Paint (and Write) from the Shoulders

Ted Krever: Writing and other forms of torture Posted on by

This long weekend, I hope to spend some time at an exhibition of some early paintings by Richard Pousette-D’art.

 

I studied painting with Richard for one semester at Sarah Lawrence. He was a hulking man in a smock coat who always carried three identical pairs of heavy glasses on chains around his neck (and somehow always seemed to know which one he needed at the moment). He was the youngest of the New York School of Abstract Expressionists, a group that had included Jackson Pollock, Willem DeKooning and Clifford Still, among others.

Richard around the time I knew him

This was Sarah Lawrence in the 70’s. I don’t remember the class having set hours or any curriculum. The studio was open all day. You came in whenever you wanted, set up your canvas, easel  and paints and went at it. Some people barely showed up, some spent the day there. I came and went.

Richard stood at one long side wall, working on the same canvas the whole semester, as I remember it. It was a huge canvas that he was filling with a pointillist rendering of a carnival – ferris wheel, roller coaster, hot dog booths and shooting range. No details, just basic outlines in dots of primary colors. Too bright, too garish for my taste. No nuance at all. I thought the thing was stupid but he just kept at it, day after day, adding his little dots of simple color.

Worse than that, he did very little teaching that I could see. He would talk to students here and there, just a bit of conversation, and he was fully available whenever any of us sought him out with questions. But I’d been working for weeks, painting whatever came into my head, without more than a few words from him. I’d done a Van Gogh, a Monet, a couple of Picasso’s – not copies of real ones but my version of what those great painters would have done if they lived in my world with my level of talent.

All paintings by Richard Pousette-D'art

Finally, I came in one day and had no ideas, no one left to imitate. I stared at that empty canvas and started trying to paint, applying a little color and looking at the result and adding something else, totally at random, totally lost in the blank expanse.

I’d reached my level. I was at that horrible place where ambition suddenly meets untested, meager skills and I knew it. I put more paint on the brush but had no idea what to do with it.

Suddenly, I heard a rustling behind me and there was Richard grabbing me from behind.

“From the shoulder,” he said. “Paint from the shoulder. Try that.”

It took a moment for me to have any clue at all to what he was saying. I was holding up the brush in front of the canvas in my hand, same as I always did, ready to apply a little paint to the canvas, if I could only figure out just the right spot to put it. It was the only way I’d ever considered the physical act of painting. Why would using my shoulder make a difference?

The answer to that question came as soon as I tried it. First of all, I simply couldn’t just apply a little paint with my shoulder. There was no ‘just the right spot.’ As soon as I tried to paint with the shoulder, the whole canvas was a target. My movements by necessity had to be more expansive and suddenly I was seeing differently.

More to the point, I wasn’t thinking, just doing. I’d spent the first month or two teaching my hand to serve my conscious mind, to paint what I was thinking of, or as close to it as it could get to it. Painting from my shoulder, that connection was completely severed. My body was doing the painting, not my mind. I painted different. Freer, looser, more emotional, connected to me in a way my self-conscious self-protective thoughts and plans never could be.

Richard helped make me the writer I am, for better or worse. I have a totally chaotic process of finding a story. I try a million things, chasing a feeling, discarding lots of perfectly good threads because they feel conscious and artificial.  I am usually in total despair just before a novel starts coming together. And I’m not sure the results show any of the craziness I go through to get there.

But the idea for me is to get past my conscious plans and thoughts and try to bring each scene back to that first flash of unconscious, subconscious vision, the very first version that played out in my head. Because the unconscious knows everything, taps a level of existence that goes much deeper and wider than our puny, controlling thoughts. 

By the way, several years after I graduated, I went to an exhibition of Richard’s work at the Whitney Museum. And there was the carnival painting, the ferris wheel, the blocky booths in their primary colors – but now just a shimmer of life behind layer after pointillist layer of white paint. It was magical and one of my favorite pieces ever. Naturally, I can’t find that one online but I think you get my drift, just as I finally got Richard’s.

 

The Man Who Tried to Tell the Truth

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Vaclav Havel always interested me. Not too many writers become President of their country and then go back to writing. Havel wrote plays that were produced around the world, was arrested by the government of Communist Czechoslovakia, became leader of a non-violent revolution that toppled that government in the late 80’s and then became the last President of Czechoslovakia and the first of the Czech Republic once the country broke up.

Havel’s mantra in his writer days was ‘living in truth’ and his fellow citizens came to expect that of him. That adherence to simple truth eventually brought down the government that had imprisoned him.

He then became a politician and, predictably, things got more complicated. Harder to ‘live in truth’ when you’re constantly dealing with politicians. Shockingly, his reputation returned pretty quickly once he went back to being a writer after 14 years in power.

Anyway, I wanted to write something about his death but I’d rather simply quote the man. This is an excerpt of an article written for Foreign Affairs magazine in 1994, just four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. If it doesn’t describe the predicament in Europe and Washington today, I’ve missed the boat:

Havel with Dubcek, leader of 1968's 'Prague Spring'

 

‘Many years of living under communism gave us certain experiences that the non-communist West fortunately did not have to go through. We came to understand… that the only genuine values are those for which one is capable, if necessary, of sacrificing something…

‘The traditional values of Western civilization such as democracy, respect for human rights and for the order of nature, the freedom of the individual and the inviolability of his property, the feeling of co-responsibility for the world, which means the awareness that if freedom is threatened anywhere, it is threatened everywhere – all of these things became values with moral…underpinnings…

‘I have the impression that precisely this awareness is sadly lacking in the present-day West…Naturally, all of us continue to pay lip service to democracy, human rights, the order of nature and responsibility for the world, but apparently only insofar as it does not require any sacrifice…a willingness to sacrifice for the common interest something of one’s own particular interests, including even the quest for larger and larger domestic production and consumption.

‘The pragmatism of politicians who want to win the next elections, for whom the highest authority is therefore the will and the mood of a rather spoiled consumer society, makes it impossible for those people to be aware of the moral, metaphysical and tragic dimensions of their own programme.’

What’s worth asking ourselves, individually and collectively, is: What am I willing to give up to have a fairer, more just society for all? It feels like a huge mass of people worldwide have already given up plenty to benefit a very small group. You can make that same statement about the sacrifice of working people to benefit the rich in this country and of the sacrifices of Third World people to feather the nests of all of us who live in the West. Nonetheless, if we all asked ourselves that question – and had to own up to what it meant – maybe we’d have a better chance of bridging those gaps.

At least, like Havel, we’d be attempting to figure out the prickly unpleasant truth.

 

The Tyranny of the Lowest Price

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Richard Russo

Richard Russo, the well-known author (Empire Falls), has a really good article on the OpEd page of the NY Times today (link here) about Amazon’s new pitch, encouraging customers to go into brick-and-mortar bookstores this Saturday and use Amazon’s price app (which shows the customer, of course, how much better of a  ‘deal’ they get at Amazon) to earn a 5% credit on Amazon purchases (further fine print applies, naturally and can be found elsewhere).

Reading the article inevitably led to some further thoughts of my own.

I like almost everything about being an independent author. When I publish a story, it reads the way I think it should – no arguments with editors trying to make movie and theme-park ride deals (not that I’m averse to those, by the way, just in case you’re a movie mogul reading this over lunch at Mozza) or the VP of Marketing (Which genre do we shelve it with? There’s no shelf for that!). I decide to publish when the thing’s ready and, within days, it’s up,  a year or more faster than a publisher. The books stay in print as long as the Internet stays up.  I’m responsible for covers, typography and marketing strategy – if I fail outright, I have only my own stupidity to blame. In a commercial marketplace as frustrating and wrongheaded as today’s, that’s no small comfort.

The one thing I miss in all this is the bookstore. I’d give up a lot to have an army of really smart, caring people across the country who’ve read my book, think it’s a good read and can recommend it to their customers – whose taste they know and whose trust they’ve earned over the course of years. That’s what you get in a good local bookstore. Sometimes, you even get it in Barnes & Noble, if you look in there frequently enough.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made in our society is to hitch ourselves to the lowest price. Most of the time, it’s no bargain.

What the lowest price does is make everything a commodity. The message we send to manufacturers is that we don’t care about quality, service (both at time of purchase and thereafter) or where and how the product is made.

Inevitably, we end up with shoddy garbage with a thousand features that falls apart in half the time it should and doesn’t work all that well in the meantime, that’s made by child labor in Guatemala or China while poisoning the land and water at the same time. And when we call customer service – and wait two hours to get through to that nice young man from Mumbai – we get an indifferent laundry list of irrelevant questions and imbecilic non-solutions that only makes clear the company stopped caring the instant they had our money and we’d left the store.

And why would we expect any better? We’ve told them we don’t care – all we wanted was the lowest price.

By way of contrast: Apple. Bose. Tempur-Pedic. When you hear these names, they have a different ring to them. They aren’t necessarily the most expensive products in their category – but they don’t compete for the bottom rung either. They’re not universally loved by the people who buy or review them. But there is an assumption of quality, a sense that, even if you don’t think they’re the best, the product wasn’t shoddy or conceived simply to maximize profit. You could almost convince yourself that these companies actually consider their customers something more than a profit-making convenience.

It’s a relationship that feels almost human.

That’s the bookstore thing, too. A good bookstore has a personality, a personality that grows from its owners, workers and customers – and their relationship.

So, with the holidays upon us, I urge you to your local bookstore. Buy a book or game or DVD or any of those other things they now sell in bookstores. Then go home, go on Amazon, Smashwords or BN.com and add one of my books. Or get a Createspace paperback and I buy you a beer (You can’t get more human than beer!).

That’s to make it a happy holiday for me.

 

Good Scary

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I was speaking to a woman in the neighborhood the other day. We’ve known each other for over ten years. She was sitting in the car, waiting for her husband to join her on a trip to their daughter’s in the city. The daughter works in TV, a successful media person, though not necessarily a household name.

Photograph by Dorothea Lange

How are things? She’s okay. He’s not so okay. He was laid off from his job several years ago and has joined the ranks of the underemployed, moving from manager at a brokerage house to working in the produce section of a local market three days a week. He seems smaller and grayer now than I remember. His good nature is an effort now, as though he has to remember the smile that always came so easily. Her business has fallen off too but she’s still fighting – she’s not sure he is anymore and it’s clearly a strain between them.

The daughter? She’s doing fine but fine isn’t good enough; everything in television is relentlessly moving forward, so doing ‘fine’ means you’re slipping behind. Nothing’s wrong yet but the pressure builds and the road forward gets foggy.

So how am I? Did she see on Facebook that I’m seeing someone? Yes. That’s good – it’s about time. You deserve someone nice. So you’re happy?

I’m very happy. It’s also scary sometimes, I say, being more honest than strictly required, as usual.

“But it’s good scary,”she says and I agree. It’s definitely good scary. Maybe even wonderful scary.

“Good scary,” she mulls. “These days, that’s enough.”

 

Special Cyber-Monday Deal!

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Well, okay then…

I’m no different from the rest – I don’t mind a bargain now and then.  I was planning to check out Amazon’s Cyber Monday deals and quickly got waylaid checking my own books out.

Have a look at this: http://tinyurl.com/75ony8c

Yes indeed, that is my familiar (if you’ve been on these pages) $15.95 Mindbenders trade paperback for the bargain price of $45.99!!!

Let me repeat: $45.99!!!! For a USED copy, no less!!! In very good condition, he says (I certainly hope so).

I really love the little graphic just over the cover reading ‘Best Value’. For who?

 

Now if I was an evil soul, I would be wondering how to clip a piece of this action off for myself.

But gracious considerate log-splitter man-of-the people Ted? No way! I would never stoop to such low commercial considerations.

Instead, I’ll just subtly remind you that I am selling brand-new copies of  ‘Mindbenders’ -with All the Same Words! In The Same Places! For 65% OFF this ridiculous offer!

If anybody out there wants to spend $45.99 on ‘Mindbenders’ (or any of my other books, for that matter), email me (see the little envelope link on the right sidebar?). We’ll make PayPal arrangements and I’ll send you an autographed copy of the book, along with an original manuscript page with handwritten corrections. I’ve got lots of those! Perfect for selling someday on Ebay or to grace your estate sale at Sotheby’s, once I’m dead or famous for cutting my ear off.

I’m not cutting off any ears or dying any time soon, so, for the moment, this is my best offer! ACT FAST! ACT NOW! And remember what the man said above: BEST VALUE!

No Ma, I didn’t intend to have a Cyber Monday sale; it just came over me all at once…

 

End of the Innocence

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There’s a man I know, who makes his living as a salesman like I do. I’ll call him Otto.

He works for the same company as me, so I see him at sales meetings and the occasional Sunday night get-together over drinks and a baseball game on TV. Otto is a gruff, funny man with a perpetually dispeptic air, someone who’ll swiftly puncture any balloon of hope that drifts within range. His remarks can be harsh but they’re rarely cruel—he usually knows what he’s puncturing and why it deserves to be punctured.

I’m not sure I have all (or even any of) the details right in what follows, but I’m sure the gist is correct.

His wife died, I believe, a few years ago. This is storyteller’s memory—I don’t retain details, only that his story started with her disappearing. Any way you lose a loved one tears at the heart and that damage is what I remember.

This left him with a son and daughter, both around college age. His wife’s mother was also living with them when she passed and what can you do? He kept shouldering that weight along with the kids.

The son started having trouble in school and dropped out, is looking for work but not finding much. In the meantime, he has to see his friends and play videogames and all those important things so…

And then the daughter finished school and spent six months looking for a job, finally grabbing something part-time that had at least the hope of leading to something longer-term. She couldn’t afford anywhere on her own so she settled home too.

About a year and a half ago, I saw him standing outside his store and he told me he’d blown his stack.

Our commissions have dropped in half the last several years, a combination of the economy and internal pressures from the company. So Otto finally started demanding something toward the rent from the daughter and mother-in-law. He also announced he was selling the second car—the kids could divide the remaining one to run errands (including taking him to and from work) as the price of having a car available to them.

The next time I saw him, a few months later, I asked if things had gotten easier and he laughed out loud. His father and mother had gotten overextended with credit cards and the price of everything rising (fixed income, you know how it is) and everything just got out of hand – until they lost their house.

So, of course, they moved in with him.

And, of course, they needed a car to get around, to do the things they needed to do. So Otto kept the second car (luckily he hadn’t sold it in those few weeks where he seemed to have a plan) for them—they were nice enough to actually offer something toward the rent. He was intermittently getting a little help from the others, after their solemn promises those few months earlier.

I didn’t see Otto for several months after that. A few days ago, I was told he went into the hospital. Yesterday, one of the other salesman, who knows him better, told me he was refusing treatment, even refusing tests. ‘It’s like he wants to die,’ he told me.

So as you read this, I’ll be sitting in Otto’s store, minding it while he fades away. It’s scary how common the details of his story are, how familiar the terminology of decay, defeat and brutality. How many steps did it take to incrementally accept this everyday grinding-down?

This not only isn’t the way people’s lives should go, it’s actually hard to conceive of a set of circumstances that would cause a sane person to choose the world that’s developed around us.

And if I’m waiting for a better world to come, who’s going to bring it?

Shower Wisdom, Chapter One

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It’s been my conviction for a long time that whoever invented the shower should be given the Nobel Peace Prize.

If I could chart the growth of my knowledge of human beings and particularly my own quirky little self, I have a feeling a good 70-80% of that knowledge came inside or just stepping out of the shower.

Drying off counts, too.

So this is the first installment in Shower Wisdom. Unless I drop dead in the next week, I expect there will be more.

I’m in a relationship (she’s not – she’s dating me – but I’m in a relationship). We saw each other last night and I noticed on the way home that while, when we’re together, I feel liberated and free; when we’re apart, I feel more draggy and weighed down than I do when I’m single. Which isn’t a good thing, obviously.

And what occurred to me this morning in the shower (naturally) is how alone I felt. Really empty alone, letting the water pour over me and trying to prepare for the workday. Desolate alone.

modern fancy shower (not mine)

A man can work up an awful lot of negative energy from a feeling like that. And I have, any number of times over the years.

When I’ve been single, as in most of recent history, my walls are up. No one gets in, nothing gets out that’s uncomfortable. I live comfortably inside a narrow space that I carry around with me. The Geodesic Dome of Ted.

I’m out of the dome now. I’m in the world again. I’m seeing the steam rise off the subway exits and hearing the birds rustle in the branches before they take off. A world of precious grueling oddball details to share – and a vibrant, brilliant spirit to share them with.

But that openness comes at the price of being confronted with myself alone, and all the fear and disturbia that carries with it.

When the world gets bigger, the self has to grow to fit. I’ve done this before, stretching the membrane. I’m doing it again, right now.

A good shower helps.

Correction: I have been informed by Smitty, the party in question, that I am misinforming you above. ‘I am NOT just dating you…I am commuting to Staten Island as a sign of my dedication to being in your presence.’ Anyone who lives in a more civilized locale (just about anywhere this side of Sumatra – oops, my apology to those of you now penning outraged replies from Sumatra) will understand what a serious commitment that is. One for which I am very grateful.

 

 

Occupy Wall Street – November 11, 2011

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Zuccotti Park is chaos. It’s a zoo. It’s America.

First of all, calling that block Anybody ‘Park’ was delusional to begin with. It was never more than a couple of marble shelves with a few spindly trees in odd places; the real estate mogul whose name is plastered  on it should be thrilled with the publicity he’s getting.

One whole side of the ‘park’ is populated by Hallal and Hot Dog vendors, doing a brisk business with the tourists and gawkers and media people. A large part of this crowd never ventures into the tent city, content to hover at the edges and strike up a quick conversation with one of the labor organizers, the college-age kid who catalogues all the evils of fracking, the girls offering hugs for change or the guy in the parka with a cardboard sign reading ‘Proud Veteran of Allenwood Penitentiary for Protesting the Vietnam War.’

Step down off the street and you find yourself in a tumult of tents in all colors packed so tight together you can’t imagine how anybody gets to the third row without collapsing the neighbors. You have tents with signs, tents with themes, tents with messages scrawled across the canvas or murals painted on the side.

 

The place is a mad collection of energy. The great majority of the inhabitants are either just out of college or around my age, veterans of the last mass wave of civil disobedience. They seem remarkably well-groomed and cheerful. There are a million signs posting various rules and advisories about being good neighbors and a responsible part of the community.

And of course, you find the artisans working handmade jewelry, the collection of partisans for particular causes and an amazing concentration of media: cameras everywhere, cellphone cameras (my own included—my apologies for the quality of the photography), professional videographers, amateurs with equally good equipment and more chutzpah, men in stocking caps lugging around Mac laptops with very expensive microphones, interviewing one and all. I definitely saw one member of the professional media photographing another interviewing someone who (hopefully) had something to say.

I participated in a discussion of new media and the next election—just five or ten people talking earnestly alongside the inevitable New York street chess game, handing a portable recorder from person to person so nobody’s great ideas got lost.

One thing that’s heartening is to see what a polite, sensible group of civil disobedients we’ve raised.

I remember planning Vietnam protests; those sessions were neither polite nor particularly open to divergent opinion. There was an awful lot of preaching to the choir and self-righteousness, enough to really turn me off to every part of the movement but the cause itself.

These people are much more serious, focused, civil and gracious to outsiders. They want to find answers and everything about them welcomes participation, even when they don’t agree with yours. When you see the number of people packed into this tiny space, you realize how much fuss has been made of a few incidents. The number of problems reported is tiny, all things considered.

Some walking impressions:

This guy was tattooed all over his face, like Queequeg in Moby Dick. When he agreed to let me take his picture, I had to add, “As striking as you are, it’s really the dogs I want.” He shrugged and answered, “I made peace with that a long time ago.”

 

There was a mad percussion session going on at the east corner of the ‘park.’ It banged on the whole time I was there, with a huge crowd of tourists watching. so I couldn’t help thinking local merchants should be benefiting from this, the Bloomberg Administration’s complaints notwithstanding.

 

This girl was dancing with her boyfriend. The picture didn’t do them justice but I couldn’t help thinking of the long line of memorable street dancers in my lifetime, from Ellington at Newport to Woodstock, Monterey and Bonnaroo. New York could do worse—and has.

 

 

 

 

 

These are the generators. The city (illegally) removed the gasoline generators just before the snowstorm a few weeks ago (no hidden agenda there, of course). So OWS replaced them with bike generators. A couple of guys were working to repair them when I came by. We shook hands, respect among geeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Weavers aren’t dead yet! This impromptu group was making up lyrics to a song I knew vaguely, that ended with ‘and I won’t learn war anymore.’ ‘I’m going to lay down my student loans and…’

 

Meanwhile, across the street, a long line of very visible cop cars and TV satellite trucks, the one hopefully keeping the other honest. Everyone knows the police will be moving in sometime soon. Somehow this is too powerful a provocation for our power structure to tolerate.

We do have that pesky First Amendment, of course. But that’s the American paradox: we are a state born of a generation that didn’t trust states. We are the product of rebels who were determined to preserve a citizen’s ability to effectively resist government, once government no longer acted in his or her own interest. And that paradox is coming home to roost now, as America has turned complacent and power-hungry, like every other powerful nation.

OWS famously has neither demands nor leadership. All it has is a clear sense that the present system is rigged against the average citizen and fucked-up beyond recognition. And apparently that’s all it takes to really threaten the power structure of this country nowadays. What does that say about America?

 

Grab It For All It’s Worth

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It isn’t easy being happy.

The older you are, the harder it gets. There’s no feeling happy without kicking up the dust of past disappointments, self-delusion, all the foolishness. The things that made you happy still do; the uncertain, unreliable element – the part that worries you – is yourself.

At the same time, as you get older, every feeling, every moment becomes more precious. You become very aware of time speeding past and of not letting anything good zip by untouched. So much of life is built around our fears and pains that we grow comfortable with them and that’s an impulse that needs to be fought.

A new acquaintance reminded me a couple of weeks ago that ‘Happiness is Possible’. And every day, I’m seeing more and more evidence of that. The hard part is believing it, relaxing and enjoying it.

My deepest conviction is that happiness is worth grabbing for all it’s worth every time it shows its face. If it fades, I won’t be looking back thinking there was anything I could have done to prolong it that I didn’t. If it deepens, then I started enjoying it sooner. Win-win.

Like a wonderful friend told me recently: The past is a mess, the future is scary but right now is alright. Better than alright. Is it okay to admit that?

All About ‘Mindbenders’

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Major ‘Mindbenders’ news:

‘Mindbenders’ is now featured on ‘DailyCheapReads‘!

The ‘Mindbenders’ sequel is well underway. I’m hoping for spring.

In the next week or so, I’ll have exciting news about several new Mindbenders stories! These are tales that take place in the period of time between the first two books, material I don’t plan to include in the new book, so it will appear exclusively on this site.

The best way to make sure you don’t miss any of the new stories is to subscribe to this blog. Click here to subscribe.

For those of you visiting this site for the first time, here are the details on ‘Mindbenders’:

“A dead-on thriller for the decade . . . . I can’t imagine anyone reading this and not wanting more” — Thomas F. Monteleone, author of the NY Times bestseller The Blood of the Lamb and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel

“Ted Krever has been a writer to watch, now he’s a writer to read. Do not miss MINDBENDERS.” -F. Paul Wilson, author of the NY Times bestseller The Keep and the Repairman Jack novels.

If you could hear the thoughts of every person for three blocks around–the regrets, rationalizations, commercial jingles, the lies that hide what they can’t bear to think—how could you ever trust anyone? And if you could make them believe anything you wanted, how could you ever trust yourself?

Max Renn is a legend of the Soviet mind control program, a genetic experiment, the product of three generations of psychics bred by the state for their power. Before his first mission, the Soviet Union collapses and he disappears.

We meet him twenty years later in the Everglades, keeping as far from people as he can get, until his best friend–his only friend–is murdered and he is forced to assemble a team of people like him to fight the international conspiracy behind the murder.

For an excerpt, click here.

For reviews, click here.

To read my recent interview with Max Renn, click here.

‘Mindbenders’ is available for all e-book readers and in a lustrous trade paperback, which entitles you to our ‘Buy a Paperback – The Author Buys You a Beer’ promotion – details below on this page!!

click here for Amazon Kindle ebooks: Click here to
purchase on Amazon.
click here for smashwords Other e-readers, click here to purchase from
Smashwords.
Click here for to purchase the
trade paperback from Amazon Createspace.

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