Scraps 3a-g, June 2005

was made on the night of June 8 from fragments  of a large unnumbered painting made perhaps a week before. The painting had been of my cock, and carried a text which had come to me before any idea of what to paint and took most of the space--

more deeper inner better

When finished that night, the painting looked like something I might have made fifty years ago. Looking at the painting on the night of June 8 and thinking how complete and how boring it was, I thought to destroy it and to make the pieces reflect the thought that had come earlier that day from watching people passing in the street--

Young men like I was
grow old like I am
and die like I will.

Thus, these seven scraps of a life in passing.

Scrap 3b, June 2005

"A miner, 49’er,*
Excavating for mine…
You are lost and gone forever,
Oh, my darling Clementine."
         ________________

*An old California saying:
"The miners came in '49,
The whores in '51;
And so betwixt the two of them
Begat the native son."

I am a native son.

 

Scrap 3c, June 2005

I’ve tried it before—let the shimmering ground call up what it will from what is speaking in me and what it has in it—and someday to come I will surely try it again. And tonight to try in that glowing space the dark ineradicable bone of time: that youth will age and die still clawing the sky.

Scrap 3d, June 2005

The bone to gnaw on is the bone of time; and I am a dog, gnawing.

Scrap 3e, June 2005

Always a throwback to the old apple tree.

Scrap 3g, June 2005

                                 A last note from Studio notes, June 9, 2005
                                                                 about these scraps:
First notes coming into the studio, looking at last night’s scraps (#3a-g, June 2005) and remembering the sleepless night that followed…

When getting out of bed I thought:
After you’ve said it, the feeling’s gone. That is, remembering last night’s theme of young men grow old and die, now I’ve said it, the feeling’s only words.

Then coming into the studio and looking at last night’s work I wrote:

The words are gone but a new, more powerful image is there. Like when something’s named, the name soon substitutes for the something and the power in the something is diminished, so here when now the name is dead, the power of the work returns unlimited by any preconceptions.

Click here for Scraps 1, June 2005.

Click here for Scraps 2, June 2005.

Click here for Scraps 3, June 2005.

Click here for Scraps 4, June 2005.

Click here for directory to all June 2005 paintings