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Posts Tagged ‘wh-auden’

Biding Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 19, 2024| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Biding Time 2007

Biding Time, 2007

Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end.
What is there to be or do?
What’s become of me or you?
Are we kind or are we true?
Sitting two and two, boys, waiting for the end.

–William Empson, Just a Smack at Auden

I feel like we are in a period of waiting right now. I don’t know what exactly, but it feels like we are kind of frozen in place as we wait for something to happen that will put everything into motion, for better or worse. Like we are waiting for someone to push over that first teetering domino.

Maybe it’s just me in feeling this way. Maybe it’s just the time of the year as we enter the holiday season and I am reminded of the intolerable waiting for Christmas’ arrival when I was a kid.  I am not quite so eager for whatever surprise is in store for us to arrive as I was then.

But whatever it is or isn’t, we– or maybe just me– remain somewhat frozen in place, biding our time. Finding a way to get through this waiting period is all we– or I– can do.

That brings me to the painting at the top, an older piece from 2007 that is titled Biding Time. I used to periodically paint pieces like this that were extremely simple and quiet. I viewed them then and now as meditations, as a means to finding stillness amidst the surrounding chaos. I haven’t painted one in quite some time for reasons I can’t determine which is odd because I always found most of them quietly effective., remaining in my mind for long periods of time.

This particular piece has not been shown publicly in many years and I thought it was time for it to make an appearance once again. The time seems right. It is headed to the West End Gallery tomorrow, in time for their annual Deck the Walls holiday show.

FYI– The verse at the top is from William Empson, a friend and colleague of poet W.H. Auden. In the poem Empson both pays homage and pokes a bit of fun at Auden while capturing the anxiety of post-WW II Europe that was struggling to gain its bearings amidst the nuclear threat that had risen.

Let’s have a song to go with such waiting.  Here’s a favorite, Waitin’ Around to Die from the late Townes Van Zandt.  This is from the 1976 documentary Heartworn Highways, a film that captured the beginnings of the alt-country movement of that time.  This clip features Townes singing to his girlfriend and his neighbor Uncle Seymour Washington, a retired blacksmith born to ex-slaves.

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The Mouse in the Box

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 17, 2024| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- The Angst

GC Myers- The Angst

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.

I don’t like starting posts with quotes where I am unsure of the attribution, but I like this one regardless of who spoke it first. It is most attributed to either the poet W.H. Auden or legendary animator Chuck Jones. Quite a gap there as far as gravitas is concerned. That makes me believe it was probably from Chuck Jones. Those who liked the sentiment most likely wanted it to be from someone with a little more intellectual weight and Auden did write a Pulitzer Prize winning poem, The Age of Anxiety.

During a quick search I couldn’t find anything that corroborated the Auden or Jones connections. I’ll leave it up to you. My money is on Chuck.

Let’s get back to the quote:  Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.

I can only speak for my experience, of course, but I tend to believe that my better work has sometimes emerged from periods of anxiety, times which have often been deep and dark for me. Maybe it is because my mind become sort of hyperactive in those time. It’s bouncing around like a mouse trying to find a way out a box, racing around to examine every possible point of exit even when one doesn’t seem evident.

It’s uncomfortable, to say the least. Actually, excruciating is a better choice of words. But sometimes during these periods where the mind is freewheeling, this mouse finds a way out of the box. Finds something that wasn’t evident to me until I was forced to see it.

Can’t explain it fully and maybe this is all in my mind. Though I think much of the work produced as a result of these times is among my best, there is no objective proof that others see it the same way. As much as I would like others to see what I see in it, it’s okay with me that they don’t.

I know that not all art reveals itself immediately. Time will tell.

There is also a contradictory position to anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity and I am experiencing it at the moment. Sometimes the anxiety is more than the mouse can handle. The racing and searching suddenly stops. The mouse stops it racing and tries to find safety by pressing as deeply into a corner as possible.

I feel a little like the mouse today, frozen in its anxiety.

It is, of course, the anxiety of current events and an election in a couple of weeks that could alter our collective future in in two very different ways. You might say that I shouldn’t be othered by this. There are some out there, those indifferent few, that aren’t affected.

That’s not in my makeup, however. I am forever the mouse in the box. That is not necessarily a bad thing as sometimes good work is produced from it. And maybe eventually that will be the case from this particular time in the box.

But for the moment, I am pressed tightly into a corner of my box, frozen in place as I count down the days.

While we’re in this corner, let’s listen to a song while we wait. It’s a longtime favorite from The Kinks. It seems appropriate for this post. This is 20th Century Man.

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