post-critique and post-dinner 'huh'

I was going to just go straight home after dinner, but I needed to write some of this down first.

As for the critique, the question came up if I felt like I was finished with the mushrooms//spore prints. I said no, but in truth, I don't want to do more. I didn't even like doing them in the first place very much because I felt I was just messing with this beautiful and intricate thing that I have no right to mess with, that was more beautiful than any representation or manipulation of it could be. And worst, I was messing with it for no reason, and couldn't make anything happen.

In fact, I can't make anything do anything it seems. And now I'm remembering a comment of Liz's that my landscape paintings were feminine in their passivity as compared to plein air painters--can I make a masculine, active, dare I even speak the word--dominating--landscape? I don't think so. Manipulation does not come naturally to me, which is not to say it's not an important thing. Making active decisions to change something in a particular way is important, and I need to learn how to do it better. Choosing and acting are the problems I've been having in my artwork, and in my life lately. I can look at a landscape (or a slug) and put it back out, having mediated it in some small way, processed it somehow so that one part of it becomes more apparent, but hell if I can make mushrooms grow a certain way. I don't even want to try to do that. I felt ugly and mean doing what I did, but also a little curious, and that's what kept me going. If it hadn't been an assignment, I never would have done the spore prints, but might have done the slug video, or something like it. And that should tell me something...

At dinner, the conversation about farming and land use and how we make things work for us (biologically) and enslavement and veganism came up. Through farming, I have come to see our use of our surroundings differently. For a while, I couldn't stand the idea that I cause other things to suffer or manipulate them to benefit myself, and indeed, I realize that this is often subconsciously driving me to act as I do--extremely passively. For a while I couldn't stand harvesting because of the harm it caused to the plants, but farming is good for me because it has made me come to terms with doing things actively in order to nourish myself and others, but not without forgetting the plant or animal I am forming a relationship with. And it is that farming isn't just about that active manipulation, but about reciprocity--about forming a relationship of both give and take (and many other things) with the world.

Again comes that word relationship.

Something strange is going on here, though, because I feel like I just don't know how to act at all. I don't know how to communicate (an active thing). I find myself interruping others a lot, which I don't like. Why is what I want to say so important? I also can't seem to say important things, I find myself often babbling, and when I have something definite to say, I can't communicate it clearly in precise language. I am able to take in and process things, but my circuitry in terms of what comes back out is all messed up.

I am experiencing a major problem with mediation and also editing here.
What do I need to say? What don't I need to say?

'What is essential?'

This is the thought I had while reading Kuo Hsi's words on Chinese landscape painting, "an artist should concentrate his spirit upon the essential nature of his work. If he fails to get at the essential, he will fail to present the soul of his theme. Discipline should give his picture dignitiy. Without dignity, depth is impossible. Diligence and reverence will make his work complete."

If I babble, there is no reverence, no respect, nothing with which to form relationships, nothing with which to communicate. (If there's so much art, none of it makes meaning). If I'm silent, I deny my own existence, that I have thoughts that are meaningful and valid.

What I really need is some discipline. I need to find what is essential. For the sound project, I am thinking now that I may spend a day in silence and then a day only saying what I feel is essential. I don't know where the art object is in that, but it's something I need to do. I also want to see what meanings I can find using more cut-up method trials with passages of writing that mean a lot to me (that I have actively chosen, and passively processed), and (actively) editing them down. My next thought: I am going to see where it goes.

I am always seeing where it goes. That's not the hard part. The hard part is the structure, the deciding, the discipline. Okay, enough for tonight.