on the muse

i just finished reading germaine greer’s article on the artist’s muse.

for the last year i have been contemplating this very same concept. i came face to face with my muse one year ago and i have been enveloped in a heady, headstrong rush ever since. it’s life threatening. it’s altering. it’s a knife to the cocoon. a bullet to the balloon.

this ephemeral being has enveloped all of my thoughts and inspired an output and a desire to output (‘put out’) like i haven’t experienced in years.

but unlike the classic concept of the muse as totalized by ms. greer so sweetly and lovingly in her pitch for the guardian uk, my conception of the muse is more ephemeral.

it is not a model you use.

it is a mental construct, an ideal like the islamic concept of the Beloved. (1 2) a concept that inspires the artist. this unpacifiable being functions as a call to apostasy. one which we should give in to readily. it is better to drown in the milk of creation than to thirst in a desert of stagnation.

i see my muse as my friend, as wife and mother of all my work. you can follow all the explicit ideas that engenders on your own. if you know what i mean…

when i found her (or, more accurately, when she chose me) i was in a state of deepest creative funk. and in weeks she had resurrected me. in the most literal senses. i was dead when she found me. suffocating in so many ways. and as saul williams (yo holmes!) said, “we all know what a lack of breath signifies…“

but back to some semblance of conscious thought. i can wax about the ecstasy of my being chosen forever. ask anyone who knows me.

this idea of a model who gets paid X bucks an hour to get your artistic jollies off is just absurd. i can understand, though. for years i stood around naked and immobile for photographers and painters, sketch brands and horny old guys pretending to not be pornographers (i hope no one ever finds those shots). and i don’t decry them their needs (except that damn perv pornographer. i did not know what i was getting into. folly of youth and broke on the streets). it was the classic method.

not that i have ever been a muse in the classic sense. but i know that at certain points i have been an inspiration for certain people and, um, institutions. and i have found mine in so many places.

and the ones that last, that we continue to return to, are the muse. they are our obsessions made manifest. dk pan always told me that it is our obsessions that we should follow to make our art. i don’t dare contemplate what that means after some of the things that guy has gotten me to do in the name of his art, but i understand his point and i love him.

and while it would be interesting to have some amazing human around to draw and paint and whatnot i don’t really work in those mediums. so i had to find a form of living theater to draw out my demons and let you be exposed to them. when i feel lost and afraid of my self and my work i draw out that modern scrying ball, my cell phone, and contact my muse who gives me the cheek up. or i find an avatar in the form of a friend who i can project the aura of my chosen one upon and listen to their advice. it always seems to work.

i suppose it is a form of black magic. luckily i believe in magic. i don’t believe in god. and my muse always tells me that the universe loves me. so sweet and so true. if it wasn’t i’d be horribly disfigured, imprisoned, dead or on that murderous rampage you read about.

and another reason why that untouchable being wouldn’t work for me is because, as an ex-girlfriend of mine once said by way of explanation for why she ‘did it’ with that bland motorcycle jock behind my eye, “i’m like a cat: i have to play with it until it dies…”

but i want to thank germain greer for her essay. it filled me with rhapsodic joy. i love my muse. i am in love with my muse. and my muse loves me. or i wouldn’t be floating night and day in tears of such profound sorrow, grief and happiness.

do you know that feeling? when happiness strikes and you want to cry and throw up and you get dizzy? have you felt that power?

if not you should drink more.

love.love.love.

hippy-ing out for you tonight,

pol

*special thanks to models ‘dan’ and ‘creampuff’

Barbancourt’s Pretty Good

what is the difference between performance art and monologue?
what is the difference between performance art and absurdity?

is it the number of people involved?
is it the number of people watching?
and if we gave a showing and nobody came would we claim that it was all for the process?

i did a piece last night called alcoholism.
i didn’t invite anyone.

it went pretty well.

is it just that we call it performance art when maybe what we really are trying to do is just to get something out that nobody gets to?
like finally noticing this trait we seem to share of looking away when we speak to each other as if there was a moment in the spotlight just for us, where we could be the star, turning our heads just so, so that we can put on our best light.

two things: slavery and fucking or sex, if you believe it still exists…

i heard that some slaves after they were free, manumission,still wanted to be all they could have been, all they were promised, under the ownership system. surrounded by their own kind, the also newly freed, they could not let go. they were free, but they were still passing out the whip. who wants to be a star?

actually, let’s keep it at one thing. sex is suddenly very frightening for me to talk about.

mind if i smoke?

i did a piece last night that involved three people, no maybe four, it’s hard to say, called alcoholism.

originally, i was going to do a piece about dying for what you believe in. i was going to seal myself in a plastic bag and wait for one of you to realize that i was asphyxiating and let me out. you wouldn’t be a hero; you’d just be observant.

what i couldn’t decide on, though, was whether anyone would do it. then i thought i should get a confederate to free me if everybody just sat there. then i thought i would time it and write a small passage that you could read and realize-to in time to figure out that you better get that bag open before i died.

it wouldn’t have been obvious. just something about personal responsibility in a time of crisis. a need to stop being so alone and reach out to other people and give of yourself without taking in return.

but if you have to ask.

i can see you.

so no plastic bag. i thought it would be a bummer to die in in a public forum, in front of all of you good people. because not everyone can read that fast.

and not everyone can read.

and not everyone.

so i thought to what the end of performance might be. and i thought that if we just didn’t DO anything, just WERE , it would be the ultimate. there is so much left to be said about not doing anything.

but that’s boring.

this isn’t clever. this is just a response to being invited here.

i don’t know what performance art is. but if i was really in love, i would stand outside their window every night and set up a huge letter from their name and put it to flame every night. and there would be a band playing. and flowers exploding from cannons, maybe.

and all my performances would be personal.

i did a piece last night called alcoholism.
and i raised a glass to you.

monologue from a performance piece done for the defunkt artwar collective in seattle, summer of 2006