Richard, how does an artist--
whatever it is that they do, stay on his or her course?
The only question worth pursuing
is about the work. Now the work is, according to my latest inquiry,
not what most people think it is(the way "artists"
use it, for example),and is not even the way I have sloppily
used it to avoid that I didn't know what it really is. This is
how I have come to it: if in my mind's eye I "see"
that all people have work( in the Christian-moral, life-associated,
natural sense of all people living are living, idea and
idea application sense) then the work is this once you
take away the people. I first know this as a contingent thing
and then KNOW it by taking away what it first was contingent
to. (The working is totally different from the work, as I've
just described it.)
Where is someone like myself?
Are there any alternatives?
Now you are in a position surrounded
by work in the ordinary sense, and by people who are in fact
working, which cuts them off from the work. You have a capacity
for understanding what the work is, but have not treated yourself
to the satisfactions which can be had in this and this alone.
You speak of alternatives; this is not possible in the work--it
is in the working, very much so, and in work in the ordinary
sense.
What of the struggle, the artist's
struggle for direction, the struggle for light, for getting and
staying on track, in line, on the path, centered, or even just
being good, or good enough?
You see in me someone who can
expose you to your own capacity, but this is dishonest to yourself
and me--though you don't intend it. First you are pulled apart
and then separated from what you really want. So many times this
happens; so many times we fight back or don't fight back--it
doesn't seem to make much difference in nature or the way the
world turns, but it does to us because we don't feel good.
When you meet another person who makes you feel good--in this
way--you feel yourself and that is the important thing--this
feeling of your Self, the satisfaction.
I do, of course, because nobody
talks about this stuff?
Now in our case we have only
felt each other's dimension, a hopefulness, and, as the greeks
said, this is the last and worst thing in Pandora's box. Strangely
enough it is the very thing which we must avoid if we are ever
going to get to the work. This love for seeing our own dimension
in others must be given up to get to the work.
And finding...
But then you ask how do we find
the courage--can't other people give us this courage, or arm
us with weapons to fight our own battle. Yes, they can, as long
as each is thinking about the work. It is wrong for me to supply
someone with arms for which they have no use, even if I could,
which, apparently, I can't, and am grateful for it.
It is also wrong for someone
in the world to qualitatively judge someone who is outside the
world, for the two don't run together; they are different. The
part of you that has nothing to do with anything is a valuable
part, not relative to others as the humanists or religious dogmatists
say: it simply is(the best part) and not to be compared at all.
To love this, to know this, to learn to know this, you need tools,
but it is best to make them yourself, slowly, single-mindedly,
and irregardless of anyone else. This is the hard work,
everything else follows, painting, if you are a painter, love
if you are meant to love, nothing if that is what is right. All
of these things feel good, but they are not it.
May 17, 1978
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