Resurrected Art Enthusiasm

On The Critical Attitude by Bertolt Brecht

The critical attitude

Strikes many people as unfruitful

That is because they find the state

Impervious to their criticism

But what in this case is an unfruitful attitude

Is merely a feeble attitude. Give criticism arms

And states can be demolished by it.

Canalising a river

Grafting a fruit tree

Educating a person

Transforming a state

These are instances of fruitful criticism

And at the same time instances of art.

It is not easter Sunday yet and if I am not mistaken, Jesus is about to die after couples of hours, but I would want to share something today and celebrate this good Friday by posting a blog entry. (There should have been another blog post prior to this one because April Fools' Day is over--I've talk to people about this though there are still problems with the unearthing process and its repercussions--and I have found truths that lead into this return to whatever I am returning to.) But I'd keep the sharing short. After dealing with the most crucial hinge of the release from the deep shit that held me captive for almost three months, I've spent a week far away from home. Again. And it helped a lot, but it could have been a better experience if I tried talking with people more. And if *on second thought, I'd rather not elaborate*

As I have expected, the week-long cultural caravan and the Mangyan day, like most activities that expose one to social realities, shattered my established notions and placed question marks and exclamation points with what I had initially planned. This disruption of the direction I thought I would take is, I think, healthy--since contradictions such as internal conflicts cause progress within the space where the thesis and the antithesis collided. This spark of the need to reconsider--or even rectify?--my truths was followed then by questions leading into my rethinking of my poetics. Thus the exchanges of ideas re: writing with friends and writers, ie both by interactive communication and by reading essays and even poems of writers I consider literary models. Glad to have friends who can engage in critical discourse and all the profundities and pretensions and philosophizing that comes with it.

"(...), if either Foucault of Althusser’s theories of power and subjectivity have even grain of truth to them and we are all always already subjects, then counter-hegemonic cultural production must inevitably proceed from within the bounds of that subjectivity. Thus, the Romantic view of the artist as standing aloof from socio-political reality must be seen as a myth, most likely as a product and effect of that very reality the artist is said to escape."

Althusser and Foucault on the Limits of Ideology by Phil Tomson

Realizing that there are still a whole lot of art shit that need to be done and possibilities to be explored and questions not just to be answered but to be asked first, I again felt the urge to involve my self in the creative process rejuvenated. And now, my pen and my notebooks are not in vacation anymore. (Or so I thought!) Three months of rest is--not enough but--too much already. Now, I have to work with what I have (yes, I wasn't totally idle during those three dead months!): fragments that need to be put together to make a whole. And I am not alone in putting these pieces together--the social ills and my personal demons are there to help me conceive ideas and put them into a somewhat decipherable form.

With the re-discovered bliss of writing after that phase when I forgot who I was and I was not being my self and I kept both eyes fixed, neither on the commercial market nor the avant-garde coterie, but on the what-should-have-beens, I am back from the void, ready to tell stories about the monsters in the abyss I created. See? I thought I'd keep this entry short. And I failed. A good sign, I believe.

"Only this: if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don't even know yourself."

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

PS! Happy Earth Day! Fvck Mining! Save the Earth! Serve the (Indigenous) People!