Tantalus

We struggle to mine the ore of experience and to express the inexpressible, and from that struggle art, poetry and music are made.

DB - The Vagabond
*****************
My first real acquaintance and understanding of the artist's struggle came when I was a teenager and went to see an exhibit of paintings and drawings by Arshile Gorky. Gorky was not his real name. He was born Vostonik Adoyan in Turkey sometime in the early 20th Century, the date is not certain. He was Armenian and when the cruel genocide of Armenians took place he fled to New York City. He had a short life (44 years), his works spanned from Impressionism, through Cubism and into Abstract Expressionism and in that mode he became a pioneer and great influence on other painters.

Gorky had a troubled life. His mother died in his arms from starvation. He and his father were separated. He never achieved financial independence, although his works were well known in art circles and he could not have the family he always wanted. The struggles of a sensitive, creative man to express the inexpressible are clearly seen in his paintings. I saw them that day in the museum. But I did not realize at the time, in my boyishness, how deeply into my being Gorky's vision was reaching.

Since that day I have come to find the same struggle in other artists, like Hoffman and de Kooning, composers like Beethoven, Bartok and Schoenberg.

Gradually I began to discover how important to my own career the struggles of my life had become. No one should ever seek out pain, deprivation and misfortune simply as a background upon which to hang one's creative life. Misfortunes come to everyone. For an artist the worst is to be scoffed, to have one's work scorned and ignored even in the face of great appreciation by one's peers. The artist's creative imagination, when focused on the right ideals, soars at the highest level of human experience, gently contemplating heaven's door.

The artist is always reaching. There is a reaching down into the ore of one's life, trying to bring up sense, answers, truth and something beautiful, and a reaching above to grasp and understand the inextinguishable fire that flashes with spirit and genius and is always just out of reach. As a result the artist is a Tantalus. The art lover, the audience member can never experience the artist's desperate reaching, all they know are the results of that struggle. But that's where the art comes from.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
**************************

SUMMER QUESTION

It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you. Don't let the recent New York State decision rob you of your thunder.

Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

8 answers so far.

You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.

DB
************************

Make Your Own Story

Imagination does not rest.

Constantine Stanislavski
***************************
Hello Abeche, Chad
*****************************
Much, and perhaps all, of human life is fundamentally a fiction. We contribute more to making ourselves up than we think we do. One of the most utilitarian tools and greatest natural blessings the human being has is imagination. It is the bedrock of great ideas and inventions, great plans and accomplishments, great art and great scientific discoveries.

Like breathing, our imagination never stops working even when we are asleep. There isn't much we can do about what imagination gives us in our dreams as it flutters around like a moth into one place and one event after another or soars like a rocket ship into far off lands without the discipline of reason.

But when we are awake our imagination can work like a lighthouse coaxing us to a fantasy world, a beacon that lights up our way through important paths of accomplishment, a flash of realization in uncertain moments.

But imagination undisciplined can also lead us up creaking stairs to a dusty attic of bad memories, down dark alleys of fear and into reptile infested swamps. And that is why I keep harping on the idea of using one's imagination in creative ways, of hitching it up to the wagon and taking us where we want to go instead of letting it lead us to uncertain destinations.

It isn't difficult to be in charge of one's creative mind. In fact what makes it easy is that the imagination is constantly asking to be used, it makes no judgements on the user and it has an infinite amount of resources to reward those who learn to consult and rely on it.

Three actors and one director were sitting around a wooden table in the rehearsal hall. We were trying to find the proper ending for the first act. The one we had been using wasn't working and we all knew it. I remember staring at the grains of wood on the top of the table and saying to myself "The answer to this problem exists. I know it does. And it is going to grow invisibly right out of the top of this table like a flower." I waited calmly and suddenly got an idea. I offered it to the group, the director picked it up, made some minor changes and when we played it out the act ended perfectly.

I have come to trust creative imagination, my own and others' and it always helps to make life a better story.

DB - The Vagabond
--------------
Never give up.
******************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

6 answers so far

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
******************