Bury Them

I’ve set aside the last decade(s?) of my life for art. “The one thing I haven’t done.” The big bucket list item. The last bucket of blood.

Why? What difference does it make? I’ve started too late to acquire enough skill to make something noteworthy. And what is art, anyway?

Well, that question is a black hole. I’ve been paddling around the edges via After the End of Art (Danto, 1997) - suggested by Mary for our book club - and biographies of Picasso and Van Gogh and others. Apparently there is art, and there is what we say about art. Art we make and art we consume. Art we take in and art we just talk about.

James’ whole life was art. Performance art for sure. Dance, theater, poetry, collage. Wit. And because he wrote it down, it is now preserved, suspended, like a beetle in amber. How can I throw it away? It’s like chucking someone’s carefully constructed cryogenic chamber into the dumpster because it’s driving up the electric bill.

I’m in my last decade(s?.) The answer given to James’ journals is the answer I give to myself. Every bit of sense says “let it go.” Let it go from whence it came. Let it die.

So why enter a whole campaign to acquire artistic skill, then consume time, money, and materials, then clutter up the world with failed attempts and mediocre endings?

Because.

Because it is a language of inquiry and experimentation. Because it is a shovel for excavating who we are and what we are. Because it not only consumes - it creates. It is the breathing out of spiritual inquiry.

And the physical result?

I must be ready to chuck it. I must create it with the intention of eventual, easy, chucking. If not by me, if I can’t stomach that exactly, by some other poor unlucky soul. But it must be easy for them to chuck. Because its worth expires with me.

So! I’m planning a shelf of small books, hand made and illustrated, of poems exploring the big questions that haunt me now. The value will be in the making. But seeing them there, lined up. Small, rich, textured, will be a comfort. I did it. I did my best. I filled the last bucket with my best blood.

James’ eleven boxes in my attic. My one shelf of tiny books. Him. Me. We will be chucked.

Looking squarely at that was made easier when Mary said “There will always be something.” Not this. This will be chucked. But there will always be something. And maybe, maybe even, that something will be informed by, enriched by, This.

The first book, the first poem for the first book, is here:

Bury Them

Bury them
Bury them in the ground
These books
Thick with poems I wrote, art I made
These concentrations of my questions
My answers
Not yours

Set them on fire
It’s OK
That’s where they came from
A spark and
Air

Chew them up
Digest them
Feed something
Something new
Something you