Saturday, June 14, 2008

beauty in the dark

I am writing this moment into a poem
I assure you the moment was perfect in life
Perfect- and poetic which was what lead me into temptation and it to it’s death.

Its short life began when I turned out the light
And saw, spilling, molten, across my pillow
A puddle of silver moon

Its beauty stunned me, enticed me to let it live- let it be.
To trust in its existence
And my own
Enough for it to be enough
That I knew that it was there, and that it was beautiful.

No need to take it down onto the list of ingenuous conquered by my pen
No need to bottle up the evidence
To prove to a bench a critical jurymen
That silver beauty does exist in the dark.

My ego now commits the crime.
Beauty, taken and spoiled by documentation as I search the room
For a pencil and paper
And return to the bed with these in hand
To scribble blindly about magic
Searching for the right words to tell them all what I can see
Articulated all around me in perfect coherent reality.

The perfect silence is ruined by the whispering and cracking
Of the pencil lead which breaks in the dark
I'm slaying this moment with a this poem
I've stolen its purity and its virtue in the dark
It limps away, still beautiful, but tainted forever
And I assure you, as I remember what it was like in its youth
It was not worth it.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

copying

it appears that i have a certain rule for myself that is incredibly important to me and completely irelevent to the rest of the world

the simplified version of the rule might sound somthing like "THOU SHALT NOT COPY SOMEONE ELSES HAIR STYLE, PIERCING PLACEMENT, IDEA, OUTFIT, POINT OF VIEW, DRAWING, WAY OF WALKING, OPINION OR PREFERENCE IN FOOD... ECT."

what it means is that there is very little left that i am allowed to do, think, eat, wear, like, draw ect. because pretty much everything has been done.



But.
this week and this month i have been fighting the all powerful hold that this eleventh commandment has over my life
i have been fighting by way of art.
i have been drawing things that other people have drawn.
looking the drawing in the face and knowing that i did not think of it myself
looking at it and realizing that i love it.
then drawing it
exactly the way they saw it
exactly the way they drew it... (thats the goal at least)

and when its finished
making myself appreciate it for itself and for its closeness to original.

now
i know that artist do this all the time.
painting from photos (photos they took themselves or otherwise)
drawings for life...
if we draw from a model are we copying life?

well
anyway
ive been fighting this impulse down...
the one that tells me that this is cheating
and i have been copying
and i love it
and its so straightfoward.

put the shadows where they put their shadows and thier lights where they put their lights.
and copy.