Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
Reveries
4.1999 I have not been formally educated or workshop trained in the art of writing. What I relate about art and the creative process springs out of my experience as a literary art contributor, through which I was and still am driven purely by instinct.
When I was around four or five years of age, I collected fine linen paper out of the forward and aft leaves of the books on my mother's bookshelves. I stored them in a safe place, and occasionally scribbled mimic writing, something important on one or two.
When I was about twelve years old, I wrote a piece for my grandmother while staying with her during a summer. I gave it to her, and she asked me what it was. She was a very strict Catholic. I sensed her grave concern about my preoccupation with the aesthetic, and said "Free verse," which seemed to defuse her. I wrote throughout my childhood and young adult years. Untold number of alliterations on napkin offerings were left for young flowery maidens serving coffee. I wrote with the same unconscious involuntary movement of breathing air or drinking water. I certainly never thought it would become something that I would take as seriously as my body needs water and air.
Artists may be viewed over a spectrum between the pursuit of an objective on the left and the subjective on the right. At the extreme left is 'commercial art,' for which the art is executed exclusively in terms of the client, customer, or fan; its intent is to please..a client, a customer, or fan.
In the middle of the spectrum is 'social art' for which an artist envisions a cause, a theory, and an effect on a reading audience. This involves knowledge of the reading audience, and some subjective elements of style of the artist; its intent is to inspire society about a vision.
Slightly to the right of social art is 'communal art,' in which, through workshop mashinations, signature individualistic qualities become tempered, smoothed, or otherwise compromised through a process of peer critique; its intent is to establish the comfort and support of an artistic community.
And finally, to the extreme right is 'subjective art,' where art is executed exclusively in terms of the artist..the consummate individualist who is concerned only with his or her own sensibilities and its expression..for which, innovation or invention, when necessary, may often be the means to its end. The subjective artist allows only him or herself to criticize the work and judge its success; its intent, on the path of the mythic Phoenix, is self expression, self revelation, death and transfiguration, and simultaneous re'birth.
A great deal of creativity springs from my experience as a subjective artist. Integrating the creative process into one's life is to adopt it as a lifestyle. Those experiences that lead to understanding and wisdom or those beauteous visions or sensations that became obsessive with itself and deeply possessive of the artist became transformed into treasured objects embodied in words. What would otherwise remain subconscious and isolated finds context, relevance, and relationship. What was dark and made bright, was brought to light, and in that instant, a simultaneous death and re'birth of the artist brings for the artist, new color and vigor. The sensation of re'birth, great or small, is commensurate with the sensation of death, and for these epiphanies, the art cannot have any responsibilities, such as fame, fortune, or even a little bread and butter on the table...utterly, no responsibilities other than what it owes to itself.
Through the execution of the craft until the work's sense and essence is better apprehended, the artist passionately invites death and transfiguration. Through each transfiguration, a treasured object is obtained. The treasured object is maintained, it is polished through a process of refinement over years. Some take years, some don't. The refinement, however, never completely embodies what was conceived. It only approaches..like a hapless point on a hyperbolic curve approaching its asymptote. An artist works, knowing the hopelessness of it, but nevertheless works undaunted to breathe life into it.
However treasured a work of art may become, each becomes a part of the subjective artist's collective. In the process of creating art, what a subjective artist treasures most, eventually becomes most emotionally removed, enough so that such extremes of aesthetics or trauma do not remain a part of the artist's a'cognitive collective. The subjective artist evolves onward.
Endurance of great angst is required with only a poor resource of a million'and'one words and even poorer ability to use them in the futile attempt to capture the beatitudes or trauma'inspired enlightenments. Great effort is required in the pursuit of converting such emotional ecstasies or liabilities into treasured objects of composition. Both efforts require two hands...one with an intent of 'do or not do,' and another with 'infinite patience.'
The subjective artist, being subjective with a reading audience solely of him or her self, all, and everyone, does not invite criticism, but does welcomes comments from anyone who was prose'd or moved to thought or feeling. Criticism is tolerated; never invited, nor accepted.
The subjective artist always has an open invitation for anyone to encounter his or her art because one always remembers that art springs from the living environment within which one lives, and therefore, somewhere in that environment is the proper place for it to reside. Art is always a celebration of life, and it is natural to want to share that celebration, however subjective that celebration may be.
