My esteemed fellow Steemit Creatives, if life is meant to synthesise souls into a mille-feuille pastelito, Steemit could be promising; or any interface where street-wise people and folks seeking direction can meet in a mind of Self-observation. We could be running here a kitchen of distinction. A recruitment board for jacks-of-all-soul-trades. Bring on the festival atmosphere, and may we be worthy of investment!
Manifesto
Ever considering what I am doing here, and how Steemit can make for a part of my artistic life and spiritual awareness campaign, I have come to understand myself as an independent agent, quietly at work in my Sukhansasister studio, with little time or interest in looking for Like-minds. I think that would be very last millenium and more suited to the crochet-club type. Minds geared up for a new utopian "mutual-understanding" (a Utopian island would be very 1627) are looking for a new way of being. I conclude that the new generation has no need for like-thinking and for whom else would an artist be making art (unless his therapist) than the next generation after this?
As a teacher, my particular field of interest would lie in reaching out. As a co-creative steward of colour my interest lies in layering up and the rest of this post will show you what I mean by example.
I do not aim to succeed as a teacher. The youth are in the fast lane of progress (let me know if you know where to) and have learned to depend on artificial intelligence for an extension of the human brain, making a single collective mind available to all who know how to jack in. What is left to find in another mind? Learning from previous generations is very passé.
As an environmentally dependent individual (we are co-produced by our environment) it does not sit well with me to invest in rubbish. I have no opinion about Steemit having its place in the core web-business of recycling but it pains me to liken it to the Bismark (thinking merely of a super-sized hot air balloon who met with a finite drama). Speaking entirely for myself in the pluralis majestatis, we sure are full of ourselves, aren't we! So many great writers and artists making astounding works of art and we little people hope to either sit well alongside them (or do we hang?) or otherwise hitch a cheeky ride with them, like I will be doing below. Hopefully, however to generate layering up.
Here then, still brave at heart, my generous gift to you, in good faith.
Layering up and fusing our complexities together, in partnerships, sponsorships, mentorships, hoods of creative sparring, we may find cohesion, yet.
I had another blessing bestowed upon me today, in the WAFS (world away from steemit), when a book fell on my foot. It made for an unforgettable day; it also helped to gel my heartmost inentions for my steemit project.
May I invite art and literature lovers to explore the layers of Cripplewood. Perfectly sublime in all its endurable fragility. A fount of meaning to life with its roots in soul to soul contact.
I don’t know much about Coetzee at all, other than that he is South-African, which is - to my shame - one of the reasons I may never have picked him up if not for Malkovich in “Disgrace” (2008, Steve Jacobs). South-Africa seemed to me a very distant place, and full of disconcerting issues, which are still by no means resolved. Most art and literature from this country, therefore, is understandably heavily socio-political, and I had only just started on the Russians...; this was in the days before I started to "research" novels (2016) . (Typically useless linguistic pragmatist who checked out little in practice.)
Now, I do occasionally pick up a book by Coetzee, almost furtively, as if I am a little intimidated by this author who has blindingly brilliant moments, like in the story of the old lady and the cats (not written for but given to Berlinde for her project). Am I worthy of such treats?! Were I to synthesise his thinking with mine (which is eerily possible for this story) would that not be a noisome process of defragmentation and an insult to him and his muses? Here goes anyway. My humble apologies in advance.
About Berlinde de Bruyckere I know even less, and only that she is from Belgium. She is the fine artist, he is the writer, but both are simply life-artists, living for beauty and meaning (where beauty must have philosophical bearings and not a decorative one). To my mind, fairly courageously heeding her intuition (for Coetzee is the Einzelgänger par excellence), she was clearly "sent" by a need that is deeper than a personal one to connect and seek out Coetzee for a curator (a requirement for the Venice Art Biennale).
In the unequivocal masterpiece “Cripplewood” (the name of de Bruyckere's work but I refer in this context especially to the entire synthesised project of the collaboration as recorded in book form), we share the process of connecting. Rather than to bring works of art together, or have his feed into hers, Berlinde de Bruyckere steered to find that sweet-spot of the inbetween and reside in this conduit awhile. The result is what I would call a making of love; not just between two I's but involving pillar precedents; and not only for a Sunday at the museum, but to push off new skiffs in which each of us independently can go back out to sea, again.
This is a notch up from brothers writing sisters (Stendhal/Beyle and sister Pauline: a highly enviable read for those who have poor or no sibling relationships); I don't quite see a brotherhood for artists/creatives, or a (feminist) sisterhood, but I would like to perceive a Schwesterlichkeit between these two, in the way Robert Musil was always looking for this point of connect in his (heterosexual) relationships (he is said to love women like a woman); otherwise it feels to me like they dip into Goethe's Ewige Weiblichkeit (the Eternally Feminine), a very sophic place, which gives this mild, tender and supportive mood between them. It gives an even playing field for these very discrepant people. I believe, that their age is helpful in this "work (of love)" on this spiritual common ground. They are both old enough to know how to value the human experience as something that starts in the heart. They are not looking to be something else or other, or more than heartfelt creations. The stretch they both have with which to reach the other's mind was sizzling to mine. This is to view Human Potential unrolled!
Saint Sebastian by: Dosso Dossi (first half 16th C.). | Lindenwood, 1400-1600, Tirol, for sale at MasterArt | Rubens, 1614
To try the mille-feuille recipe of Coetzee/de Bruyckere, layer up these works of art with the exceptional poem “Apollo and Marsyas” by the great artist and thinker Zbigniew Herbert.
The Beauty of Age
I am too full with puff and pastry and cream and sweetness to layer much onto Cripplewood myself here. Other than that I found another encouragement to ageing.
Both are older. Coetzee the elder by 25 years, and you can feel throughout the brief correspondence around the project of curation, he has the more reserved or restrained nature that indicates for me a man who has seen it all and knows very little can be said anymore. (In the short story he gifts her for her project as curator) the conversation about cats, which is not at all about cats, or thanks to cats also about us, makes for a metaphysical meditation to sit down to twice daily. It reads like a surreal dream grounded in the highly mundane. A thousand leaves to crunch into and let melt upon the tongue. Keep turning those delectable pages, which are light as air, but packed with fuel for the heart. (Dietary caution: puff-pastry is high in calorific value when made right with pure butter!)
You can feel in the to and fro both are committed to listening to every word and examining all the punctuation. Where ideas might come to rest, a little flat initially, in the other's mind, for a lack a context, of a different perspective, they are never crushed but are left to rise up from the patient wait to soar to new elevations.
Words fail me to describe the joy I derive from such maturity.
More but different:
Another author/artist collaboration of interest is to be found in Paul Auster and Sophie Calle. Double Game
If you click the link you will find The Classic Napoleon | Mille Feuille Cream Pastry recipe by “of batter and dough” which ought to come out looking like the photo at the top.
While I wait for my VP to build back up, I've read this post twice and wonder if you aren't creating a parallel universe on the block chain. This also makes me wonder if some future archaeologist will find a path through het kreupelhout that is Steemit to find your project, that is, if a valid copy of the Steem block chain still exists at such a time.
While kreupelhout often produces beautifully figured and/or colored wood, it will not yield boards large enough to build those new Skiffs, but luckily we can peel and laminate the smaller bits into plywood, engineered wood, not unlike a block chain where multiple layers can provide more strength than the core material by itself.
Kreupelhout is also used to describe low growing scrubs like Buckthorn and such.
I hope that Book didn't hurt as it fell on your Foot.
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The kind of hurt I am willing to suffer.
And I think there is more to it than just a parallell universe. You and me both have this knack of calling up long lost memories in each other.
I had a man come and fix (major overhaul, needing the removal from the hinges) my oak front door once upon a time, who was a boat builder. It was quite something to see him at work. As if he was talking to my door. Which could mean many things.
My parents heard of him via via on one of their cruises. He had stories to tell alright, having built remarkable vessles for remarkable people all around the world. He often had to frown at the amounts of money people wanted to spend. His favorite projects were the more humbler barges he restored.
He knew his woods, obiously, as boatbuilders do, too, which gave us something to discuss over coffee, which he took alongside the door, never leaving her alone.
I had a modest stick collection of all the species of tree I could find in my city, lightly sanded to bring up the grain. My way to a love of wood was Runes, which says very little, for it's the energy of the tree beings that have meaning in rune language and tree lovers are not necessarily wood lovers (often the contrary needless to say). But it felt like a good excuse to take up another interest. I don't skip about all over the place: EVERYTHING is interconnected, I keep reassuring my self. Not mad yet... no not yet.
It is a joy to read you speaking of your talents at work and the seemingly endless intersecting references that bridge two very different worlds. It makes a bridge-builder of both the diver and the knitter. And the universe needs more of them.
I have a very practical question only you can answer about my posts - because I cannot now, on my last legs go digging around to find out for myself. Did I post about the student-lawyer guy in Barcelona, whom I taught the sentence: "Fancy meeting you here" already?
This afternoon the universe became very blurred when after having been prompted to write about him, I suddenly remembered, you welcoming me back with that sentence, which had to mean one of two things;
either your memory recall is absurdly detailed, strong and ever at the ready (which I wouldn't put past you, but surely not regards a year old blog);
or - since there is no such thing as coincidence in my crafted universe - I must consider it another curious layering up.
Will stall post till I am clear on this one.
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I honestly don't know how to answer your question but I'll try. My memory can be exact and absolute with specific details when it concerns objects or melodies, but hasn't manifested itself that way with written language. I think you've written about a student Lawyer in Barcelona before, but I can't connect "fancy meeting you here" with that. That being said I can't guarantee that it wasn't used there either. I think we have some backtracking to do, any idea where to start looking?
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Very helpful response. It confirms I am still on track to simply doing what I must do (following my intuition on what to post up next, without falling into endless repetition, with the limited life-experience I have, compared to some world-travellers). ---- The fact that you now blend into this project seemlessly is becoming a fascinating side-line, bottom line, guide line, fishing line..... ---- When listening becomes that close, though, the All-time starts to bleed into the tic-tock on your wrist, wall, computer at least. (And the knitter easily doubts whether she is stil in the right row of the pattern.) Or the pulse (tic-toc-choc a very good album by Tharaud playing Couperin by the way) in [sic] your wrist, echoed against your wall, manifest on the screen, is starting to layer up the cosmic tracks, that always lead back. But can we lay them forward?
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