Willed Spontaneities

Picasso was obsessed with Manet's "Olympia"; apparent, still, in the calculated clumsiness of his late work, decades after "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon". Then there's the work of Egon Schiele and the inevitable discussion of whether or not there's any difference between erotic art and pornography. Picasso famously said, "You have to know how to be vulgar. Paint with four-letter words." Consider that Picasso thought only Matisse (those odalisques) could challenge him as the greatest artist of the twentieth century. For me it's still the Modigliani nudes. Looking at nudes all day, actually, thinking about erotic art and what it's saying. It occurs to me that I could further research and write a coherent book about erotic art. The Carter nude drawings (life drawings), got me thinking about it, and I've been doing some reading. It occupies a place in mind now, and I can't shake it. Which is the whole point in a way, that you can't shake it. A nude is always sexual, even if it's other things too. I won't write a book, I'll just think about it; observe myself doing that, and report to you. It's a cleaner process, I think, and probably closer to what I really think, if I just jot down a few things after a day of reading. My idea of a good time. I do several open-faced tomato sandwiches in the toaster oven; one I top with an over-easy egg. Runny egg yolk and hot tomatoes on buttered toast is so good that I can hardly contain myself. I whoop. Insofar as I know how. A jig, or maybe St. Vitus dance, heat lightning, a shaft of fall light, coming through the trees. I can barely see to drive, it's an acid flashback, light and dark. Mackletree has become a tunnel, with these painful shafts of light. I have to accept as reality, whatever confab you've assembled. I'm sure I'll look bad. I usually do. A force of habit. The way I duck beneath the crook of my elbow. Hiding something, as a matter of course. It's the wrong time of day, but I need to sleep for a few hours. I'm worn out and nothing makes any sense. When I wake, after a couple of hours, I don't know whether it's morning or evening, I have to go outside and see where my shadow falls. Evening. I want a BLT but I have no bacon. I do have two chicken thighs that I want to marinate for dinner tomorrow, so I skin them and crisp the skins slowly in a cast iron skillet. Render enough chicken fat to fry potatoes another day and enough ersatz bacon for my sandwich. Chicken skin, lettuce and tomato. A great sandwich. B visits, to return a book, and concedes I know the Cello Suites better than any other non-musician he knows. Today I listen to Casals, giving voice to what is merely notes on the page, the start of it all. A transport of joy. I'm studying the painting of hands. Rembrandt's are not very good, but look at Caravaggio's in "The Supper at Emmaus", they seem to break the plane of the painting, real hands, reaching out to you. The folk art show travels, and I'm sorry the shit-on-the-floor interrupted the conversation Sara and I were having, because we have to pack that show for shipping. I have some ideas for hanging the large puppet-dolls. Some of the larger ceramic pieces for the doll show are problematic, the wall mounted pieces, as they need more than just a screw-head in a plastic anchor. We'll come up with something, those 'J' hooks we use for hanging very heavy painting on 'D' rings, or some mystical electromagnet that holds things three inches off the wall. I'm not a flutist, but I lived with a flutist once and she taught me how to breathe. It's not as simple as you thought, what you learned as a child, simply in and out, but a more complex thing, that starts deep within your diaphragm Wait, what we talking about? I don't have any control over anything outside a very small circle of events. I mop when I need to. There wasn't a diagram with the instructions. Tab A in slot B, or tabs A and B in slot C. Read Julian Barnes on Gericault's "The Raft of the Medusa". What does a picture signify?