civilized ku # 2503 ~ losing the room and the emasculation of acceptance

Barrels, fence, hole ~ Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenIn my last entry, civilized ku # 2502, wherein I put forth a "clue" regarding my intentions in the entry civilized ku # 2500-01 ~ associative disassociation or disassociated association (or maybe not), I wrote:

the audience reaction to the idea/concept was a resounding and/or collective shrug, or so the absence of comments would seem to indicate.

Which in turn instigated this response from Paul Bradforth:

Have you considered that they might not have understood any of it, as I didn't? I read those words that you put together with your pictures and couldn't for the life of me see any association OR dissociation. And I have to say that I find your second paragraph* above to be opaque

I don't mean to judge too harshly, but when you write (a paragraph) like that, I don't think you can expect to be understood too widely ....

my response: As a matter of fact, while I was hoping for a few comments / questions about the concept / idea, I have entered into this pictures+words project knowing full well that it will not be easily understood much less appreciated (much like my pictures as well). The undertaking is not meant to be "easy" or "understood" (in the definitive sense). Rather, it is meant to be a lyrical exercise from which many meanings / understandings / experiences might be gleaned or intuited.

Some will "get it", most will not. My intention is not to pander, preach, or pleasure. Instead, it is to proffer a concept / idea comprised of pictures and words which I hope, for those who "get it" (or want to try to get it), will engender thoughtful and imaginative contemplation which extends beyond the visual and literal document.

All of that written (sorry, Paul), as I develop and refine my approach to the pictures+words project, I have considered this from James Agee (from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men):

As a matter of fact, nothing I might write (picture) could make any difference whatever. It would only be a “book” ("picture") at best. If it were a safely dangerous one it would be “scientific” or “political” or “revolutionary.” If it were really dangerous it would be “literature” or “religion” or “mysticism” or “art,” and under one such name or another might in time achieve the emasculation of acceptance. If it were dangerous enough to be of any remote use to the human race it would be merely “frivolous” or “pathological,” and that would be the end of that. Wiser and more capable men than I shall ever be have put their findings before you, findings so rich and so full of anger, serenity, murder, healing, truth, and love that it seems incredible the world were not destroyed and fulfilled in the instant, but you are too much for them: .... one by one, you have absorbed and have captured and dishonored, and have distilled of your deliverers the most ruinous of all your poisons; people hear Beethoven in concert halls, or over a bridge game, or to relax; Cézannes are hung on walls, reproduced, in natural wood frames; van Gogh is the man who cut off his ear and whose yellows became recently popular in window decoration; Swift loved individuals but hated the human race; Kafka is a fad; Blake is in the Modern Library: Freud is a Modern Library Giant; Dovschenko's Frontier is disliked by those who demand that it fit the Eisenstein esthetic; nobody reads Joyce any more; Céline is a madman who has incurred the hearty dislike of Alfred Kazin, reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune book section, and is, moreover, a fascist; I hope I need not mention Jesus Christ, of whom you have managed to make a dirty gentile. (ed., I have added the parenthesized word "picture")

Now, to be perfectly clear, my humble little project is not undertaken with the aspiration of achieving either the importance or the notoriety of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Evans+Agee's picture+words critically praised opus. Nevertheless, my project - much like Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - does aspire to combine factual / true pictures with passages of lyrical / poetic beauty.

Whether or not it achieves the "emasculation of acceptance" is anyone's guess.

*As a clue to what my intentions were, re: putting those words with my picture(s), I titled the entry associative disassociation, which on hindsight should have read (or maybe not) as disassociated association. In either case, what I was driving at was the idea that the words and picture(s) were simultaneously connected yet seemingly not - while the words were literally disassociated (to separate) from the picture(s), in fact (to my eye and sensibilities), figuratively speaking they are associated (the connection or relation of ideas, feelings, sensations, etc.).

Update on Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 10:55AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Peter Nilsson wrote: "Did you already say where you're going to get the words from? Is this a collaboration?"

my response: Yes, it is a collaboration between myself and a woman whom I consider to be a gifted writer - amongst many possibilities, she's very good at writing what I might label as extended haiku.

Comments

[Peter]

Did you already say where you're going to get the words from? Is this a collaboration?

[Sven W]

Are you trying to re-badge yourself as a conceptual artist and score some gallery space?

;-)