The Tender Barbarian excerpt

they constitute you as the final outcome in a chain of successive present moments.

When you create a picture, its composition derives from prior influences, older or more recent, that is, inspiration is its basis. With respect to the course of the cosmos, no one, therefore, can preempt the present — except with respect to the actions of one’s contemporaries.

Everyone remembers using “fantasy” at times to conceive from clouds, rock faces, molten lead at Christmastime . . . a variety of mundane shapes. The exact same process is at work when you look at a flaking wall or marble. In the blotches you see faces, figures, surfaces become space, everything blends together, is animated. Mental images are actually triggered here by the accretion of surface shapes corresponding to your visions. What you actually see is your own life converted into two dimensions — that is, into a surface. The train of imagination is able to construct from basic elements hundreds upon hundreds of original forms and configurations. Understand: it is grounded in life experiences and the cognizance of them evoked by blotches. Some of you attend school to learn how to draw and paint. After five or six years you’ve accomplished what you set out to do, and more often than not that’s the end of it. Many times the flame of enthusiasm goes out during these years of study, and despite the craftsmanship you display, you have nothing to say to the world. Yet if you were to focus on creating work with the help of blots, you would learn how to express yourself visually in a matter of days, a few weeks at most. And how much richer your work would be. Even richer the more you experience in adult life as compared to those academy trained artists. And it makes no difference if you’re a miner, chemical engineer, housewife . . . , was not the world of culture enriched the most by persons engaged in life? Naturally art schools will continue to exist, but unlike in the past, they will no longer teach the craft of art and will produce instead art from their collective.

If from the time we’re born we had lived in a white room, seeing nothing other than the white walls, our imagination would be nil. We, however, daily see thousands of forms, thousands of movements. All of these are stored in the “spirals” of our brain even if at times subconsciously. If circumstances awaken in you a strong 106