a car
on fire
double-parked
in the middle of the block
transparent
flames
slipping
up between the hood
and
windshield
in the
sun
no one
around
no one
in it
sunlight
everywhere
shining
through
a
distant siren
on its
way . . .
—downtown,
scarlet alcoholic faces asleep
on
canoes of lice-ridden cardboard
in
city parks, smack addicts
leaning
against the Hilton while others
crawl
hands and knees along the sidewalk
feeling
for crystals spilled into cracks
from
the night before, conventioneers,
plastic
name tags flipping around necks
like
marked down for sale signs
walk
purposely past
carrying
laptops, coffee
guts
full of acid
headed
for a keynote—
the
flames’ transparency catches me
light
everywhere
such a
beautiful day
in the
city
the
car burning quietly
the
city a mirage
in
graceful flames . . .
we are
postponing our only lives
to
live in a Society of Spectacle
with
devastating implications.
Art,
an illusion, reveals delusion.
I
finally understand a Rauschenberg exhibit
I saw
in 1964, fifty years ago
an
obscure gallery just below chinatown
fifty
years to understand
several
flimsy strips of see-through fabric
collaged
with media photographs
—pictures
of JFK’s funeral, Vietnam
Muhammad
Ali, toothpaste ads—all transparent images
on
fabric, a technique Rauschenberg innovated
to
portray his vision. The fabric
is the
viewer, images floating on his eyes
in his
mind, his memory, his imagination,
as he
breathes, he is the fabric
that
swells with the breeze
from
the air-conditioner, aswhirl with reflections
a
see-through being?
Just
because Rauschenberg's innovation
has
had an incidentally commercial use
to a
materialistic economy,
and is
now applied, on a similar fabric,
onto
convention center windows for spectacular tradeshows, Google, Apple Oracle etc,
and on
T-shirts
sold, in museum stores,
doesn’t
dilute its intention:
a
technique discovered to show us we are awash
in
images, that we are abstracted,
a
technique that redefined the artist’s role
beyond
that of image maker
implying
the artist now has become an actor
in
magic again, involving the viewer
the
one to be healed! makes the artist
more
akin to a sand painter
in an
older, more ritualistic act,
a
happening for now, a healing
to be
blown away by morning wind
not
catalogued in a museum, a living
dying
medium, the medium
of our
eyes, the see-through
film
of awareness
beyond
creating
an object of verisimilitude,
such
as a piéta
—an
aid to meditation
on the
mystery of mother and child but
perhaps
extending the cubist continuum
think
of that! in light of quantum physics!
the
viewer is involved (in helpless anonymity)
the
way the patient is involved in his healing
(not
anonymous, not helpless)
the
same way a physicist observing phenomena
affects
that phenomena, so we can no longer pretend
that
pure objectivity
or
subjectivity
is the
real deal: every artistic perception
is an
interaction: in other words, We are In It.
It is
in us. Like paradise.
Like
cancer.
DuBord
would have grasped the implications
of
this technique immediately.
So no
more art as refuge? Relentless life
is our
refuge. We stop the world
by our
being. As these pictorial
haphazard,
life-affecting events pour
over
Rauschenberg’s diaphanous fabric
the
eyes of the viewer become that invisible medium
become
the see-through.
Events
beyond us come from within us.
What
happened? When
all of
us, thrown from the Titanic into an icy sea,
saw
stars rise like notes from our screams and the violins
of
musicians playing to the end
became
our personal story, our malady, our final redemption
until,
fast-forwarding, even poopular bloopers on TV
joined
the cavalcade
so we
can laugh at what fools we are
(networks
making millions off free content—again
that
issue) devastating events,
such
as war and poisoned water
that
we feel helpless to manage on a personal level
we see
through wavering fabric, ourselves wavering
in
see-through flames.
I’m
entranced to see
through
these flames
the
car burning on the calm street
it is
the seeing-through that counts
and
yet
this
perception doesn’t confer emotional distance!
on the
contrary
that
very transparency
compels
a compassionate eye
everything,
everybody, every animal is included
when
light goes through fire—
and
something must be done quickly!
Again.
And again again! But we are as far
above
it as an orbiting astronaut who sees
what's
happening but can do nothing
about
it,
a car
on fire
double-parked
in the middle of the block
transparent
flames
slipping
up between the hood
and
windshield
in the
sun
no one
around
no one
in it
sunlight
everywhere
shining
through
a
distant siren
on its
way . . .
—downtown,
scarlet alcoholic faces asleep
on
canoes of lice-ridden cardboard
in
city parks, smack addicts
leaning
against the Hilton while others
crawl
hands and knees along the sidewalk
feeling
for crystals spilled into cracks
from
the night before, conventioneers,
plastic
name tags flipping around necks
like
marked down for sale signs
walk
purposely past
carrying
laptops, coffee
guts
full of acid
headed
for a keynote—
the
flames’ transparency catches me
light
everywhere
such a
beautiful day
in the
city
the
car burning quietly
the
city a mirage in graceful flames.
Seeing
is being affected, being
affected
is to effect seeing. Action
is
indeterminate, outcome uncertain
a
risk, like birth, like opening
your
mouth. Chance is a key
beyond
your obsessions, perhaps the only
relief
from
thinking you know
who
you are. We are the see-through.
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