Monday, March 12, 2007

They say its your birthday...

"My 20s were difficult. I think that those are
hard years for most men. Older men want to kill
you, and girls don’t really want you. They’re
most interested in the rich, older guy. For me,
money was scarce, and I was extremely lonely.
But New York was such an exciting place then
that it compensated for all my insecurities." R. Gere

It's never what you imagine it'll be. Sex, death, suffering... Thats
a constant truth in life. Its never how you think it will be.
Literature, arts, film, all provide a glimpse, elude to the feeling of
what the experience is like but its almost always a different kind of
wonderful.

Its like that touching scene in "Lost in Translation" when Bill Murray
is in bed next to Scarlet explaining what happens to a man when he has
a child. Everything changes, and we try to understand what It will be
like, grasp out of curiosity or longing the idea of a thing rather than
the thing itself. We become obsessed with ideals, love, honor,
dignity, death, suffering, only to understand that they are
abstractions. Silly abstractions.

Why do we keep trying to understand when it will never be like the
words we read, the pictures we saw, the music we listen to? Perhaps
because there is pleasure in it. The pleasure in making the attempt.
Or perhaps we like to lie to ourselves. To pretend we know rather than
bravely face the unknown.

It does work the other way around though, ironically. Once you have
lived something and then you encounter a work of art that speaks to
that experience, it is liberating, elating and enlightening. You feel
less alone, you are caught in disbelief that someone put into words
what you always knew, what you felt, in a way, the art form brings you
full circle, confirms your experience and gives it meaning.

What would all this be like if art didn't exist? Where does art come
from? What does it mean in our life? I remember a friend of mine when
he read "Brothers Karamazov" a highly influential book in life tell me
it did nothing for him. How was that possible? My god, to not be
moved by the Russians? He was lame though, maybe he will re-read the
Russians one day. When in trouble read the Russians, an old but true
adage.

I look for art to transform me. To change my actions. To guide me.
and in my most vulnerable moments comfort me. I will often spend a
friday night in bed with poetry listening to jazz while the world gets
drunk and stoned. I'd rather scribble bad short stories in my notebook
and read them to lovers than partake in meaningless conversation about
the weather. I want to create. I feel ready now that I have lived a
little. Just a little, there is much more to do, news doors to open as
others close behind me....

We can never go back. There is no going back. And in that there is
beauty and perfection. Don't look back. Look forward. Chin high.
Don't cry. Ok cry a little. If its for the lost ones. The ones no
longer here, the ones we will see again in some other form. The ones
who loved us. The ones that don't. To all those who wanted to...its
for them I really live.

Peace.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I want to live. It's no coincidence that you begin this blog with the Richard Gere quote "I was extremely loneley but NYC was such an exciting place then that it compensated for all my insecurities" and then you, Gabo, ask the question What is art?
You answer it though..to share and experience with someone a similar thought or feeling, to remove me from my loneliness, to make me live.

Sqb. said...

But let's assume, for a moment, that meaning is born in the individual.

Now your Friday night looks different. It's a teeming world, replete with words, lights, sensations, song.

I'm reminded of a character from Don DeLillo's novel "White Noise". Murray Jay Siskind, a professor. He absolutely loves going to the grocery store...why? The preponderance of *data*. In the grocery store, you find the modern world, glistening, packaged, underwrought with cheap music. There are colors, faces, sounds and a subjective experience to channel them through (I shop, too).

I struggled for too long to separate intellect from my daily life. There is still something to be said for that. But perhaps one could claim also that it's no sin to "read" the grocery experience as one might read poetry...wisdom doesn't keep its throne in any single place...

-Saqib

Anonymous said...

Gabo, your writing is beautiful. My yin has got the better of me and I'm struggling to center myself. I am wrapped up in this struggle with myself and your writing has really helped me to loosen my grip on myself. Thanks brother.

Anonymous said...

Gabo, your writing is beautiful. My yin has got the better of me and I'm struggling to center myself. I am wrapped up in this struggle with myself and your writing has really helped me to loosen my grip on myself. Thanks brother.

- Varuna