managing oldness

After my previous post, on managing newness, I figured it begged for this: managing oldness. You could make a strong argument that I should reissue the "managing newness" post virtually unchanged, and just view it as intended for "oldness"?

What difference would it make?

But that's merely postmodern cleverness, or a simulacrum of it.

Managing oldness.

That would refer to accepting life's limitations, such as memory lapses or confusion, and alterations in physical strength and endurance, and reduced motivation blah blah blah, and accepting that life itself is limited, as opposed to the invincible and robust notions of never-ending youth.

But I'm not even sure of that. To quote Bob Dylan, in "My Back Pages":

 "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

My best and most prolific work came after I was 50.

benevolent amnesia

"The thing I really cherish about the work is the done-ness. When it's finished I tend to develop a benevolent amnesia." 

-- Leonard Cohen, as quoted by Rob Sheffield (@robsheff) on Sept. 18, 2014 on Twitter.

Don't you love that phrase "benevolent amnesia"?

Who doesn't need or want some benevolent amnesia now and then?

creative collaboration

Proud to share this creative collaboration with you. Really proud.

SayYesSyracuse2010

I'm not kidding.

You like?

creative. . .

collaboration I spearheaded.

I trust you like it.

creativity. change. evolution

"When I draw and paint, the essential thing is not to know what I do, or else I cannot come to what I see."

-- Avigdor Arikha, 1929-2010

This is also true in writing.

And living, too.

expository exposure

While viewing the fine and appealing "Turner to Cezanne" exhibit today at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, I discovered that art historians are playing peek-a-boo with important works of art. Well, more than peek-a-boo. Scholars have peered at works via x-ray to determine what's under the paint. For example, the commentary on a Renoir with a woman wearing a blue dress ("La Parisienne") reveals that a doorway was penciled in in an earlier version, along with an object I can't recall. (But maybe an x-ray of my brain would jog my memory.)

This is slightly unsettling, this naked exposure of the painter's work in progress; this raw look at creative vulnerability and trial and error.

Imagine if this were done to writers!

Or bloggers!

Or dancers, sculptors, jugglers, orators, magicians, scientists, priests, and telemarketers!?

Yes, Word allows you to save various versions and drafts of a document or to undo or redo many edits.

But what if all this were left bare to see by simple x-ray? (Of course, libraries and archives are filled with fascinating drafts of works. For example, I've seen Ezra Pound's extensive markups of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" on display at the New York Public Library.)

Worse yet, what if our unfiltered or even our censored thoughts were left as on a palimpsest for all to see?

One word:

YIKES! YIKES! YIKES!

(Palimpsest: In college I wrote a paper on Thomas DeQuincey's "The Palimpsest of the Human Brain. Or did I?)