XXIII

A

rtists, leastwise the good ones, make for poor guides. They wander the wilderness exulting in the desolation of their landscape. They trammel untravelled ways. Should some seeker of wisdom fall in behind them, exuberantly hopping from one imprint to the next, the master jigs. The artist wants none to stand in his shadow but rather, they may bask in the light of his torch. No beacon navigated the genius so how could he have but disdain for those that track him?

The artist is keenly aware that though paths might cross, none start nor end together. To follow after another can only be a diversion. The staggered trail of prints that culminates at that cadaver will show no indication that this victim was dragged. Drugged, perhaps.

The artist, when faced with an eager student, must come to terms with the notion that one cannot teach someone to find their own way, as though explorers had neither cartography nor astrolabes.

"Be yourself!" is the mantra of the typical modern art teacher.

"Express your individuality!"

"Runners must remain in their own lanes."

"Stop following me. Find your own path."

Such is the due for a field that has, since the Modernists, valued itself not on genius but on genus. Quirks are become the scientific unit of measurement to describe the quality of a piece of art.

This classicist is not rejecting innovation or novelty. He instead rejects an aesthetic that rejects further exploration of what has already been discovered. Little is accomplished if every discovery of a new world requires the abandonment of all the glories of the old. When sighting a seabird, do not hurl charts overboard in celebration. When making teddy bear caryatids, sculpt them brilliantly with all the knowledge of the ages and ensure that the columns and capitals obey Vitruvian proportions.

Ideas are insufficient.

But the path has been lost.

Artists make for poor guides.

My Virgil remains on the Elysium shore, sending me on across the Styx alone. It was never Beatrice that was my guide, as I had ever believed, but Anne. She was to conduct me through my trials and on to Beatrice. That was until I committed treason against friendship. Exiled from that pagan paradise, I was midway through the journey of my life, obliged now to find my own way. If my fate was written in the firmament, it had naught to do with Beatrice. She was not to be my celestial patron, beckoning me to find her in the first and final garden. Without light from the heavens or the steady stretched finger of a friend. Directing my march to the horizon, I turned my gaze to the ground and there it remained for seven years.

There is a horizon in every view. It is in each landscape. Every earth escapes to sky eventually. It might but peek grey through thick foliage but The Great Endless can always be found. The earth was without edges and so without exits. I am not that Prince that walks the tiny asteroid. There is no Rose, only seamless soil.

I held a frame in two firm hands but in any length of slow and searching revolution nothing would fill that void but rocks and dirt. Sometimes I saw dead foliage, fallen down from some lofty, living spire that had, in life, grasped for heaven. It had returned to the earth though, where it would decompose itself. Nothing prevented my arms from tilting that vantage skyward. Nothing stopped me from filling the frame with marvelous landscapes but she had sent me away and away I was. Cast out, I had cast myself down and covered my nakedness. Clawing at the earth, I clutched fistfuls of dirt and wondered at how dry my fingernails became. What merit is in this ground that I embraced its solidity?

Clinging low, I could not halt the spinning but I am reassured. Grasping the bosom of the Great Mother, I find solace, not salvation. It is in that embrace with the earth, that we are free to not see the extended vastness of the sky. It is only when we view the horizon that we are again not large enough.

We only grow when we look up.

But I was forbid to look upon my Sun and I was forbid to look upon those who stood in the brightness of that light. My sins had condemned me to an exile upon this earth.

No more melancholic metaphors. The reality, the physicality of it is that in posture, my bearing was alert and proud. Head up. Shoulders back. Chest out. Head and eyes straight to the front. Bends out of those elbows. Be proud of who you are... whomever you may be. Dance teachers have a similar soldierly tirade but they further demand a smile. March with pride and you will march well. Dance without confidence and you are not dancing.

Posture is an existential exercise. First must come the moment of critical awareness of one's posture.. Then there must be cognition of the difference between performance and being. An old soldier, until the end of his walkabout days, will ever carry himself as a soldier. He has learned the lesson young that a well-kept carriage will make the journey more endurable. No façade is thrown down when he is alone. He wishes not to be seen as a soldier but to be. There is such a small amount of effort required to sit up straight or from preventing hands from being pointedly deposited into front pockets. So very little physical effort indeed. All that is demanded is a mental attention and the will. Once the first moment of awareness is reached it is forever after a series of existential decisions. Am I a person that slouches or am I one that stands tall with eyes on the horizon?

Does my costume conform or does it declare me a rebel? Which category, which cliché am I to celebrate? Which uniform will I wear?

"Be yourself!" is the cry.

"Make yourself what you will be" is the counter.

To be yourself is to be complacent. Change yourself.

I cannot say if, in those artless years, I was changing myself. While my dreams remained, I had so refrained from pursuing them that they did not occupy my waking days. I was certainly forming myself into a different shape with a different momentum for a different destination but dreams do not change. Only the schemes to achieve them are altered. The efforts applied may be abated.

Loose silver threads float into the darkness from my heart. Some, at distant ends, tie themselves to Art and others to Beauty. One thread trailed from a cellist's hem while another floated in the periphery of a friend. With every pumping beat, my heart will tug on some faint string or other. It cannot draw the ghosts closer. The threads of desire must be wound in by working hands. They do grow taught, these lines, as the phantom draws near but never does the source come clear. When Beauty was so close that I could see beyond, the silver thread lay loose behind and went forever on and on.

XXIV