Years ago when I was actively involved in inner city art classes I was asked by the social worker from the River Street Community Centre to see a client of her's at a local hospice/apartmant for the dead and dying.
I went to the location, 2 weeks before Christmas and met Jack.
He had been a paper hanger/painter most of his life. He was 52.
He looked 70. He was apparently Gwartzmans fist partner. Gwartzman is a dealer in artists materials in Toronto.
At the end of his life he decided to make a painting , really more a mural, that summed up his life and beflief in the here after. It was simple project, Jack began, he proceeded through life, and he died an ignoble death. The mural documented his travails. All in all nothing profound.
What was profound was asking me to watch over his demise.
The thing is though, the information was unique to him.
Did that make it significant to me however?
Sadly the answer is no.
What was different with Jack though was the way he died.
He died Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) having completed his project on Christmas day.
Emaciated, with paper thin skin and the hacking cough of a lung cancer victim he died, glorious and free and at the same time poor and destitute.
What information can Jack distribute that is of any interest in the mediated world.
Sadly I still say none.
Jack's life was uneventful and fruitless.
Dead is as dead does.
Joe Edit.
Dead is as Dead does
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Type: discussion
Comments
Here we see what happens when we interpret expressions simply within the
languages of art. If you do not consider the larger context of the
expression and what it says on its own terms, within that context, we may
fail to understand the expression utterly.
You sketch a situation where a man, at the end of his life, destitute,
attempts a last ultimate expression of hope and bearing witness to his life
and the eternal. And you find it empty, "all in all nothing profound".
How sad for you.
Imagine someone reading the forthcoming book of poems from the detainees of
Guantanamo Bay and their sniffing at it, concluding 'all in all nothing
profound'. Such critical judgement would say much more about the reader than
what was read.
ja
Years ago when I was actively involved in inner city art classes I was
asked by the social worker from the River Street Community Centre to see a
client of her's at a local hospice/apartmant for the dead and dying.
I went to the location, 2 weeks before Christmas and met Jack.
He had been a paper hanger/painter most of his life. He was 52.
He looked 70. He was apparently Gwartzmans fist partner. Gwartzman is a
dealer in artists materials in Toronto.
At the end of his life he decided to make a painting , really more a
mural, that summed up his life and beflief in the here after. It was simple
project, Jack began, he proceeded through life, and he died an ignoble
death. The mural documented his travails. All in all nothing profound.
What was profound was asking me to watch over his demise.
The thing is though, the information was unique to him.
Did that make it significant to me however?
Sadly the answer is no.
What was different with Jack though ! was the way he died.
He died Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) having completed his project
on Christmas day.
Emaciated, with paper thin skin and the hacking cough of a lung cancer
victim he died, glorious and free and at the same time poor and destitute.
What information can Jack distribute that is of any interest in the
mediated world.
Sadly I still say none.
Jack's life was uneventful and fruitless.
Dead is as dead does.
Joe Edit.
ah you poor soul, it was a fiction, and not all fictions have happy endings. sorry about those detainees you are worried about. what are you doing to help them?
Joe Edit
> ah you poor soul, it was a fiction, and not all fictions have
> happy endings. sorry about those detainees you are worried about.
> what are you doing to help them?
> Joe Edit
Talking with you apparently, which, I grant, is very little.
I read an exceptional review of poetry yesterday at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/books/review/Burt2.t.html . It's exceptional because it isn't vague and primarily promotional. But, also, it's a writing about a type of poetry that considers a different notion of significance.
Sentences themselves are rarely 'profound'.
Usually people do not write to be 'profound' but to work things through, to bring things out, to consider what is going on or what could be going on.
The force of writing is largely in what we infer, what we are able to make of the situations. I suppose that is often said by saying it's what is shown rather than what is told.
When the book of poems from the Guantanamo detainees comes out (the book is mentioned in http://books.guardian.co.uk/poetry/features/0,,2021897,00.html ), I think we should pay attention to it not only for what it tells but for what it shows. This is actually something that poets can truly help with.
The significance of poetry is not simply a matter of style or pedigree. That these people should turn to poetry at such a time as they are enduring is, to me, profound.
ja
no doubt. but are we so castrated by the flow of massive volumes of
information that we can't take action and if we do are we doomed to fail?
is that an excuse for doing nothing?
ja?
—–Original message—–
From: "Jim Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 19:41:12 -0400
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Dead is as Dead does
>
> no doubt. but are we so castrated by the flow of massive volumes of
> information that we can't take action and if we do are we doomed to fail?
>
> is that an excuse for doing nothing?
In what sense. Doing something physically in the world of sweat, or do something in the mediated environment?
And what does this have to do with the sociopathology of the original post?