Art is Cruel

Art is cruel. If that statement had to be epitomised as a character, much like Death is often betrayed as a hooded figure or Father Time as an elderly bearded man with a scythe and an hourglass, then it would for me be in the form of a Cruella de Vil: sleek and seductive, dressed in a fantastic art-inspired coat and dripping with jewels and smelling of money, and accompanied by a very slick man, business attired with a slightly tanned complexion and oiled hair, and never without his phone or briefcase which onlookers surmise is full of wads of (counterfeit and dirty) money. Or a pistol.
Sometimes both of these articles: gun and money, fake and real but ill-gotten, is indeed carried when it's under his arm but when it's held by his perspiring palm then more often all that's inside are a few greasy looking documents, a pair of reading spectacles and the sandwiches his wife made. And in spite of his magazine-style appearance (of course devised by Cruella), he's actually a nervous character (certainly not a Mr. Ripley!) and therefore not good with subterfuge. But then he's only the assuredly silent or stuttering money man.
Cruella handles the whole operation: that of dashing hopes and destroying artists, to recoup these losses when they've been extinguished, by fate or their own hand, and their works have finally been recognised and are climbing in value; when their admirers number thousands rather than a few earnest supporters, and when all that they achieved is lauded far, far beyond how it was received when they were living.
It may not have escaped your attention that I've somehow drifted into writing of this 'Cruella' and her accomplice as if they are established already; in my mind, they are. I see them so clearly, although you would be right if you also thought (as I do) the money man needs more work, even a re-write. But it's just germ of an idea, based on factual stories of art theft, art frauds and auctions which my mind took and Disney-ified, supposedly to try to make a point, which I'm currently failing at because the characters have stolen that thunder, and which I hoped to expand on to include (generically) authors who've incurred the same treatment.
I don't think it's too implausible to shape an idea thus, but really she needs her own name...if she's going to steal paintings not puppies and negotiate hard. The moral being that when acclaim comes too late other people grow fat on the proceeds.
But is that a moral you can learn by? The artist may have left the world poor – in a dejected state of mental and physical health - and yet what they left, as in their works, has enriched it. And continues to do so long after their demise.
How do you learn to recognise somebody's gifted?
And not after the fact, their fact of being and their take on the world: what they've lived through, how they've experienced it which they not only see through their own eyes but through the eyes of others. And then put into a painting, into music, into dance, into words.
Should art, in all its forms, always be a struggle? That if lived on is a hand to mouth existence? And which in many cases others later profit by?
Is that what makes great art? That will to create and get by with little. So that eventually (though sadly not necessarily in the artist's lifetime) the art is the collectible kind, the kind that impresses critics and crowds. That has popular appeal, and once it's been noticed a staying power. One that increases and doesn't diminish with time.
Do you have to, if you're an artist, live and die by the sword you wield? Perhaps you just have to be prepared to and to follow through if such an instant comes. Perhaps it's not a choice... perhaps art always gets its victim. Particularly if it's regarded as a calling. And perhaps those called to it aren't always strong enough, or its pitfalls make them weaker?
Maybe some artists arrive too soon, before the public are ready? Even before a receptive audience have been born, before attitudes have changed.
Cruella was expelled from school for drinking ink; Gerard de Nerval reportedly walked live lobsters on blue ribbons; van Gogh ate paint. There's a relevance in there somewhere.
Oh yes, art is cruel.

Picture credit: Cruella de Vil, 101 Dalmatians, Disney
All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Dreamlike

Why is it you don't notice seismic shifts when they occur? It's only later, much later, you realise a change happened, but when you can't say. It's too long ago, and that person, that other person, the one you were then, in that decade, seems dreamlike. A dream you that you know once existed yet now feels imagined. Almost as if that person were a distant cousin you hear of but never see. Someone that survives in the mind only, and only then tenuously.
The link not as strong as say to the child-you. Or to the adolescent.
Which is the act: now or then? Neither?
Did a mask fall? Or has a mask been put on?
Why do I always ask myself questions I can't answer? Or to which a different answer will always be given depending on when it's asked.
It's pointless to carry on with you even at this early stage, but by that do I mean me or you, the reader?
I don't know. I'm going to carry on typing. See what happens. And you can stay too, or go. Who cares whom I'm talking to: to a past me, to present me, to anybody out there, even an alien form, to people who might wake up one day and feel the same way: find it hard to recognise who they were, and where they might have gone?
There's no clues. That person must have just upped and left. And you can't conduct a search for them, put up posters in shop windows and on lampposts, for you share their physicality, if not their personality or persuasions. Doing that would waste everyone's time, and besides, they're not coming back. They're never coming back. And they can't, they won't be found.
Yet it's not loss I feel, just bafflement. Why?
Did their leave-taking happen so gradually it went unnoticed? By me, by anybody... for years, until not a remnant (other than the same eyes, the same nose, the same mouth, the same hair, the same general height and weight give or take a few inches) remained. Perhaps I've been lucky in that regard...perhaps in other cases appearances dramatically alter too...?
So if it's not sadness and it's not a mystery I can solve, then what is it? This. This wondering. Is it more why didn't that person want to stay? Was there a reason she couldn’t? Or was their a door at which she could have come back through but I closed it? Chose to without even realising, and now she's so illusionary it's just not possible for her to ever re-enter. She's too much of a figment, like a fictional character I empathise with but feel separate from. That could be me, it was once me though it seems hard to believe because now it's not.
I never imagined I'd be holding this conversation with a screen; in my head, sure. I hold plenty of discussions up there, not that I ever make much headway. Ha Ha. Too many questions infiltrate and disrupt the A. of the session. Too curious to want to know the answers, if there are any. Too incurious to listen.
It's just one of those things isn't it? An age. A phase. You outgrow yourself. Become someone else. Mature. And look back and think: who was that?? Possibly think: she was more fun than me. Or played a very good game, convincing herself and everyone else.
Hmm, or is she doing that now? But then you end up talking about the current you in the third person, which means, although inward looking, you're outside yourself almost twice over. A 1.5 observer. More than half of who you are living in a dream. Do I do that?
Some would accuse me of being unrealistic in my dealings with this modern world. And I am. I'm not ashamed to admit that or be straight about it: I don't like it.
Do I like myself in it? Sometimes. I like me if I can keep abreast but mostly stay cloistered; I like myself less if forced to apologise for not adapting to its terms. Essentially, I feel got at if made to apologise for being me. For liking me as that uncompromising person. Who, for all her doubts concerning other matters, won't be swayed.
See, there's that third person again; it's too easy to dissociate myself from the subject. Perhaps, that's the crux of it – there are and have been many mes shared with this world, so that recalling any with any certainty or without that dreamlike quality proves problematic.

Picture credit: Femme assise, en robe bleue, 1950, Jean Metzinger

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

The Impatience of Kings

The image of the sun represented in cards also looked, from my seated position, like a child's drawing: its rays like spokes of a bicycle wheel, in blue and white like a china pattern and not a fierce crayoned yellow.
A cold sun: the centre bare, no card yet set there, for they had only been dealt once and my hand was just about to place the first central card in its destined spot when the thought of the sun occurred. I hoped it wasn't a king.
Second round. Third round. Fourth.
It hasn't showered today as it did yesterday, when I was at this same stage: arranging the cards. There's been no pitter-patter against the window panes to arrest my attention and delay my appointment.
So...
A sundial made of cards. Yet no shadows by which to tell the time of day will fall across its face. It's already getting dark. Outside. Inside. Late afternoon light. A pink-greyish shade, that will with time grow deeper and darker. The pink will fade to blend with the grey; the grey will deepen and deepen, sometimes to an oily block of black, but by then my curtains will have been drawn and its transmutation to this: the dark of night, will have gone unnoticed, and yet its barred presence will be felt because the upright lamp's on, casting shadows on the wall and ceiling, and the circulating air feels colder.
Or is that just my imagination? Sensitive to the direction of the wind and to bright or muted light. Wherever I am. Regardless of the time of day.
However, light cannot change to an all-engulfing black as quickly as that in the three games I play. That comes after, in the hours set aside for writing. In that dedicated segment where ungovernable thoughts are mastered and where nothing else is permitted to interfere; in that all too brief period before the body vocalises its needs and I try to delay then resign myself to: a hot shower, food.
I could easily live on Spanish time. Or I do only feel this because I'm a couple of years off forty? My digestion doesn't mind. I eat carbs at nine. And feel tickety-boo.
I digress. For the clock face with its card numerals has no influence then. Its pause spent, its games won. The kings united and standing firm, two stern and two with more gracious expressions.
Yet in that suspension, in that gap of time where a door to all thought is opened, there's always a chance a king will forego his given moment to cause the loss of a life or a blow that signals death. That final strike, like the last stroke of midnight when any magic is undone. Everything reverts to what it was. The day unchanged. All because each suit of king made an ill-timed (though for them it was timely) appearance, thereby putting an end to the unfailing hope that maybe, just maybe, they'd be licked.
Just once out of three games. That's all I ask for.
There's still two more to play, so the hope though dimmed remains. And a king might in the next two fall in the wrong place on the clock face or in the pack, which will give the opponent the advantage, if an advantage in a game of probability can be had. It cannot be pressed or made, that's for sure; the odds are mostly against you. I think. Because I'm not good at computing that kind of thing, and I think a lot of it comes down to the shuffle, at which I think I must be poor.
I've grown more conscious of how I collect the cards. I gather them back into a pack in an unsystematic manner, divide in two and shuffle five times over, ensuring the corner of each card in each half overlaps with each other as I flick through, like one of those tiny books where the drawings form a moving picture, so they'll not be side by side with their equally valued cousins. This technique, however, needs perfecting, for in this USA printed deck the kings generally outwit me and appear all too quickly to take up their rightful central thrones.

Picture credit: The Shower of Cards, John Tenniel, 1832, Alice in Wonderland

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Misty Land

The frustration of not having a definite thought from which to start has combined with the fog of January. I want to write, I want to write, I want to write, these determined words if printed with a pen would stab the paper, the nib pushing through and so causing a tear or a hole. I'm not however applying that same forceful pressure on the Lenovo keyboard, though the temptation to do so is there. In the mind, which is inwardly raging and poking the clotted air. Further poisoning and choking it, because, if by some miracle, a half-baked idea occurs and is pounced upon then the pounce is too slow, for the intent changes mid-flow so that the whole article if completed is altogether unsatisfactory.
I could let the simmering rage take over and with both hands jab with one finger rather than tap lightly as I'm doing with all digits as if I were playing a piano and a piece I knew by heart and therefore didn't need anybody sitting next to me or standing beside the instrument to turn the pages.
Huh, bluffing. Successfully. But I don't know this score. I know nothing. The keys, of course, are helpfully marked with their letter, yet I don't know in which order they are to be played. It's an improvisation, which will in all likelihood be about nothing. Except filling up space with perfumed words, rather than those that leave a stink or unease. An awkwardness pervading the room, of the sort where shoes are looked at with increasing interest and eye contact is avoided.
Duh. I've just described modern life. Though it's phones that are looked at for no reason other than because...An uncomfortable feeling such as that above unneeded; it would have gone unnoticed anyway. Because surgically attached to people's hands, their gaze is always down, and their expression stupefied. Nothing else around seen or heard, and if their attention is grabbed their heads only lift momentarily before returning to the mobile screens they carry in their palms, like vicars on Sunday services expounding the Bible from their pulpits.
Are there still Sunday services? They must be...even in this largely secular and multi-faith society and, dare I say (I do!), era of useless time-sucking technology worship?
Before you think ERROR like a computer program, I did not mean to instead pound out 'saving'.
Ha! The minions on planet Earth have been fooled. They're so zombie-like we can soon make our attack; they'll never see us coming and we'll be in control in no time.
System down. Internet Explorer has stopped working...
See what I mean. Anything can happen when your bubble is a screen rather than real living: the small part of world that surrounds you. For God's sake, notice it before all of us succumb to being cartoon alter egos. Oh wait, too late, it's already happened hasn't it? And where the rest have gone, the rest will surely follow. Was that a nursery rhyme? Mary had a little lamb...Google it...is it important? No. Though tender lambs are sacrificial, and there are many more lambs on this planet compared to mutton. The old can be lambs as can the middle-aged. Actual young lambs are much more belligerent (these days), their white as snow fleeces harbouring overly righteous hearts which, with confidence, they lend a voice to. Bleat, bleat, bleat...They may be right (not in every instance) but can be tough to listen to, whereas mutton, so I hear (and I'm finding to be the case) can be surprisingly tolerant, having reached that place where they don't have to care. It's all gravy, one way or another.
See what happens when you refuse to let rage lead and suffuse it instead into a stew. Thickened, to a chunky soup texture, it's developed bite and some astonishing exotic flavours. I cannot account for it (there's not room to), and anyway the thrown-in ingredients came of their own accord. A pot-luck, which if started over would be different (as is the point), for that same spirit with which, some might opine, spleen was vented, no longer influences my mind or my fingers. The latter, you might like to know, are hesitantly hovering over the keys as if afraid, once again, of hitting the wrong notes and being lost, permanently this time, in a misty land.

Picture credit: The Opium Smoker's Dream, 1918, Lajos Gulacsy

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Penserosa

The details I'm about to mention have only recently passed, but you, reader, are farther from them. For you they are a year ago, whereas for me they are fresh, undimmed by time and Christmases to come. Not even the one just passed, where they will have receded and been replaced by those just made.
Twenty-eighteen has, in my time-frame, just begun, so that hasn't occurred. But like preceding years, in January 'the thoughtful one' (or 'penserosa' as I learned from Goethe) makes her presence known, more so than at other times, even if she, meaning me, is not that deep in reflection i.e. only fetching images back from an arm's throw away. However, on rereading (in your window of time), it will, I hope, feel like standing in the middle of a bridge, contemplating the water or greenery that stirs below, pulled ever deeper into the jungle of leaf or swirls of pond.
Hypnosis by Nature. And to induce that I must record these trivialities.
Trivial they will seem, maybe even puzzling, and yet offer, again I hope, amusement at this rather pensive, gloomy time of year. Other people's families or pastimes often provide merriment, though it might if it's yours – family or hilarity – be concealed.
Get on it with woman! Yes, but please remember I'm no Sue Townsend. Or Victoria Wood for that matter. I don't think I know what it is to be witty, not purposely anyhow.
I wanted to begin with 'Last Christmas...' but that always reminds me of George Michael, and as much as I admired the man, that song once it's recalled is a blasted nuisance. And as I didn't give anyone my heart, it's inappropriate. My heart, you might like to know, is a dried up old thing. Oh, it still goes, it's just a bit shrivelled and rarely expands as it might have once done in former days, which isn't to say it's not warm and generous but it stops short of loving (new) people, outside family, to that degree, where you actually want to offer up this mechanism inside you. To present or be presented with a figurative heart seems too much of an obligation rather than a token of love.
But let's not get on to that; how did we get on to it anyway? Oh yes, George Michael, and the perfect link to another George, a castrated, food fixated and hard of hearing George who didn't seem to know what presents were, nor care really. Though he was transfixed by my father's gift to himself – a mini model train set – and successfully caused a few derailments, and then later from his bed watched the locomotive with a sleepy eye, probably dreaming its attached carriages transported bone-shaped biscuits.
An elderly dog's first Christmas with us, three bored adults, then is the most noteworthy episode, while those that followed were mostly sole occupations. My father created more fake news of a political (and photographic) kind with a 'Vote 4 Jez' graffiti tag line and with Jez, the Labour leader, in a baseball cap, singlet and wide-legged shorts carrying a spray can; and then separately Nigel (Farage) and Theresa (May) playing Jack and Rose in that famous 'Titanic' pose and with a rather crude strap line.
My mother travelled between the kitchen and living room reporting breaking news or was, whilst preparing food, engaged with ITVBE's 'Real Housewives' (of any state or county) or TV quizzes, and if not doing that pouring over crossword puzzles.
I, meanwhile, was travelling too but from a seated position - to New York, to Italy, to Russia, to Germany, to Switzerland, to Manchester, England, and at present (the first week of January '18) to 1960s Budapest, as I continue to follow these book crumbs. And when I have a rest, for the revived Christmas addictions haven't yet abated, it's Kriss Kross or clock patience.
What remains unsolved is the two NHS 111 calls which we received late eve Christmas Day: the number they rung right, the emergencies not, and which I believe (research tells me) might be similar to Raymond Carver's Whoever was Using this Bed, so I advise you to read that instead, because I want to end, as I started, with Goethe, who apparently said: Our world is a cracked bell that no longer sounds. Mine does, occasionally. 

Picture credit: Emily, 1903, Lajos Gulacsy

All posts published this year were penned during the last.