left without leaving

i haven't written because, well, i haven't really been working in the garage. being that this blog is supposed to be about the daily life of an american artist, i felt i needed to post as i progressed in my work. i realize now that it is about the breath too.

history has the ability to condense itself. by this, i mean the way we perceive history in context of artifacts versus chronology. we can look in a room of thirty some odd paintings and believe we can see the life of the artist. we believe wholly in the struggle and the romance of the paint laden lips of a van gogh and forget that time is the factor unseen in between the canvases. some artists, myself included, work in great and sudden orgasm. we lay dormant for months, sometimes years, and then it just clicks. i have been known to stay awake, without drugs, for three to four days working it all out. the chore of living seems to have reward in the sheer amount of production in a short time, and it is all so natural, unfettered with forethought and post thought. pure. and in it's ugly simplicity, the long breath without pause, page-length paragraph and sincerest of memories in full color, i find truth. i find repose. my brain stops humming and my body falls out. that is the greatness, the sunflower days, the blue period. but really, it is impossible to sustain this current of energy and have output of pure work.

this is the art of non-creation. to know that you have a purpose, but to know that you cannot manifest this purpose, is by far the hardest failure to accept. but it is in these meditations that challenge the ego in it's need to produce, that the art truly begins. it is hard, though, to convince yourself that it is okay to do nothing for a while, to be nothing. we spend the first years of our lives building in relative silence. our bodies create movement, our minds create relations, our mouths create words, and once this starts, it seems we never return to the silence of creation without a sense of loss in hand. this is the struggle. this is the trial.