Guston

i mentioned Coolidge before so i might as well bring up Philip Guston. (and thank you for reminding me about the weather, everywhere. we can talk about responsibility, we could talk about Cervantes? Goya? "This I have seen." I went to the prado for a week or so, every day, and looked at the black paintings. everyday we would get up, have coffee and some fried bread and then head off to look at them. I looked at a tree recently, in it's complete and late fall glory, i came back the next day and the leaves had blown away. i was immensely grateful that i'd had the chance to see it at all.

so here's some thoughts from Guston himself. if i fail at explaining myself, he absolutely doesn't.

"I remember days of doing "pure" drawings immediately followed by days of doing the other—drawings of objects. It wasn't a transition in the way it was in 1948, when one feeling was fading away and a new one had not yet been born. It was two equally powerful impulses at loggerheads. I would one day tack up in the house a bunch of pure drawings, feel good about them, think that I could live with them. And that night go out to the studio to the drawings of objects—books, shoes, buildings, hands, feeling relief and a strong need to cope with tangible things. I would denounce the pure drawings as too thin and exposed, too much "art," not enough nourishment, and as an impossible direction with no future. The next day, or day after, back to doing the pure constructions and to attacking the other. And so it went, this tug-of-war, for about two years."

"I hope I don't sound sentimental but it is so that much of the time what I am painting seems like a mirage to me—a vast detour I am making and I am left with a sense only of my perversity. I must trust this perversity... and yet, who knows I may again be forced to penetrate that state of reduction and essence. But now, the vast complications and uncontrollability of imagery keeps me in the studio most of the time."

i was lying in the attic bedroom up in vermont this last month around 2 am in the morning and the wind was howling (it felt like the beginning of every meg and charles murray adventure, it was really exciting.) The moon was full and the light in the room ! wow. i'm pretty sure wild storms trump thought.) and i’m always watching unless i’m fucking, and then i'm not really watching or absolutely not experiencing any physicality of separation but rather breath, sweat, taste. power, ground, and playing. (also, i should mention the transcendent experience is not what we've been talking about. i believe you and i both agreed and established our hatred of the transcendent) so, fucking, dancing, too little sleep, the pills. There's a little space put aside, for the social, contemplative pleasure, (also? thought. because damn if you can think anything at all with the music inside, which is a practical thing, an awesome thing.) lately the unlawful pleasure of smoking at the club I've most often been to. The big guy at the door softly asks me to maneuver around the ropes, i smile and thank him, situate myself in the outdoors where if hazy memory serves it’s fucking freezing, the sweat on my body almost instantaneously icy and chill. There’s a pleasure in that, as much as the warmth, strobes and tongue, mouth that I kiss. Men are fun to watch. Kind of sloppy, kind of out of their minds, some have a tremendously awkward way of dancing, but it doesn’t matter, body types have changed rapidly in the last decade. i'm really happy when r. comes out to stand with me, did i tell you that. we just kind of stand together, it's comforting.

one time, mom and i were in the middle of the lake, giddy. i sniffed the air like a dog, "there's something coming."

She raised her paddle, "that's thunder."

the storm came in feet first, sideways, skidded all the way down the lake and literally pounded away the humidity in front of it. 4" inches of rain in 2 hours. (mother nature does not fuck around). we saw it come on like a wall of mist behind the wind with lightning bringing up the rear... I was like, "fuck. we're in the middle of the lake, at dusk. in stupid little kayaks."

then, the general vamoose.

mom laughed really hard all the way home. yes, i did have my trusty pasternak russian bear hat on. glad to know i get it from somewhere.

There was body & soul for one period of time, you could arrive at 2 on sunday and work it out with the most amazingly eclectic group of people, all colors, all types, men and women, really good music and then toodle off down for a walk on the piers, completely elated and exhausted before heading home to sleep and work the next morning, either hop a subway or get a egg sandwich at a deli and watch and listen to the city wake up. But that little area for smoking, just off 11th avenue well there’s usually someone out there who has very little hold on how killing the weather is, could be. Soaked, babbling, a baseball cap pushed low over haunted eyes. He just got off a bus from Los Angeles.

i'm currently listening to a kind of amazing cover of "The Boy With A Thorn In His Side" by Scott Matthews, btw. also, "The Longest Road (Morgan Page Radio Edit)" not by Scott Matthews.

Kerouac in Old Angel Midnight:

The wush of trees on yonder eastern nabathaque Latin Walden axe- haiku of hill where woodsman Mahomet perceives will soon adown the morning drear to pail the bringup well suspender farmer trap moon so's cock go Bloody yurgle in the distance where Timmy hides, flat, looking with his eyes for purr me-O Angel, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, & ah Angel dont paper-party me, but make me horrified in silken Honen honey-rubbed Oxen tongue of Cow Kiss, Ant Mat, silk girl ran, all the monkey-better-than secondary women of Sam Sarah the Song of Blood this earth, this tool, this fool, look with your eyes. I'm tried of fooling O Angel bring it to me THE MAGIC SOUND OF SILENCE broken by first-bird's teepaleep--

like clark coolidge says, "I guess you either hear the music of that or you don't." what kind of monstrosity meant that i ever thought i was something i'm not? and really, who the fuck cares? done. (oh, i'm kidding. we're not done with that term of being are we?) and certainly we've experienced so much tenderness and immanence. it's neat exploring how others did it. too.

meanwhile! this made me laugh.
"I can't believe you have done this to me! You have me using the word 'ridonkulous' four times! What the hell? I'll be saying fo-shizzle next!"

coolidge goes on in that talk or essay (whatever it was):
Then Kerouac says, in Old Angel Midnight: "The total turning about & deep revival of world robe-flowing literature till it shd be something a man'd put his eyes on & continually read for the sake of reading & for the sake of the Tongue & not just these inspidid stories writ in insipid aridities & paranoias bloomin & why yet the image-let's hear the Sound of the Universe, son."

update add-in: the redundant ‘it’ of ‘it is raining’