That tiny blue dot is Earth as seen from Voyager 1, 4 billion miles away.
I've been confused most my life. There was a brief time, around the age 19 or 20, that I had what one might call a real moral structure to guide most of my thinking about justice and ethics and so forth. From that window, I could see how the world had gone off track, how it had veered into the wrong. I could identify the parties that made it do so (capitalists, mainly -- being the socialist that I was back then). I could probably even name the men whose actions had turned the world from the just and verdant place I knew it could be. And because I could pinpoint the causes (all the causes) with a certainty I now find naive and maybe even stupid, I could also prescribe certain remedies. Step-by-step instructions on "How to Fix the Ills of the World, pt. 1."
Now, as you probably could already tell, I have no idea. Though I still (kinda) have a system of ethics, it's mostly just a bunch of vague notions and even those are riddled with holes. All the tiny bits of information that surround and support it are unstable, even volatile. I can't seem to know anything. I've accidentally slipped into a kind of moral relativism, which drives myself and everyone else nuts. Everything I know, all those bits of shit lying here and there about my brain, look different every time I give them a passing glance. They shift positions and color and size and blah blah. So my "system of ethics" is really just a big pile of unanswered and unanswerable questions -- which, someone could argue, rules out my "system" from being considered ethics at all.
Maybe the question is stupid, but whenever I've been asked something along the lines of, What is creativity? my mind immediately conjures images of children finger painting or throwing glitter at smears of Elmer's glue, making cotton-ball clouds and tapping them in a ziti sky. And maybe, after those images pass, I'll see an image of an art gallery or museum or something. But the childhood images always come first. And while those images don't, in the least bit, answer the question of creativity, childhood is probably a good place to start the discussion (and this essay). This, like most other things, is where creativity is learned. For this short period of time, the only real, intellectual goal for a child is to figure out what exists and what is possible. So, because they are just kids and there are no real consequences to this kind of day dreaming, there are no limits imposed on these experiments, and because of the lack of limits, creativity and imagination, that two-headed dancing beast, can rear their heads and run wild with every insignificant thing it finds.
But despite having my own ideas about creativity, I find myself drawn to the theories of others: hypothesis about what it is/what it means, interviews with artists/writers/chefs about where these ideas come from and the processes that evoke them.
Lately, there have been not a few articles by neurologists of different stripes hoping to nail down exactly what process in the brain cause one, when confronted by a problem, to find a unique and creative way out of the situation. While interesting for purely intellectual reasons, these scientific explanations seem to be little more than a man scratching at bark to find the nature of a tree. It's true, he may very well find something (a bug eating at the wood, for instance), but the essential nature of the tree will remain hidden. It could be that the essential nature of the thing will always remain hidden, is a thing beyond our limited mind, and may not even be a thing that exists, just a word that attempts to stop time, to freeze a moment in the metaphysical lab of the mind, tries to examine the world in order to develop true generalities from a specific. But by the time anything is gleaned from these experiments they have already spoiled and turned false. The moment has irrevocably passed and everything has changed.
Not to brag, but being a pretty famous neurologist in my own right, I have my own conception of what happens in the brains of truly creative people:
To find the spot where creativity happens, you must get past the bogs of last night's binge drinking, past the screens looping, repressed memories from childhood, to the places where the these experiences have swept though and left smoldering piles of rubble. There you will find large swaths of circuitry ruined. Disconnected wires flailing about like loose fire hoses, spraying bits of information in places they have no earthly right to be. There strange piles of images and phrases and ideas combine in large, rank compost heaps. In theses heaps, disparate tidbits collect from years of seeing and hearing, combine into an amalgamation all their own, combine and (if your prayers are said earnestly, and the muse is disposed to smile kindly) come out of that pile of shit looking brand new.
After these strange chemical reactions comes the truly audacious aspect of the creative arts, where what Liz Diller (video above) calls naivete. The element of naivete seems just as important as the creative act itself. Having the naivete to believe that theses strange amalgamations mean something, are important. The naivete to believe that these divergent stimuli can be magnetized and attracted to one another in a way that is interesting, in a way that doesn't just make you look crazy. And, most importantly, having the naivete to believe that the connections, these new amalgamations, will make a sweet enough sound to attract other people, an audience, a public. That people will, and do care to listen, to see, this new world that was just, a moment ago, created from nothing, from everything.
For a bunch more interviews in this vain, by the filmmaker Doug Aitken, click here. I strongly suggest the interview with architect David Adjaye, and, oh, there are also interviews with Beck and Jack White that are quite pleasant as well.
So I killed this mouse. It was cute. It jumped and ran in circles. It stopped and sniffed the air. It was bug-eyed and tiny. It was a mouse. It was a fool. Now it’s dead.
I knew the mouse only for a very short period of time, but in that time I could tell all those things. Not that I paid it much mind myself. I got most of that from the brief period of indecision, the lull so that my girlfriend could ooh and ahh and say baby words to it before it died. And even then, while my girlfriend babbled non-words to a shitlessly scared mouse, I spent in thought of how it might die.
Once I decided… it was brutal – really, it was just bad– but it was also (if I might say so myself) humane (more on this later). But before I get into the details and series of events that resulted in this mouse’s demise, I first want to relate a story. This is the origin story of this essay.
So as I just said, I killed the mouse. It happened as we were on our way to bed. It popped its little mouse head out from behind some toilet paper rolls. My girlfriend screamed, panicked, pushed me in the room with the mouse, closed the door behind us, and there we all were, trapped. My girlfriend and I standing on tall things so as to protect our feet, I guess – I don’t really understand this reaction – and the mouse searching frantically, from corner to corner, side to side, for a hole that didn’t exist. Then I killed it (again, details to come), brushed my teeth, locked the front door and went to bed.
Early last week I had a brief meeting with a colleague for reasons so boring that I won’t bother committing them to print, but we met outside the University of Baltimore where he briefly went to law school until he was drafted to Vietnam. Before we finally shook hands he left me with an antidote about his time at UB: “It was around 1964. I just started law school. My first lecture class had about 140 students in it. It was in a big room. Then someone went and started a war. By the time I was drafted there were only 30 of us left. The room was empty… It was a lot different back then.”
It’s hard not to compare such a story to the general effect the Iraq War had on our generation. I was in college throughout “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” and can’t say it affected my life much, save the slight trickle of disturbing statistics and images peppering the political hyperbole that we call news. I must admit, it took some effort to remain conscious that these numbers represented real things, people, and were not just quotes from the stat sheet of a professional Call Of Duty gamer.
And this is where Justin Sirois’ new novel, “Falcons on the Floor,” comes into play. It is another reminder that there were people on the other side of that TV, that there were people on the other side of those guns. People who did in fact have lives that got all fucked up cause someone went and started a war.
"Falcons on the Floor" (Publishing Genius Press), $12 from PGP's website. Justin will also be reading from his new book tomorrow, March 26th @ Worms (Metro Gallery).
Artichoke Haircut: Why don’t we start this off with a stock question… Why do you write?
Justin Sirois: That’s a tough question. I feel like I have so many motivations to write. If I didn’t have a creative outlet, I know I’d be in huge trouble – I’d either be doing something dangerous to myself or others. Writing expels a lot of my anxieties and energy. So yeah, it’s a healthy practice and without it I’d be absolutely lost. I also love creating stories and characters. It’s always happened naturally for me. As a kid, I’d make up weird characters – monsters and aliens and whatever – and I’d draw and act them out, talking out loud and probably making an ass of myself.
Art thou pale for weariness?
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, --
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
I’m not exactly sure what it says about man, that he is always looking for something beyond himself, something greater than his surroundings? It could be that this question springs from, as La Rochefoucauld said, the fact that we can neither look the sun nor death directly in the face? And what does it say about the human race that we must mythologize these forces, and every force, for that matter, we do not understand. What manic insecurity we must have that we find it necessary to make up fantastical stories in order to escape from the thoughts born of those treacherously quiet moments, those moments that otherwise would be filled with thoughts of the smallness we feel pushing us into the ground, only to be mocked by the stars and the growing night?
It is impossible that one with even a tangential interest in modern culture has not suffered through a conversation on the power of language, a topic discussed ad nauseam in political discourse, academia, literary circles, theology, blah blah blah. Yet what is little discussed outside the arts (and esoteric, modern philosophy -- hi, Derrida), is what the desire to speak says about the human condition. We find it necessary to cognitively coral things within our experience, yet beyond another's, so that through speech they may indeed experience it. The human animal finds its own reality so endlessly fascinating, or unbearably terrifying, that it is impossible not to blather on about it, no matter who is or is not listening. What else explains the constant speaking into the void that is Twitter?
I could ramble on and on about Popa's use of myth, folklore, surrealism, etc. I could talk about the humor and sly intelligence which springs out of his deceivingly simple poems. I could talk about his use of repetition and cliché . But these labels and explanations would do little but distract attention from the man's voice. Instead I'll just let the 'lame wolf' poet from Serbia say it, and hopefully you will see it for yourselves:
It isn't that I dislike religious imagery in poetry, it's just that a part of my brain rebels and fights and screams whenever I hear it. It takes a bit of work and an excellent poet to crack through that prejudice and make me listen. Hopkins does, and his poem "God's Grandeur" shows the reader the wonder this planet can instill if carefully observed. He pulls you from ephemeral beauty into the blear of humanities' devastation of their environment. Yet there is no "the end is nigh" in this poem. With a touch of grace he pulls you out of the mortal tragedy in time to show you it's eminent rejuvenation. Such is the hope of religion I guess. Lets hope he's right:
God's Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
