Art & Life

writing or drawing 
while my daughter sleeps
second guessing my labors of yesterday 
while my daughter sleeps
my daughter at her easel 
pausing reflectively before the violence ensues
my daughter and i at MoMa
my daughter and i at an opening
my daughter and i at my opening 
my daughter and i at any number of galleries
my daughter banging her head to Saxon
my daughter telling me to "hear" her
my daughter reciting the lines 
of various and sundry Disney princesses
i'm shopping for tonights dinner 
before hitting the studio 
forgetting that Manhattan grocery shopping 
on a saturday entails the rude, oblivious and insane
i'm putting together a stew before i hit the studio
i'm painting my ass off 
keeping an eye on the snow 
outside the tall windows

Art and the life around it mingle together like furtive teenagers at a basement keg party-- awkward, perhaps lewd, casting glances that may or may not be appreciated... You go through your day
and if you're not there tearing it up in the studio, you are certainly thinking about it.
A specific gesture comes to mind-- a movement, a piece of brilliance that you missed last night or the night before. Thoughts of color and placement, realization, composition and the like...

The beauty is that you can't second guess yourself hypothetically. The making of Art is not simply the application of materials. There is the guessing-- there is the thought and tumult... The major contemplations of Monday are but empty bottles and wads of masking tape come Thursday.

And thats fine (I believe it was Ginsberg who admonished us to never begin a line with "and", but it feels so good to do so and I'm cool with being a bad writer, so fuck it...). We have that beautiful authority to cast out what could otherwise be construed as "failure" and unravel what becomes victory (I grimaced as this was typed, but, again, fuck it, its so true...).