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Art & Writing

 

Art & Writing

 

It’s scary writing because you’re so exposed. Words appear so definite when really you’re just digging through space & time on a particular day, in a particular mood, with a particular mindset & capacity. Words isolate & divide. They are sequential. Unlike music or painting which is able to show multiple simultaneous sounds, tones, motifs or images, writing is linear. One thing follows one another. When I look at the works of serious painters, I am envious, of the avoidance of thesis allowed visual language. Even films. That last mad procession in Mad Max Thunder Road with the guitar player at the spear end & really what is happening, what does it mean? John Olsen when he painted his great Spanish Encounter under the influence of Dubuffet was able completely get away from rational thinking. I’m currently watching an interview, which I had to pause to start this. & I remember when I first looked at Surrealism, it was clear that it was ill-suited to writing, despite Breton’s automatic claims. We allow our artists to manifest all sorts of wildness, violence, madness & yet we require that our writers must believe what they write. Particularly in this age of PC, it’s such a conservative time, we have to write on our knees in this country, for fear of being cancelled, in whatever way that is. While trillions of dollars that could be spent housing & feeding people is spent on imprisoning & killing people, it is a surreal time that we somehow still require caution & censorship & self censorship. Why do we take such care with our words, what about what poetry is, which is a journey through the subconscious? We live in a time when politicians tell a succession of bold faced lies & so we must, we writers be tamer than our governments. It’s bizarre. The challenge of surrealism was that it put the fear of God into politicians. It scandalized the world & politicians cowed (at least privately). But today’s artists & writers are more like civil servants. Obeying the rules of the government run grant Arts. Who, then, to borrow from Don Chipp, is keeping the bastards honest? I write then as an outsider, but please don’t think that there’s not a huge price to pay. The mental cost in leaving myself wide open & vulnerable is enormous. I just have to keep going, in the belief that I can ‘break on through to the Other side.’

 

 

 Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

 

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