.
The problem is that most adherents to a faith are not skeptical of their religious knowledge, and so have no reason to be tolerant. Locke notes this saying “that ecclesiastical authority had adapted itself to the “ ‘different whims or fancies of monarchs, changing their decrees, their form of worship, even their articles of faith to fit the current vogue’ ” Thus notions of tolerance will shift with the prevailing whims of culture.
Another problems is that Locke’s definition of tolerance and society’s definition of respect in no way prove to be identical. The English words ‘tolerate’, ‘toleration’, and ‘tolerance’ are derived from the Latin terms ‘tolerare’ and ‘tolerentia’ which imply enduring, suffering, bearing, and forbearance. Locke’s use of the word “tolerance” implied that there were some religions so inferior that they had to be “endured” or “suffered” with. One also cannot disregard the fact that toleration is directed toward something perceived as negative. The lives of the persecuted were made no better in that they were simply shunned secretly rather than persecuted publicly. Simple toleration, then, is not the answer.
I think that Locke’s attempts to rationalize religious tolerance are well meant, even though he did exclude certain groups, particularly those groups that he saw as dangerously bridging the separation of church and state. Tolerance may be a means to an end, but in my mind, it is not the end we seek.
In my own experience I may encounter beliefs that I do not agree with. I may even be righteously offended by these ideas and categorically reject them, along with the people who espouse such ideologies. In these cases, tolerance is not a vehicle that enables me to live peaceably with these people, as I still hold them at bay and distrust the ideologies. At best, tolerance is a way of defining boundaries between my ideas and those I dislike or even find abhorrent. For me the only true was to rid myself of the negative, even repulsive feelings I may sometime have is to stop holding them at bay through tolerance and to release them.
Locke points out that neither persuasion nor force can make someone adopt a moral value to which they do not agree. My feeling is that religion is not about what the other person believes, but about what I believe, or more specifically, about my relationship to God. Negative, sometimes pessimistic feelings do nothing to strengthen this relationship, and so by tolerating others I only separate myself from god.
I owe an apology to those that I have tolerated, I have done it with the best intention, but I has served neither them, nor myself. And so I pledge to be more understanding and to work harder on acceptance.
“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I could not be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.” -Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
Friday, November 27, 2009
To whet the stone
You know the children’s song “There’s a hole in the Bucket?” A man is singing to his wife ‘dear Liza.’ There is a hole in the bucket (hence the name of the song) and he is unsure how to proceed. She tells him to fix it, but, as the song progresses, we discover he is unable to do this as there is no wood to fix the hole, the ax is dull so he can’t chop more wood and the sharpening stone is dry so he can’t sharpen the ax, to cut the wood to fix the hole. The song comes full circle.
It is a great song, repetitious, humorous, with a circuitous logic that leaves the listener stumped. What is the man to do? The bucket will hold no water. There is no wood to patch the leak. The ax is dull. He needs water to whet the stone to sharpen the ax. But again, there can be no water, for there is a hole in the bucket.
I admit that this song delighted me as a child. I felt sorry for the man, whose lines in the song I heard as a kind of desperate plea. I imagined the woman growing evermore impatient with her simple-minded husband; as she had to time and again explain to him, fix it. Fit it. Fix it. Only to discover, like he had, that the solution was beyond their immediate means. The song, you see is a dialogue. Not exactly a Socratic dialogue, but a device used to create greater degrees of tension within the logical structure of the song.
Usually when you listen to the song, the man is played as a whiny sort, clueless and inept while the wife is shrill and painfully judgmental. Liza is sure she can present a solution for her husband. Meanwhile, Henry has exhausted the possibilities and has turned to his partner in the hopes that she will find some fault in his logic that allows him to complete his goal. “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza” is a plea for help. “Where have I gone wrong?” He asks. “Have you Tried A? B? C?” She responds.
The relationship between Liza and Henry made me think of Adam and Eve. Not because there is any clear parallel. Though I suppose one could construct it: What’s wrong with the Apple? Is it poison? Is it bitter? What is wrong with being smart? Why shouldn’t we eat it? I wonder about the rational of Eve, biting into the apple and then offering it to Adam. Was it her way of saying “the bucket be damned!” or “I am going to eat this and prove that nothing will happen”? No, the reason I thought about the first couple in creation was because they acted in tandem, “I ate this apple, here, you try it.” They are working together.
The thing about Henry and Liza is, they are trying to solve a problem. He turns to her, she parrots the solution back to him, and, ultimately, they arrive at the conclusion that the bucket is unfixable. Interpretations that pit the two against one another may add to the comedic moment when both realize that the bucket is unfixable, but detract from the truth that they work in unison.
The other day I was looking around the house thinking: “there is so much to do, Laundry, dishes, piles of children’s toys and brick-a-brac.” It is in moments like these that I hear the old familiar tune come to mind. “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.” And all the picking up and the washing and the scrubbing seem like so much work, an impossible mountain of chores that would never go away and I had no idea where to start. Like Sisyphus I would throw my weigh against the stone over and over again wondering if there was ever a solution.
"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."
As I stood there singing songs of confusion and defeat it occurred to me that I could pick up what was mine, my shoes for example. That might be a place to start. I could wash my coffee cup, I could put my clean clothes away, and so on. In short, I didn’t have to start with the WHOLE house. I could just pick up after myself and see where that lead me. As it turned out, I had a very large part in that particular days mess for it seemed like everywhere I went there was one thing or another that was mine.
My problem then is that what I though was a hole in the bucket was really self- defeatist thinking. “The mess is too big” or “I don’t know where to start” which is different from, “To fix A I need B but B requires A.”
“No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
Taking another stab at the song, I should point out that Henry is immersed in the dilemma of the bucket. One conclusion that you might draw is that he has already tried to whet the axe and has discovered that there is no clear solution. Frustrated he turns to his wife. The immediacy with which he answers her suggestions seems to support this interpretation. “With what shall I…?” Could be interpreted as “I tried that but…” The fact that Liza shares with Henry solutions that he has already visited speaks to the like- minded nature of their relationship.
They are equals, and both set about “solving the problem” in the same way. For Henry and Liza, each new situation is met with a set of variables that must be solved. “How do I mend the bucket?” is answered with “With Wood.” Unfortunately for each the solution may fall outside of the liner logical structure of the equation. “I may need to borrow an axe from neighbor Fred” or “I may need to buy a new bucket” or even “Do I need any of these things at all?”
The last solution seems to be the one that the song suggests, for if the stone cannot be whet, what purpose does the bucket serve? The answer in the structure of the song namely that we are metaphorically casing our tail here, creates an ambiguity about the nature of Henry and Liza, that they are simpleminded folk who cannot see the proverbial forest for the trees, or that the spiritual solution, as I like to call it, is to step away from the situation and thus remove yourself from the equation. “The bucket is broken” is both the beginning and the end of the song suggesting that the harder we react to the situation, the less “distance” we cover. Through this line of questioning the absolute nature of their situation is now evident and they have gained nothing but the certainty of the knowledge they already possessed.
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl
The conclusion of the song suggests that in fact Henry and Liza are now at a completely new place, one of equal footing and ultimately of a kind of equality. This place is one born of frustration but open to the possibility that they can now choose to act or choose not to act with full conviction. The stage is now set for a “real” beginning, of sorts and the song bizarrely begins at last, even as the myth begin again.
It is a great song, repetitious, humorous, with a circuitous logic that leaves the listener stumped. What is the man to do? The bucket will hold no water. There is no wood to patch the leak. The ax is dull. He needs water to whet the stone to sharpen the ax. But again, there can be no water, for there is a hole in the bucket.
I admit that this song delighted me as a child. I felt sorry for the man, whose lines in the song I heard as a kind of desperate plea. I imagined the woman growing evermore impatient with her simple-minded husband; as she had to time and again explain to him, fix it. Fit it. Fix it. Only to discover, like he had, that the solution was beyond their immediate means. The song, you see is a dialogue. Not exactly a Socratic dialogue, but a device used to create greater degrees of tension within the logical structure of the song.
Usually when you listen to the song, the man is played as a whiny sort, clueless and inept while the wife is shrill and painfully judgmental. Liza is sure she can present a solution for her husband. Meanwhile, Henry has exhausted the possibilities and has turned to his partner in the hopes that she will find some fault in his logic that allows him to complete his goal. “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza” is a plea for help. “Where have I gone wrong?” He asks. “Have you Tried A? B? C?” She responds.
The relationship between Liza and Henry made me think of Adam and Eve. Not because there is any clear parallel. Though I suppose one could construct it: What’s wrong with the Apple? Is it poison? Is it bitter? What is wrong with being smart? Why shouldn’t we eat it? I wonder about the rational of Eve, biting into the apple and then offering it to Adam. Was it her way of saying “the bucket be damned!” or “I am going to eat this and prove that nothing will happen”? No, the reason I thought about the first couple in creation was because they acted in tandem, “I ate this apple, here, you try it.” They are working together.
The thing about Henry and Liza is, they are trying to solve a problem. He turns to her, she parrots the solution back to him, and, ultimately, they arrive at the conclusion that the bucket is unfixable. Interpretations that pit the two against one another may add to the comedic moment when both realize that the bucket is unfixable, but detract from the truth that they work in unison.
The other day I was looking around the house thinking: “there is so much to do, Laundry, dishes, piles of children’s toys and brick-a-brac.” It is in moments like these that I hear the old familiar tune come to mind. “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.” And all the picking up and the washing and the scrubbing seem like so much work, an impossible mountain of chores that would never go away and I had no idea where to start. Like Sisyphus I would throw my weigh against the stone over and over again wondering if there was ever a solution.
"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."
As I stood there singing songs of confusion and defeat it occurred to me that I could pick up what was mine, my shoes for example. That might be a place to start. I could wash my coffee cup, I could put my clean clothes away, and so on. In short, I didn’t have to start with the WHOLE house. I could just pick up after myself and see where that lead me. As it turned out, I had a very large part in that particular days mess for it seemed like everywhere I went there was one thing or another that was mine.
My problem then is that what I though was a hole in the bucket was really self- defeatist thinking. “The mess is too big” or “I don’t know where to start” which is different from, “To fix A I need B but B requires A.”
“No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
Taking another stab at the song, I should point out that Henry is immersed in the dilemma of the bucket. One conclusion that you might draw is that he has already tried to whet the axe and has discovered that there is no clear solution. Frustrated he turns to his wife. The immediacy with which he answers her suggestions seems to support this interpretation. “With what shall I…?” Could be interpreted as “I tried that but…” The fact that Liza shares with Henry solutions that he has already visited speaks to the like- minded nature of their relationship.
They are equals, and both set about “solving the problem” in the same way. For Henry and Liza, each new situation is met with a set of variables that must be solved. “How do I mend the bucket?” is answered with “With Wood.” Unfortunately for each the solution may fall outside of the liner logical structure of the equation. “I may need to borrow an axe from neighbor Fred” or “I may need to buy a new bucket” or even “Do I need any of these things at all?”
The last solution seems to be the one that the song suggests, for if the stone cannot be whet, what purpose does the bucket serve? The answer in the structure of the song namely that we are metaphorically casing our tail here, creates an ambiguity about the nature of Henry and Liza, that they are simpleminded folk who cannot see the proverbial forest for the trees, or that the spiritual solution, as I like to call it, is to step away from the situation and thus remove yourself from the equation. “The bucket is broken” is both the beginning and the end of the song suggesting that the harder we react to the situation, the less “distance” we cover. Through this line of questioning the absolute nature of their situation is now evident and they have gained nothing but the certainty of the knowledge they already possessed.
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl
The conclusion of the song suggests that in fact Henry and Liza are now at a completely new place, one of equal footing and ultimately of a kind of equality. This place is one born of frustration but open to the possibility that they can now choose to act or choose not to act with full conviction. The stage is now set for a “real” beginning, of sorts and the song bizarrely begins at last, even as the myth begin again.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Bad Paintings
I was chatting with a friend through an exchange of emails the other day and they asked had I ever painted a bad painting, or at least I read it as a question, as in, “Are you willing to paint a bad painting?” When in fact is was actually a statement “You are willing to risk painting badly in order to paint something new” which is really a huge compliment and true enough, I guess, but it isn’t how I think of myself, and so like anything people say about me, I like to try it on and wear it around for a while and see if it fits. I mean, sure, I paint bad paintings, and yes, I like to experiment, which might look like I like to take risks, but while I like trying new things, I hate having to talk about it, because in art people want to know what it is you are doing or what it is you are trying to say, and about the time they think they have it figured out, I go and change it up and say “that is not it at all, that is not what I meant at all.” Colleagues and professors will ask me “Why did you do that?” and “What does that mean?” and I never have an answer, or at least, I don’t have an answer that I am willing to share, because the answer in my head always sounds so naïve. “It looked cool” or “I was just messing around” and then they shake their heads in collective disdain or worse they say nothing at all because there is nothing to say. It’s like saying “I paint pretty butterflies, aren’t they pretty?” and while that will sell t-shirts, it doesn’t build credibility.
I think there is a question in there. Does consistency build credibility? And the corollary to that is what does consistency consist of? Painting is just painting, but you can’t paint paintings of butterflies one day and spirals and squiggles the next and expect people to understand, so the consistency here isn’t in the act of painting, but in what you paint. A good fiction author writes fiction and a good documentary filmmaker makes documentaries and while yes we are all encouraged to explore other venues, to do so with great abandon tends to confuse.
Then there is this whole other song inside my head that I am whistling away while I type and that is who is the audience? Can you write poetry for some and non-fiction for others? Would Whitman still be Whitman if he spent his off hours writing Civil War documentaries? Or is he Whitman because he spent his off hours polishing his craft and refining those things that he wrote while he was working? I suppose you hear tell of Renaissance men and women who can do it all, the proverbial Jack-of-all-trades who knows no boundaries and no fear. Their myths inspire and delight us, but truth be told (a phrase I have been using a lot lately) Leonardo didn’t finish much, and the stuff he did finish is falling apart. Durer might be a better example, or Michelangelo as both of these me wore numerous hats. But can we honestly expect to measure ourselves by these men, when in all reality most normal, humble people don’t aspire to do so much and nonetheless tend to fare pretty well. There is a lesson here somewhere: I am no Michelangelo, and I don’t want to be.
I will tell you what I told my friend “In short, I have made a lot of bad paintings. But it was never really about what is good and what is bad, in the moment of creation I loved each painting dearly and poured myself into them with abandon. It is odd, but what I think I am really doing in art is working on me, and the painting is just the remnant... kind of like sequin wasting- you punch the little holes making sequins and what is left over, the ribbon, you sell as a decorative bow.” Then my audience is really me and not anyone else and it doesn’t really matter what I paint because I don’t aspire to fame or stardom or any of that jazz, what I really aspire to is being happy and making pretty little paintings that people enjoy and sometimes even making one or two that have a little something extra, some meaning or insight attached to them not that I strive for this, but when it happens, when that magic little something goes ka-pow, then I smile a little secret smile to myself that says “I didn’t mean for it to happen, I didn’t plan for it to happen, but it happened and that’s that!”
I think there is a question in there. Does consistency build credibility? And the corollary to that is what does consistency consist of? Painting is just painting, but you can’t paint paintings of butterflies one day and spirals and squiggles the next and expect people to understand, so the consistency here isn’t in the act of painting, but in what you paint. A good fiction author writes fiction and a good documentary filmmaker makes documentaries and while yes we are all encouraged to explore other venues, to do so with great abandon tends to confuse.
Then there is this whole other song inside my head that I am whistling away while I type and that is who is the audience? Can you write poetry for some and non-fiction for others? Would Whitman still be Whitman if he spent his off hours writing Civil War documentaries? Or is he Whitman because he spent his off hours polishing his craft and refining those things that he wrote while he was working? I suppose you hear tell of Renaissance men and women who can do it all, the proverbial Jack-of-all-trades who knows no boundaries and no fear. Their myths inspire and delight us, but truth be told (a phrase I have been using a lot lately) Leonardo didn’t finish much, and the stuff he did finish is falling apart. Durer might be a better example, or Michelangelo as both of these me wore numerous hats. But can we honestly expect to measure ourselves by these men, when in all reality most normal, humble people don’t aspire to do so much and nonetheless tend to fare pretty well. There is a lesson here somewhere: I am no Michelangelo, and I don’t want to be.
I will tell you what I told my friend “In short, I have made a lot of bad paintings. But it was never really about what is good and what is bad, in the moment of creation I loved each painting dearly and poured myself into them with abandon. It is odd, but what I think I am really doing in art is working on me, and the painting is just the remnant... kind of like sequin wasting- you punch the little holes making sequins and what is left over, the ribbon, you sell as a decorative bow.” Then my audience is really me and not anyone else and it doesn’t really matter what I paint because I don’t aspire to fame or stardom or any of that jazz, what I really aspire to is being happy and making pretty little paintings that people enjoy and sometimes even making one or two that have a little something extra, some meaning or insight attached to them not that I strive for this, but when it happens, when that magic little something goes ka-pow, then I smile a little secret smile to myself that says “I didn’t mean for it to happen, I didn’t plan for it to happen, but it happened and that’s that!”
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