I wrote those words a few months ago, at a time of creative uncertainty during which  the familiar artistic paths had ceased seeming fruitful.  I was considering a return to electronic composition.  But whereas years ago I prided myself on being a purist, working from abstract number relations and piling up sine waves to create original sounds "from the inside out,” I had newly become  attracted to the idea of recording samples - a bell, a train's horn, the wind, a voice - and manipulating them (as it says above, such that what remains is both unrecognizable and wholly contingent).  

At the same time I was struggling with such musical issues I had also reached a dead end in painting (doubtless to Sue's relief, though she had never quite had the heart to complain over the past three years as I spattered paint on myself, my clothes, our furniture, or to discourage me from what she must have seen as the doomed efforts of a novice to create art without experience, training, or a hint of talent in his first fifty years on the planet.  Never
comfortable with a brush, I would scrape, dribble, fling and smear paint in the general direction of the canvas; once I even resorted to stomping on the paint with both feet, like Odysseus in the cave of the Cyclops - all this in the twin hopes of circumventing my technical ineptitude and facilitating a kind of  controlled aleatory.).

The story of how I got sidetracked into painting in the first place, the strange tale of a man accosted in midlife by what you might call seismic eruptions in the unconscious for which his musical instinct had no adequate response - this story has been told elsewhere, and I will not rehearse it here - except to admit that Dionysus got the upper hand of Apollo so that Sue found that, rather suddenly, she was no longer cohabitating with Mr. Neat but with his dark
twin, Mr. Messy.

But - don't get confused - that was some years ago, and now, I mean, more recently, the shifts in my musical interests have been mirrored in my visual art activities: I've become an enthusiastic amateur photographer,and spend my idle time quietly taking snapshots and reworking the images in the solitude of my computer: once again, Apollo reigns triumphant in my heart, Mr. Neat in my home.

Now as I see it, there are three steps to an artistic photo.  First you need to find an object - something existing outside your private thoughts, not an abstract idea, not something that emerges gradually as the hand and the mind explore color and space, but a tangible thing (as, perhaps, you might find strolling along a quiet beach: a sun-bleached buoy, a small pebble, a piece of driftwood, gnarled and worn).  In my estimation such an object is not yet
art, it just is.

Second, you need to make a photograph of this object, a photograph which is not the thing itself, but an image of the thing: it possesses neither texture nor depth, but suggests these qualities.  And neither do I consider this yet to be art, this mere image of the object.  But if it's less real it's more malleable.

And that leads to the third step, wherein the photo is altered, just like the recorded sound samples - either with subtle provocation or beyond recognition.  You find something, you photograph it, and you change it.

Or maybe (the thought crossed my mind one day), instead of utilizing found objects, I can resurrect and redeem those paintings  I recklessly brought into being - those  paintings whose existence has become for me a daily source of emotional turmoil  and discomfort!  

In either case, I imagine this shift in interest (from the abstract and timeless toward what's "incomplete, imperfect, impermanent" as the Japanese say) has to do with getting older, as I've come to recognize those qualities in my work and in my self.  But it seems to me that this urge to metamorphose is evidence of a positive, creative impulse which apprehends objects not only as auguries of dissolution but as beginnings, as raw material, as bearers of potential
for rejuvenation when they come in contact with the imagination.

Now I am aware that, in today's world the average twelve year old has both the technology and the savvy to construct the kind of picture I am describing (cropping and zooming, filtering and re-coloring).  But does he have the taste of an artist, can he do it well?  Or do such questions betray an outdated manner of thinking?  I often get the suspicion lately that, both in music and in art, the old aesthetic categories are becoming less valid:  We've always
assumed that if something were easy to do it couldn't have much worth, that there is a connection between labor (think of Beethoven) and achievement  (or Michelangelo).  But if the new technology liberates us from the need painstakingly to develop skills, is this really "cheating"?  It's only a matter of time, I think, before developments in genetic engineering transport us beyond the realm of competition in areas such as intelligence and athleticism.   What will it mean then to be "smart" or "healthy"?  

Or beautiful, as in a beautiful photograph?  Are my pictures beautiful?  Even to say they fail would hold out the hope of such a condition.  

I find them, at least, intriguing, and enjoy them in a strangely disinterested way.  In their contemplation I suffer none of the trauma parents endure watching their children, or poets, painters and musicians their progeny.  Hell, it's not mine anyway - neither the object found nor the pre-packaged, thus impersonal, means by which I transform it, hence there's a distance between it and me, and this allows for a somewhat detached appreciation.

But if the old categories are breaking down, perhaps such art opens up new ways of understanding.  If, for instance, you see only Green Pumpkin, you might not recognize its source.  In that case you'd be enjoying (or not enjoying) the image in the way one experiences abstract art.  But if you see Green Pumpkin in a sequence of related pumpkin images (some more, some less traceable, so many variations on a theme), then your attention would be divided between the desire to locate meaning (Ah, it's a pumpkin with the
color changed!) and your instinct for pleasure in the perception of abstract design (Ooh, how nice - green!).  Needless to say, once you start presenting images in calculated arrangements, the possibilities for fruitful ambiguities increase.

It is not lost on me that the trajectory of my artistic development bears a resemblance (in a miniature, belated, modest way) to the course of art history in the 20th century.  My efforts in painting relied on intuition and spontaneous inspiration, were fired by a search for the sublime and ineffable, and were grounded in the hope of something like self-discovery - all of which can be traced to the worldview of Abstract Expressionism, according to which the
value of a work increases in proportion to its originality.  But the referential nature of my new photo-work, along with its breezy acceptance of technological virtuosity, relate it to Pop-Art and the Post-Modern world of uncertain values and humorous ambiguities.  Or am I just getting lazy, losing my edge, even my marbles?

In any case I know myself well enough at least to suspect that all of this may be temporary, that it may  only be  a matter of time before those Dionysian forces lurking in my unconscious gain ascendancy and overthrow the cool Apollonian order than reigns at present in my mind and in my home.  Only  a matter of time before Mr. Neat is ousted by Mr. Messy whose angst-ridden spatterings will challenge Sue's patience anew.  But for the moment everybody's happy, and it's my hope to make the most of it.