I WILL WRITE NO MORE FOREVER
These words have been circling in my mind for the last week or so. They are a paraphrase of the last words of Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce explaining his decision to finally surrender. It is a searing speech you can read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Joseph
The catalyst for me was the recent article in The New Yorker about the struggles and eventual suicide of author David Foster Wallace. But the thought, the question, has been with me for a while, since I finished my last book I guess.
I have been wondering if there is a time for a writer to stop. To say I have written what has been given to me and now I will be silent. To say I will write no more forever.
Posted by Stephen Evans at 3/18/2009 9:25 PM 
Categories: The Meaning of Life
Tags: David Foster Wallace suicide
Categories: The Meaning of Life
Tags: David Foster Wallace suicide
I've thought along the same lines regarding my art now and then, as in, 'I will PAINT no more, forever.'
However i'm currantly reading 'The Age of American Unreason' by Susan Jacoby, who in it pursuades me that the willful ignorance, lack of conversational skills and above all, the absense of a reading populace has horribly devistated our nation. If then, literature is to be seen as a fight against the decline of civilization, those who do write well must continue, as a duty, both to our species future, and to our cultured forbears. All that remains is for us to get some fun out of the creative process. Once that goes, the jig is up.
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I'm glad someone else feels this way. And I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. But my feeling is really more a reaction to the internal pressures - writing for a reason, finding something you are passionate enough about to make the years long effort to make something worthwhile and original. I feel lucky to have found that a few times so far and I have been wondering how many of those we get. I wonder too, now that you mention it - is it different for a visual artist?
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i don't think so. People have said to me that they didn't like Picasso. Well which Picasso style do they mean? He originated so many. You appreciated Sci-fi early. I think it unrecognized as todays response as philosophical literature with broader plot possibilities than Russian novels. I think it's easier for painters, we can just slap paint till we like it, a writers got to be good to be heard all the way through and passed along. I'll go thru long periods of not painting but i still consider myself to be 'at work', as i'm sure you do. I bet that when a writer stumbles across the right chunk of marble his head, all the stuff that he's cogitated on that fits, finds it's way to print. As for how many of those times we get, well, that's up to your longevity and the fire in your belly. Today, if someone can't find something to be passionate enough to work for, they're either blind or stupid. You are neither. I leave the originality up to you. To brutally mangle, paraphrasing Picasso, - 'borrow if yer gonna mess around, stealing is art'. Everything is derivative in some way. All we can hope for is to make ourselves happy and the world a tiny bit better.
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Maybe you should be the writer. But then I would have to be the painter and that would never work.
I always preferred Braque myself.
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Matiesse - "Get a job, keep your art pure"
Writers and painters both must be insane. Nobody reads anymore and the only people who buy paintings doso for an 'investment'.
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i seem to recall it reported that regarding cubism, Braque and Picasso occaisionally couldn't tell whose was whose.
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well I have only seen a miniscule sample of either, so who knows. Braque to me is more human, Picasso cold and static. Even Guenica seems intellectualized to me. Funny I was just thinking these things at the Met Museum in New York a few weeks ago.
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well you're no intellectual slouch yourself. Take a longer look at Picasso, born 1881, began drawing and painting at 7 or 8 continued into 1973, the volume of his stuff is incredible. As for Guernica, it had to be well thought, the damn thing is almost 26' long by 11 and a half. Gotta have serious emotional impact even tho it's only in black and white.
I don't really have a favorite painter, it's all just...
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Nice of you to say, and back at you. At the Met, when I wasn't lost or searching for the cafeteria, I spent most of my time in the Pissaro room. Such balance and color. But my favorite would have to be Chagall - love the imagination. There is a stairwell at the Chicago Institue of Art where his windows are installed. I just sit on the steps and look. one of my favorite places.
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"'A poets work' he answers. 'To name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.' And if rivers of blood flow from the cuts his verses inflict, they will nourish him." - Salmon Rushdie - 'The Satanic Verses'
The trick is the ability to live off that blood, whichever form your art takes.
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The sight of blood makes me faint. The sight of mine, anyway.
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Ha, my favorite place is the Mercury surrounded by green marble columns at the National. Don't care much for Chagall tho. If someone twisted my arm, i'd choose Matisse.
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Haven't been to the National in years, I'm sorry to say. I'll have to look for that next time.
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