“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.” – Charles Bukowski
The following is a statement from Mark Rothko, about the hurricane you step into if you decide to dedicate yourself to the creative life. It is painful, it is excruciating, it is ecstasy. (Believe at your own will)
THEY SAY:
1. To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.
2. This world of imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.
3. It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way. (hmm)
4. We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.
5. It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing.
We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.
(Statement, June 7, 1943. Mark Rothko, Adolf Gottlieb, Barnett Newman)
Perhaps this is why I am visited by words like ‘Necromancer’ in my wakeful sleep. I know that I am pummelled day and night by some creature that haunts me. I must have picked it up somewhere in Arizona, or between the East and West of Australia, that black hut desert and sky, so much space, so much air, it’s almost suffocating. I must have picked it up there. This world is so full of spirits. I never even knew what Necromancer meant, until the following day when I discovered, to my surprise:
“Necromancy is a form of divination in which the practitioner seeks to summon “operative spirits” or “spirits of divination”, for multiple reasons, from spiritual protection to wisdom. The word necromancy derives from the Greek (nekrós), “dead”, and (manteía), “divination”.
However, since the Renaissance, necromancy has come to be associated more broadly with black magic and demon-summoning in general, sometimes losing its earlier, more specialized meaning.
In modern time necromancy is used as a more general term to describe the art (or manipulation) of death, and generally implies a magical connotation.”
Maybe I am a witch, after all. Who likes witches? Who likes magic? I am a young witch. I must be careful where I place my powers.
7 Comments
I immediately recognized your blog title… I wonder how many other people know of it… it is so quiet in the song, very easy to miss.
“Only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless” is particularly telling given Rothko’s eventual passing. I’m not surprised his manifesto proclaims tragedy as the ONLY subject matter that is valid. Though, I can’t say I really disagree.
Yees, my favourite part of the song is that little quip. Ha-ave you-u ever…
It is a sham and a shame that tragedy/ depression/ mania/ asbergers syndrome are often glorified as an aspirational trait to have when one is an artist. Also the whole thing about being an artist = starving, poor, mad etc.
I beg to differ! There are so many possibilities in life, and ways to create art from everything and anything these days. As another great song attests: “There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made”
I suppose I agree with you…
Perhaps what it is… is that so much of the positive side of life gets trumpeted loudly and to welcoming arms… but expressing something challenging and perhaps not so generally optimistic (mental illness notwithstanding) can meet with substantial social resistance. In a weird way and ironically, the resistance which that perspective engenders seems to justify and even promote many artists’ dour perspective. There is no question that friction can be very inspirational.
On a side note, I actually see that Beatle’s lyric differently… that lyric suggests to me that there’s nothing new under the sun. Like all those great Beatle’s lyrics… they always seemed to have a irony about them even while appearing to be so optimistic.
“So you think you can tell, heaven from hell?”
I understand completely what you’re saying. At a very deep level I have a huge affinity for the more vulnerable side of human nature. There is so much out there in popular expression that is very over the top candy-filled surface skating. I have a low tolerance threshold for it, I have to admit..
Pink Floyd is my absolute all time favourite band. It’s astonishing you quote them, I’ve been writing the Paper Castle Philosophy after supreme inspiration from a book called Pink Floyd and Philosophy. Tonight just listened to Animals and a Collection of Great Dance Songs. Dark Side of the Moon is a huge influence on my world view and the way I see the world.
I like that ‘Learning to Fly’ balances the feeling of striving painfully, and breaking through the threshold to new greatness. I was going to quote just a bit of it, but I have to post this whole section…
Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction holding me fast, how
Can I escape this irresistible grasp?
Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit…”
It goes on… Brilliant lyrics. I love the original video too.
Yes. Pink Floyd. Remarkable stuff. The “Wish You Were Here” song lyrics actually physically hurt me when I listen to them…
“We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.
Year after year, running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fears.”
On another musical note… I had commented in your blog about Brian Eno’s ambient. I followed a link on your site to, I guess, your brother’s film site(?) Showcase films. And I watched one of the films… and it had some Eno music in the soundtrack…
Is Learning To Fly from an album other than their live one, Delicate…?
Yes my brothers and their friend like making experimental films with Brian Eno music. They like to push all kinds of buttons, I have a feeling they’ll go a long way.
Learning to Fly.. I actually don’t have it on an album. It’s one of those tracks that floats around my iTunes unattached to anything. I’d love to find out what albums it appears on, though.
Ps. Would just like to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed these talks about music and lyric interpretation. Do you have any background in music other than the philosophical nature of being a listener?
I’m an artist and filmmaker (and half-hearted production designer)… so music is a constant source of inspiration… probably because I can’t actually make any myself!!
Is the “Learning To Fly” you have on the iPod a live song?
Wait! We have the internet (I keep forgetting!) Let me look. A quick visit to wiki reads: studio albums post Roger Waters were A Momentary Lapse… and The Division Bell. It’s from Momentary… that solves that mystery. Only album I don’t own.
The reason I’ve been harping on and on about Eno is I find him very good to write scripts to… which I’ve been doing the last few weeks… very mysterious and not syrupy at all.
When I write… these lyrics come to mind!
“Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tribute to finality – to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for my immortality”