the whole picture
Sun 9.16.18
Another 9/11 anniversary this week, lest we forget the effect this had and continues to have, I thought I would post an essay written one month after the event:
Saturday 10/13, 01
What a weekend! Friday afternoon after I wrap up work for the week, lovely short sleeved, sunny day, I take a long leisurely shower then choose a nice outfit to wear, make myself up, the jewelry, the earrings and I'm off. My plan for this weekend is to go check out the Signac paintings at the Met on Saturday and brunch with my group on Sunday.
I head first to the library where I pick up a biography of Crazy Horse that's being held for me, I'm looking forward to reading it, then over to the bank to make my deposit. Afterward, I stroll over to Eli's to pick up a baguette and that's when I see it; on the cover of the Daily News, FBI Warns of Eminent Attack. And on the Post, Red Alert and a big bull's-eye. Instantly, my mood crashes. What the hell is this? I think. Why are they telling me this? If it's known that an attack is about to happen, how is it suppose to occur? Are we going to be bombed? Biological attack? What am I supposed to do about this warning, go home, tape the windows and doors to keep out the poisonous fumes and hide under the bed?
I choose a couple of art books and head for the café at Barnes & Nobles, still upset about the headlines. A woman sits at a table, working on her computer her feet up on another chair. What is this? Not enough chairs for people to sit in and this bitch uses one as a foot stool? I walk up to her and point, the chair. She removes her feet wordlessly. I drag the chair to another table where a man sits by himself. This your stuff? I motion to the books and magazines sprawled all over the table. He nods and picks everything up and deposits it on the floor. Jesus, what am I doing I think, snapping at people and creating bad energy?
An uncomfortable minute and then, Thank you. He nods. After he's gone, I notice that he's left his newspaper behind. It's the Red Alert bull's-eye Post. I bring it over to the trash can.
At the Met the following day, it occurs to me when looking at Signac's pointillist paintings that we are up close to all the little dots of our present situation. We haven't stepped back far enough to make out what the picture is all about. He started his career as an impressionist until he met Seurat and then his style gradually evolved. It's quite interesting to see his first paintings which pulse with emotional coloring, hanging next to the progressively more formal pointillist works. The characters and scenes lose their substantiality and become symbolic objects poised on a piece of canvass. A lot of my stories start with a kernel of an actual event, a real person, but as the story unfolds I've traveled so far from the initial facts that it becomes like a Signac pointillist painting. The initial event whether it is the WTC attack or the kernel of a story is not the half of it. One has to look at the whole picture and the whole picture is too complex to be rendered by what really happened. Asking a writer if his work is autobiographical is a silly question. That's not what it's all about. The only people who are telling the truth are story tellers, the rest is lies. We are incapable of telling the truth because we are physiologically incapable of even perceiving it with the linearity of our thought patterns and our method of digesting information. Artists play with "facts" and in that way often stumble on a truth.
My friends and I have long, soulful conversations that range all over the "facts" and have no clear purpose or direction other than to vent, to try and understand, to finally see the truth of the situation. Stepping back and letting the soul do its work of processing the recent events is about all that can be done at this time. It's not always easy. Sun 9.16.18
Another 9/11 anniversary this week, lest we forget the effect this had and continues to have, I thought I would post an essay written one month after the event:
Saturday 10/13, 01
What a weekend! Friday afternoon after I wrap up work for the week, lovely short sleeved, sunny day, I take a long leisurely shower then choose a nice outfit to wear, make myself up, the jewelry, the earrings and I'm off. My plan for this weekend is to go check out the Signac paintings at the Met on Saturday and brunch with my group on Sunday.
I head first to the library where I pick up a biography of Crazy Horse that's being held for me, I'm looking forward to reading it, then over to the bank to make my deposit. Afterward, I stroll over to Eli's to pick up a baguette and that's when I see it; on the cover of the Daily News, FBI Warns of Eminent Attack. And on the Post, Red Alert and a big bull's-eye. Instantly, my mood crashes. What the hell is this? I think. Why are they telling me this? If it's known that an attack is about to happen, how is it suppose to occur? Are we going to be bombed? Biological attack? What am I supposed to do about this warning, go home, tape the windows and doors to keep out the poisonous fumes and hide under the bed?
I choose a couple of art books and head for the café at Barnes & Nobles, still upset about the headlines. A woman sits at a table, working on her computer her feet up on another chair. What is this? Not enough chairs for people to sit in and this bitch uses one as a foot stool? I walk up to her and point, the chair. She removes her feet wordlessly. I drag the chair to another table where a man sits by himself. This your stuff? I motion to the books and magazines sprawled all over the table. He nods and picks everything up and deposits it on the floor. Jesus, what am I doing I think, snapping at people and creating bad energy?
An uncomfortable minute and then, Thank you. He nods. After he's gone, I notice that he's left his newspaper behind. It's the Red Alert bull's-eye Post. I bring it over to the trash can.
At the Met the following day, it occurs to me when looking at Signac's pointillist paintings that we are up close to all the little dots of our present situation. We haven't stepped back far enough to make out what the picture is all about. He started his career as an impressionist until he met Seurat and then his style gradually evolved. It's quite interesting to see his first paintings which pulse with emotional coloring, hanging next to the progressively more formal pointillist works. The characters and scenes lose their substantiality and become symbolic objects poised on a piece of canvass. A lot of my stories start with a kernel of an actual event, a real person, but as the story unfolds I've traveled so far from the initial facts that it becomes like a Signac pointillist painting. The initial event whether it is the WTC attack or the kernel of a story is not the half of it. One has to look at the whole picture and the whole picture is too complex to be rendered by what really happened. Asking a writer if his work is autobiographical is a silly question. That's not what it's all about. The only people who are telling the truth are story tellers, the rest is lies. We are incapable of telling the truth because we are physiologically incapable of even perceiving it with the linearity of our thought patterns and our method of digesting information. Artists play with "facts" and in that way often stumble on a truth.
My friends and I have long, soulful conversations that range all over the "facts" and have no clear purpose or direction other than to vent, to try and understand, to finally see the truth of the situation. Stepping back and letting the soul do its work of processing the recent events is about all that can be done at this time. It's not always easy.
