sticking to your guns

hmmm, put that way it sounds rather bad. like going down with the ship or something. i could say 'stick to your guns'! alas, the imperative is not for everyone. a therapist friend says most people happy to be in the mainstream, depression coming when they wash up on the bank for awhile.

nevertheless, i know it's cheezy of me, but i'm inspired by movies where the hero won't give up and gets the girl ('adventureland' 'slumdog millionaire') or where the hero suffers an appropriate death, as in 'the wrestler'. the ram, as he was called, died flying in the ring. of course, an inappropriate death in the movies can depress me for days. 'milk' an example. he, in no way, deserved the end he received.

what's true for the movies goes for real life too. an example: years ago the university art gallery had a show of fantasy miniatures done by a painter who lived in a small valley town near here, gridley or biggs. he'd spent a bit of his youth in san francisco, yet retreated to work in solitude and be a complete unknown. i wish you could see his work.

true, rimbaud quit writing poetry by twenty and sailed off to be a gun-runner in north africa. maybe he knew he was written out. or perhaps he had to go proactive as a romantic. or maybe it was his way of rejoining the mainstream, being a businessman (unfortunately not a very successful one). blake says 'a fool who would persist in her folly would become wise.' who's to say what that wisdom might be. in eugene o'neill's 'touch of the poet' the hero eventually abandons his aristocratic pretensions and goes off with the boys to drink in the bars. somehow he made a better american than a false brit.

all this said, i admire those devoted to an honorable personal mission. i say 'honorable' cause i'd like to except serial killers and corrupt politicians. and i suppose it's naive of me, yet i pretty much accept what is 'honorable' to the world. it can be poetry or soldiering, parenthood or a nunnery. it's not easy to survive the self-doubts which will assail you on your path. this is not for those who always think they're right. that gives them energy, not necessarily courage. without a sense of service, the term doesn't fit.

you can persist beyond your talent and skill, imitating yourself. i'm thinking of wordsworth and hemingway, however the latter did write 'the old man and the sea' and 'a movable feast' before doing himself in. i'm always sad when a great pitcher leaves the mound for the last time.

humility must be part of this, i suppose. to know you're not a genius and still strive to make a tiny contribution. after all, civilization is an ongoing process, not something we wish to end.

speaking of continuation, here are some recent theater and dance pics. persisting in a small community may be your honorable destiny.

www.pbase.com/wwp/five

www.pbase.com/wwp/chrit1

the physical basis of our reality

today the professor of roman art said, 'we live better than any people in history.' deja vu! almost fifty years ago a professor of anthropology at san francisco state said, 'we live better than any king before 1900.'

how strange that we discount our physical existence, putting all our problems down to the metaphysical. feng sui taught the chinese how you lay out your house, how you form your cities, determines much of how you feel and the decisions you make.

as i've said before, the one component true to all forms of bliss is feeling good in your own body. this leads to sex (children), drugs (the recovery of childhood), fancy houses (the womb), and so on.

yet we wish to believe ourselves above circumstances, as though we were gods who can't be affected by floods, famine, or a simple change in the weather.

for compelling evidence, read 'night' by elie weisel. i listened to a recording on my way back from san franciso and the dentist. the rapidity with which the jewish villagers transformed into concentration inmates makes the head spin. the loss of everything familiar: family, hair, clothes, dinners around the table, time at the temple and total disruption of a universe can only be imagined.

for me, spring is a time of utter transformation. suddenly, i feel like a different person. and i think, 'where have i been these past few months?' the deprivation of light, the cold, body's tenseness, they separate me from how i feel at my best.

what i am saying is: don't discount your vulnerability to circumstances. give them a shape with the well-being of yourself and everyone around you in mind.

here's a little vision of such a paradise, even with the wind blowing furiously:

www.pbase.com/wwp/kite

and prozac has done more for keeping me from suicide than all the best wishes of gurus worldwide.

you can't go home again

okay, so the title's not original. i couldn't think of anything better. besides, titles can't be copyrighted. maybe this one will have a new meaning, though i doubt it.

in the shower the dream i'd had just before waking haunted me. it started as a very pleasant dream, myself in a city i enjoyed, finding a place to stay and thinking, 'i've got a bed, at least for a week.' then i met friends. ah, the terrible feeling of being connected to others, how long could it last? not long, it seems. first the two women disappeared down a hallway. then the actor pulled aside by someone offering help for his career. they vanished on a platform into the sky.

the beginning of the end. i tried to find the women, going from room to room in what seemed like a huge resort: dining rooms, a room full of leaping ambitious young ballet dancers auditioning, a jewelry and clothing store where i got lost among the racks.

i'd change tactics. go find my friend in the sky. fat chance. and we were on the way to hear irish music. where was my cell phone when i needed it? yes, there it was, but i was in a foreign country. and i didn't know the phone numbers of the others. i threw a handful of tortilla chips angrily into a potted plant. bang, bang, i hammered on glass obstructions, windows and doors.

and woke up upset i had to start the day with this particular incident.

no, not the first time i've tried to find my way back. and the lesson: i had to always go forward. i couldn't go back to the moment before i broke off a tooth or a love affair, said something stupid or lost my inflatable pillow on a bus! this was the new condition, the configuration of events i had to deal with, despite my desire to avoid it all.

how can we save ourselves from so many feelings of loss? basically, i can offer one word of advice. we constantly worry about our weaknesses and try to shore them up. FORGET IT. alas, what we do well bores us. GET BETTER AT IT. instead of just being a good actor become a great one. build on your strengths.

true, that means leaving a lot behind. unless forced, we don't want to give up anything, especially childhood. and why should we? to have a past enriches us. to try to re-create it, however, seems to make us forever poor. for example, i've realized my photographic strength is black and white. i've hundreds of photos i could convert from color. yet, when i go back and do a couple, i get bored. maybe someday, when i can no longer walk or have an interest in finding refreshing visions, i'll return to them and bring out the genius i think is there.

in the meantime, it's the first day of the rest of my life.

www.pbase.com/wwp/album

how to be humbled

a british lawyer once told my friend jeff, 'american children are spoiled but they become fine adults.' and that statement has led me down many a pondering path. is it true? how true? what's the mechanism of change, if there is one?

okay, it's an exaggeration. we all know plenty of meatballs under and over 40. but the seed of truth can't be avoided. we definitely live for the new and our kids in their strollers kings of the earth. when was the last time you were chauffeured and given an allowance, just for being you?

yes, a time of transformation arrives. it's not easy or even short. once out of the house and school, you're faced with paying your own way. bills, bills, bills, hamlet might have said in this day and age. do you really want to pay them, or even have them? many a child has decided living on the streets and under bridges more appealing. (discounting the completely unlucky and mentally unabled.) cellphone? cable? who really needs them? they just fill up the day with obligations.

okay, say you've chosen the more popular path: job, house, kids. getting to that point from graduation poses a terrible test. you have to accept a certain humiliation, a descent from your grand dreams into what's achievable. do you give every fantasy up for security, the enemy of art? perhaps you wisely do. after all, most of those grandiose plans were planted by parents and the media. we all want children we can brag about. saying, 'my son's in a mental institution and we're hoping our daughter finally off drugs,' is not what proud mamas and papas would like to offer after church.

i suspect our real motives fairly simple. for example, walking on the beach makes me as happy as i can be. or participating in theater. or staring off a sailing ship at a foreign shore. it's the pleasure of moving and seeing. throw in music and poetry for hearing as well. these are not expensive habits.

however, you have to make time for them. and much gets lost in the transformation to self-sufficiency. we can lose our sense of how important the moment is. and reality certainly hands us lots of despair. we're troubled with no one to bail us out.

at barnes & noble i observed a young woman i used to know as a student. at first i wasn't sure it was her. her cheeks had lost their baby-fat, her blond hair, now cut short, had darkened, and most disturbing of all, the expressions that passed across her face. no, no longer the perky person who had all the answers, who didn't choose to become a nurse for she distrusted the modern and shopped at the co-op. finally, she grabbed her soda, pulled herself up, and went to look for books, probably ones like 'life is a gamble you lose.'

she may very well come out the other end a fine adult. (i couldn't tell if that was a wedding ring she wore.) once past thirty - and she must be close if not already there - she'll find a satisfactory way of making a living. and in the end, doesn't it all come down to that?

we live in a free-fall society, each of us rising and falling until we reach our level. at some point i had to accept i was a middling poet. i had to tell myself it was okay just to be in the game. the same with theater, not the famous playwright i expected to be. last week watching the last minute set being hammered together and taking pictures, i glowed, happy as a bug in a rug.

you can see the pictures here:

www.pbase.com/wwp/inish

www.pbase.com/wwp/inish2

learning to read

if you stay away from sex (and dating) for long enough, you become a virgin all over again! (believe me, i know, unfortunately, what i'm talking about.) and the same goes for many other skills.

the back-story: seven years ago i got tired of writing. i figured i could see everything like cassandra and no matter how much i wrote about it, no matter how much energy i poured into the ears of an unenlightened populace, nothing would happen. zero. in fact, i began to believe people didn't read any more, only look at pictures like the illiterate in the middle ages. oh, of course, i'm still not sure this isn't true, even as dozens of new books appear at barnes and noble, where i drink my chai with a shot of expresso, every day. 

cold-turkey, that's the only way i can quit an addiction, no ability for half measures. so i bought a laptop and digital camera. millions of pictures and seven years later, i suddenly couldn't look at another book on photography, couldn't lift up a camera, or print out a picture. like the time i became an alcoholic, drunk on khalua and cream every night, fantasizing about a certain woman, one nail knocked out another. my back spasmed. lying on the living room couch, i had too much reality to reach for a bottle.

it's not exactly like that, but you catch my drift. i'd overworked the right brain. i could tell cause as soon as i started browsing novels/poetry/memoirs i could actually feel my left brain getting some exercise. hmm, it had been dormant, for a long time. 

this is not to say abandoning words was a bad idea. language seems to make us all critical of each other. my theory is it depends totally on opposites: light vs. dark, day vs. night, long vs. short. we're caught in the net of terrible dualisms, unable to resolve anything, and it's so frustrating we lower/raise ourselves above everyone else to lose/keep our self-respect, a yo-yo in the hand of a child god.

it doesn't hurt to be silent for awhile. like a poem, a picture can stop time, which is what we most often need. the future is like an avalanche coming at us, and we thrash our arms/minds trying to avoid the inevitable. a photograph of the moment can show us what is actually happening: stillness. we realize the nature of the arrow which keeps halving its distance from us and thus can't plunge into our hearts.

see, mixing metaphors. i've forgotten everything. i go back to what i have written, amazed. where did all these words come from? and, can i really read again? (much less, you know, the other...)

www.pbase.com/wwp/the_written_words

amateur vs. professional

by now i thought i'd be a rich and famous playwright. for that i'd gamble the whole shebang (a life). unfortunately, as my brother said, i wanted the money without the attention. as my friend jeff shore once opined, "you want everybody talking about you, but you don't want to be there." and my own personal myth is hiding in the center.

yes, in san francisco college days i'd ride the buses, pretending to be invisible and observing people, listening to conversations. that mode of living never quite died. now i do it to take photos in public places. invisibility is an art. many great picture-takers have practiced it. and as my friend marilyn moore observed, "you are always sketching."

ah, dang blast, couldn't i have made a living at it? oh, i suppose i do. what else is a fire lookout but a voice coming from the top of a mountain, heard, not seen? that is definitely hiding in the center, the round mandala fire-finder with the pin-hole in the middle where i sit all day, that is proof enough.

and i've had a chance to be various kinds of a pro. in 1969 i received a scholarship to stanford, one of two directing grad students. unfortunately, i spent a wild and free winter in new york theater the winter before and by fall i couldn't go into the staid academy. was i just protecting myself from corruption? or did it have more to do with loving the art, the theater? after all, doesn't amateur mean lover of?

and i could have worked in a bookstore or library. i did work a bit in the first and i hated how books became a mere comodity, so many bricks to be sold, indistinguishable from each other. libraries have always been a haven and i moved to where i live over 25 years ago for the local university version. had i had to spend all day in one, i doubt my love of the sun would have permitted it.

that said, this doesn't make me anti-commercial. these days i enjoy reading accounts of pro-photographers of all kinds. my god, it seems such drudgery, not glamorous at all. work, work, work. and the five years it takes to get a musical up and running, forget it. i'll stick with community theater. my heart already seems to belong to it.

professionals do take the best photographs, however. probably from necessity and oodles of practice. they must communicate, whereas the amateur can get by doing the art for him or herself. communication is the key. a playwrighting teacher in new york once told us the secret with this illustration. a city girl visited a farm. in the middle of the night she was called out to witness a calf being born. it seemed such a miracle she ran and ran until she found someone to tell about it.

as amateurs, perhaps we can remain too pure. and it's odd that the work professional photographers call 'personal' is far inferior to their commercial work. maybe it's like classical musicians trying to play jazz. they simply can't loosen up enough.

okay, speaking of loose, here are some dance photos taken last week. they'll never reach the classic stage, i suppose, since most of the best-ever dance photos taken under controlled conditions. i end up trying to snatch sparks from the process.

www.pbase.com/wwp/choreo09

heaven in six minutes to ten years

what we tend to forget is how narrow the window of opportunity has been for many great accomplishments. for example, a pilot lands a plane on ice in the hudson river. in half an hour he's made a career as a hero. and many a medal of honor winner entered the rolls with a five minute run through enemy lines. 

i mention this cause we often despair. our whole lives have passed and what has it come to? well, it's come to the next five minutes. van gogh created all his paintings in ten years, and the best in the last six. walking through the kroller-muller museum in holland, i passed a case of awful paintings. what were they doing here amidst the masterpieces by van gogh and monet and dozens of others? i had to peer closely to discover they were the first paintings by, yes, van gogh. he started out pretty grimly, let me tell you. who would have thought...?

actually, my favorite story of an artist is the japanese print-maker Sharaku. he created the most realistic kabuki actor portraits of his time (and maybe any other). they didn't find favor, and as far as we know, his career lasted six months, all we have of him surviving from this tiny period. 

how many more can you name? the ode to a nightingale  written in an hour under the tree outside keat's home on hamstead heath. of course, whistler said it took him twenty years to learn to paint a great scene in twenty minutes (and charge a lot of money for it). but how many things don't require a long preparation. mostly, it's a matter of rising to the occasion. 

if you've got a day, a month, a year left, it's time enough. 

here are some new photos. a couple of rambles in chico.

www.pbase.com/wwp/we 

www.pbase.com/wwp/tracks