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Scouring used
book stores in the search for old paper, I found an old German
religious book. It was ideal for my purposes--I could not read a
word, the paper was old rag paper with the feel of reality to it and
foxing which already told of
lost signs, sigils and talismans (one of
my phrases for the lost marks of salvation which I sought). I
marked the pages with the signs of the autumn of that year, with a
message to art critics as to why this pathetic little art of
mine mattered more than any of their public utterances about the great
people in the world, and, as time went on, I found in the pages the
maps to the place in my soul where lust might transmute into love,
family, homestead and the immortality of our lives through all the
generations past and to come...
As in "Again, again, I go only to seed in immortality..." The
life of the rose, the stems and thorns, the buds, blossoms and falling
petals--and then the rose-hips loaded with seed--these were my vision
of life from youth to age, from the young husband I was to the old man
I have now become... ejaculation is the seed of the future, the seeds of
immortality in the eternity of time. (The "Again, again..." was
framed because I submitted it to a juried exhibition of flower
paintings. It was rejected and lost for nearly forty years.
It has been on a shelf in my studio now for a long time--a message
from the past that tells the only future I think we any of us have.)
|
"Again, again, I go only to seed in immortality" |
"And the
path there
is hard with
dying weeds
seeding, seeding
and hoping" |
And there are young trees
there
but half a hundred
years old...
|
More clear
seeds are
seeding
and... |
There is the seed of September days.
The true seed
is the
sun-wheel
of the speculum
mundi. |
Then there was the booklet addressed to a local art
critic, "Amy--" (I no longer remember her last name) who was a
weekly art critic
on KPFA in those days
click here for more about Amy |
The full text was...
"Dear Amy
Art is for eternity, it is not for you.
For the cry of the world. |
For the sob of the sky.
It is not for you.
But art is my home in Hesperus |
for I am a fountain,
a stream of ever jetting sperm." |
About my work, 1957-58
