Comments on: In the grove

By: Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Clive Hicks-Jenkins — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:52:49 +0000

Oh I’ve just re-read what I wrote, and as usual I’ve mixed metaphors hideously in the struggle to make sense of the inexplicable. But you get my drift.

I think Marly is my version of your wise mystic, Rachel. I puff and splutter and proclaim my unbelief, railing against preachers and the Pope and all purveyors of cant and dogma, and she writes back gently about the ingenious ways in which God works through my painting. She leaves me absolutely floored, deflated and floundering. It’s hard to stay cross when someone so transparently good speaks straight from the heart. Though we’ve we’ve never met her words leap off the screen and calm me.

Galloping fast fast fast now as my exhibition deadline looms. I’m not leaving the comments I’d like to here, but I promise to get back up to speed in Via Negativa matters when my mind is my own again come June.

Best
C

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:41:20 +0000

Well, that’s kind of what I believe too, I guess, most of the time (except when I am talking to wise mystics like my friend Rachel Barenblat). I like your description of survival as a form of improvisation. A jazz jam session really is a much better model for living than an orchestral concert, which presumes a composer.

By: Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Clive Hicks-Jenkins — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:37:19 +0000

Yet again I come here for a bracing breath of good sense. So much has been written about and pontificated over regarding Haiti, and most of it couched in platitudes and clichés. (Pat Robertson’s insane ramblings sent me for a long hot bath, so tainted did I feel for having watched the clip. Another ghastly example of the dogma of hate!)

Like you Dave I wish that people would stop trying to explain every damn thing that happens to them, as though God and the Universe is a giant hand either dispensing cookies from a jar or beating the crap out of everyone. As I see it there’s no explanation for existence nor any lasting or meaningful order that can be imposed upon it. Survival, whether on a micro-level or a Universal one, is an endless and ultimately exhausting improvisation. We all have to think on our feet until we’re too weary for the dance and we drop, at which point others will take our places. I find an odd comfort in that, in the sheer bloody relentlessness of it all. From the exhilaratingly wonderful things we experience to the catastrophic, taking in the endless flat territories between those poles, we should just get on with it as best we can, and with as much grace and generosity as we can muster.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:29:08 +0000

I wondered if anyone would object to that. The flapping was of wings against spruce branches. I probably should’ve found a way to explain that.

By: quite regular

quite regular — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:45:15 +0000

picky picky me but…owls’ wing flaps are not usually heard, although you might hear one trying to negotiate a landing among branches and such. I bet it was another big bird, a raptor?
I put some crutches in a Haiti box today.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:22:20 +0000

Glad you liked. Kind of a rehash of things I’ve said here in the past, but no harm in playing something “once again, with feeling,” I guess.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:20:43 +0000

Thanks!

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:14:24 +0000

Qoheleth/Kohelet is the proper name for what English-language bibles call Ecclesiastes, which strikes me as a woefully inappropriate attempt to place a pious fig-leaf on a radically skeptical text (similar to the way in which pious people have seen Job: through the lens of his supposed patience).

I guess it hardly needs to be said that this president can’t even imply American culpability for anything without raising howls of accusation from the usual quarters, but I still think the article could’ve been framed differently. It’s likely that “Why Haiti Matters” was something the Newsweek editors themselves came up with, though (as my brother Steve pointed out) they had another cover story back on December 19 which was subtitled “People who matter on what matters most.”

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:02:37 +0000

tectontism’s authorship, and ongoing sponsorship, of life on earth.

That is a better way to put it, I agree. Doesn’t sound at all full of shit to me (but consider the source!).

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:12:21 +0000

I feel tectonism is a wondrous and under-appreciated and I’m glad you brought it up. Though it is the cause of unimaginable grief, there are growing hints that it might well be the source of all our joys. Tagging it as merely the “price” strikes me as glib mostly because it seems to trivialize tectontism’s authorship, and ongoing sponsorship, of life on earth.

Dang. I wish I could say that without sound so goddamn full of it, but tectonics is the shit.