Echoes of Time- At West End Gallery
People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor.
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann (1825)
I used to work with a guy who was also a drummer in a local rock band. Great, funny guy. He used to say that he didn’t listen to music by anyone else because he wanted his beats and rhythms to be original. I didn’t argue the point with him but even then, over thirty years ago when I was just beginning to paint, I knew this was an impossibility. Originality is the rarest of things, an act of genius that is far beyond most of us.
I know some out there might dispute this. You might be right. But I adhere to the definition of originality that Goethe expressed more than two hundred years ago, that once we are born, we become the recipient of everything the world in which we live has to offer. Everything we read, see, hear, and feel combines and our creations are a synthesis of those influences.
The sparks of our creation are lit by the fires set by others before us.
I feel that the best that we can do is transform that vast store of influences into something that can be interpreted as our own expression.
Something honest to ourselves.
Something authentic.
Maybe I am writing this because I know I am not original. My work is built on a dense foundation of the influences of other artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, animators, cartoonist, poets, thinkers, teachers, and on and on. My own work is a complex product of the work of these many people.
The only thing that is mine is how I feel and express this synthesized mass of influence and inspiration.
I believe that is unique and authentic.
Maybe I am splitting hairs here between originality and authenticity, maybe the difference them being only a matter of semantics or usage. Or maybe hubris. I think everyone would like to think, like my drumming friend, that our creations are totally original. Hell, I would like to think everything I create is something new and totally original. But I know better, know that if I can’t be honest with myself on something as basic as this, I risk losing the only thing that I have that matters– my authenticity.
I don’t know if my work will have a life after my own but if it does, I believe it will be because of its authenticity.
I came across a line from a letter that the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote to a friend in 1884 that kind of sums up the importance I feel for authenticity:
Poetry is the expression, in human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning of the aspects of existence: in this way it confers authenticity on our time on earth and constitutes the only spiritual task there is.
We all experience this world and all that has influenced us in our own unique way. I have felt for some time that my work was created primarily as a yawp, to borrow my favorite Walt Whitman line, sent out over the rooftops of the world, a way to let it know that I existed, that for that short time I deeply felt the joys and sufferings of this place.
Maybe deeply experiencing this world is, as Mallarmé put it, the only spiritual task there is.
I don’t know. I’m just a tired guy sitting in the woods in paint splattered clothes drinking a cup of coffee that is quickly becoming cold with three cats gathered around my desk watching my every move. What the hell do I know?
Now that might not be original but goddamn it, it’s authentic. The best I can do this morning.
Here’s a song that I kind of hesitated in sharing. It’s from Prof, a Michigan based musician better known as a rapper. I’ve been drawn to artists who are making music independent of the influence of record companies. I think they are making some most of the most interesting music today. Definitely authentic. This is Prof singing his Garden of Eden. There is a line– I have been really low down lately/I see extinction of experience/Lost in our phones we all lost and alone the extinction of experience— that I think speaks directly to this post.
Give it a chance. It’s real and authentic.
Now here’s a thought that may not be real but it is authentic– git.