FIELD REPORT: Here Error Is All In the Not Done: On Not Making Nothing

October 15, 2009

Today was a rough, tough and unwieldy day artistically – jagged and ragged in the core of it, a creative state that has been building for a few days as I have felt slightly at odds, syncopated, outside the inside of my work. It’s okay to be uncomfortable with the process. It’s absolutely all right. But being comfortable with being uncomfortable is a quizzical little enterprise, and rather self-reflexive.

Locating internal discomfort feels like locating muscle knots in a massage. There’s nothing you can do about it on the short term except relax a little, and apply soothing pressure, and maybe a long bath.  My admittedly problematic temptation is to bang away at them with a mallet, or cut them out with a scalpel, or anaesthetize them with enigmatic salves and unguents.  It’s so maddening that they’re right there, but I can’t just go in and fix it in two seconds. This week, that’s my experience of the creative process: a muscle knot.

Sometimes my work and I are in the inside of an idea – following and catching and leaping ahead and kinetic, or deliberate, or haphazard, but in it together. There is no struggle for control between artist and idea, but rather seamless interconnectedness. An idea arrives, and stays to play. Regardless of whether it’s pleasurable or not, the game of creation is happening. It’s thrilling because it’s my love: I am doing what I love.

For two months on the road, imposing a daily discipline and creative practice has been the key to sustainability, and even sanity. Get up, and get to work. Sleep. Eat. Laugh. Be okay with being uncomfortable. Stay in balance. Keep up. I am so fortunate to be in this stage of life, amidst these phenomenal communities, and – like most of us – are familiar with the sadness of a creative dream dispelled.  Know what it’s like to wake up and go to the office or wherever and work to fulfill someone else’s worthy dream – but at the expense of one’s own.

Now that I can serve my own dream, I feel an honor must be upheld: do the work. Be dauntless, be disciplined, be true. It’s about living in love, rather than in disappointment or fear or defeat. Keeping the heart alive.

“What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee”
– Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI

It’s been a matter of sheer force of will to unravel the voices of oblivion that say no and absolutely not and who do you think you are – you mustn’t and even – hey there, good morning, hack!

I suspect these are universal voices fashioned within the cognitive plumbing of human beings – for artists, they hold a unique deadliness. They can only be silenced with love. This is my theory.

And so in this mood of love I have dwelled so stubbornly for the past two months in the timeless, shapeless morass of residencies – all the time you want, all the space you want, being housed and fed and otherwise completely the mistress of your own internal domain. It’s the ultimate freedom, and the miracle of it is daunting. Euphoric, but sobering, if that makes sense.

But today…oh, today.

Today!  Grim!

The rocks.

Ah, I hit the rocks.

It’s quite simple: some initial films came back from the lab in Los Angeles and I was dreadfully disappointed in myself about their quality. Very ho-hum in the scheme of things, but there you have it – it was a particular couple of rolls from a particular day and place and I had bonded rather deeply to them. When they returned from the lab with some fatal composition problems, it hit a nerve.

In fact, my initial (and quite surprising) response to the poor quality of work was to visualize each of my fingers as the vicious pry-end of hammers, and imagine clawing all the sheet rock off the walls until I was left howling in the middle of the Great Plains, having dismantled everything created by humans, including myself.

I watched this drama unfolding within myself, and thought hm, this doesn’t seem quite right, not necessarily the best choice.

And then promptly experienced a great deal of pleasure as I again visualized destroying the world.

Samson in the temple could not have wrecked more damage. In my vision the plaster flew, the I-beams warped and bent. The center does not hold. Live wires snapping in the snow.

“The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity.
— Ezra Pound, LXXXI Canto

It surprised me, sinking this unsettlingly violent shunt into the vein of some primal mad cat incarnation. A little ashamed of my ferocious anger and summoning up of the primordial Wyoming banshee, I just stopped….and succumbed to being a dead fish. Get rid of that pesky anger. Try on depression for size.

And thus I stopped moving my fins and released into a warm tidal undertow of nihilism: why am I here. Who do I think I am. I should be a bookkeeper. This work is shit. Pure shit. Riptide.

So quickly I moved from ant to centaur to dragon and then to fish and then to grain of sand.

This all came about at the end of the day – fitful weather, muddy boots, walking into a neighbor’s barn and disturbing his hunting dog because I took the wrong way home. My work is horrendous. And it’s not so much about self-hatred, it’s about the sense that I haven’t fulfilled the potential of the project.

The disappointment of having eaten two brownies and eight cookies but no fruits or vegetables. Hack.

Feeling inadequate is also about feeling responsibility to the piece created – this came into being through my hand. Feeling ridiculous and feeling more ridiculous because it is ridiculous to feel ridiculous in this circumstances. Feeling homesick. Self-indulgent parasite.

With these particular images, I had hoped that chemistry would smile upon me and some difficult-to-achieve colors would come through. They didn’t. Hence: deciding I’d let down everybody who believes in me. Deciding a fatal inability to achieve my dream, fulfill my artistic vision.  Should have had more crimson, and that peculiar orange I love so much.

Worried about paying bills, where are the fingernail clippers, do I have too many split ends, why Southern California? It’s also a matter of composition, and how the eye changes over time, and what felt delightfully imbalanced in September now seems perversely symmetrical.

Where did this all begin? What happened from my morning’s satisfaction with the box of cookies and the subzero cloudy skies?

The manner of things to shift and warp, so that from day to day it’s not me that changes – the images and words themselves constantly rearrange themselves so that whenever I revisit my work, it’s different. Clearly.

What happened?

Ah, yes, right – my piss poor fucking photography.

“Master thyself, then others shall thee beare
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowst’ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity
How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe [quick] to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity,
I say pull down.”
— Ezra Pound, LXXXI Canto

And what happened next was that I dragged my sorry self to dinner – and someone came in late and said, it looks like a date in here. Our candlelit table, our six faces gathered close in the light eating soup and confiding the stories of our days creations. Hushed voices, bright eyes, curiosity and concern.

One of us said, brilliantly, I had a day spent not not making art. A day that was un-uncreative. A day that was not a day spent not creating.

And another spoke of Edison’s lightbulbs: the thousands that didn’t light were not mistakes. They were ways not to make a working lightbulb.

Making as many mistakes as are required. Continuing to love. And I thought of Pound, of this Canto, of the idea that our vanity gets in the way of our love. How mean these hates – bad photography.  Falsity. Vanity. Uncharitable. What thou lovest well remains.

It is enough to love. Solace enough to labor at love, not to destroy, to be charitable towards oneself and all creations. To get stuck in the mud with hunting dogs and a stomachache and a bag full of terribly disappointing photographs is nonetheless at the end of a day of being there. Here. Just being there, here, in the practice, breathing, creating love.

“But to have done instead of not doing
This is not vanity
To have, with decency, knocked
That a Blunt should open
To have gathered from the air a live tradition
or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame
this is not vanity.
Here error is all in the not done,
all in the diffidence that faltered . . .”
– Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI

And so for all of us: gather from a fine old eye the unconquered flame. Dispel the diffidence that falters. Begone the vanity within us that says we must only create if what we create is “worthy.”

This tomorrow’s assignment – to have done instead of not doing.

As Pound writes, Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell – take our misery in measure. Find in it the pleasure: a stomachache, a hunting dog, some absolutely deplorably horrific photographs that represent a project failed…but doing what I love. Elysium.

Today I walked along the banks of the stream and found pieces of local coral, ancient. Wyoming. The cosmos.

Learn of the green world. Creation.

Let us spend more days not making nothing.