Hidden Representations & Transparencies

Dear Graham,

The conventionality I would presumptuously reveal
(Emperor's Bare Butts where the conspiracy for cover-
up is systemic & "moralizing" and me, so proud) probably
isn't the conventionality I'm submerged in like Joe Fish
all wet thinking he can talk about fluid drive.

And I guess the same with Sustainability: what I want
to sustain probably is not the sustainability-that-needs-
sustaining. This is a bind I like to consider but can't escape. It
seems somehow worthwhile to wallow in it. Otherwise:
I’m in-denial, illusion, and pandering, as Frank K.
points out.

Those actors I mentioned: all great actors. Looking backward
we see a conventionality (arbitrary, artificialness) that we
couldn't see at the time. Is that fair to say?

I don't know about the power to change.
What I can change probably isn't what
I most need to change.

This is the interesting thing about Convention
—a matrix, a whelm: Bacon describes them as
“idols of the mind”: Cave, Tribe, Marketplace,
Theatre—the four varieties of Conventions-We-
Don’t-Feel-as-Conventions and so—don’t know
the nature of our conventionality. Closet.

It always feels like we’re getting real, keeping it
real: does it ever feel like an illusion—no matter
how we talk?

Last year I tried to draw a distinction between inert art and
ert art: art that fits into the convention, and art that doesn't;
and got into trouble with my language--proving my point,
I guess, or probably not: not sufficiently transparent.

The possibility of discerning and relating INERTIA and
ERTIA without demonizing one or the other but doing
justice to both: like building ice cream parlors in hell &
everyone happy about the necessary agony generated--
that would be a shared frame-of-mind worth sustaining,
if ever achieved.

Re TRANSPARENCY.

IDOL: A transparent representation is NOT transparent
because it IS transparent and therefore NOT.

ICON: a non-transparent representation IS transparent
because it is NOT and therefore IS.

You need a fine artist to do justice to this without
tripping over contradiction, paradox and
limitations of double-edged language.

If I can SEE the transparency of a convention,
than it’s not transparent because it is. On the other
hand: if I can’t see it, then it’s transparent, damnit,
because I’m not aware of it.

Briar patch. Got to be fool or fine artist to delight in
this cat scratch fever: levels of logical hierarchy &
language that has to bend over backward to indicate
the differences if not the relationships.

No country for Old Composition Teachers.