Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Long Way 'Round

First off, I must say that... forty days?  What was I thinking? 

And now, back to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

The house John and I bought, ten years ago yesterday, on St. Joseph's Day in 2002, is at the very edge of a little neighborhood between Seton Hall University, to our west, and the Vailsburg section of Newark, east of us.  We are so close to Newark, in fact, that the border between South Orange and Newark runs at a long diagonal, down through our driveway.  Meaning that, technically speaking, when the cars are parked up near the back door, they're in South Orange.  But as we back down onto Sinclair Terrace, we obliquely enter Newark, left rear bumper first, until we're completely in that troubled city when it's time for us to decide which way we're going next.

I'm not sure if our neighbors across the street have a similar predicament -- if there's any border irregularity for them, I think it only involves a maple tree and some arborvitae.  The neighbor across the street, John Carter (yes!  Back from Mars for a limited engagement!), is also an artist, and we have been sharing a work/storage space (heavy emphasis on storage) in some unnamed section of Newark, near the train tracks and the eruption of Route 78, at the end of the McCarter Highway.  John Carter actually does work in the space -- welding his stop-light sign chairs, or his boxing glove chairs, and then muscling them up through the trap door to the parking lot, and then... off to some happy new owner. 

As for me though, I don't think I've done one single bit of work in that space in all the time we've shared it -- aside from cleaning the bathroom, that is.  I had the best of intentions, but the multiple 'water events' which we've experienced here in our basement (and, actually, in the work/storage space as well...) have made it necessary for me simply to haul stuff over there, and more or less dump it wherever it seems that whatever it is won't fall over, whenever the next bad thing happens. 

My intentions regarding the space had always been good, of course (the next fifty miles of the Highway to Hell brought to you by... guess who?), but among other disincentives, the drive to get there, using the only route I knew at the time, was so unpleasant.  Even though it's only about a four mile drive, the stretch of South Orange Avenue, connecting my basement studio here to that basement storage space there, makes for a dreadful, congested and irritating commute.  I actually began taking a much longer route, just because it wasn't quite so grim, and I could expect to go over 25 miles an hour for minutes at a time.  On the way back, too tired to care, I didn't mind taking the aggravating option.

Last year, though, I had a six-month residency, at an artist-run space right on Market Street, virtually in the center of the center of Newark.  And that commute down South Orange Avenue really started to grate.  Once, due to some traffic tie-up near the Court House, I was forced to find an alternate escape, so I could get back home, and... voila!  The beginning of a new driving experience...

I had actually found a relatively direct, relatively untraveled itinerary, on wide streets, with only three traffic lights -- what a revelation!  Now, this is the approach of choice, when, for instance, I take Dr. Sheridan to Newark Penn Station.  Or when I want to get to that sump of desolation that is my share of the basement studio in the part of Newark so desolate that realtors haven't come up with an enticing name for it yet.

And this alternate way, through Vailsburg, across the Garden State Parkway, up past a suspicious-looking park, and then down South 15th Avenue (I think), is really what I've wanted to get to, in this digressive little memoir.  Lately, perhaps because of the light on a particular day, or because my anti-depressants were actually working for once, I've been intrigued by the visual experience of passing through this part of a town I barely know.  I've begun seeing some of the more monumental buildings in a new light -- as modern-day equivalents of van Gogh's Yellow House, for instance.  The big drug store.  The splendid 19th-century brick school house.  A beige, one-story bank, just below the crest of a hill, that looks as though it's being swallowed by the street. 

I find myself appreciating some juxtapositions of signage -- Newark, in black, next to Euphoria, in bright yellow; a dead red warehouse, with a faded 'Available' trying to entice an unwary buyer -- or the way an entire low brick building seems to have a distinct, consistent color palette -- I can almost smell the oil paint I'd mix, to get just that violet-grey-brown...

And the streets themselves -- because of the hills, and the width of the streets, the patched and pot-holed greys and blacks of the asphalt, mounding at a crest, stretch up, and seem to push the bordering buildings apart.  I've begun to suspect that, if I were to pay just a bit more attention -- if I were, for instance, to stop and, oh I don't know, take a freakin' picture? -- I might actually find something worth...

Painting.

Oh God, not again.  The great struggle that won't go away.  As I may have mentioned, I firmly believe that the only reason I can make sculpture is because it didn't occur to my family of origin to tell me that I couldn't.  Painting, however, is another matter.  As I know I've said, I'm allowed to buy all the paint I want -- as long as I don't actually use it.  Kind of like my food dilemma, but with a heavier psychic cost, I think.

It wasn't always like this, though.  There was a period, just before my brothers were brought home from the orphanage the first time, when I was able to spend hours, in a basement room, listening to one of two 45 rpm records I had, Liebestraum and Clair de Lune, over and over again, as I... painted.  I actually had a commission from a high school friend, and for the princely sum of $5, I painted this fun scenario: a disembodied horse's head, gleaming gold, floating in air above a desolate beach, populated by one long bare sword lying on the wet sand, and with green-yellow storm clouds gathering on the horizon.  Oh, and there was blood coming from the horse's neck.  I was twelve.  I also did two small panels, with what I guess would be surrealistic imagery -- a kitten walking a tightrope over a gaping abyss, with two eyes hovering above, glaring at the viewer.  I forget what the other one was.  My father seemed intrigued by these, and said he wanted to take them to show the psychiatrist my brothers were seeing, just before they were to be sent away again.  (I wanted desperately to see that psychiatrist too, but wasn't allowed)  I was thrilled that my dad showed any interest at all in what I was doing, and I was eager to hear what the therapist had to say.  I heard nothing about the paintings, and never saw them again.

Even while I was in the military, I managed to do some oil painting, along with my work with charcoal, and whatever else I felt I could get away with in such an unsupportive environment.  I'm not sure any of the work was much good -- I'm not sure I even finished anything.  But somehow, I had the internal permission, at least for a while.

I think it was in college, when I discovered theater work, that the old internalized prohibitions began to resurrect themselves.  I was urged to 'make a choice', the implication being that I couldn't possibly make visual art and act in plays in the same lifetime.  I tried weaning myself of art making, but I only got sick.  And if I wasn't acting in a play, I would have to be taking a stagecraft class -- which meant hours on end, working for free, making things I wasn't interested in, and which would be destroyed in two weeks anyway.  I'd rather learn lines and blocking.

But back to today, and to Newark's swollen streets and visually arresting devastation.  I think I want, once again, to paint.  I'm terrified that I'm always fooling myself, as to the quality of the work I make.  I'm so vain, that I think it would all but kill me, to discover that I had begun making pathetic old man paintings -- the things people do when there's nothing else left.  I'm afraid I don't remember what I used to know (well, I do recall the 'fat over lean' rule); I dread having to confront whatever I might be able to produce, if I'm able to produce anything at all.

And I always dreamed of being an artist.  (I have a former teaching colleague who was a bit more specific: she says she always wanted to be a FAMOUS artist.  Which, as a matter of fact, she now is.  I knew there was something I was leaving out)  A really good artist.  But I feel tired these days, and demoralized.  And of course, there's the Death Flu to take into consideration.  I feel that it's too late. And then, even if I should manage to overcome these internal barriers, I'm still stuck, not only with the old 'don't you dare' implant, but also with this Gordian conundrum -- I  must always work very very diligently, and must be excellent at what I do, and I must always fail.

Well, if I were my own student, I would say this: take it easy, go at your own pace, but push through the discomfort, and do exactly what it is that you're afraid of.

Today, John lent me his little digital camera.   I could keep it in the car, and maybe I'll take some photos of these odd urban contours, while I'm stuck at a light?  And then...  Stranger things have happened.  Or so I'm told.

©   2012       Walter Zimmerman    
    

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