a shape

 

Dear Working to Refine & Define,

I am trying, working, I guess, to find a 'poignant' shape.  This is a thing that concerns me deeply- perhaps all artists are looking for a poignant shape.  I want an emotional shape that is not defined already.  Not a heart or a butterfly, or a hand.  I want a shape that feels like something, but is not something.  A shape with fullness, and flourish, or a shape with weight and sadness.  Or a shape that evokes the moonlight.  Or satisfaction.  It should be rounded, some, I think, and maybe a bit awkward in proportion.  I often end up with something kind of mounded.  A half oval.  But, I have to be careful not to end up with something too human breast like.  Similarly, it can't be too much of a lemon or a pear or an apple.  It can't look too much like a mushroom.  Blobby, yes, but kind of symmetrical, I think, is what I want.  It should be like a view of the sublime, this shape- an awing feel.  Maybe bodypart-ish, but not specific.  Biological looking.

I once used a shape that was a cross between a wire whisk and a light bulb.  I used it enough in graduate school that an artist visiting my studio asked me what it was.  I said I didn't know; just a shape.  This fellow, then, warned me of the danger of using shapes without knowing what they were or where they came from. 

Curious, isn't it?  A warning like that?  Was it that the gods would be angry that I used a thing that came from the unconscious?  He went on to tell me that he had a shape like that, and he used it for years, until he recognized it as something in his studio- perhaps a light bulb?- and then he stopped using it immediately.  

Now, I wish, like a wish sandwich, that I could tell you what that all meant.  What lesson there was in his warning me about using shapes without... permission?  Full knowledge?  Clinical trials?  I do not know.  I know one thing, that if you are going to warn a person, you might take some care, do a little background check, because I think if you warn a person not to go over a certain fence, not to cross a line, they are not likely to obey if they aren't afraid of the undefined monster you say lives on the other side of the fence.

your rights

 

Dear People,

All there is now is crying and fear.  An endless plain of suffering that Republicans have wrought for us. 

Ray Bradbury said that we should be feeling when we write, not thinking.  My feelings are a huge burning ball of rage and despair, and articulate words are not easily formed from this magma.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson tells me that just 16 Republicans could stop this abuse and terror; that 23 of them could remove our hateful dying President.  Know this, that if you come around me and I find out you are a Republican or that you sympathize with any flavor of conservative racist crap, it will be the last time you see me.  I will not be doing any forgiveness, no exceptions, no "but they didn't realize."  I won't even be discussing it, there will just suddenly be an empty space where I was.

The thing that you know, in the core of your existence, is that any power you wield as a human, your height, your wealth, your weight, your intelligence, your brawn, your speed, your keen eyesight, your anything, must MUST be used to shield and protect the people less powerful than you.  Our responsibility is to take care of others and not to harm them.  This is it.  The whole thing, the whole state of being human.  Ask yourself if you are one and know your rights.