the pepper tree breaking into light

he might have felt lonely if it hadn’t been for his thoughts: not the consecutive, reasoned grey of intellectual thought, but the bursts of kaleidoscopic imagery, both flowering in his mind, and filtered sensuously through his blood…

—The Vivisector, Patrick White

it has been an unusual autumn. an auspicious approach to winter. several relationships have fractured or fallen away, initiated by one party or another. different reasons, different causes, and yet the end result is i am alone heading into this rainy winter forest. alone in an apartment, and my day, and my nights. i don’t say that moaning, or in complaint. i don’t even speak it with the angst which has accompanied the last twenty posts here or so. for once, i am only noting it. and in fact, i think this time comes destined. but yes, it is unusual. the long, deep silences in this apartment are unusual. so many days and nights in a row with so much space in bed is unusual. the quality to the days are utterly unusual. again, so much silence. room to move about and think. that made things very painful for a while. too much space. too much silence. i feel i have moved into a new season, now.

at first this aloneness felt like a withdrawal stage. the apartment in disarray was a wound. a ghost moaning incessantly of the past, and of shame and failure. someone asked me “isn’t there another way to frame it aside from ‘failure’?” and if i were being more honest with myself i would have just admitted ‘no’ instead of trying to rationalize that, yes, i understood there could be other ways to frame it. some nights i went mad for a while. most nights, at first. i lost myself in moving furniture. trying to reshape the interior. cleaning. trying to help my brain over the landing. through the change. i’ve used booze too.

so strange. not having someone here to always hear my thoughts. nobody’s company watching a movie. nothing at all. the displacement paralyzed me. almost like after 9/11, when i froze and everything fell to the ground in a tiny echo of what the city had all just lived through. this time things almost fell entirely into disrepair, financially and spatially, before i lurched into action because, no. not twice in a row at least.

and so i got up and scheduled things and set up some jobs, and worked for the right amounts of time—and i’m still doing that—and i’ve had a little help, too, from friends. i’ve got things going and i’m doing food shopping and am keeping things reasonably clean and maintaining my time with luna and i feel i’m on track. i’m paying the rent and my fone is not shut off and i don’t feel crazy every night, nor dread the evening whenever it comes around…that’s a big one.

i’ve simply started moving again, turning the wheels again, accepting that there is a reason to do so, and that in doing so, progress can be made in some way. it occurred to me the other day a lot of this is replacing old routines with new routines and in this way i am moving through it. and now i’m no longer just holding on…i’m beginning to enjoy some of the silences. and settling into my own seat. taking a breath, looking around. now that i’m not in survival/shock mode and wondering if the ship is going to go under any moment, i’m beginning to think about where i want to steer this thing.

and i’m not part of any daily dysfunction that feeds a bristling ball of anger, pain, and general negativity within my own sphere and others’. that’s first and foremost. nothing happens until that part is removed. no, i don’t know whose “fault” it all was. if it was mine, well then. i’ve removed myself and that seemed to work. and i didn’t even plan that. unexpected happenstance was the catalyst, but this continued path i walk is about more than that, now.

actually, i’m amazed. mostly because being alone for too long has been a bit terrifying for me. i don’t do that. i’ve always traveled with a best friend, or lived in group settings with other males (institutional settings) or lived with a woman—since i was 17. on one road trip (20) i stopped at my father’s who I’d just met again for the first time in 15 years. when he saw me and my best friend, he asked me pointedly “why aren’t you ever alone?” it wasn’t until at least ten years later that it occurred to me what a cruel question that was coming from someone who walked out on your life before you were even born. but to the point, and as strange as it might sound to someone else with different experiences, being alone in my own place is a brand new pattern. waking up alone, going to sleep alone. figuring out how to eat each day. paying bills all alone. making structure out of no structure at all. being with myself. i feel a change lately, in that i can bear it. this seems important to me.

if anyone has wondered why i’ve maintained a distance around myself at certain times or a lack of promise or investment its because i’m trying not just to be fair to others, but to brave these silences for once. i’m trying to reap the benefit of this struggle. if there is anything positive to be wrought from the depths of such a crack-lipped rift as this which takes a family apart in this way, it is to be found in my reflection, solitude, loneliness, thoughtfulness. it is to be manifested in a gathering in of my energies and a careful application to that which is positive and creative and constructive. I want to be careful not to be reactive, nor to simply distract myself from the ache. There is a meaningful and profound pain running through this change, whether it be called a failure or otherwise. I want to use that pain to hone my effects, to pare away the distance between my intention and application on multiple levels.

i find with more time to myself i have more time to consider not simply my emotional reaction to the world and to others, but the origins of my own emotion. there seems to me an important distinction.

i feel i am less grounded in other people’s ongoing reality, and that is a good thing. as an artist, i am a bit like a receptor. a tuning fork. i feel easily, deeply, and intensely. this is coupled, of course, with the recoil and response which artists have as a matter of function. you receive the energies of your environment, are imbued of them, resonate with that and then transmit it back/outward—and if i dont have time to process or consider the transmission or interpretation, the event can become like an echo track overloading and overheating the circuit. me, being that conduit. part of what was so painful in my marriage was that i was ultimately contending with cluttered emotional freight on a daily basis. there was not the room to get to more fragile or more subtle vibrations such as one needs to contact for much of their art. and if an artist is not doing these types of things, i really think a great amount of unhappiness resounds. and then, that is what you transmit.

i dont write these things to blame anyone else. i think these are problems inherent in an artist having any close relationship, to tell you the truth (and i’ve got plenty of my own freight). and i’m sure we could embark on another discussion here. but i’m talking now of my specific life. not theories involving love, intimacy, and artists.

we could no longer dance. we could barely move. we were both dragging around lists made of lead. i tag neither of us as some sort of sole destroyer or victimizer. if she does, that’s her view and for her to espouse or defend. but for me arguing about it brings no clarity, only more pain. i didn’t know what went wrong. or how much was right to begin with. even when i tried, i couldnt navigate simple kindness anymore and i couldn stand myself for that lack. i don’t know what is the future of her or myself or our children. but i don’t want it to be anything other than kindness. kindness or nothing. and so far, this is better. though it is certainly not ideal…

i want to be truer to myself. that means seeing what i am good at and what i am not. and applying myself doubly hard in the areas i have interest and talent and ability (and yes calling) and retracting myself more from areas where i am just lounging or killing time. i am 39. if life were fair, i’d live to be 400. because i’m an infant in terms of mastering my talents and being a human being in general. i feel such great awe and earnest gratitude for every new thing i learn, but i’m hardly half way to being self-actualized. and so it is with a certain tinge of (sorrow may be too strong a word, but i don’t have enough terms for shades of sadness) wistfulness that i admit my life will be incomplete. meanwhile, i don’t want to waste too much more time pretending or starching up my collar or posing—unless its for really weird art fotographs or installations.

i want to be truer to my art. i’ve been practicing brushstrokes and gradients and arcs and shading and hue and image capture and composition and layering and narrative and theme and subtext and transition and meter and metaphor for two decades, now. i feel i am ready for another round of production and another level of corazónian expression. i havent made any art (and i mean paintings in the 3D) or sculpture or albums in a long time. I’ve dabbled in digital grafiks and fun little audio tracks or quickie songs for about two years and i see this as a buffer period where i’ve been soaking up a lot of new information, thinking about things in new ways, and in general, changing and not quite ready to “produce” yet. i’ve also done a lot of thinking about art and how i’ve used it and what the gift is for. my entire approach to art has transformed in this time period where i’ve not been really exploring any new ground. my thoughts on the use of it, the debt owed to it, the power and function of art, and consequently how to speak with it. a reader could track this since i began writing years ago in el grito about euro-centric media, and indigenous art, and capitalism’s minions, and sexist and racist media…and actually, it began years before, while learning about media messaging in NYU Film/TV, and even earlier with my photography and SBS and marketing courses in community college. In fact, “this” is a long path, and we cannot find the toe or head here. i am but standing aside for a moment and marking the journey. once again.

my art (and i include music) itself was a reaction for a long time. and it was a mourning. it was a mourning without a full accounting. it was a hand of anger with an incomplete grasp of cause. it was a vow to take vengeance but overlooking many important actors. in this way it was typical. the “truth” of what i am creating is of greater importance to me, but apart from all other considerations, i certainly do not strive to be a typical creator of sound or imagery or story. if i’m going to bother, i don’t need another hobby. no, i want to reach new, original levels of creation/interpretation/expression. not necessarily in the world’s canons, but definitely within the context of my own repertoire of style. i want to push myself toward the greatness that may lie at the seed of this ability. looking back, so much of what i was saying was repeating lessons i’d been given. or reacting viscerally to realities i was living and sometimes the result was beautiful, maybe, in its striving for honesty. (granted, there are still people who swear by much of it. and i would take nothing from them. that’s an argument i dont win even when i seem to!) but there are always deeper levels to plumb. without evaluating further or degrading past efforts to be real, these stated conditions are why i say that my years of art—soulful gestures for sure—has been mostly practice. then again, i’m sure every artist wants to look back with scorn upon her or his seminal or early work. so perhaps i am not being so original after all.

regardless, i feel something truer and vast beneath the surface. and i would dive down to get at it. i would risk drowning to find it. that i know to be so much of my purpose here.

not this:

and while words are very much a part of my work and what i am presumptuous enough to think of as my gifts, this blogging thing has tended to steer me toward overuse. an effervescent outpouring of words, words, words and that’s all too easy for me, isn’t it? and all this time i’m typing and talking i’m not doing enough of other things. words, as i’ve written before in el grito, are dangerous and at the same time, inefficient. (all these value judgments of course depend on intent and function and goal, that’s a given). but lately i’ve been looking at my easel a lot. and lately i’ve been picking up my guitars more often. it might not mean a thing. then again, it might.

one last thing. in my last post i talked, joked, about having contempt for the entirety of the human race. now of course, this is not a great statement to make wholesale, and while i’m okay with the amount and quality of people who choose to stick around despite the many off-the-cuff statements i make like this, i had a few thoughts about it. and what i thought was that there is no time i am more unhappy with the human race as a whole then when i am improperly interacting with it. that might mean holding a job that offends my nature, or lying too much, or trying to engage people in ways that feel phony or unnatural to me; against my own grain. it might mean a number of things. but i’d like to take back the locus, if nothing else. people are no one thing. people are in turns, wondrous, disappointing, ugly, beautiful, amazing, selfish, shallow, generous, remarkable. there is no blanket statement that holds fast. and again, it comes down to where i’m trying to place myself within that entire exchange. if i’m more careful and honest about it, there will be less moments like that. at least that’s the idea.

what was i saying? oh yeah. too many words. pretending i understand them and that they fix things. or that they say what it is i’ve been feeling. missing getting my hands wet, dirty, bright, staying up drawing impossible suns all night. less of that and more of this. announcing my alliance with fearlessness and bliss.