Dear goodness. I can spend the entire day doing little of consequence and yet…. the moment my head hits the bamboo fibre pillowcase, I fill my ‘trying to empty’ reservoir with a series of brilliant things to say. The words flow. The ideas shine. Yes, Yes…
I started the process of falling asleep a few minutes ago. It was interrupted by reminding myself what a fraud I am regarding the arts, the fine arts. It starts with the fact I don’t often have much a clue what the great filmmakers are saying. I watch Ingmar Bergman and stifle a laugh, his characters are so pregnant with meaning as to be comical, to me. I don’t bother to study the film, I just snicker. For example: one film stays in my mind that I don’t remember the title of. An old woman is getting kinda preachy with the young folks. Then, the young girl goes to milk the cow, trips and spills the milk. The music swells and it is obvious that this is important to the story. Yeah. I never bothered to learn what it meant. I still liked the film though, even as pretentious and overbearing as it was. I don’t know why Bergman is so revered but I kinda like the films. Makes me feel like I am cheating when I watch them, though. I can almost hear the film school professors clucking their tongues.
Books? Visual art? Poems? I have always preferred to read the books I knew to be substantial, to view the art I heard was substantial, to read poems that were… more interesting. Do I have the necessary education or pinpoint clear view to understand the core of what is being said by my favourite art-makers? No, I am sorry. I have tried to analyze but it just puts me to sleep. I am sorry Pablo Neruda. All that bloody work to assemble something magnificent for the world and that guy, Bob, reads it, eating popcorn and puzzling over some of the images, straining to understand, giving up and just reading – feeling the rhythm but not able to accurately count it out, sensing there is meaning very near but enjoying the sensation, then leaving it at that.
I have wasted the time of many great artists. Hemingway, Faulkner, Irving, Atwood, Longfellow, Wordsworth…oddly, or not, I kinda understand Chaucer. He seems easy to know. Alexander Pope, less so. Edmund Spencer? fugedaboutit. He is a wacky guy and the stuff is hard to read through the language barriers. The Faerie Queene? Really? And, how dare I suggest it but, Shakespeare is more than a little boring. I guess he needs to get with the times that Bob Hubbard is living in? In the case of dear old Will, I do know at least in part why he is so remarkable. His plays run the entire gamut of human-ness. We cheat, we lie, we try to take power over others, we get naughty in the bedroom, we misdirect, we violate every one of the ten commandments. The plays cover just about all of that and in succinct form. However, they can be a bit wearisome to suffer through. This year, I saw a cool Macbeth. The Danish court sycophants were a motorcycle gang, living in a motel…not everyone’s cup of tea but I liked it.
There have been highlights in my not-so-lustrous career as critic. I really liked the piece of modern art called “Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley” by Charles Ray. It is a sculpture of some ten different life size nudes of the artist, all gathered together in various sexual positions. Why is it art? I would have to think awhile. Why do I enjoy it so much? Again, it is something ‘other’ than the Virgin Mary, something ‘other’ than a Rodin sculpture. When I first saw the piece, it was Chicago at the Contemporary Art Museum. The most interesting part was to watch the tourists (everyone in a museum is at least a kind of tourist) and their reaction. My ex and I sat outside the gallery on a bench and looked in. The men would be walking around the sculpture with their wives or girlfriends. The women were chattering excitedly and pointing while the men attempted to look away. I am almost certain that was the intent of the artist and the why it is art but maybe the bespectacled crowd would differ?
I actually learned a little something about sculpture by submitting a study paper of Henry Moore. In my study, I wondered aloud why this lump of plaster (it was a test piece) was considered great art. My art teacher gave me back a lengthy explication of sculpture, how it works and why it is, of shadow, of form, of suggestion. He was very excited by my remarks and I adored reading his evaluation, explication. I also got a good mark on my study and very good marks in the class. It was a general humanities class and I aced it… not because I had special knowledge or insight but solely because I was familiar with almost every piece, music, visual or otherwise. I had, at least, looked at or listened to it. I was curious, even though unaware. That gave me an edge, but I knew my opinions were somewhat fraudulent.
Sigh.
I still love a freakish movie (non-violent, just weird), a goofy jazz piece, like ‘Steppin’ by the World Saxophone Quartet…Mary Oliver poems and Walt Whitman poems, little ol’ me, who just wants to hear pop music and look at strange books or movies but doesn’t like vacuous, brainless, unmusical Beyonce’ pop…like (danger Bob, danger) The Tragically Hip. Nickelback are better…..
Robert On The Air 