Friday, June 17, 2005

Years ago, in a different life, and several complete cell generations ago, I had a collection of poems by Richard Brautigan entitled "The Pill Versus the Spring Hill Mining Disaster". I read it aloud, several times over, to my mother in her last weeks. I will always be glad I did.
I remember many details about the experiences---the smell of flowers, the wind blowing the curtains, the sound of her laughter. I remember very little about the poems, except that they were raw and funny and kicked us right where it hurts.
The collection's title came from one poem that likened unfertilized eggs to miners trapped under the earth.

It's stayed with me for all this time and tends to come to mind when I think of unrealized ideas. All those good ones that slip by because there aren't enough hours in the day or days in the week or dollars in the budget to bring them to fruition. I think I've said before that I believe that the sculpture I make on Tuesday morning won't be the same as the one I make on Saturday night, even if it's an idea I came up with the previous Sunday. I've learned that usually, if I don't do the work while the idea is fresh, I'm better off letting it go.
I try not to think of them as buried. I can see them better as snowflakes--each unique, each beautiful. You can capture one, but most blow past in the blink of an eye. Maybe someone else will catch those. Maybe they're gone forever. Thing is, once we think them, they are part of us.
But then, in the words of Batman "...It is not who you are inside, but what you do that defines who you are."

No matter what you've felt, or thought, or seen in your deepest visions, no matter if these things tore you apart and put you back together differently, no one will ever see the work you didn't do.

7 comments:

bwhawk said...

Lisa, that is an incredible concept; I'm not sure whether it is something to fear or to rejoice. However, your statement at the end of your post is truly beautiful. Would you mind if I held onto that and quoted you someday?

lisa said...

Brandon, it's a message. I'd be grateful for you to help carry it. Thank you.

K said...

That's one of the things that tortures me late at night... that I won't make the time to do the things I really want to do.

vandaluna said...

Hello Lisa,

I remember your statement about the sculpture you make on Tuesday...

I almost commented last time you said it, but didn't really feel that my voice was necessary or needed at the time.

So, you've said it again.

Funny thing... I always feel as if I am not the same today as I was yesterday...that I even look different today than I ever looked before. I do not see myself as a consistent personality at all, almost to the point where I don't exist in the physical but more exist only in the ethereal. (I did say "almost"). Once, however, about 15 years ago, I picked up something I did as a child (7 or 8?) and was stunned to see the message I disseminating at the time was the same message which concerned me years before. Now, every once in a while, I still get those glimpses into the who I am that is me and the underlying consistencies I never knew existed. I am somewhat happy for the continuity of which I was unaware, but I still feel different everyday (maybe that is the magic at work?)

vanda

Anonymous said...

I'm having those dreams again, the ones with the monkey, that evil grinning bastard with the cymbals. Not sure what that means, the last time I was 14 and Lisa was still woking in a garage/studio overlooked by the Goat-Man's apartments. I would bring her coffee but half the time she would dip her brushes in it and drink the paint thinner. How easily the words and memories flow when the cerveza has been refilled a few times. But I digress. The monkey, that evil monkey. I always wonder about it. What does it mean? Those cymbals clap clap clapping, what does it mean mom?

lisa said...

To "monkey":Dreams are tricky. Sometimes they don't mean anything. Sometimes they mean every single thing you put into them.
My therapist once told me that every single persona in my dreams represents some part of me. That all our dreams are about only us. That, in dreams, only ourselves exist.
I'm not sure I buy that whole program, but sometimes it would explain a lot. Lay off the sauce. I MEAN IT.

Carl V. Anderson said...

Great ideas Lisa. I've been thinking about passed ideas over the last few months and you very succintly summed up some great ideas regarding this. I love the snowflakes analogy. And the Batman quote makes it all extra fun while driving the point home. Thank you very much!