The meaning of this happy hour
Reading Paul Klee's diaries again today. I was reading about a trip he made to Tunisia, which was something of a turning point in his artistic career. His diary entry for 16th April 1914 suddenly bursts out into this declaration:
As for me, I haven't abandoned the feeling of working. In fact the business of refashioning so many poems, and writing new ones is some ways the most difficult work I have ever done. I used to be able to draw quite well when I was at school, and every now and again I still have a go. Each time I pick up a pencil again I'm amazed at how rusty I've got.
I'm beginning think you can get rusty at writing poems too, but I am getting back into the zone. Spent an hour or so sifting through very old work, and rejected scraps to see if there was anything interesting or worth saving there. A few gleams, but most of it soberingly dire. I had to write a lot of drivel to get to this point. I'm constantly reminded of Pound's phrase at the moment of having to murder your babies. Or as my old Art Director Nev used to frequently intone as we were working on catalogues: you can't shine shit. Pound was a fantastic editor, slicing off the flab of Eliot's Wasteland, and ridiculing W.B. Yeats's worst excesses when he was working as his private secretary. I never read Pound for pleasure though.
For relief I am also writing about skeletons, which I am saving for the afternoon and evening. But the happiness I feel in being able to simply get on with both projects is fantastic and liberating.
Wandered about deep in thought for an hour or so, in a beautiful afternoon.
This evening off up the hill to babysit Klaudia and Oskar. Anna and Anton off to the pub, but Anton suprised me by returning early. Turns out wires had been crossed and it was a chick's night out, so Anton had to speed through his glass of beer and dissolve away from the several ladies and their bottle of white wine. This was my gain, as we a fun evening with him drinking teas and listening to various tunes, and discussing many and various things.
Spoke to Lorraine who is suffering from a hideous cold, but soldiering on. If she were a man of course, she would have already been bedridden for days.
Reading Paul Klee's diaries again today. I was reading about a trip he made to Tunisia, which was something of a turning point in his artistic career. His diary entry for 16th April 1914 suddenly bursts out into this declaration:
I now abandon work. It penetrates so deeply and so gently into me, I feel it and it gives me confidence in myself without effort. Colour possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Colour and I are one. I am a painter.
As for me, I haven't abandoned the feeling of working. In fact the business of refashioning so many poems, and writing new ones is some ways the most difficult work I have ever done. I used to be able to draw quite well when I was at school, and every now and again I still have a go. Each time I pick up a pencil again I'm amazed at how rusty I've got.
I'm beginning think you can get rusty at writing poems too, but I am getting back into the zone. Spent an hour or so sifting through very old work, and rejected scraps to see if there was anything interesting or worth saving there. A few gleams, but most of it soberingly dire. I had to write a lot of drivel to get to this point. I'm constantly reminded of Pound's phrase at the moment of having to murder your babies. Or as my old Art Director Nev used to frequently intone as we were working on catalogues: you can't shine shit. Pound was a fantastic editor, slicing off the flab of Eliot's Wasteland, and ridiculing W.B. Yeats's worst excesses when he was working as his private secretary. I never read Pound for pleasure though.
For relief I am also writing about skeletons, which I am saving for the afternoon and evening. But the happiness I feel in being able to simply get on with both projects is fantastic and liberating.
Wandered about deep in thought for an hour or so, in a beautiful afternoon.
This evening off up the hill to babysit Klaudia and Oskar. Anna and Anton off to the pub, but Anton suprised me by returning early. Turns out wires had been crossed and it was a chick's night out, so Anton had to speed through his glass of beer and dissolve away from the several ladies and their bottle of white wine. This was my gain, as we a fun evening with him drinking teas and listening to various tunes, and discussing many and various things.
Spoke to Lorraine who is suffering from a hideous cold, but soldiering on. If she were a man of course, she would have already been bedridden for days.
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