Better Company

I want to write a vignette, not an observation or an opinion, but there is too much going on here this morning to do that.  I need solitude to write, solitude to think.  Company palliates loneliness but it doesn't feed creativity.  I've had both--or each (I'm not certain)--and I know there is no balancing them.  "Art" (I loathe the word when used in a personal context) is selfish.  Creativity is demanding.  It has been weeks since I visited the studio.  I paid the rent, though.  Now if I just start paying someone to use it for me and to create some stories, I'll be set.  No, there is no balance and neither life is fully satisfying once you have known the other.

I'm talking about a certain kind of "art."  If I were tye-dying or making abstractions from sunshine. . . or if I were even making lithograph prints of vegetation, it would probably be different.

Nope.  It is not "art" after all.  It is me.  It is the sort of thing I wish to pursue that makes the difference.  If I started writing songs for the churches, I'd have a full and complete life--companionship and creativity.

I will try.  I will give up the darker arts.  I will write happy tracts for the sinless.

I went to the local university's film student showcase last night.  It was the first year director's night, twenty-two short films.  Oh, my. . . if this is where all filmmakers start. . . . It was a showcase in how difficult it is to be creative.  Not a provocative shot or dangerous scene among them.  Cliched to the max.  They could do the camera work and color corrections o.k.  The films looked like films technically.  But oh, sweet jesus, there is not a thought in their pretty little heads.  They are a perfect illustration of postmodern theories of the master narrative, spoken through by the culture they unconsciously suffer from and embrace.

Me, too.  The one I embrace.  Fuck you Bukowski.  Fuck you Balthus.  Fuck you Fitzgerald and Faulkner and Hemingway.  Fuck you Kerouac and Mailer and Thompson.  Fuck you Modigliani and Matisse and Bonnard.

There were apparently other choices.

O.K.  I must go keep company.  It might be the better thing.