Fullness

I know it might not be fair, but one does feel as though one's own creative life is a little bit lacking after seeing certain unbelievably amazing works of art. I was just tonight out seeing an Igmar Bergman movie (Fanny och Alexander) and it does make the consternations of my own mind seem a might bit flim-flammy. Now, I have seen in the past that it's bad news to try to compare apples to oranges (my art to films, to music, to rocks and salamanders), but I guess a little moping around might be a good thing for me since, as I've said before, I have no fucking clue what I am doing.

In fact, the movie seems to deal with some things that have a lot to do with this idea of great art and little life. (I'm not good at describing things or reviews, so pardon this poor short summary - I'm not going to evaluate the film except to say that it comes very highly recommended.) The movie was so shockingly beautiful and visually rich. Part of it takes place in the home of a rich family of actors and artists - drunken philanderers all, but their lives were so emotionally motivated and there was a lot of kissing and eating and dancing. The other part takes place in the huge castle where a strict and mean protestant bishop lives with his screwfaced old maids and get up early and turn the heat way down and wear grey and other dreadful things.

The Bishop's home represents an extreme of anti-emotionalism, formalism, rationalism, hatred of sin and of sex and of imagination. I just was struck by the reductive minimalism that I saw there, and that I now seem to be seeing in my work and in my life. I know that I can sometimes be really unfriendly in life, and unforgiving in my aesthetic. Not only that, but I can explain its attraction too well for it to be mere affection - this is a real part of my life (except the getting up early part). I don't know where it seeped in - what kind of awful puritan hooligans impressed me at a tender age (actually I have a clue), but I do know that I don't want to live a life like that cold hateful Bishop.

I can't explain what I mean about this Bishop streak in my art - it may be too abstract; the black and white, the analytical posture, the distancing, the negation of graceful mistakes, fear of being seen, sharp-toothed editing, reduction, cold, black and white. Ugh - god it is really freaking me out now. I don't want to be an inhuman monster! My misanthropy is supposed to be pathetic and upside-down, not a final judgement. But I suppose I have chosen this path, and whatever path I have chosen has got to be the one I needed to have taken. Still, the question I have been asking myself this week as I lay in my sickbed was; how can I let a little light in? And then to see it reinforced in this movie... It's too much. It's always too much, but it's too much.

Now, I suppose that so many of these things on this godawful blog are writ in such a way as to be a rather useless read for a person who is not me. When I go out with a a good friend, as I did tonight, and try to make myself known, the closer I get to explaining what I think about my work, explaining in the way that I actually follow these thoughts in my head, the less clearly I am understood. I don't mind the puzzled looks, I don't worry about being seen as the wacko that I know I am, but I wish I could get through sometimes. I'm too selfish, I know, but I'm not just talking about explaining my feelings, I'm talking about talking with another person in order for us to know a little bit more about some things that are universal.

I don't know what universals really are, but I bet that Igmar Bergman would have no idea what the hell I was talking about here, really. I mean, I'm verbose, yes, thank god for free words, but I'm vague vague vague. In any case, despite the cloudiness, whatever he was trying to say in the movie, it meant a great deal to me, and that is at least part of what is meant by universal.

So how do I let a little light in?

This trailer might give you an idea of what I am talking about, even though it kind of implies it is a movie about "saving the children" (sheesh - how time magazine can you get?). Plus, hopefully it'll make you want to watch it.