to see what has never passed this way before, ever -something unique,
crack this, this walnut, and behold what you see as you have never
beheld anything before. do so deeply, with a very conscious intensity
of all deliberate Intent upon that matter anew. to see something that
will never ever be seen again by any of the countless eyes ever was or
ever will be, take the matter into yourself. eat that walnut.

matter realizing itself is possibility ablaze, possibility itself as so
materialized. utter ignition. the binary nature of differentia in spin;
enlightenment beside catastrophe, the minute skein of the mirror's very
surface holding clockwise from counter. -spark occurred. motion begun.

aware.

we each are so unique. we cannot behold ourselves in motion; no present
can be beheld or analyzed unless stilled.

Ego captures us to the will of all else save ourselves. it's own Intent
is that of default. mindlessly dumb and blind, soliptic, we assume. we
are soothed by seeming ease. convenience. we cease then to be unguarded
and caring beyond. we cease our dialogue with earth and all as actually
is. we eschew that which earth herself provides to safeguard...

earth is returning to her roots, a churning boil of feral muck & agony.

         wailing, assailing
         all such captivity by convention
         we beat our drums by rote

         recreating ourselves
         from numb despair
         in this desperate air

nearly all this had already been lain down before i recalled the very
phrase of what i have been working with here, what i had been working
on. of artists, and their mates... the creative imperative.

googling it up, suprisingly, i find precious little.



we will do anything for our children... our works, in most any walk of
life, is just that -our very walk of life. every step brings us closer.
the creative call is the most particular. so specifically demanding...

                                -={0}=-

...and so i've added much here, artists whom i thought epitomized some
different aspects of the creative imperative itself. before adding the
last, i thought this well enough though never really directly touching
upon the thing itself; the personal relations involved in such precious
lives.
    i begin these well enough with modigliani -the proverbial story of
an artist and his mate if there ever was one -but i end it on something
that surprised even me -even though it covers things i've been saying,
in all the same fullness, for many years -just not as authoritatively.

artists are as they are, as helplessly as any so rightbrain possessed.

"You are not alive unless you know you are living." -Amadeo Modigliani

"Create art. Live and die for it." -Stanislav Szukalski

         

"Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings,
the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses,
take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with
which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread
into wine and the wine into song... A man who belongs to this race must
stand up on a high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his
entrails."  -Henry Miller

"Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in
itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something
which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the
artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself." -Henry Miller

    

"Every work of art embodies the vision of it's creator and
simultaneously reveals a facet of the collective mind. Art history
shows each successive wave of vision flowing through the world's
artists. The history of art is a vast record of tens of thousands of
artists and their acts of disciplined passion bringing vision to form.
Such a program of passionately committed actions could be called a
mission. Yet, the mission of art cannot be limited or strictly defined
with words. It is much like Lao-tse said of the Tao, "the way" of
enlightened wisdom, "The Tao which can be put into words is not the
real Tao, not the ultimate eternal Tao..." The artists mission may not
ever be put into words or well understood, but it's invisible
magnetizing presence will infuse an artists work completely. What I
mean by mission is the inner calling to creatively serve our physically
and spiritually depleted world. The artist can be a spiritual emissary
working in any media in any part of culture. Mission connotes personal
passionate commitment to something. Mission is applied Vision."
-Alex Grey

           

'But why, if Mr. Andolsek wasn't thinking art, or audience, did he do
what he did for so long, drawing thousands of pictures over 50 years?
Because he wanted to, and because he had to, which in his case are more
or less the same thing. The act of drawing and painting, he has said,
helped to ease a debilitating anxiety that had dogged him all his life.
Once he started a drawing, the anxiety lifted. Relief arrived as a
state of entrancement.'

'The other artists in the exhibition, which has been organized by
Brooke Anderson, director and curator of the museum's Contemporary
Center, are similarly, if differently, driven to art. So "obsessive,"
too, is relative. It can describe pathological behavior - art as a
motor constantly running, a habit, a twitch - or therapy for such
behavior. It can indicate an aesthetic style, a "look," defined by,
say, repetition of forms or motifs, or by excruciatingly micromanaged
details.'