Moon, Stone, Moment — At West End Gallery
From the very beginning almost I was deeply aware that there is no goal. I never hope to embrace the whole, but merely to give in each separate fragment, each work, the feeling of the whole as I go on, because I am digging deeper and deeper into life, digging deeper and deeper into past and future. With the endless burrowing a certitude develops which is greater than faith or belief. I become more and more indifferent to my fate, as a writer, and more and more certain of my destiny as man.
– Henry Miller, Reflections on Writing
I’ve been writing a lot lately and thought I’d take a small break by sharing this post that originally ran here in 2009. I love the passage above from Henry Miller and instantly see my own feelings on my work and life in it. Trying to put the feel of the whole into the fragments that are my work is a fine summation of what I do, trying to make even the smallest, seemingly insignificant piece, which may seem at first glance to be a mere fragment, still contain a sense of fullness, of completion. Of wholeness.
Sounds like a lofty goal but it’s not. I just figure that every piece deserves my full attention and effort. If not, why even bother? Much like all lives, the life of a writer or an artist doesn’t consist of creating one grand opus or masterpiece. They come as a result of consistent attention to small things over a long time, over and over. Each fragment is a rehearsal, honing the mind and the eye so that one day something greater might emerge.
And if a singular masterpiece never comes, the work created over the years contains the same wholeness of one.
Okay, I have already written more than I intended. Below is the post from 2009, which seems like both yesterday and a thousand years ago. I have also added a version of the song You Keep Me Hanging On performed by the late folk singer Mary McCaslin. The Motown classic from the Supremes and the rock cover from Vanilla Fudge are both tremendous but McCaslin, an underappreciated but influential artist, seems to find new ground in the song with her interpretation, which was recorded in 1969.
[From 2009]
This is a fragment of an essay, Reflections on Writing, from a book of essays, The Wisdom of the Heart, by Henry Miller, the great and controversial author. When I was young his books such as Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn were still being characterized as “smut” and many libraries didn’t have them on their shelves for fear the morality police would swoop in and raise a fuss. Probably many only know the existence and influence of his books from their use in a memorable Seinfeld episode, the one with Bookman the library cop whose hard-boiled dialogue still makes me hoot.
For me, I wasn’t so much attracted to his books by the raciness of the stories but rather by his way of speaking through his words and expressing views that I found at once to be compatible with my own. He observed and said the things that I wished I could say with a voice and power I wished I possessed. I can pick up one of his books and open to a page anywhere in the book and read and be fascinated without knowing the context of what I’m reading, just from the sheer strength of his writing’s voice.
I see a lot of things in this particular essay that translate as well for painting or any other form of creation. It opens:
Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one: it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order to eventually become that path himself.
Substituting artist for writer, I was immediately pulled in. The path he refers to is the path I often refer to in my paintings, the path we all walk and struggle along on, trying to find the middle way between these upper and lower worlds.
It’s a good essay and one I recommend for anyone who creates in any form and struggles with the meaning of their work beyond its surface. For anyone seeking that path…
Redtree Times 