Wanting to Make Art

I woke up this morning with a feeling I never had before. I wanted to make art of something, anything, but I'm not sure what art looks like, sounds like, feels like.

On the subway to my college art history class, a painting popped up on my phone, "Flaming Summer Meadow" by Brazilian artist Janaina Tschäpe. I really like it, it made me want to paint something like that myself. But when I showed it to my art professor, who won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, he said, "Where's the art in that painting?" I didn't know how to answer him. What could I say? The sheer human emotion that I saw in it? The radiant colors that brought together what people and nature have in common? I didn't say anything becuase I was sure my art professor knows more about paintings than I do.

Then I went to the park to meet my best friend for lunch. My friend is one of the most educated, worldly people I know. He knows something about everything. While I was waiting for him, I was reading Jon Fosse's Septology. What an interesting book, I thought. All stream of consciousness, one long sentence over hundreds of pages. It made me want to write a book myself. When my friend arrived, he said, "Don't tell me you're reading that timewaster. I see you're almost finished part one. Don't bother with the other six parts. It's more of the same. Seven hundred pages of emptiness." I didn't know what to say to my friend. But on the subway ride back home, I thought about it. I realized I could have said for me the book was a deep examination of what it means to be alive, to create art in absolute isolation, to choose a life of solitude, to be a deeply self-examining Catholic, to survive troubled family relationships and lingering suicidal thoughts, that if art were life as life really is, then this book is a consummate work of art. But it was too late, and I didn't want to call out my friend on his judgment, because his friendship meant too much to me and, after all, he has read more books than I ever will and probably knows better about Fosse's book than I do. Maybe I'm just misreading it.  
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When I got home, I told Alexa, "Play 'Tití Me Preguntó' by Bad Bunny" as I lay in my bedroom. I am not a big rap fan and don't understand Spanish, but I like the swing of this song and I've memorized the lyrics in translation. I can't get that songe out of my head. Maybe that's what I should do, write lyrics for some rapper. I think I'm a pretty good writer, and I completely get rhythm and meter. No sooner did I think that than my father knocked on my door, more like pounded on it, and shouted, "Turn off that garbage. Why don't you ever listen to real music?" It's his house, and I'm living on his dime, so I can't argue with him. He’s entitled to his opinion, especially since he’s always playing sonatas in the living room on the Steinway piano he inherited from his father. Makes me wonder, how did I end up with no talent? So down went Bad Bunny. And my father did get me to think. Maybe “Tití Me Preguntó” isn’t real music. If art is forever, then he has a good point when he says that the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven has lasted nearly three hundred years and all the stuff I listen to disappears in no time.  

Now it's past midnight. I can't sleep. I'm in bed thinking what a weird thought I had this morning when I woke up. How can I make art when I don't know what it is. I hope the same thought doesn't waste another day tomorrow.

Living in the Past

You say I live in the past, but how can I not when I'm with you? When I'm alone, I'm in the present, preparing that Greek salad, washing the toilet, mowing the lawn, or buying groceries. True, when I leave out an ingredient, when the toilet isn't spotless, when I miss a section in the lawn, when I forget to buy an item, it's because I'm living in the future, imagining what the trip to Maui will be like, or how I can get the best possible price for a flight to New Orleans, or where we will stay when we travel to Miami. But I'm usually in the present when we're apart. 

I have known you a long time, most of the years of my life. When you lie in bed with the veins in your legs throbbing in pain after twelve miles of hiking, please don't interpret my smiling at you as a sign of indifference. I'm thinking about how those legs have walked thousands of miles with me through trails in the Grand Canyon, Arches, Mount Rainier, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Great Smoky Mountains, and Acadia, and the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Athens, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, and Valletta. When I laugh apparently out of nowhere, I'm recalling your reactions when your father or mine said something inappropriately yet wickedly funny during family gatherings. When I seem distant as you talk about something we need to get done, I'm not shirking a responsibility. I'm reflecting on the many accomplishments and setbacks we have shared, and how all these events have brought us to his beautiful place. And when tears well in my eyes at the end of Casablanca, Death in Venice, Paris, Texas, El Norte, Cinema Paradiso, or Central Station, I cry not for the fate of the these fictious characters but for losing family members and friends who can no longer share their radiance with me, for those poor, humble, kind people who have served me and will never reach my status, and for those who have helped me throughout my life, who have changed my life for the better, without receiving more than a thank-you from me.

So tell me, what's so bad about living in the past? Don't you?