The Awakening— At West End Gallery
“There is very little that I can do well,” he confessed. “I cannot have or care for a child. I cannot prepare a meal satisfactorily—the dishes never emerge at the appropriate times. I cannot even eat a meal when I would like to. Things are falling apart; I lack mental and glandular flexibility. My brain doesn’t produce the creative fog, or words or sentences that share anything but the dusty refuse that resides in my skull. I cannot even be a friend for any sustained period of time, because my boundaries, always gently traced in sand—sands of madness—have been blown away and I can’t retrace them. I cannot, you see, really do anything, can’t relate to anything, but goddammit, I thought once, and I think still, that I can write. Can’t I get a single witness to whom I once delivered pages and deliverance to say that I once mattered?”
-Tennessee Williams, interview with James Grissom from Follies of God (2015)
The words above from the late Tennessee Williams really hit hard when I first read them. For one thing, his statement that there is very little that he does well hit a nerve as it is a belief that I have long held about myself.
Don’t get me wrong, I can do things. It’s more a question of whether I can do them well. And in most every case the answer comes back that my skills are unexceptional. Average at best.
Just enough to somehow get by. I guess that’s the most important part here.
There are some things I do somewhat well. My work, for example. But even that assessment is suspect in a field based on subjectivity. I can’t say with any authority that my painting is exceptional. Of course, I want to believe that it is.
Even if it is not, it has been good enough to get by for about thirty years now. That is probably all that matters.
But is it something that I can say that I do well? Something that matters beyond the living and self-expression it provides for me?
Is it relevant outside of my own mind? Does it really matter and have relevance to the outside world?
I think anyone working in a creative field has questions at some point about the relevance of their work. I imagine it is an achingly difficult question for someone like Tennessee Williams who had been often near the pinnacle of his field. I have never scaled to anywhere the heights he reached, of course. Few have.
But whether an artist is standing at the peak of the mountain or toiling somewhere further down it, the question of relevance is much the same: Can my mind create work that is exceptional and, more importantly, work that has a wider resonance?
It’s a hard question. I think most artists try to avoid even thinking about it and that’s probably the right route to take. Just do the work that you feel the need to create and let the others sort it out.
That is what I try to do, for the most part. But there are days– and weeks and months– where that question nags at me. It’s been hanging around a little more with the fatigue I am experiencing. As I try to muster up the energy to get started, that question jumps out at me: Does it really matter?
There are days when the answer is no and nothing gets done. I stumble around in frustration and fog.
But more often than not, the answer comes back to me in the form of another question: If it doesn’t, what does?
Its relevance might simply be in its existence.
Much like our own.
So, I go to work most days, hoping that whatever comes from my efforts has some purpose and relevance. That it has expression and meaning in this time or whatever time in which it is seen. That it doesn’t exist one day as merely a relic of the past.
Being such an internal struggle, I am not sure this makes much sense to many folks. But then again, we all wonder whether whatever makes up our lives has meaning, that it somehow matters. So, maybe it does make sense.
I don’t know.
Thanks for putting up with my wandering– and wondering– mind this morning.
Here’s a song, That’s Where I’m Going, from Eilen Jewell. I am not going to try to explain the relationship between this song, the paintings at top, and my words. There might not be any evident connection though I am sure I can pretzel logic one together if I felt like it.
But I don’t so you’re on your own, partner.
Redtree Times 