Tag Archives: creativity

Giacomo, Constanze, and the shape of life …

Engraving of Constanze Mozart at 19 or 20. Artist: Joseph Lange, brother-in-law of Mozart. Date: 1783.

“My husband makes things that live forever.”
“Then he must be a fool.”

I’ve been doing a bit of work on my new play “The Rake’s Visit: A One-Act Capriccio on a Theme from Don Giovanni,” about a fictional meeting between Giacomo Casanova and Constanze Mozart (downloadable here). These new lines come right after a playful improvisation in which Giacomo and Constanze create a little “opera” set in a beautiful place where people live truly free and creative lives:

GIACOMO.
But you are crying.

CONSTANZE.
It’s nothing.

GIACOMO.
Tell me.

CONSTANZE.
Am I dreaming—or am I dying?
It must be one or the other.
Here we are, the two of us together,
and I don’t believe I’ve ever felt so lost—
or so lonely.

GIACOMO.
Have you never felt it before—
this loneliness that must be shared by two?
It is the bitterest loneliness of all—
and also the loveliest.

CONSTANZE.
It’s sad—so sad.
Soon we’ll forget—all this ever happened—
this—this warmth of the brandy in our throats,
this yeasty aroma of fresh-baked stories,
the taste and—and tempo of our words—
this moment will die.

GIACOMO.
As all moments must and shall.
That is what moments are for,
to abide and then to perish,
and thank God for it.
We breathe, and then surrender every breath.
We light a candle, and we snuff it with a pinch of dampened fingers.
So it is with our lives, yours and mine and everybody’s.
A life without death would not be worth living.
Death is what gives life meaning, gives it …

CONSTANZE.
Shape?

GIACOMO.
The very thing.
Death is the boundary that holds us back
from formlessness and void.

CONSTANZE.
My husband makes things that live forever.

GIACOMO.
Then he must be a fool.
I myself am writing my own life story,
from beginning to end—
my joys and sorrows,
masterstrokes and blunders,
triumphs and debacles,
feats of magic, feats of fraud,
mortifications manifold and glories ever-fleeting,
and, oh yes, ladies, ladies, ladies—
in dozens of volumes, thousands of pages, millions of words—
and my greatest fear is that I’ll die
before I get the chance to burn them all,
every last scrap of ink on paper,
unread by any living soul …

—Wim

Now it’s called hybrid—

Writing creatively, based on thinking creatively, can take a lot of different forms. When Wim and I tell stories together, we might have fiction, nonfiction, scripts, quotes from other sources, images, all bundled together as the story unfolds. The arrangement of those parts contributes a way of thinking about it all.

We’re delighted to have just such a story, “Humans,” published this month in Prime Number Magazine. We found our way to them by submitting to journals who say they’re interested in “hybrid” writing. Although the definitions vary, that’s generally defined as a mixture of genres, sometimes with images and materials from other sources.

When we started our newsletter that became our first published novel, we included everything that seemed to contribute to the story and to thinking about the story. Reviewers referred to The Jamais Vu Papers as a “playful romp” and it was eventually identified as “postmodern” and as “metafiction.”

Since then, our storytelling style has faced some difficulties. Competitions usually have a list of fixed genres to choose from and jurors often specify that they’re looking for a “consistent voice.” A few years back, one juror explained a rejection by commenting that authors really had to “get over” including sections in play script format. (Actually quite a lot of authors have mixed their genres for a long time. Perhaps those “authorities” never read Moby-Dick.)

It’s great to have an authentic style defined for that part of the work we’re doing now.
Pat

Here on this fleck among the uncountable stars something takes form, eventually to wonder why we are and what to each other.

Those words, my most-often-used artist statement, are about the wonder of life existing at all and how we experience it and what we are to do with it. My fiber works are often a direct expression of the enigma of life itself, and variations on these issues permeate all of my work. The books that Wim and I write deal with the same questions in one way or another.

We just finished hanging an exhibit of my work at the Carrboro ArtsCenter, up through the end of March. Here’s the main area.

Below is the wall of my illustrations for our book pages.

Another wall features small works.

Some closeups on my art page: https://playsonideas.com/pats-artworks/

Pat

How long does it take to make an artwork?

A lifetime at least. More than that because so much is double-timed, images and words running parallel to every ordinary day, fading in and out of the corners of the mind while everything else goes on—a lifetime of double-timing between those moments of sharp intensity while the focus is entirely on the work.

Whether a simple-seeming splash of color or a living line, a brushstroke or plunges of some sharp tool … whether stitching in space or dancing in it, writing words or singing them, or bringing pure sounds into a void … the thing taking form depends on everything lived so far and imagined yet to come.

Life Forms, Eventually to Wonder
Linen and cotton yarns, handmade paper, river stones, bone beads, on a wrapped tree branch, 36 in H x 48 in. W x 17 in. deep.
An expression of my most-often-used artist’s statement: Here on this fleck among the uncountable stars something takes form, eventually to wonder why we are and what to each other.

I worked on this piece over several years, off and on and, of course, double-time. Stitchery is a very slow means of expression, so the thing itself is likely to grow a lot between concept and final form. This old needlelace technique works to create surfaces in the air and handmade paper is yet another way of making something that wasn’t there before. I like stones for their compositional value but especially because stones are ancient in our world and always seem to have something to say on their own.

— Pat

Why do artists …?

Working in isolation and without an ordinary outlet seems to be uncomfortable to lots of people, but might be more familiar for artists and writers. Why have we been doing that kind of thing for so long? The question reminded me of an essay from some years back that took the form of a conversation among people waiting for an art class to begin, as told by a first-person narrator. It was the only piece accepted for this anthology that was told in a creative form.

Here are some lines from the ending of my essay “Reveyesed I’s,” written for the publication Creativity:

Just as Roger and Rose Ellen are leaving together, Roger turns back and looks at Marie. “Why did they persist? Why do you?” he asks.

“What?” asks Marie.

“Why do artists insist on making art, without pay or recognition?” Roger asks.

“Why is art made, when the artist is no longer employed to fill the needs of church or king? Why, when there are no animals to be entranced, no hunting spells to weave by firelight deep beneath the earth? When images can more quickly be made by other means?” the model chants.

“When there is no clear use for what they do?” Roger asks.

“The artist needs to get the intuitions of the mind outside, and see what they look like. Or hear what they sound like,” Marie answers.

“Thoughts grow and change as they emerge. The process of getting the images down is a process of knowing them better. It’s a way of coming to terms with the shifting and expanding nature of reality,” the model says.

“What does creativity have to do with reality?” Kay asks.

“I think that the relationship of art to reality lies in the creative act itself. It’s not in the images or other results produced. The creation of images is part of the learning process, not something carried out after it,” says Marie.

“Just for themselves, then?” asks Roger.

“Oh, no. The response of others adds to the meaning. When readers and viewers make their own meanings, they are also involved in the process,” says Marie. …

“But what does all of that have to do with living in the real world?” Kay asks.

“It is by focusing on the process of creating works of art, and by drawing the viewer into that process, that our arts represent the real world. They reflect the way that we function in that world,” says the model. She returns to her place among the still-life items.

The model sits still for a long moment, then shifts her position. She speaks slowly, “‘No longer to receive ready-made a world completed, full, closed upon itself, but on the contrary to participate in a creation, to invent in his turn the work and the world, and thus to learn to invent his own life.’” She says nothing more. But that last, I am sure, was a quote from Robbe-Grillet. I shall have to look it up.

Marie nods. She gets slowly to her feet and gathers up her belongings. “My grandson is coming for me after class. But that’s still a long time off.”

“I’ll give you a ride home,” says Karen.

“Are there artists now, discovering?” asks Olivia.

“I hope so. I trust there must be,” says Marie. Once more, we glimpse through her glasses the multiple lights reflecting off her eyes.

Karen and Marie go out together. Kay and Olivia remain for a short time, talking quietly. Am I mistaken, or do I see there a slight glitter, a hint of a change in the eyes?

Then they, too, go out into the dark.

(See our Books and Downloads page for the whole essay.)

Pat