|
7 & 1/2 Acres |
2002-09-01 - 4:54 p.m. August 31, 2002 I want to be educated. Rather, I want to remember. I am so frustrated with this doggone lack of any cohesive memory that characterizes my life. I want to change it. This is how I am going to do it: First I am going to pay attention. If I find my mind wandering, I shall call it back. If I cannot call it back, I stop the activity at hand. What I do not do is pretend I am paying attention. Secondly, I refamiliarize myself with the things that I do know, or knew once, and reknow these things again presently. This is going to involve watching movies again, rereading books perhaps, and going over my music collection and actively listening to things that I once listened to. Right now, I have started this part of my reeducation by playing The Breeders. Kim Deal sang and played guitar in The Breeders. She formed this band after The Pixies went defunct and if my memory serves me she and Tonya Donelly are the two who got together to form The Breeders. Tonya Donelly used to be in Throwing Muses with Kristen Hirsh--if I remember right. Frances tried to get this through my thick skull one time but I didn't pay attention and now I wish I did. My reeducation will be this basic. In fact, it will focus on these kinds of details. There once was a time when I was horrible with names. Frances'd nudge me constantly, reminding me to just exchange pleasantries without trying to say the persons name--cuz I was inevitably going to say it wrong and embarrass everyone. So, these are my major things I�ve outline so far in this online journal: 1. That I've been in school a long time. 2. That, though I've majored in Art, I want to go into farming. 3. Part of this decision is because I want to do good. And here I've hit my wall. I suspected I would. DISCLAIMER: I AM USING THIS TEXT TO FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT---I AM WRITING HERE TO FIGURE THIS OUT---I AM USING THIS PUBLIC FORUM IN ORDER TO ACCEPT A HIGHER SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT I SPEW HERE---IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT I WRITE HERE IS INHERENTLY ROUGH AND MY EGO IS SO BIG I HAD TO MAKE A DISCLAIMER ABOUT IT. 4. I feel sometimes that this decision isn't solely outta wanting to do good. It is out of reaction to ways of doing things bad. It is out of ego to think I can do things better. It is out of a desire to make a comfortable but responsible place for myself (not just me but my community) in this world. It is out of a desire to own and control my own economic means--to direct my own sustainability. To work for another, day in and day out, I think would suck any spirit I may have right outta me.
5. I do want to make art. I think it is the art making that makes the farming something else. This notion I have of farming is one of this sustainable living with the environment and community. the art making brings this sustainability to a public forum so that it is not locally sequestered. At least this is what my hope is anyway. I haven't even been making any art. (For clarity--I am making art--it's just that I am involved with the research and living part of it that the "art" has not manifested into any form yet. There is nothing to see--yet, but the art making is happening right now, even. Boy, this is a thought that this visiting professor as well as several others in the academic institution of an MFA program just could not support. I think they got it, but refused to recognize its validity. Wendell Barry writes about this in What are People for-- It used to be that I could think of art as a refuge from such troubles. From the imperfections of life, one could take refuge in the perfections of art. One could read a good poem--or better, write one. Art was what was truly permanent, therefore what truly mattered. The rest was "but a spume that plays/Upon a ghostly paradigm of things." I am no longer able to think that way. That is because I now live in my subject. My subject is my place in the world, and I live in my place. There is a sense in which I no longer "go to work." If I live in my place, which is my subject, then I am "at" my work even when I am not working. It is "my" work because I cannot escape it. If I live in my subject, then writing about it cannot "free" me of it or "get it out of my system." When I am finished writing, I can only return to what I have been writing about. I have been writing about it, time will have changed it. Over long periods of time, I will have changed it. Ultimately, it will be changed by what I write, inasmuch as I, who change my subject, am changed by what I write about it.
|