Found Art

March 27 2020

We emerge in spring

blinking in the glut of light,

layer by layer

shedding our clothes

in the unaccustomed warmth.

The snow on the roof

is slowly receding,

its moth-eaten edges

glistening with melt.

The sun is a sculptor,

shaping the soft ductile material

into bizarrely flowing forms;

Dr Seuss, crossed with Picasso

but in an austere modernist white.

I'm reminded of desert formations,

the spires and arches

pinnacles, hoodoos, and buttes

that are left behind

when the softer rock erodes.

Because, like sedimentary layers

not all snow 
is created equal.

Her art is fleeting, though,

and as you watch

you can almost see it change.

Another week, and there will only be wet brown shingles

and coldly dripping eaves,

waves of heat

rising up in late afternoons

as the spring sun strengthens.

But only if you notice.

So look up as you pass

and stop for just a moment.

Unintentional art

in the eye of the beholder.

I guess this is a variation on “stop and smell the roses.” So if nothing else, I can be proud of myself for at least avoiding the cliche! It's also what, by temperament and inclination, poets do: observe, detach, imagine.

It may just have been lifted from Wikipedia (or wherever it was my search landed on Google), but one of my favourite lines has to be pinnacles, hoodoos, and buttes. Even if it means I'm not so much the writer of original material as I am the curator of esoteric jargon. I've always liked using rich unfamiliar language like this in poetry: like the sculpted snow, its own found art.

I think the last 2 lines say more than they might appear to. 

In the more literal sense, they ask if you can call it art when there is no intention. Is a sentient creator necessary for the creation of art? Or is it good enough that the beholder experiences what art is supposed to do; which is to impart insight, aesthetic uplift or aesthetic revelation, deep emotion, and -- at its best -- transformation? 

And in a less literal sense, they're also about the way we impose intention, order, and ultimately meaning on what are actually random events.

Which is what we do when it's just everyday stuff, but we call it art because our eye makes it so. For example, to call it art, the beholder must imagine a creator and attribute intention. And if not that, then assume the role of creator himself: imposing order on chaos, transforming something stumbled upon not just into something "found", but into "found art".

Which is what we do when we confuse causation with correlation, or refuse to believe in coincidence.

And which is what we do when we think must always be a "why", even though some things could very well be meaningless. (The meaning of life? A perennial question, and the beginning of religion. But maybe there isn't one. Perhaps life is meaningless ...and we're not here for any reason ...and nihilism wins.)

I'd like to go back to this idea of art and intention, and whether “found” art is even legitimate. Seems a worthwhile thing to discuss, if only because of the title of the poem! One of my first readers, after being sent an early draft, wrote back with some thoughts on the age-old controversy “what is art?” He began with this: Art - Oxford suggests human created ...another dictionary recognized animal art ...So given what I’ve seen in some galleries  ...a crap on the lawn may count.

I responded with this short essay. (One reason I'm including this is because I write a lot of prose – certainly more than the poetry, at least if you go by the number of words – and it never gets included in this blog. Probably because lot of it is political, and the rest a bit too personal. But then there are pieces like this, that seem more than suitable. So perhaps it's time I featured some.)

I think this idea of "art" makes for a fascinating philosophical discussion. Maybe mostly because, along with language and abstract thought, art is what separates (elevates?) us as humans from the other animals. 

As always, we have to begin with definition. Art vs craft. The latter involves as much virtuosity and skill. But art is meant to transform; craft is merely (if "merely" is the word) useful or aesthetic. So art works on us to alter us. We don't just experience it; it has to change us.

Further to definition:  types of art. Visual ...literary ...performance (dance and live theatre) ...devotional (religion) ...and, of course, music. Which may be the purest. I say this because we respond to music without needing to process it:  it goes directly into our brains; in particular, our emotional brains. ...Can you come up with any more categories? Monumental/architectural? Multimedia, as in the design of computer games? Even culinary?!!

I'm partial to this idea of intent -- that to be art something has to be an intentional act of creation -- but also really question this. Because in order to be art it also has to be received. (In a vacuum, there would be no art. Tom Hanks on his desert island created Wilson. But without an audience, Wilson isn't anything.) And the question arises as to whether simply having a beholder -- without any maker --  is sufficient. This is where found art comes in. Can the beholder's vision add meaning to something that was never created to be art? Can an arbitrary random object catalyze some transformational change in sensibility or perception or thought in the viewer that it becomes art? Can it acquire, by virtue of the way it is perceived, some elevated aesthetic weight and presence? Do we turn the world -- the natural world, in particular -- into a work of art simply by virtue of our appreciation?

Another thought I have is that perhaps what makes something art is that we can revisit it and have as powerful an experience the 2nd or 3rd time. Or perhaps revisit and find something new in it, or learn something new about ourselves. Or perhaps it's simply the way a truly effective (and affective) work of art sticks with us:  how it keeps coming to mind for days after seeing it, and how different aspects keep revealing themselves the more we reflect on it. So one quality by which we might measure art and define something as worthy of that description is simply its stickiness. (Trouble here is that an ear worm of a formulaic pop song would too easily risk attaining the top tier of artistic virtuosity!) 

Another worthwhile topic is this question of whether we can separate the art from the artist. If a despicable person produces great art, does his/her character taint the work? Should we boycott Woody Allen movies because there are concerns in the wind about his behaviour? Should Picasso be shunned because he was a womanizer? An individual is, of course, free to make his/her own judgment. I guess the question is more pertinent when we think about a work's continued presence in the great collective canon of literature or of visual art, or even whether it should be airbrushed out of history entirely (like photographs of Stalin's succession of politburos, in which the purged apparatchiks, factotums, and panjandrums are disappeared as if they never were!) Or, instead of banishment, like Confederate statues, would a plaque indicating the controversy and context of their erection be enough? Does the work of art stand on its own? Or is it forever joined at the hip to its creator?

Free-Rider

March 26 2020

The hovering birds

circle on currents of air,

riding the thermals

steadily up.

Their ascent

seems without effort,

supported on outstretched wings

with barely a flicker or luff.

As if they were free-riders,

exempt

from gravity's basic law.

But this is deceptive,

because at such a distance

we never see them feel their way;
the dip of a wing, trimming of feathers,

the subtle reflexive adjustments

according to pitch and roll and yaw

of a creature adapted to flight.

And also because

they're actually hard at work,

big chest muscles tense

hearts relentlessly pumping,

intricate lungs

sucking-up cold rarefied air.

Looking down

from their commanding heights

on earthbound creatures like us

who only dream of flight.

Small penetrating eyes

like highly polished beads.

Tiny brains

but brilliant at navigation.

They were dinosaurs, once;

terrible lizards

who made the ground shudder

beneath their ponderous weight.

But now they are birds,

hollow-boned and feather-lite

and nimble as furtive prey.

A curved line

inscribed on clear blue sky

high overhead.

Then a barely discernible dot

shrinking as it rises.

Succubus

March 24 2020

I awoke to blood on the bed,

sheets stiff

with a dry brown crusting.

Was it my nose, as I slept?

The dark hours,

when time is lost

and the body's left

to run itself.

When we're at our most vulnerable

and can only trust.

In what, exactly?

That day will follow night, as it has always done?

The wisdom of the body

the life force?

Who knows what goes on

while dreams distract us

and we are swaddled in darkness.

While we snore, grunt, stretch

mumble nonsense words.

Grind teeth and bite tongues

and drool unbecomingly.

Incessantly turn,

churning blankets into knots

or uncovering ourselves.

Sometimes even walk,

like eyeless automatons

in the dead of night.

The bleeding stopped

all on its own.

Another night lost

to time's black hole.

As my body slept, my nose bled

my mind travelled who knows where.

Bad dreams

        . . . night-mares

                  . . . a child's night terrors.

The succubus, stealing my breath.

I don't recall my dreams, I rarely do.

A shrill alarm intrudes.

Half awake

and all forgotten.

When I googled to confirm my definition, I was informed that succubus is the female demon who visits sleeping men, while incubus is the male version attending to women. I always thought the mythology was that they lay on you at night, so you felt immobilized and unable to breathe. But it appears that the more common myth is that they're having sex! I stuck to breathless, needless to say.

The physiological explanation is that this imagery occurs as you're surfacing to wakefulness through a light stage of REM sleep, when you're dreaming but your body is still paralyzed. Which woulds explain the anxiety of being assaulted and helpless at the same time.

The interpretation is cultural. So traditionally, demons. But maybe today, extra-terrestrials? Republicans?

A Difficult Birth

March 23 2020

We were condemned, after all, to a difficult birth.

Was it a vengeful God, punishing Eve?

Or simply posture,

two-legged animals, with too big heads

walking erect?

So  . . . either disobedience

or precocity.

And memories

that are blessedly short.

Because who remembers being born?

And how to explain

big families,

if women weren't forgetful

and pain didn't mercifully fade?

How some babies look like old men.

Fat as Buddha

and badly balding.

Incidentally wetting themselves

diapers or not.

And too weak to hold up their heads,

lumpy bodies, slumping floppily

dribbling saliva

chin on chest.

While old men

regress to childhood,

taking pleasure in the little things

and saying what they think

and refusing to sweat

the small stuff.

So life goes on,

one generation

handing-off to the next,

the pain of birth

the fear of death.

Wondering

if it's karma, resurrection, rebirth

or eternal nothingness?

If souls persist

but are somehow wiped clean,

and whether heaven exists

or if death really is

the end?

All we know

is that pain is last and first.

That it cannot be weighed, contained, preserved.

That while matter transforms

into energy

and energy's in turn conserved

pain vanishes.

To its own dimension, perhaps,

some parallel universe

or the dark side of ours.

The immense weight of a suffering world

extinguished utterly.

An immaculate birth

and a peaceful death.

If only

He were not so mysterious

so quick to condemn.

We were made in His image

instead of He after us.

I surrendered a bit to stream of consciousness in writing this poem, and the initial result was a jumble of roughly connected stanzas which I then had to shoe-horn into some kind of coherent whole. So I'm surprised it ended up making as much sense as it does! Not as linear as my usual style. But then, my usual style tends more toward the prosaic. Non-linearity is not only acceptable in a poem, it's often its greatest strength. 

But still, the sum may be less than its parts.

And one part I particularly like is the immense weight of a suffering world / extinguished utterly. It's this idea of pain being such a subjective experience; yet so potent and universal and ubiquitous: that it doesn't really exist – not in the same consistent quantifiable way as matter or energy – and yet is so powerful and determining. When you imagine the sum of all pain among all living creatures, it becomes overwhelming and incomprehensible. Yet, if you try to quantify it, you end up with nothingness. Where does subjective experience exist? Can it be real and unreal at once?

I also like the entire stanza While old men / regress to childhood, / taking pleasure in the little things / and saying what they think / and refusing to sweat / the small stuff. I like it because it captures in three simple observations both the wisdom and the freedom of aging.

And finally, the end: If only ... / We were made in His image / instead of He after us. Because this is the essence of the atheist's world view: that we are not God's creation, but rather that God is a creation of ours. God ...or gods. The Bible says we are created in His image. But it seems we have actually created Him after us. Which perhaps explains the all too human fallibility of those quarrelsome Greek gods; or the short temper and need of constant praise and Old Testament retribution of the God of the 3 great monotheisms. How solipsistic is this? Because we flawed humans are susceptible to feelings of vengeance, do we lack even the rudimentary imagination to create a god who is better than us? Apparently not!

The origin of this poem is far removed from the end result. It actually began as a commentary on spring: how the transition to spring is this difficult on/off process of freeze and thaw ... of 2 steps forward and 1 step back ...of a blizzard as bad as any winter white-out, followed by a warm sunny day that turns the drifts to mush. I thought the metaphor of the birth process – which, we are told, is uniquely painful and difficult in humans – might be interesting. But instead of leading to a seasonal poem, difficult birth led to a rumination on birth and death and uncertainty; on pain, suffering, and belief.

My nephew wrote me with some questions about the closing stanza. Here is part of my response:

A few disjointed  thoughts, in answer to your question. if only / He were not so mysterious  I was hoping it would resonate with "God moves in mysterious ways; His wonders to perform", which I always thought was biblical, but in checking it out just now realize that it's taken from a Christian hymn written in the 18th century by a guy named William Cowper. But the idea still stands:  that we give God a free pass by simply proclaiming that He is ineffable; that His divine plan is inscrutable to us mere mortals, and so we must simply consign ourselves to both faith and fate. And so quick to condemn calls back to the opening stanza:  the condemnation of Eve; the sins of our fathers (or mothers, in this case!). And the final two lines are as the blurb suggests:  my self-indulgent critique of religion, which is the atheist in me saying that we create our gods, not the other way around. Who needs mythology to explain the pain of birth when science already has an answer?

BreatheandRepeat

March 19 2020

They say concentrate on breathing

to empty the mind.

The long slow draw . . .

              a fleeting pause . . .

                       then full exhalation.

The circularity of breath, the cycle of life.

Breathe and repeat

ad infinitum.

What strikes me is how automatic it is.

How the machinery of the body

goes about its business

without our even noticing.

How I never think about breathing

my heart's shifting beat.

Saliva, seamlessly swallowed.

The pressure of this chair

against my seat

until I turn the light on it.

We privilege consciousness,

the one thing at a time

to which we attend.

While most of the brain

is preoccupied with maintenance.

As guts secrete

lungs reliably pump,

killer cells

are out for blood

the corner of the eye on guard.

The emotions that rule us

dwell there, as well;

in the netherworld

of inattention,

the motor

of intent.

While our executive mind

is a thin skim of ice

over black bottomless depths.

Our rationality

the conceit of an animal

who presumes to call himself

sapien.

Take long full breaths.

Count slowly to 10

when the anger wells.

And never imagine

you think objectively.

Because we should have known better.

We are not Vulcans, we are men.

And the mind cannot be emptied;

merely distracted, at best.

In mindfulness training, one is trained to divert oneself from the chattering monkey brain by focusing in on breathing. How instructive this is: to have something that is normally totally unconscious all of sudden occupying the entirety of our attention. Where was this breathing before? How did I go on so long with life while being totally oblivious to such a critical life-giving function?

It's also instructive to experience just how intrusive and persistent that chattering monkey brain is: how hard it is to turn off thinking and consciousness.

If breathing – utterly essential to life – can go on like this, it raises the question about what else is going on down there, in the netherworld of unconsciousness. And so the poem comes to be: an exploration of body and mind, of emotion and rationality.

I had a little fun with title. It recalls the ridiculous advice on shampoo bottles to “rinse and repeat”: as if one really needed instruction on how to shampoo one's hair! (An instruction I suspect has more to do with increasing sales than personal hygiene.)

We privilege consciousness, imagining that anything unconscious is merely distortion, or noise, or spookiness. Yet consciousness occupies only a very small part of our brains, and a lot of our thinking is going on below the level of awareness. The poem begins by talking about unconscious processes: the machinery that keeps us alive. But this is merely a way in to the central theme, which is first about attention and salience, and then – going deeper – how we decide how to act, form opinions, and construct a world view.

I might also have talked more specifically about the unconscious cognitive biases that distort decision making (things like priming and anchoring and confirmation bias), as well as the crude heuristics and fast thinking (referring to Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's theory of slow and fast thinking) that fool us we are making measured and rational choices. But this is a poem, not an essay on cognitive neuroscience, and it's enough to imply that we are not the cool rational creatures we imagine.

Although I might also have said that our emotions are an essential part of us, and often help us be decisive. Because it's been shown that people whose emotions are numbed -- through either brain injury or chemistry -- can be paralyzed in their decision-making: emotion, even though it's unconscious, can be an excellent tool in focusing all of past personal experience into a quick and efficient weighting of alternatives. So emotion is the original heuristic: a cognitive shortcut (along with experience and prejudice) that most often emerges as what we call intuition. (The poem briefly alludes to this in the two short lines the motor / of intent: as good an example as any of how poetry can distill a complex idea down to inscrutability. Which is either a good or a bad thing, depending on how you think poetry is meant to work!) I'm highly suspicious of people who “go with their gut”. (A certain President comes to mind!) Nevertheless, gut feelings can be useful, and even those among us who most pride themselves on their rationality (me, that is!) cannot help but go by them.

The Devil's Horn

March 18 2020

The thing I like most about the saxophone

is how it bends a note,

more like giving voice

than following a score.

And the shape of the instrument

some call the devil's horn,

all sensuous and sinuous

in its smooth suggestive curves

and softly glittering gold.

And then, how it's held.

More caressed than gripped

and fingered oh-so teasingly,

standing loose-hipped and louche

and rocking back and forth

as if lost in the music.

Classical composers avoided it,

as if it were a snake in the grass

that might contaminate the orchestra.

While rock knew how to riff

and jazz made sax its own.

The perfect instrument

for bluesy laments

and ballads of longing and loss.

If only I could be as cool

as a jazz saxophonist.

I would sport a beret

and grow a funky beard

and wear sunglasses indoors.

Instead, I sit at my keyboard and type,

in tattered slippers

and mismatched socks,

unflattering pyjamas

the could use a good wash.

I cannot coax out a note.

But easy jazz

is playing softly in the background

and I've surrendered to its spell.

First a plaintive voice

full of pathos and hurt.

Then an alto sax, playing all alone.

It goes from a pure sweet sound

to a reedy growl

and then a minor note,

lovingly bent

and breathlessly held.

Who doesn't want to be a cool saxophonist? (Pronounced “saxahhhphonist”; especially as it appears in this poem, where it resonates so nicely with “loss”, not to mention “socks” and “wash”.)

Even me, someone who has a tin ear and can't hold a tune, let alone play an instrument. I think I got as far as a very halting rendition of Twinkle twinkle little star... on the recorder in grade 3. In middle school, back in the day when they actually taught music and had school bands, I was relegated to vocal class. And even there, eventually instructed to stand in the back row and mouth the words.

But even a musical half-wit can appreciate and enjoy music. I love jazz, and especially jazz saxophone. Like the cello, my other favourite instrument, it seems to come closest to the human voice. What a perfect compliment to the plaintive restraint of Billy Holiday, or the effortless mastery of Ella Fitzgerald. I can only envy the cool jazz saxophonist, performing his magic before a crowd of adoring fans. (I might have just as well said “her magic”; except that for whatever reason, it seems most saxophonists are men. At least for now.)

And any time I can shoehorn into a poem a wonderful word like “louche”, it's worth doing no matter how lame it turns out.

Absent

March 16 2020

The country road

winds leisurely back and forth,

steadily ascending

due north.

Cold

settles down on the earth like a weight.

There is a dusting of snow,

trees press in

on either side.

My headlamps seem so much brighter here,

the only car

on an unlit road.

But still

their wavering yellow beams

hardly penetrate,

swallowed up by the night

like a bottomless well.

I watch, in my rear view mirror

as the city recedes

and its light incrementally dims.

But an amorphous glow persists,

filling the sky behind me

and obscuring everything else.

Which is why city kids grow up

weak-eyed and bored

and unacquainted with night.

So I look ahead

into star-filled blackness.

A perfect backdrop

against which to search once again

for the northern lights,

that shimmering curtain of light

that makes the world small

and the silence seem deeper

and gives the mysterious form.

But just as before, they're absent

as they've been all season long,

in this exceptional winter

that's been far too dry and warm.

So I wonder if anything's changed.

Is the sun weakening?

Has our magnetic field waned?

Is the sky too hot, polluted, degraded

for their fabulous display?

Only hard pin-point stars.

And monolithic blackness

that's darker than dark.

Animal Heat

March 14 2020

The dog sleeps

on the covered porch

curled-up against the cold,

in the cranny beside the door

where two walls intersect.

She follows the sun

which tends to linger there,

beaming in

to this sheltered corner

with surprising warmth.

Where, despite my urging

she refuses to come inside,

into the overheated gloom

of stale air

and cooking smells,

the odour of habitation

she knows so well.

While outside

in the bracing air

the world is her own.

Nose twitching

at infinitesimal scents.

Head raised

at some insensible sound.

Thrashing legs

as she slips into sleep

and dreams of hot pursuit,

the hunt, the chase, the pack.

And how frail am I

bundling-up to venture out?

Every time

fussing with zippers, fasteners

laces and straps,

snugging down

my winter mitts

and thick wool cap.

How deaf and blind and flat.

How consumed

by abstract worry.

How distracted

by thoughts of the past

and future plans,

the self-important ambition

at which God only laughs

and contingency dismisses.

Impervious

to the subtle world

in which she exults,

eyes and ears alert,

hair-trigger nose

close to the ground.

Inured to the cold

in her animal heat

and winter coat.

The atavistic urge of dogs;

our loyal companions

still wild at heart.

Skookum has always been an outdoor dog. She seems indifferent to cold, even at 10 1/2 years of age – and counting.

I can only envy her: how she perceives a world to which I'm oblivious; how, like a master of Zen, she lives in the moment; and how beautifully adapted she is to the harsh extremes of nature.

How she waltzes out, as is, not matter how hot, cold, or wet; unconcerned, and seemingly impervious.