The Art Spirit
As to your “method” of work try something different. Take a change from your little fragmentary life-studies on a 5-by-9 paper. Cast about a bit.
My advice to you is to venture, meet some other difficulties, be a real student.
Real students go off the beaten paths, whenever beaten by themselves or by others, and have adventure with the unknown.
There are few students in the schools. They are rare anywhere. And yet it is only the student who dares to take a chance, who has a real good time in life.
But remember that I say it is possible for you to follow your old method and have the adventures and come out all right. It’s altogether what your are able to get out of it.
Be sure that your decisions are really made by yourself. Decisions made by yourself may be of a nature unexpected. In other words, very few people know what they want, very few people know what they think. Many think and do not know it and many think they are thinking and are not thinking.
Self-education is no easy proposition.
Men either get to know what they want, and go after it, or some other persons tell them what they want and drive them after it.
I can’t tell you what you want to do, can’t lay any plans for you doing it. You must surprise me. I am not interested in your being the kind of regular fellow who tells me what I know before. The case is in your own hands. Get as acquainted with yourself as you can. Question yourself. After a while you may get some answers. They may surprise and shock you, but they will interest you. Maybe you will get so that you will begin to do things for yourself. It will be very fine when you can begin to serve yourself.
After all, your “method” of work is nothing. Why be tied to any method? You will say that when you step out of your rut you don’t do as well. But what does that matter? It may come better later. Anyway, don’t be a slave to a “method,” to a 5-by-9 piece of paper. Don’t be a slave either way. Ask yourself.
There is no school that will exactly fit you. There is no advice made just for your case. The air is full of advice. Every school is waiting, whether it is willing or not, for you to make it your school.
I do not know if this answer to your questions will be satisfactory to you, but it’s the most useful I can give.
Don’t let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.
Robert Henri, The Art Spirit 212-213 (1923)
It was a few moments after the show ended that I described Patti Smith as the anti Cat Power. The conditions at the State Theater were not really made for a rock show—it was a large, gilded proscenium stage. Someone from the audience shouted “ROCK AND ROLL” and Patti replied: “That’s up to you, now isn’t it?” She claimed that she felt like a movie up there, and spent a lot of time looking at the structured rows of seats that extended all the way to the front edge of the stage. Then she seemed to walk off in disgust. But the show wasn't over, it had just begun.
The band broke out into a Seeds cover, Pushin’ Too Hard. A few moments later, Patti appeared in the audience, near the center of the neatly rowed seats in the pit. Everyone got up and started to dance. She went on. It was a great show; most of the comments I’ve read about it just seem asinine—“better than you might think?” Why would you have a clue what your reader thinks? Who really cares about your opinion of her hat? The best thing to say about Patti Smith is that she is clearly comfortable in her own skin. She didn’t tell me what I knew before—she only occasionally followed formula (particularly in the closing number) and was thrilling to watch. No complaints worth noting, just moving on and doing her job as an entertainer.
Each person is responsible for their own experience— I wholeheartedly agree.
August 8, 2007 11:41 AM
