Fuller and Roddan
Thomas, have you read anything worthwhile lately?
Yes, Notes from the Woodshed by Jack Whitten, the painter and sculptor who passed away about a year ago. Anyone as interested as I am in 1) becoming a human being 2) becoming an artist and 3) becoming an original thinker might read this book for, dare I say it, inspiration.
And you Brooks, what have you read lately that made an impression?
The Journals of Jules Renard, a book I started reading in 2017 and that I hope never ends. I keep it on my bedside table and read an entry or two every night in the hope that I'll wake up one morning and become a writer.
Thomas, before we move on to other matters are there any other books you'd like to mention?
Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle, originally published in 1967 and the best explanation I've yet to read of the time we're in now, the time of Trump and the other inexplicable political phenomena we're reading about in the newspapers and watching on tv. I could tell the French were on to it all long before we were, but I couldn't read them--Lyotard, Baudrillard et.al. were unreadable to me. Debord's not necessarily easy to read but the clarity he's able to achieve about the shift from our need to be to our need to have is key to any understanding of our time. Here's a snippet: "The spectacle is not a collection of images, rather it is a social relation among people, mediated by images." We now live in a social construct that is a representation of authentic social construct, and our political representation reflects it.
Ah, I see. For example, I don't remember ever thinking about Donald Trump, why would I? Now he's almost all I think about!
Yes, Brooks, more or less.
Thomas, I keep a notebook. Do you?
No, not really, I keep any notes I may make on my iPhone. At the end of the day I erase anything I don't deem worthwhile, which is pretty much everything.
Well, I write in a notebook almost every day and the notebooks pile up of course to the point where I often throw them away once I fill them up. I looked at my current notebook last night and saw some things of value to me, things I'd forgotten I'd written, sketches I'd made and so forth, and I'm now sorry I'd made a practice of throwing my note books away once they were filled; that from now on I'm keeping my old notebooks.
Anything you'd like to share from your last notebook Brooks?
Sure, I'll just go through it from beginning to end, randomly:
abstract expressionism is the garage band of contemporary art
if I don't have the feeling at some point that what i've gotten myself into when i'm writing or painting then i might as well not continue
at the poetry reading the silence at the end of the poem is most interesting: perhaps IT IS THE POEM, what the poet had already said and what couldn't be said
i don't like referees, umpires etc. using instant replay in sports to make sure they've made the right call: sports is all about human success and failure
Starbucks: the new Coca-Cola
Idea: the creation of a sustainable pain pill, one that could be taken once in a lifetime, therefore voiding the concept of addiction etcetc
there's no money in poetry, part of its beauty, but the poet is the ultimate entrepreneur
Franchot Tone (why did I write this?)
I've never molested anyone, unless telling a lie is a molestation
Cheever: I'd forgotten what a good nature writer he is
my life: one big pre-existing condition
on the walk along the coast in nothern Oregon I see a river of birds
sleeping on the couch: I should try to make a painting of that!
I want to go live in the United States of Sleep
It seems possible and advisable and achievable to "meet" every person in the world, if only to introduce yourself, "Hi, I'm Brooks Roddan", "Hi, I'm Samir Patel" and so forth and, if not face-to-face then on one of those internet things, SKYE and FACETIME and so forth
weird how when i'm painting, as i'm doing now and doing more and more of, the solution is always to use more paint, as opposed to writing in which the solution is always, always to use fewer words