Marina Abramović: An Artist's Life

1. An artist’s conduct in his life:
– An artist should not lie to himself or others
– An artist should not steal ideas from other artists
– An artist should not compromise for themselves or in regards to the art market
– An artist should not kill other human beings
– An artist should not make themselves into an idol
– An artist should not make themselves into an idol
– An artist should not make themselves into an idol


2. An artist’s relation to his love life:
– An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist
– An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist
– An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist


3. An artist’s relation to the erotic:
– An artist should develop an erotic point of view on the world
– An artist should be erotic
– An artist should be erotic
– An artist should be erotic


4. An artist’s relation to suffering:
– An artist should suffer
– From the suffering comes the best work
– Suffering brings transformation
– Through the suffering an artist transcends their spirit
– Through the suffering an artist transcends their spirit
– Through the suffering an artist transcends their spirit


5. An artist’s relation to depression:
– An artist should not be depressed
– Depression is a disease and should be cured
– Depression is not productive for an artist
– Depression is not productive for an artist
– Depression is not productive for an artist


6. An artist’s relation to suicide:
– Suicide is a crime against life
– An artist should not commit suicide
– An artist should not commit suicide
– An artist should not commit suicide


7. An artist’s relation to inspiration:
– An artist should look deep inside themselves for inspiration
– The deeper they look inside themselves, the more universal they become
– The artist is universe
– The artist is universe
– The artist is universe


8. An artist’s relation to self-control:
– The artist should not have self-control about his life
– The artist should have total self-control about his work
– The artist should not have self-control about his life
– The artist should have total self-control about his work


9. An artist’s relation with transparency:
– The artist should give and receive at the same time
– Transparency means receptive
– Transparency means to give
– Transparency means to receive
– Transparency means receptive
– Transparency means to give
– Transparency means to receive
– Transparency means receptive
– Transparency means to give
– Transparency means to receive


10. An artist’s relation to symbols:
– An artist creates his own symbols
– Symbols are an artist’s language
– The language must then be translated
– Sometimes it is difficult to find the key
– Sometimes it is difficult to find the key
– Sometimes it is difficult to find the key


11. An artist’s relation to silence:
– An artist has to understand silence
– An artist has to create a space for silence to enter his work
– Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean
– Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean
– Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean


12. An artist’s relation to solitude:
– An artist must make time for the long periods of solitude
– Solitude is extremely important
– Away from home
– Away from the studio
– Away from family
– Away from friends
– An artist should stay for long periods of time at waterfalls
– An artist should stay for long periods of time at exploding volcanoes
– An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at the fast running rivers
– An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at the horizon where the ocean and sky meet
– An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at the stars in the night sky


13. An artist’s conduct in relation to work:
– An artist should avoid going to the studio every day
– An artist should not treat his work schedule as a bank employee does
– An artist should explore life and work only when an idea comes to him in a dream or during the day as a vision that arises as a surprise
– An artist should not repeat himself
– An artist should not overproduce
– An artist should avoid his own art pollution
– An artist should avoid his own art pollution
– An artist should avoid his own art pollution


14. An artist’s possessions:
– Buddhist monks advise that it is best to have nine possessions in their life:
1 robe for the summer
1 robe for the winter
1 pair of shoes
1 begging bowl for food
1 mosquito net
1 prayer book
1 umbrella
1 mat to sleep on
1 pair of glasses if needed
– An artist should decide for himself the minimum personal possessions they should have
– An artist should have more and more of less and less
– An artist should have more and more of less and less
– An artist should have more and more of less and less


15. A list of an artist’s friends:
– An artist should have friends that lift their spirits
– An artist should have friends that lift their spirits
– An artist should have friends that lift their spirits


16. A list of an artist’s enemies:
– Enemies are very important
– The Dalai Lama has said that it is easy to have compassion with friends but much more difficult to have compassion with enemies
– An artist has to learn to forgive
– An artist has to learn to forgive
– An artist has to learn to forgive


17. Different death scenarios:
– An artist has to be aware of his own mortality
– For an artist, it is not only important how he lives his life but also how he dies
– An artist should look at the symbols of his work for the signs of different death scenarios
– An artist should die consciously without fear
– An artist should die consciously without fear
– An artist should die consciously without fear


18. Different funeral scenarios:
– An artist should give instructions before the funeral so that everything is done the way he wants it
– The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving
– The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving
– The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving

Love, like a kitten, is a distraction.

"What would it be like if I could accept life—accept this moment—exactly as it is?

- Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach

How have I frightened myself?
How many times?

How many times
Have I dived
Into too-cold water
And survived.

The Writer.

In her room at the prow of the house 
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden, 
My daughter is writing a story. 

I pause in the stairwell, hearing 
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys 
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale. 

Young as she is, the stuff 
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: 
I wish her a lucky passage. 

But now it is she who pauses, 
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure. 
A stillness greatens, in which 

The whole house seems to be thinking, 
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor 
Of strokes, and again is silent. 

I remember the dazed starling 
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago; 
How we stole in, lifted a sash 

And retreated, not to affright it; 
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, 
We watched the sleek, wild, dark 

And iridescent creature 
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove 
To the hard floor, or the desk-top, 

And wait then, humped and bloody, 
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits 
Rose when, suddenly sure, 

It lifted off from a chair-back, 
Beating a smooth course for the right window 
And clearing the sill of the world. 

It is always a matter, my darling, 
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish 
What I wished you before, but harder.


Richard Wilbur

The best things happen when I'm doing what I'm not supposed to be doing.

"Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population."

- Peter Farb

 

"I am in no hurry to comprehend myself (Enough! I shall always comprehend myself). If such and such a sentence of mine causes me a momentary disappointment, I trust in the next sentence to right its wrongs, I refrain from beginning it over again or polishing it."

- First Manifesto of Surrealism, Andre Breton

Convinced the universe is offering yellow cars as roses. 
Never saw a yellow car before two months ago.

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”

- Henry Miller

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"If I could leave you with one practice, cultivate self-love, because it shifts us from being somebody, to being nobody, to being everybody."

"Be cool, work with the chaos, and ultimately develop a vagabond spirit."

"...suggestions that consciousness is not local to the brain."

"Western medication treats the symptoms. Entheogenic medication treats the root cause."

"The African mind doesn't distinguish between what you may call the natural and the supernatural. What you experience is real, there's no such thing as an hallucination."

"God is balance."

Social Transformation through Cultivating Genuine Confidence in Our's and Others' Basic Goodness/Buddha Nature - Fleet Maull

http://www.upaya.org/dharma/fleet-maull-08-07-2013-social-transformation-through-cultivating-genuine-confidence-in-ours-and-others-basic-goodnessbuddha-nature/

Grown Ocean.

In that dream I'm as old as the mountains


Still is starlight reflected in fountains


Children grown on the edge of the ocean


Kept like jewelry, kept with devotion

In that dream moving slow through the morning

You would come to me then without answers


Lick my wounds and remove my demands for now


Eucalyptus and orange trees are blooming


In that dream there's no darkness a-looming

In that dream moving slow through the morning time

In that dream I could hardly contain it


All my life I will wait to attain it


There, there, there

I know someday the smoke will all burn off


All these voices I'll someday have turned off


I will see you someday when I've woken


I'll be so happy just to have spoken


I'll have so much to tell you about it

In that dream I could hardly contain it


All my life I will wait to attain it


There, there, there

Wide-eyed walker, don't betray me


I will wake one day, don't delay me


Wide-eyed leaver, always going

Fleet Foxes / Robin Noel Pecknold

Boards of Canada : Tomorrow's Harvest

Give yourself a little time every morning to sit, silent, to rediscover that anything is possible.

"I hope I will be given time. Sometimes when I think of death, I think merely that it would be too bad, for I have not yet yielded up all the treasures I have collected. The chemistry I am producing of turning experience into awareness is not yet finished."

- The Journals of Anaïs Nin, Volume 5, Anaïs Nin

     Restlessness is no offense to the loved one except that the loved one considers it a matter of personal pride. He feels he should be the Sea, the Mountain, the Exotic Islands, the Religion, the Food, the Stimulant, the Inspiration, the Provider, the Total Universe to his love. Actually restlessness, you could explain to your love, is an outcome of being in love. Having the love one wants, one wants to roam, taste, enjoy, discover, explore. It is an extension and continuation of the love. Love is at the roots. We choose our jailers. Thou shalt be my safety brakes, my hand brake, my foot brake, my automatic brake, my Brake. Some of these brakes are very attractive to touch and to hold. Otherwise you would fall in love with wilder and looser characters. Nurture your restlessness. It is a compass pointing to mirages.
     Quotation from unknown source:
     "The adventurer is within us, and he contests for our favour with the social man we are obliged to be. These two sorts of life are incompatible; one we hanker for, the other we are obliged to. There is no other conflict so bitter as this, whatever the pious say, for it derives from the very constitution of human life which so painfully separates us from all other human beings. We, like the eagle, were born to be free. Yet we are obliged, in order to live at all, to make a cage of laws for ourselves and to stand on the perch. We are born as wasteful, and unremorseful as tigers; we are obliged to be thrifty, or starve, or freeze. We are born to wander, and cursed to stay and dig. We are born adventurers. It is this double-mindedness of humanity that prevents a clear social excommunication of the adventurers. If he fails he is a mere criminal. One third of all criminals are nothing but failed adventurers. Society's benefactors as well as pests. These are men betrayed by contradictions inside themselves, a social man at war with a free man."

- Letter to Jim Herlihy, Anaïs Nin

Flippant with others' love.

Uff da

Memorable Quotes of the Week.

"Done is better than perfect."

A Poem About Baseballs.

for years the scenes bustled 
through him as he dreamed he was   
alive. then he felt real, and slammed

awake in the wet sheets screaming   
too fast, everything moves
too fast, and the edges of things   
are gone. four blocks away

a baseball was a dot against   
the sky, and he thought, my   
glove is too big, i will

drop the ball and it will be   
a home run. the snow falls   
too fast from the clouds,   
and night is dropped and

snatched back like a huge
joke. is that the ball, or is
it just a bird, and the ball is
somewhere else, and i will
miss it? and the edges are gone, my

hands melt into the walls, my   
hands do not end where the wall   
begins. should i move
forward, or back, or will the ball

come right to me? i know i will   
miss, because i always miss when it
takes so long. the wall has no   
surface, no edge, the wall

fades into the air and the air is   
my hand, and i am the wall. my   
arm is the syringe and thus i

become the nurse, i am you,   
nurse. if he gets
around the bases before the   
ball comes down, is it a home

run, even if i catch it? if we could   
slow down, and stop, we
would be one fused mass careening   
at too great a speed through
the emptiness. if i catch

the ball, our side will
be up, and i will have to bat,   
and i might strike out.

Denis Johnson

Love Song.

If I could write words
Like leaves on an Autumn Forest floor
What a bonfire my letters would make.
If I could speak words of water
You would drown when I said
'I love you'.

Spike Milligan

Make room for what exists already.

why

(Irrational) feeling of being disliked.

My tired body rebels.

The Arrival.

For years on end I have been sitting here,
impatiently awaiting potency: some explosive revelatory surge
that will carry me away and permit no looking back.
But this moment of deliverance has not arrived,
and I have done nothing to hasten it.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Perhaps I wasn’t meant to do anything.
In which case, I have succeeded admirably.

John Tottenham

Looking out the Window.

The sounds of traffic  
die over the back lawn   
to occur again in the low   
distance.

The voices, risen, of
the neighborhood cannot   
maintain that pitch   
and fail briefly, start   
up again.

Similarly my breathing rises   
and falls while I look out   
the window of apartment   
number three in this slum,   
hoping for rage, or sorrow.

They don’t come to me   
anymore. How can I lament   
anything? It is all
so proper, so much
as it should be, now

the nearing cumulus   
clouds, ominous,   
shift, they are like the
curtains, billowy,   
veering at the apex
of their intrusion on the room.
If I am alive now,   
it is only

to be in all this
making all possible.   
I am glad to be
finally a part
of such machinery. I was   
after all not so fond
of living, and there comes
into me, when I see   
how little I liked
being a man, a great joy.

Look out our astounding
clear windows before evening.   
It is almost as if
the world were blue
with some lubricant,
it shines so.

Denis Johnson

"The doctor explained that the illness came from fatigue and worry, and prescribed inner peace."

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Stand in the emptiness
Underneath is the desire to be loved
Energy comes from the blind spots
(I am inadequate)
To reach for higher things

you came in through the back door
no the front no the back
you saw me I didn't see you
but I must have because
I'm writing this now

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"I used to party surprise people, often with a bit of a split."

"Splitting on things."

"I just need to lose this holiday weight... From the last seventeen holidays."

"You're the one... I met first."

 "Excess in moderation."

I read until the character's problems are bigger than my own. 
With Jonathan Franzen it takes three sentences.

Inanition.

Tender chicken?
Till 2am…
Succulent Steak?
Ask a waiter…

Cool to play pool to.

1. Bend your knees.
2. Get low.
3. Keep your elbow straight, in line with your cue.
4. Follow through.

 "This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth draped in its verdure has as much effect on me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."

First Manifesto of Surrealism, Andre Breton

Odd limbo I find myself in.
No debate.

Jeans are never that dirty.

You don't meet a voice like that often.

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"As empty as it shows, it reflects the fullness of existence."

"I will miss your suicidal tendencies."

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"You can juggle depression with talent, I have."

"Decanted butter makes me restless."

"One cheese. And one cheese only."

"How does that make you feel?" 
"Drugs."

Office Haiku.

In a meeting you

I go to get a coffee

I don't even want

Once there hung a mess
A scribbled ball of thread
Woolly woolly woolly
Suspended in my head

Crocheted into a doilie
Dyed a deeper red
The mess is now carpeted
A musing emptiness in my head

Memorable Quotes of the Weekend.

"It's cheese puffs or nothing."
 
"What's that?"
"Wine."
"So what's the problem?"
 
"Sounds like you went there with my mindset."
"Yeah, and that's not fun."

The Death of My Expectant Self.

There is nothing to do.
There is nowhere to go.
There is nothing to achieve.
We are just sitting here doing nothing.

Memorable Weekend Quotes.

"Anxiety springs from a constant negotiation of your beliefs and morals."

"We don't need to eat to be happy, but still..."

"Please tell me you're joking."
"Yeah sure."

"If this makes sense to you, you're not getting it."

Résumé.

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Dorothy Parker

"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a... merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox! This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table."

D.H. Lawrence

ESTRAGON: In the meantime let's try and converse  
     calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.

VLADIMIR: You're right, we're inexhaustible.

ESTRAGON: It's so we won't think.

VLADIMIR: We have that excuse.

ESTRAGON: It's so we won't hear.

VLADIMIR: We have our reasons.

ESTRAGON: All the dead voices.

VLADIMIR: They make a noise like wings.

ESTRAGON: Like leaves.

VLADIMIR: Like sand.

ESTRAGON: Like leaves.

[Silence.]

VLADIMIR: That passed the time.

ESTRAGON: It would have passed in any case.

- Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

"Good words, But deeds must prove it also; ... remember you don't forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear."
a
- Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

                          MR FITZGERALD

         Did you notice the new secretary in my office? 

         A temp agency sent her to help out while Miss 

         Hamish was in the hospital. Her name's Samantha. 

         She's a really sweet girl. She's a newlywed, lives 

         here in town and... I could tell from the moment 

         she got here that she really wants to work here 

         permanently. I mean, a 5 minute commute, very 

         convenient for her, right here in town. It would 

         be a great job for her. Yeah. Anyway, this morning 

         she was trying to figure out through a series of 

         sideways questions exactly how serious Miss Hamish's 

         illness was. And, she was acting concerned of course, 

         but I could see in her eyes, you know, she doesn't 

         know Miss Hamish, she can't help it. There's a 

         part of her that wants Miss Hamish to die. It'll 

         get her the job.

                          TERRI

         So?

                          MR FITZGERALD

         So Miss Hamish is dead Terri. I got the call an 

         hour ago.

                          TERRI

         Sorry Mr Fitzgerald.

                          MR FITZGERALD

         Don't say things you don't mean Terri. You're not 

         sorry she's gone. You barely knew her.

                          TERRI

         Sorry.

                          MR FITZGERALD

         Now after I got off the phone with the hospital 

         I called the temp agency and I told them, you know,  

         we're going to hire Samantha permanently. And they 

         thanked me and they said they'd call her and give 

         her the news, and I said you know, if you don't mind, 

         I would rather do it, because I kind of wanted to 

         spring the news on her, you know, what a great way 

         for she and I to start working together, right? But 

         now, I have to tell her she's got the job, and I will  

         have to watch, while she pretends to be sad. 

         Life's a mess dude. But we're all just doing the best 

         we can. You know? You and me and Samantha. We're just 

         doing what we can. So if I hurt you or if I lied to 

         you, all I can tell you is I'm sorry, and I will try 

         to do better. Maybe I will do better, or maybe I'll 

         do even worse, I don't know. I screw up all the time.  

         Because that's what people do. You know?

Memorable Weekend Quotes.

"It's not about the bridges."

America.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. Her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our filling stations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Allen Ginsberg

If you spend half a working Monday googling depression are you

a) More productive than you would have been shuffling tea bags
b) Less productive than your colleague who
c) Depressed
d) Apat

The Second Coming.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

Lesbian sex with Kathy Bates.

Song Off #4.

vs.

Dam Days.