PICTURESQUE

I’m selling my paintings. Some want the Jews, some the ‘women who know things,’ some the math, and some the readers. I keep the infinities for myself as they are dangerous in the wrong hands, and I don’t want to end up being cursed for ruining people’s lives.

As I popularize the news of my new-found luck on Facebook – people actually pay me heavy money for the stuff, and swear that I have it as a painter – I think of some of the comments. Not long ago, an art critic and a painter of caliber himself made the comment that while my work manifests too much brain power, it’s lucky that I’m at the same time “sensual, exciting, and creative,” which shines through the intelligence. The reference was also meant to cover the cross between my visual and my writerly endeavor, as some of the paintings are accompanied by textual fragments. I said nothing of what the premise for assuming that I’m “too smart” might be, as the same critic did me the favor of being quite on top of what’s going on in my work, thus showing acute perceptiveness. And I like that. As he put it, the paintings exhibit a rigor of rigid precision, of ‘cutting to the bone’, and of tight consistency, though not in a way that puts the act of reducing thought to a bare essential on a cliché track, but quite the contrary. It makes the statement that going for the authentic crisis rather than the inauthentic cliché is worth the while and always preferable. I can live with such comments that can identify what elements precisely in my aesthetic projects have the potential to rise above the tension in the opposition between the drama of learning about the limits of your experience through the complexity of assessing pain and the frivolous learning through merry-go-round cognitive models à la ‘change your attitude and you’ll see an effect… – why? – because I said so… – errr, what’s the argument? – beh, there’s none, but it worked for the Harvard business boys, so, – ah, ok, thanks, here’s a sack of money for nothing.’

Today I explained to a friend of mine, a political theorist and an activist, who made the comment: “Charmant. Adorable! "Women who know things," that there’s more to it than that. I quote myself below:

"In that category 'Women who know things' I'm trying to counter the stupid assumption that when 'men know things', they are geniuses, and we accept that. When women 'know things' they are 'too smart for their own good,' and we don't accept that. We pity them, wrongly assuming that they are missing out on things, or else we either fear them, or we assume that the manifestation of brain power is a manifestation of women's desire to merely get laid. I mean, really! Logically speaking, isn't it so that if you are 'too smart', you're probably also smart enough to know quite precisely and already what you're missing and what you aren't? Lord have mercy....”

Her reply:

‎:))))))

:)))))))))))))))))))))))))

))))))))))))))))))))))))))

))))))))))

I like that. It makes its own quiet statement. Wittgenstein as a woman who is not sorry if it’s stupidity she’s missing out on.

BOYS TO MEN

Yesterday I attended my nephew’s 16th birthday, though, in actuality, it is yet to come, as he was born on the 28th. A few other boys were also attending. Being in the company of teenagers can be thoroughly entertaining, and as I’m prone to listening to what they have to say, I often find myself in the situation where I hear myself delivering life lessons, or making points that often have a ring of finality to them. Paul is good at initiating a feel-good atmosphere on all levels. For instance, as soon as I entered the room, he hurried towards me, kissed me, and then proceeded to check out my silk jersey dress. “Why have you come as if dressed for the funeral?” he asked, and then swiftly moved on to admiring my necklaces: one made of real pearls and the other made of lava stones and amethyst. He particularly liked the latter. “Oh, that’s very beautiful and interesting,” he said. “I made it myself,” I said, and then he went on even more swiftly to telling me that he liked my presents.

Between eating, singing, and playing the piano, there was room for some other kind of playing that involved argumentation and belief. “Last chance,” Paul said to me, after showing me all the insides of his computer, and all the technical stuff in it, “to admit to the benefits of a PC over a Mac. If you’re not going to believe this now…” “Then what?” I cut him short. He tried to argue, but he wasn’t convincing. So I said to him, extrapolating from the event, and adopting a reverential air suited to the making of a universal and therefore important point. “Don’t ever give people ultimatums, or tell them that this is their last chance to do something, or believe something, unless you actually really know what you’re talking about, and unless you can really calculate the risks pertaining to the implications of such statements." “Why is that so important?” he wanted to know. “Because” I said, “if you don’t know what you’re saying, and yet insist on issuing final ‘warnings’ without thinking, then you will merely disclose that you’re full of shit, that you have no good judgment, and no experience.” “Oh,” he said baffled, and then continued: “that’s bad.” I read this as an implicit statement that, when it comes down to it, and in spite of their age, boys do want to be taken seriously rather than be dismissed on account of being silly, insensitive, or foolish. “You’re goddamn right it’s bad”, I then said, “and the sooner you learn this the better, namely that knowing what you’re talking about is what distinguishes between mature and immature people. So take your pick.”

Benjamin came to my rescue, as I was about to venture into a potentially unpleasant ‘grow-up, for Christ’s sake’ moment, and started performing massage on my back. “Oh, my,” I said, and just as I was getting into it, he ran to his computer while asking: “how do you write this in Italian?” – he was fascinated with the google translator and the robot behind it uttering all sorts of sounds. Benjamin is a bit of a language genius. I said to him: “now, you finish the job you started, and then I’ll tell you.” “All right he said, and then proceeded to even ask me how hard I liked it, and what other sado-masochistic-like punches on my back I preferred. The other grown-ups in the house were giving me the look of: “Benjamin never takes any orders from anyone, how did you manage…?”

After the massage, Peter tried to convince me, also by way of helping Paul out, that an Acer computer is better than a Mac because you can play all these things on it. “Like what?” I said. He showed me a game in which he was running around with a shot gun in the desert trying to kill infidel soldiers. “Why is running around like that interesting at all when there’s no strategy?” I asked him, implying that if that’s all you can do on an Acer that otherwise looks like shit on a Mac, then I wasn’t convinced why I should even bother installing such things on my computer to begin with, not to mention why I should change computers at all. “Oh,” he said, quickly, “there’s strategy, there’s lots of strategy.” “Yeah,” I said, "like what?" “You have to be fast,” he said. “Oh, and that’s what you call strategy?” I asked, destabilizing his beliefs in a snap, which, also in a snap left him dead on the ground. He got shot by the other guy on the screen. It goes to show that thinking can also have this consequence.

At this potentially metaphysical turn, I got hit in my head by Janus who wanted to play with the huge Pilates ball. It was lucky that I decided to wear a jersey dress, for I wouldn’t have been able to handle that one, had I opted for some other garment. I made this remark in reference to Paul’s initial ‘funeral’ comment. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about it” – Paul is always thinking – “and I’ll grant you: you wanted to match my white shirt, but you didn’t know that I was going to wear the Norwegian one, did you?” Oh, I liked this game the best, for it gave me the opportunity to ask him: “are you absolutely certain about that?” "No," he had to admit, and then went: “if the opposite is true, then I want to know how you arrived at that calculation and conclusion.” I told him. When we parted he whispered: “I’m glad you’re part of my life.” Back at home, I sank into my chair and I felt like saying that I was also glad that I was part of my life. And his, of course, of course. Just for laughs. Paul, happy birthday.

CELEBRATION

Today I thought I caught a glimpse of Bach and Walt Whitman together. As I was trying to ask myself why Bach is so sublime, and in answering to myself that it's because he knew how to celebrate himself, a weird wire from Bach to Whitman electrified my own self. Statistically speaking, as weird occurrences happen at a much higher frequency than we like to believe, and hence, the weird is never as weird as we like to believe, I settled for the idea that, indeed, if we want to experience being wired to something that resists full comprehension, then we have to listen. Just listen. We can even listen to the smell of autumn as it vibrates through strings.

AESTHETICS

As autumn sets in, I read some seasonal poems. Paul Celan's Corona does it for me, though I can't help thinking about the one element in Celan's poetry that—where message is concerned—always comes across unambiguously: where art is concerned we all participate in the same ideal. According to some literary critics, it is precisely this position of sharing the absolute that is most problematic for Celan.

Formally speaking there is no problem. Morally speaking there is a problem. For Celan—who lost most of his family in the concentration camps—as a writer there was no difference in what he was doing and what the Nazis were doing, namely participating in the creation of art. No one can argue that what drove the Nazis to their atrocities was essentially an aesthetic project. They had an idea of getting blond people to populate the earth—supposedly because the earth would look more beautiful if it just stuck with one kind of color, so they pursued this almost by the book, the aesthetic book, that is. And one can trace the formation of art according to the definition of art in the Nazi project almost to the point of no deviance.

A serious fellow artist cannot disregard the similarity. So, Celan's question here, and one which can also be traced in all of his poems is this one: insofar as poetry is the result of an aesthetic project which relies on the reduction of many ideas to one, how can one then allow oneself to accuse others, who think the same, for the 'wrong' kind of thinking? It is quite clear here that what bothered Celan was the fear that ultimately it is not imagination that has the potential to drive people mad, but logic. Poets don't go mad, they merely kill themselves. Rationalists, au contraire... God have mercy on their souls...

What Celan has achieved in his grappling with the problem of symmetry that guides certain aesthetic projects is his honest suggestion that where art is concerned, it needs to be true to itself and not to its presupposed responsibility. This is a tough message to put across. Celan's honesty, in this sense, can be said to be a high form of generosity, as it consists in equal measure of both, what is possible and what is impossible to represent. As often with art, however, there are the fewest who are ready for ultimate acts of giving, especially if they consist of disturbing and painful elements. A crisis arises when the even fewer who may actually get it, for whatever reason, may at the same time also fail to recognize the act fully. What remains, then, if you want to stay intact in your integrity as an artist, are only two contradictory strategies that you can embody: either going the rational way or the emotional way. Celan died like a Romantic poet. The Nazis turned mad. We obviously need more logics for the excluded middle.

Meanwhile, here's Corona for an early autumn day, and for the middle way,

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.

From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:

then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it's Sunday,

in dream there is room for sleeping,

our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:

we look at each other,

we exchange dark words,

we love each other like poppy and recollection,

we sleep like wine in the conches,

like the sea in the moon's blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people

look up from the street:

it is time they knew!

It is time the stone made an effort to flower,

time unrest had a beating heart.

It is time it were time.

It is time.

STRAW

Für Anselm Kiefer

A sea of love. There must be a sea of love behind it. “It's chess” the blood relation says. “Don't touch it,” the gatekeeper says. “Why not? This hair is made of straw, Margarethe's hair is made of straw.” “Because Anselm won't like it.” “We don't speak Danish,” the chess lover says. “No, but you understand it. Now move away.” “Yes, sir, Hitler sir,” we say in perfect Danish and vanish in Shulamit's painting. In the alcove where the Ice and Blood awaits, I hear the sister of mercy asking: “What do you see?” The alcove's resonance goes like a bullet through the surface, it ricochés on the hero's palm, and glides into the sea of love, vibrating. I'm cutting a wave with Anselm's scissors and plant it on Shulamit's head. She starts talking: “Du bist Maler, Wort Gewitter Eis und Blut.” Maybe. Maybe. “What do you see?” “I see a theory of the moon,” the pianist says. “You are the crystal woman.” “Who taught you to talk like that?” “You did.” I sip ashes through the straw, and imagine another feedback. I'm the crystal woman. I cast my reflection on your strength and your power gets divided by four. Das ist Melancholia für Paul Celan, Sol Invictus für Jean Genet, Konstellation für Margarethe, und Sternenfall für Shulamit. You can't drown in the last straw. I make a wish for the utterance: You are powerful, my love, and I believe you.

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SOIRÉE

My sister invited her language class to celebrate one year of learning Danish. It was fun to be reminded of old times, when I myself had to go through it. Sounds incongruent with each other mixed in with music, as Paul was giving some encores along his piano teacher, Pippi, who is here to celebrate his upcoming 16 years birthday. Small kids in the background joined their little voices in, and I started counting. Danish, Romanian, Hungarian, Farsi, French, German, and Dutch. That’s seven languages together. I threw in some dead ones too. “Russian,” I said to my sister. “Remember when mother had guests from Bulgaria, and two weeks she spoke nothing but Russian? How she loved it, and was high because she had a chance to practice it?” We thought then that it was embarrassing to have our mother speak Russian. No one else we knew wanted to do that, or could. “And silence,” Paul said. “Silence is also a language.” “Indeed it is,” I said, and I went home translating.

Paul & Beethoven: Still with Noise from Camelia Elias on Vimeo.

Paul's teacher, Pippi from Camelia Elias on Vimeo.

Paul & Bach in the dark from Camelia Elias on Vimeo.