On the Greening of the Artist
I always thought that knowing morning
was enough to know.
That was when making art was all there was.
I want to share my greening with you;
my art, my music, and my thoughts.
I want to share with you how I finally gained a sense
of myself that I could live with.
Being an artist is an awesome task,
most of us do not know how scary it is until we are too old to do anything else.
I grooved on the thought that
"Art is long... Life is short".
I thought to make a quick impression,
to leave something with my name on it.
But then discovery happened...
At first I only heard the words,
"...My heart in hiding, stirred for a bird -
the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!"
That was Gerard Manley Hopkins.
I knew then that someone had shared before.
Tonight I said it was the magic room,
suspended between first and second.
Magic at first because it was my own.
But more because it was in a strange place.
I could never abide strange... so I worked at it,
not intentionally just to change it -
I worked on it, because it was there,
to make it a place where I would want to be.
That is how and why artists make old warehouses,
garages, basements, and lofts into special places.
It is a magnificent power that we have
to find beauty and charm in things.
To make special of a room that could only be reached
from the back of the kitchen
or from the third floor back stairs.
That was my gift...
the ability to make something possible
is perhaps the greatest gift of all.
That room is firm in my beginning.
It became my philosophical statement -
my first aesthetic position
and I likened my situation to the existence
of other rooms, like The L Shaped Room,
a foreign film that was passionately non-conforming
and The Blue Room, A Room of one Zone
and much, much later, A Room with a View.
That room was a place for art and thought...
a place where a young artist's life could begin.
I gorged myself on that beginning,
packing the references into every available
crevice of my landscape.
I took the words and the hopes and desires -
the poetry and the prose - the dreams - the opera,
Jazz and Mozart (a world unto himself)
and John Lewis, Thelonious and Beethoven.
I shouldered the philosophies of the ages,
learned to say existentialism,
and played chess for hours
and days without sleeping.
You could not have convinced me then
that Henry the Fifth was not written for me.
I longed to hear the call
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."
I took my Grandmother's warning,
there would be no devil's workshop for me -
my mind was full, my hands were busy.
My father said, "Well, you had better be a good one."
I had enough starting power to last a lifetime.
Everything was for me and I was for everything.
Some things I thought about, some things I did.
Judgment was a game, art was the name,
if anything delayed, confused or interrupted,
the sacrifice was sleep, time to eat -
whatever could be spared was sacrificed for art.
Like blues music, I was transported.
The warm black walls were hung
with my paintings and drawings
and then draped with seine netting,
the ceiling was starred with album covers -
and only strategically covered with the fishing net.
It was not so much a stage set as it was a fantastic tent.
One deep purple wall from a tune that I knew.
A few stolen traffic signs leading up the stairs -
the diamond shaped detour at the top
and pointing cleverly, opposite the door.
Like the sea
the wonder of discovery
would come in rushes and whispers,
sometimes as if beside a brook.
At those times I thought of other rooms...
Five Spots, Birdlands, and Storyville -
Red Doors and Shadows
and Cellar Doors, Bohemian Caverns
and later salons and theaters.
Some I knew from fabulous visits to New York,
Washington, and Boston.
Others I knew from the music that originated there.
I came to love California
with Concerts by the Sea
and I covered my floor
with a beach colored grass mat...
one black butterfly chair, one easel, one paint stand
and a rolled up or out foam rubber mattress -
either bed or couch.
In one corner the book case, mounted on the wall,
heavy with the volumes of my days,
connected by the desk where long letters
of "Being and Nothingness" were written
under the light of the requisite pole lamp.
Under the corner of the desk hung the speaker -
hand made from the Lafayette kit -
my first really essential furniture -
a twenty inch column of woofer and tweeter,
not enough money for a mid-range or crossover
and certainly pale by comparison now,
but then, it was a powerhouse of bass and treble,
it was almost like being there -
in the club where the sounds were made.
Malcolm, my friend, was usually on the floor,
his head somehow wedged under the speaker -
I thought he would surely make himself stupid,
like everyone said,
"with Percy Heath's bass pounding on his earlobe.
He wanted to get as close as possible
to the source of the music"... We all did -
I did not have the words then
to tell him that it happens in the heart.
That to be one with the sound was to be inside.
But that was a year or so before Zen
and meditation - before three button suits
with skinny little ties, before I knew my sign
or that someday someone would care to ask.
But not before I knew that five - my number,
was the number for art -
and that twelve belongs to the universe
and that "body, mind, and spirit" was good.
Jane was in the corner, beside the easel,
just behind the paint stand,
her patience was the only thing -
more beautiful than her profile.
The elusive light that played across her cheek,
disappearing softly under her chin -
the line that I painted always seemed so strong.
I must have learned to work with a steady hand
while I practiced uncountable strokes -
forever chasing the loveliness of a disappearing line,
a lifetime of exquisite subtle colors, dark into light,
a drifting cloud, the spray of sea...
sound into line - perfect passage.
Andrew, my cousin,
always seemed too large for the butterfly chair,
his presence overflowed that canvas sling
just as the memory of his affirmation of my life
and style and my choices overwhelms me now.
Only my mother had more faith -
to be valued is like receiving a rite of passage,
to make someone believe is the second great gift.
But we were young,
so young to know that black bread
and red wine was only a temporary repast.
I got past that, and found that Thelonious Monk
was a main course,
different than the Modern Jazz Quartet;
but still ultimate -
compelling and unforgettable is better...
only now I can see that his "Little Red Wagon"
was a state of mind -
I could not think of that until now -
in reflection I see myself promising my son tomorrow
and later pulling him in our own little red wagon
"until the wheels might fall off"
as Doug and Esther said and later, much later,
I thought that he, my son, and you and later yours
should know the right and the legacy
of the drawings and the sounds of music and art.
And so I have cleaned the old records to put away,
this time safe from dust.
I have saved Il Trovatore and Monk and Garner
and Dylan Thomas reading and Gigli
and de Los Angeles, Tebaldi and Aretha -
and I have saved Beethoven's Fifth,
Brahm's Double, and Mozart's Twenty-First.
I have saved the thoughts of Ben and Claude
and Billy and myself growing up
and all of the Sams in my world
and Donalds and Phils and Lloyds, - and the
Andrews, Jacobs, and Davids and Walter -
who are continuing reincarnations
of the longness and the tallness of destiny.
And I have saved the honor,
the memories and the hopes and thoughts
of Jane and Di and Calea
and Elizabeth reading Margaret Walker to me
and all of my friends, and my mother and yours
and their mothers finding beauty and charm in everyone.
Some more to know and to feel -
that the lines and the sounds
of cool and hot and passion and soft,
as in a morning's sunrise -
two degrees east - three degrees west.
Lou Stovall Commencement Address, Corcoran School of Art Washington, D.C., May 9, 1992 Commencement Address, Expanded for Duke Ellington School of the Arts Washington, D.C., June 13
|
