I Never Lost Control

Another good Saturday. Prints were sold. There were some nice ppl.

Sadly, at the end of the day, there was some criticism for meezy from a person. I was gratious about, didn’t argue per se. But, I did note something about the excahnge: I really have no “street cred” at this point. Basically, the ppl that I sell art to are ppl that buy art and know a lot about it, many of them know a lot of music and literature as well. It made me kinda sad. It also made me realize that I’ve flirted a lot with graphic design lately when in fact I have such (sometimes obnoxiously) high ambitions to Symbolic artwork.

It doesn’t help things that my latest series is so pattern-based and geometric. I notice that I’ve been getting recognition for my design skill when I really don’t care that much about design. I got solicited thrice today for graphic design projects, only one of which I accepted.

I’ll have mroe to say on the design topic as soon as I think this whole thing over- you see, it really just occured to me.

Das ist alles

It’s been a Long time- we shouldn’t'a left you

I’ve been pretty absent from wordpress.com as of late. But I’m back.

I’ll make my first return post brief, mostly life-y:

I have two jobs; Oregon Art Supply and Tsunami books. I like both places so far. In another week, I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say about it all.

I feel mostly like an artist these days, but I’ve said that in lots of posts. There’s just something about the whole selling of art thing that simultaneously changes a person and reveals a change that’s been going on for a while unnoticed. I sell more than I probably should- there are better artists than myself everywhere. Nontheless, I sell for one reason, the only thing that matters to me anymore and the one thing I feel I can base some kind of theory about art on right now: I am prolific. I cut new blocks daily, and the count of blocks I’ve cut rapidly approaches one hundred now. Most of them ok, some bad, a few that are pretty good.

SO, that’s pretty much all. I guess my current focus on prolificness over profoundness is nothing new anyways

Oh, but hey: Expect one of my very next posts to be a MEGA UPDATE of my visual art. Maybe some poetry will follow.

I, starving artist

I’ve longed so long to post here. I lacked a concrete statement, so finally, I have come with what I do have.

The title says it all- I consider today my status as an “artist,” whatever that means. It’s been on my mind so long, and I’ve finally found my answer.

Luckily, I become less starving everyday lately. Whereas I was opperating my little printing projects at considerable cost to myself for a long time, I came to the point of completely breaking even lately, which is huge for me, considering I never could bring myself to take myself seriously and the fact that I indeed do so much printing. I can say today, however, that I now see my opperating costs many times over. That is, I actually make considerable profit off my art.

What should this mean to me? I don’t think that feeling validated as an actual artist, not just a kid who sometimes produces juvenile visions, is quite letting it get to my head. Perhaps I’m wrong. But there’s something about seeing a person’s interest in what I’ve done that goes so far beyond being able to feel good about what I’ve done in the presence of myself. It feels like a contribution to God’s creation, which is all the fulfillment one could ever ask for.

The truth is, I’ve felt this way about my poetry for a good long time. Perhaps it was the first time I saw my work in print that I wasn’t responisble for, or maybe the second, but the validation there has helped me go further with my capabilities and do things with words I was always too timid to attempt before. Finally, I am there as a visual artist. Perhaps music shall be next

Anyhow, in conclusion, I think I’ve found what I always needed for the last 20 years, which is such an uncanny feeling. That is, I feel content to be who I am. It’s funny that now is the time that I realize that I could and should have always felt this way, and I don’t need anybody to tell me that i’m good at what I do. But it happened in the end, and that’s all I could ask.

This reminds me, I need to update my artwork page!

More later, much love

Poem: The Plainest SOng In All England

Here it is, the new installation in the hals of sad stories:

A shadowy attic

The North Sea coast

I am inspired to salvage

A poorly varnished secretary

Offers this mysterious sacrament

A cream colored note

I love

I have come to bury

In defiance of the Lord’s fiat

I dwell willfully

My mind redecorated

In the manner of a cool

Windowless basement

We were poets

We were full glasses

Left on the brink of the bitter ends

I read the two words

Uttering in harmony

My hatred for the five insipid marks

For their simplicity

For their naivety

I sing them tunelessly

In imitation of the careless notation

and find them flat

And so it’s possible

This is the plainest song in all England

Its dingy ghost

Stands without appeal

Against the intrigues of history

They are not witches

That clumsily conjured it

Merely humiliated alchemists of language

Dashing on the shallows

Of the explicit

The choir of Daedalus

They were moved to tears

Staring at the impartial sun

Not for loss

Not for injustice

But from a quiet

Unspoken pride

Midday relaxes

On the open windows of the studio

I worked all morning

Priming this canvas

Mixing these paints

Paying too much for this brush

It approaches the tabula rasa

With dark intent

Strikes seven empty tones

and drops silently

We loved

Prosetry

“Hey, why don’t you write prose poetry?”
This statement was put to me more like a command than a question. Naturally, I strained at the imperative.
You see, I will never write a prose poem. Why is that? It is not because I fear the distant, undefined hinterlands of poetry. In fact, it is from them that I come to this point. It is because I fear prose.
Prose is the market. All come with their shiny products to compete, not with quality, not durability, not with utility, but with good salesmanship. It is the port where every outlandish trinket is worth more than the last. I come to it a humiliated fisherman, an unlucky and lazy farmer.
The purpose of prose is to relate. To tell a story. I have no story. I want to tell a story of a few common reflections. I want to hum the plainest song in all England and be reckoned an artist.
Poetry, that is all that is left to me. Poetry is the silent sanctuary of Saint Vitus. It is the only safe place for my type. In a city so populous, the only empty beds seem to lie in the cemetery. Given the bizzare accomadations, I am nonetheless comfortable, as I finally have found a quiet projection of that environment my mind will always shut itself in. A poet, I conclude that all is well. Were I a writer, I would surely end this nocturne on a minor chord, leave a space for the sequel. I will have no sequel, as I know that I will sing this very song tomorrow. That pleases me, as it’s all I’ll ever need. All that I have written and will write is a chromatic chain of slightly altered facsimile.
How does a poet end something? In the middle of nowhere and without warning. Perhaps  I am no great poet either then, as I am making a point of saying good night and happy fourth of July to you all. But, when you live life like a show, you must take a bow to the people you know.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche has come up in a few conversations lately. It inspired me to read the Nietzsche I’ve been wanting to read for some time now. I was dissapointed, to say the least.

His The Case of Wagner is likely the worst bit of commentary on art I’ve ever read, excepting perhaps the occasional LiveJournal/myspace rant about recent literary dissapointments of ppl with no art crit. aspirations.

Nietzsche’s “critique” of Wagner’s work is shaped by a sad, petty set of adjectives: “idiotic/stupid,” “sick,” “subversive,” and “evil.” These are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for criticism- they herald the logical humiliation of the critic by the criticized work. They are in fact an admission. The reasonless, visceral hatred of any work has its place. I hate Elvis. We all suffer this. It has no place in lit/art criticism.

Besides these… charges, Nietzsche ascribes to Wagner many, many things: power, genius, pre-eminence in his contemporary field, etc. So, if we must discount his pathetic insults from the work, all we are left with are tacit praises of Wagner!

These are the only other accusations Nietzsche manages to bring: Wagner lacks melody in comparison to Bizet and his music is generally ugly. Anything lacks melody in comparison to Bizet! Carmen is in fact little but a sequence of melodies. There is more to a grand orchestral narrative of a proud nation than its whistle/sing-along-appeal, is there not? Wagner makes a point of this, quite blatantly.  Nietzsche ignores it. As far as ugliness… how can this be criticism? Nietzsche looks something like an old, bitter Icarus falling from the lit. crit. heights of The Birth of Tragedy to this painful end.

It has been said that “Nietzsche was Symbolism’s philosopher, Wagner it’s composer.” Wagner was a Symbolist. They were both decadents. Nietzsche *nearly* achieved the Symbolist aesthetic philosophical master-piece in The Birth of Tragedy, but failed. Ultimately, he mistook Symbolism’s relationship to Classicism. He took Puvis de Chavannes to be a naïve Giotto, Gauguin to be a hasty Raphael, and forgot al about Redon, Klimmt, Munch, and Dennis, amongst others. Saddly, he took Moreau and Khnopf at face value.

I refrain from calling him stupid nonetheless. He was purposeful. He knew what he wanted. In the end, the inventor of the übermensch may have suffered an excess of that “nostalgia for unity” he pretended to despise.

I think I will leave Nietzsche here. I had intended to do a more in-depth reading of his works, but I am already tired. There is a new decadence to exploit, and I have no time to reasonlessly whine about degradation, ugliness, low-class, etc. I want to move, move decisively on this indeffinite path towards a supposed future and move others with what I do.

Sound & Vision

Here’s a poem. Hope you likes

Sound and vision,
the sun and the sea,
I think I have found
the eternity
the sleeping eye wants
in its shallow haunts.

Grey drones in the ear,
a song washes blue
on regions of green
and settles like dew,
its glint as it dries
its remark to the skies.

The tall pines are told
of the sand’s decadence
as they turn their long backs
to the flock’s merriment,
jaded raiments warmed
nonetheless by grey swarms.

I’ve never seen orange
like Orpheus’ eyes,
bloodshot reflections
of the sun’s distant cries.
The voice empties red
from his cold, jaundiced head.

I’ve learned from pastels-
the pale, vast expanse,
ephemeral youth,
Autumn’s aged romance-
the faint harmonies,
my heart’s subtleties.

I wait for the lyrist
to show me the tune
I’ll hum for the phantoms
drawn to the white moon
that shutter their eyes
to morning’s bright guise.

Sound and vision,
dawn and sunset,
stir me from shadows
when I come to regret
all that I want
in my solemn haunts.

Oregon art supply?

So, this morning I’m off to apply for a job at Oregon Art Supply. It will be interesting- never applied for a job before, and I’m super nervous. It would be too cool to have this job though! In fact, I almost feel the urge to not try very hard to get it, because trying for it and not getting it would be so, so dissapointing and sad.

Nonetheless, I will try. Urges are not actions, no? Now, what will I wear?…

Anyhow, I promise a prompt posting of random blog-type-things. I have much new art-work I haven’t scanned yet. It will be here soon. I didn’t sleep very well, so I’m not thinking well yet.  Time to get ready to go downtown

Keep it trill

EDIT: I went. It went well

Rebeccah, the owner, was not there, but when I said that i had a resume to drop off with her, the girl asked “oh, are you victor, Kim Still from Saturday Market’s son?” hahaha. I think that’s a good sign? Then she said that “Rebeccah was looking forward to seeing this. I’ll have her call as soon as possible.” Phew. Went well. Now, to wait…

Just be simple

I listened to my iTunes library on shuffle yesterday afternoon while trying to mapout my last essays of my college career. I have a few more days to write them. One of my favourite songs came on, and it was everything that I needed, for the essays’ sake and my own- Songs: Ohia‘s “Just Be Simple,” where he says “just be simple” over and over at the end. That utterance is no less powerful than somebody screaming drama over some over-orchestrated mayhem. Simplicity is the nearest to truth- for the most part. Truth is beautiful. I recognized that this is a time to be simple.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll state what that “really” means for me. It means simply being good to people (you, the reader, included ). It means approaching the block/plexiglass/zinc plate with a singular vision unclouded by considerations of what would or should look good here or there. It means writing a poem and not feeling a need to add this or that device here, make such and such metaphor there. Maybe a singular metaphor in a whole poem is good, as long as it’s true. Simplicity is continuing to eat right, excercise, work, keep a clean house, create, and be happy. Happiness and contentment are simple, and what more could one want?

Perhaps this post concerns my art the most. I’ve worried at times as of late about over doing my art. I only do it when I get nervous about simply putting something out there- an idea, an image, whatever. Sometimes the impulse arises to clutter things so as not to over expose the honest truth of the mind. The impulse must be erased, and I’ve had some astounding success the last couple of weeks with some prose experiments, poems, my essays, and my new blocks/plates I’ve been cutting. It’s a new period in life with this principle.

So, if I could make any appeal to my dear reader here, it would be this: my friends, be simple. Love, create, act, and speak simply. Forgive those complexities that seem to drive away and apart, for they are only phantoms we summon to guard the essential truth. We forget that what is simply true can never be damaged. You’ll think it odd to read this coming from me- perhaps I have transgressed simplicity worse than any. I have concealed, hidden, denied, and attacked the honest. Still, we choose who we are everyday, and even I make this new choice.

Perhaps this was my own Sunday morning sermon- a prelude, if you will Given my new outlook, it would be dishonest to apologive for that

I’ll leave you with a final statement on this topic: everyone reading this, you have been good to me, and I love you for it. It’s been good times lately. It will be even better times- new adventures, new opportunities, new everything.

Keep it real

The New, already

To think, just the other day I was proclaiming the newness when the old hadn’t quite ended. It did. It’s done, and it’s ok. Without overly elegizing it, it was a good time. There was 2006. I will always remember it fondly. The following GBV lyric will always attach itself to the PHR days:

“Often times I’m reminded

of the sweet young days

when I poured punch for the franchize

and thus was knighted,

was so excited.”

That is the final word on it for my part. Good night PHR.

So, part II of this entry (and creative life in general) begins here.

Jesus said “let the dead bury themselves.” I have no intention of being so cynical. Nonetheless, there is work to be done. I’ve already begun the printing series that will be the begining of my as-yet-unnamed printing establishment. It was already in discussion as of Saturday.

There will be three categories to begin with: Still lifes, Stories, and Interpretations. Interpretations of poetry/music will begin with the GBV illustration project, first of which is “weed King.” Second will be “Game of Pricks,” with Max.

Also potentially included in this new project will be C.V.- that is, if Max is still interested. It is the story about a man on a journey. Look forward to pieces of it. That is all I’ll say for now.

Folks, that is all I have for now. It’s a lot. Perhaps more could be said, but we’re all better than what that could be.

Much love to everyone out there