I've never kept a journal –– or rather, I've never known if I ought to keep one.  Sometimes, I begin one, and then, quite quickly, drop it –– and yet, later on, I begin again.  It's a light, intermittent desire, lacking in seriousness or doctrinal substance.  I think I can diagnose this "disease" of the diary: an insoluble doubt in the value of what one writes there. 

          This doubt is insidious: a doubt-in-delay.  At first, when I make a (daily) entry, I sense a certain pleasure: it's simple, easy.  I don't struggle to find what to say: the material is there, at once; it's like an surface mine; I need only to bend down; I don't have to transform anything; the crude has its own value, etc.  In the second phase, closely following the first (for example, if I reread today what I wrote yesterday), it makes a bad impression: the text doesn't keep, like a delicate food which "turns," goes bad, becomes unappetizing from one day to the next; I'm discouraged to find the artifice of "sincerity", the artistic mediocrity of "spontaneity": worse yet, I disgust and irritate myself by having taken a "pose" which I never wanted to take: in the context of the journal, and precisely because it doesn't "work" (isn't transformed by the action of work), I is a poseur: a question of effect, not of intention, the whole difficulty of literature is there.  Almost immediately, continuing my rereading, I'm annoyed by these verbless phrases ("Couldn't sleep.  Already the third in a row," etc.), or phrases in which the verb is carelessly shortened ("Passed two young girls in the Place St-S.") ­–– and try as I might to restore the decency of a complete form ("I passed...,"I couldn't sleep"), the matrix of every journal, namely the reduction of the verb, lingers in my ear and gets on my nerves like an old, tired refrain.  In the third phase, if I reread my journal pages several months, or several years, after having written them, although doubt still arises, I feel a certain pleasure in recalling, thanks to these pages, the events they relate and, even more, the inflections (of light, of atmosphere, of mood) they cause me to relive. In short, at this point, no literary interest (other than problems of formulation, that is to say, of phrasing), but a kind of narcissistic attachment (weakly narcissistic: no need to exaggerate) to my affairs (whose reminiscence doesn't fail to be ambiguous, since to remember is also to take note of and to lose a second time what will never return).  But, once again, does this final indulgence, reached after having crossed over a phase of rejection, justify (systematically) keeping a journal?  Is it worth it?

   Knowing that one does not write for the other,  knowing what these things that I am going to write will never make the one I love love me, knowing that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely where you do not exist: this is where writing begins. 

        History of "my" sacred, recounted in chapters which could include: real life (waking state, dream, and half-sleep), language, art (religious pomp, performances -- bullfighting -- music, painting, and poetry). 
        Or rather, a rosary of dichotomies: 
                                                                  dream and waking
                                                                        art and life
                                                   "crucial" experiences and everyday life
                                              mythical language and common language, etc...
        For each of these pairs, it would be a matter of  showing how the second, profane term distinguishes itself from the first, sacred term.  

        Impression of the absolute given by certain words, which seem to have no alternatives.  For example, "voracious," which evokes the idea of a famished being, tortured by the desire to devour.  These types of words make it easy to believe that an actual Kabbalah exists, a preestablished harmony between ideas and the combinations of sounds that express them.  

        When I write an essay, I am completely "dissociated".   If I write a poem I have -- at least momentarily -- the illusion of "totality".  The only question is whether this dissociation, such as it is, is worth less or more than the illusion of totality.  

        The idea of the "gift" according to my mother: my brother Pierre's "gifts" for music.  Opposition of "gifted" and "industrious."  In short, I was raised with a certain contempt for "industrious."  

      Necessary injustice of the sacred: no possibility of justice or measure in trance.  Necessary arbritrariness of the sacred: in the sacred, the fortuitous (or "gratuitious" or "free" or "arbritrary") and the necessary find unity.  The sacred is what I love (something I love so much that I could abide anything in order to protect it); when I say "it," I am speaking not of the sacred object -- which I could be led to destroy or allow to be destroyed -- I am speaking of the bond itself that alone constitutes the sacred, of which the object is merely a support, like a kind of churinga.  
        More simply, the sacred exists not in people or things, but in the relationship I keep with certain things or certain people. 
        Hence, the sacred remains fluid, is never substantialized.  
        To "communicate" would mean to establish an actual relation.
        Establishing a relation solely between things (as the surrealist technique of the image wishes to do) is a purely mechanical practice, enhanced by subterfuge and trickery.  It is crucial that there be an actual (authentic) relation between me and the relation itself, and then, through this second relation, one between myself and the reader or listener.  Metaphor -- or the cataclysm between distinct elements - can only represent the real cataclysm that must intervene between the poet and his reader.  With a handful of very great poets (Villon, Racine), the human cataclysm is produced without even a need for the imagistic one.

                                                                                                                                      from "Notes on the Sacred in Everyday Life"

      In my childhood memories, I rediscover facts (places, events) that appear to me to be marked by the "sacred" -- in which I seem to have felt the impression of the "sacred."  This could simply be because of the sacred character that today I attribute to my childhood memories, because of the sacred attitude that I automatically adopt as soon as I evoke one of these memories, it could be that this attitude pushes me to introduce the sacred there where it never existed.  

     If I have experienced the sense of the sacred while participating in rituals of religions that were not my own (Catholicism, by which I remain marked due to my education), it's doubtless for reasons of exoticism.  That is to say, there may always be something of the "exotic" operating in the sacred: idea of a different world, of a realm without compare, of a radically faraway land.

      The sacred character attached to childhood memories could be explained by the same reasoning of exoticism, if we consider that archaism is in time what exoticism is in space: my memories are sacred to me insofar as they are faraway from me.  

     The prestige of dreams is also, in large part, based in exoticism.  A large part of their emotive value is doubtless due to the emotion that intervenes in the act of remembering them, and the difficulty in remembering them: the effort made to apprehend them so that they become less faraway.  The most moving dream will always be the one that keeps something irreducible, that is to say, something irreducibly sacred or faraway.  

     Role of nostalgia: to leave things in the distance, in order to feel desire or regret.  Weakness: one doesn't dare to seize, one only desires, and must -- without putting oneself in danger -- conserve desire.  It is a man of whims who dreams of unheard-of lands. 

Michel Leiris, from "Notes on the Sacred in Everyday Life"

I.  

Strange birds, songstresses, seamstresses, albatross:
That old cartoon, that smelly old carrion.  
Carrier pigeons, those few months of loose morals,
that various playing field, played (out) and oh, 
I just remembered another, the one with Keats' lips.  
Keats' death mask, we called him.  Number one.  
The boy with the rose still waiting, legs dangling
on a slip of paper edged into my hand, left on the bar: 
"nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands."
That really happened; I really knocked that one over.  
Look into my eyes.  The foreign traveller, pale and
with certain scars I traced, crisp, clean, collared shirts,
seaside blue, still starched and toe-headed, so silent,
serrated edges when fingers raked.  I forget his hands 
but his skin warm glow radiated elastic elongated
and moist, a bit too much elastin there feel 
                                                                     the cool damp 
 

II.  

and everyone wanted to eat their flowers

                                                                      wanted
                                                                                     to
                                                                                          

watch the svelte fall
        of the torso, the flat
                expanse that breeds
                        nothing but undulates
                                 the bone underneath

                                             underneath's stillness
                                                    in stillness.  This one 
                                                            is german, this one 
                                                                          has gone grey.
  

watch, settle down 
        like the dust in the jar
                  after the jar has been shaken

                                         take care, jar
                                                it's been grand 

     In a dream, the substitution of one vowel for another, in the body of a word, or the addition of a consonant, gives me the key to the universe.
  
     "To love love."  Mystery of this notion in childhood: one knows that actual love will be a different feeling of love than what one has -- or is supposed to have -- for one's parents, for example.  Impatience to know this feeling: idea of the lightning bolt, of a state that will be radically different than all that one has known until the present.  Question I have often asked myself: from what age can one fall in love?     

     Eyes closed, my interior landscape expresses my transparency.  Everything I see, I see through my organs.

     Note on the letter V:  I love the letter V because of her angularity, and for her sound as much as her form.  She begins words which count among the most beautiful: Vautour, Vésare, Vorace.  I also have a preference for the number 5, to which she is linked (in the roman alphabet) because of its right angle and the brusque twist of its vapor trails, the dross of its odd meaning. 

     Just as catholics have the scent of incense, I have for the sacred the color of play, color of poetry.

     Confess, when one no longer knows what to write.  Likewise, in order to smash the awkwardness of a conversation where communication is wholly lacking, one begins to speak about oneself, to force communication.  To speak with an open heart, lay one's self bare, reveal as much as possible : a way for something to happen in conversation.
     Every time I start to talk about myself, to confide in someone (not of acts, but of states), I feel malaise: the emptiness of a conversation where "nothing real is exchanged".  We must fill up this empty space at all costs, break up this silence that hides behind words.  And so I talk about myself, I lay myself out with imprudence, I describe a drama that is nothing less than the reflection of my present state of malaise due to communication's absence. 

     A dry and transparent sacred, outside of all the vapor of the church.

     The sacred cannot exist but in moments.  Artificiality of ritual, which proposes to kindle -- or ressurect -- these moments.  Religion as the utmost debasement. 

     I once heard the story of a man condemned to death who, in a Barcelona prison, spent the entire night singing saetas while waiting to be executed.  I envy the heart of this prisoner who, despite imminent danger, was able to give form to his grief.

It's over
the air is dry
the world no longer rises to my lips
vertiginous familiar

Will the "object" be a package wrapped in white paper
-- a multitude of white papers --
like a Christmas present?
or will it be a flint, chocolate-flavored
despite its color of café au lait?
Or will it be a magnificent record
that I've already heard?
Will the "object" be a piece
strictly limited, as the skin of sleep?
Will the object be a piece
a simple, small piece
of something I've never placed beneath my teeth
In my mouth
lightning
-- if it could ever be tamed --
couldn't be better

Michel Leiris, from "Notes on the Sacred in Everyday Life"

If I take pleasure in reading a certain phrase, story, or word, it is because it was written in pleasure (this pleasure is not contradictory to the writer's complaints).  But the reverse?  Does taking pleasure in writing assure me - me, the writer - the pleasure of my reader?  Not at all.  I have to seek out (to "cruise") this reader, without knowing where he is.  A space of bliss, of jouissance, is then opened up. The other's "person" is not necessary to me, but this space is: the possibility of a dialectic of desire, of jouissance's unpredictability:  the bets are not yet placed, the game may still be played.

{The Pleasure of the Text}

... this art splits the gaze in two: one of us watches the other, and does only that: he has the right and the duty to watch; the other never watches; he watches everything, except me.  If a single glance from the screen were to fall upon me, the entire film would be lost. But this rule is not followed to the letter. For it is also possible that, on another level, invisibly, the screen never stops watching me.

(from "Right in the Eyes")

 A sign repeats.  Without repetition, there could be no sign, for how else could one recognize it, and recognition creates the sign.  On the other hand, as Stendhal writes, the gaze can speak volumes, but can never be repeated.  What is this mystery?  The gaze belongs to the realm of meaning whose unity is not found upon the sign (discontinuity) but significance... As opposed to language, the order of signs, the arts, in general, are a matter of significance.  It's not surprising, then, that there would be a kind of affinity between the gaze and music, or that classical painting has so lovingly portrayed so many different kinds of looks: tearful, imperious, furious, pensive, et cetera.  In significance, there is without a doubt a kind of semantic knot without which the gaze would be unable to speak: a look does not know how to be neutral, unless it intends to signify neutrality, and if it is "vague," its vagueness is clearly full of duplicity.  But this knot is surrounded by a halo, an infinite field of expansion in which sense overflows, disseminates, without losing its impression (the act of being imprinted): and this is exactly what happens while listening to a piece of music or while standing in front of a painting.  The "mystery" of the gaze, its disturbing nature, lives in this overflow zone.  Here, then, is an object (or an entity) whose being is attached to its excess.  Let us examine these excesses for a little while.  

 from "Right in the Eyes"               

28 August 1979

Always the same difficulty of working in the afternoon.  I went out around six-thirty in the evening for no good reason; noticed in the Rue de Rennes a new hustler, hair falling down around his face, a small earring; as the Rue B. Palissy was completely deserted, we discussed terms; his name was Francois; but the hotel was full; I gave him some money, he promised to be at the rendezvous one hour later, and naturally he wasn't there.  I asked myself if I had really made a mistake (everyone would say, to give money to a hustler in advance!), and came to the conclusion that since I didn't actually want him (nor even to have sex), the result was the same: whether I slept with him or not, at eight o'clock I would find myself at the same point in my life, and since simple eye contact and talking turns me on, it was that pleasure which I payed for.

I want there to be a wall between us 
and I want to walk through it like a ghost
I want the wall to be a ghost, I want to chew 

through it, I want it to taste like marshmallow

READING FOR COMPREHENSION:
Wayne Koestenbaum's "Notes on Glaze"

Instructions: Read the essay carefully, then answer the following questions.

According to Wayne Koestenbaum, art is
a. a means to an end
b. a call to arms
c. spreadable
d. confusing
e. all of the above
f. none of the above

According to Wayne Koestenbaum, dreams are
a. real
b. novelizations
c. chicken feed
d. enjambed
e. all of the above
f. none of the above

The writer's sensations take place
a. inside his body
b. outside his body
c. in the lake
d. in Paris
e. all of the above
f. none of the above

4. The writer is
a. a glazed entity
b. a red wheelbarrow
c. a photograph
d. Jeanne Moreau
e. all of the above
f. none of the above

Prose
a. cooperates with posing's regime
b. knows where the red wagon is heading
c. acknowledges Emily Dickinson
d. shoots marbles
e. all of the above
f. none of the above

The relation between cloud and hayfield is
a. seditious
b. outré
c. syllogistic
d. irrelevant
e. all of the above
f. none of the above

Cloud leads to hayfield via
a. sicilian oranges
b. a waterslide
c. Hades
d. Jeanne Moreau
e. all of the above
f. none of the above

Avital Ronell has a starring role in
a. Gone with the Wind
b. The Lost Boys
c. The French Connection
d. Frozen
e. all of the above
f. none of the above

The real essay
a. ripples
b. is immobile
c. gambols
d. makes jam
e. all of the above
f. none of the above

 

Anni Albers: Work with Material

 

Life today is very bewildering. We have no picture of it which is all-inclusive, such as former times may have had. We have to make a choice between concepts of great diversity. And as a common ground is wanting, we are baffled by them. We must find our way back to simplicity of conception in order to find ourselves. For only by simplicity can we experience meaning, and only by experiencing meaning can we become qualified for independent comprehension.

In all learning today dependence on authority plays a large part, because of the tremendous field of knowledge to be covered in a short time. This often leaves the student oscillating between admiration and uncertainty, with the well-known result that a feeling of inferiority is today common both in individuals and in whole nations.

Independence presumes a spirit of adventurousness—a faith in one's own strength. It is this which should be promoted. Work in a field where authority has not made itself felt may help toward this goal. For we are overgrown with information, decorative maybe, but useless in any constructive sense. We have developed our receptivity and have neglected our own formative impulse. It is no accident that nervous breakdowns occur more often in our civilization than in those where creative power had a natural outlet in daily activities. And this fact leads to a suggestion: we must come down to earth from the clouds where we live in vagueness, and experience the most real thing there is: material.

Civilization seems in general to estrange men from materials, that is, from materials in their original form. For the process of shaping these is so divided into separate steps that one person is rarely involved in the whole course of manufacture, often knowing only the finished product. But if we want to get from materials the sense of directness, the adventure of being close to the stuff the world is made of, we have to go back to the material itself, to its original state, and from there on partake in its stages of change.

We use materials to satisfy our practical needs and our spiritual ones as well. We have useful things and beautiful things—equipment and works of art. In earlier civilizations there was no clear separation of this sort. The useful thing, could be made beautiful in the hands of the artisan, who was also the manufacturer. His creative impulse was not thwarted by drudgery in one section of a long and complicated mechanical process. He was also a creator. Machines reduce the boredom of repetition. On the other hand they permit a play of the imagination only in the preliminary planning of the product.

Material, that is to say unformed or unshaped matter, is the field where authority blocks independent experimentation less than in many other fields, and for this reason it seems well fitted to become the training ground for invention and free speculation. It is here that even the shyest beginner can catch a glimpse of the exhilaration of creating, by being a creator while at the same time he is checked by irrevocable laws set by the nature of the material, not by man. Free experimentation here can result in the fulfillment of an inner urge to give form and to give permanence to ideas, that is to say, it can result in art, or it can result in the satisfaction of invention in some more technical way.

But most important to one's own growth is to see oneself leave the safe ground of accepted conventions and to find oneself alone and self-dependent. It is an adventure which can permeate one's whole being. Self-confidence can grow. And a longing for excitement can be satisfied without external means, within oneself; for creating is the most intense excitement one can come to know.

All art work, such as music, architecture, and even religion and the laws of science, can be understood as the transformed wish for stability and order. But art work understood as work with a substance which can be grasped and formed is more suited for the development of the taste for exploration than work in other fields, for the fact of the inherent laws of material is of importance. They introduce boundaries for a task of free imagination. This very freedom can be so bewildering to the searching person that it may lead to resignation if he is faced with the immense welter of possibilities; but within set limits the imagination can find something to hold to. There still remains a fullness of choice but one not as overwhelming as that offered by unlimited opportunities. These boundaries may be conceived as the skeleton of a structure. To the beginners a material with very definite limitations can for this reason be most helpful in the process of building up independent work.

The crafts, understood as conventions of treating material, introduce another factor: traditions of operation which embody set laws. This may be helpful in one direction, as a frame for work. But these rules may also evoke a challenge. They are revokable, for they are set by man. They may provoke us to test ourselves against them. But always they provide a discipline which balances the hubris of creative ecstasy.

All crafts are suited to this end, but some better than others. The more possibilities for attack the material offers in its appearance and in its structural elements, the more it can call forth imagination and productiveness. Weaving is an example of a craft which is many-sided. Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, it also includes color, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art.

When teaching the crafts, in addition to the work of free exploring, both the useful and the artistic have to be considered. As we have said before, today only the first step in the process of producing things of need is left to free planning. No variation is possible when production is once taken up, assuming that today mass production must necessarily include machine work. This means that the teaching has to lead toward planning for industrial repetition, with emphasis on making models for industry. It also must attempt to evoke a consciousness of developments, and further perhaps a foreseeing of them. Hence, the result of craft work, work done in direct contact with the material, can come here to have a meaning to a far wider range of people than would be the case if they remained restricted to handwork only. And from the industrial standpoint, machine production will get a fresh impetus from taking up the results of intimate work with material.

The other aspect of craft work is concerned with art work, the realization of a hope for a lawful and enduring nature. Other elements, such as proportion, space relations, rhythm, predominate in these experiments, as they do in the other arts. No limitations other than the veto of the material itself are set. More than an active process, it is a listening for the dictation of the material and a taking in of the laws of harmony. It is for this reason that we can find certitude in the belief that we are taking part in an eternal order.

1937

Black Mountain College Bulletin, 5, 1938. Reprinted in College Art Journal III:2, January 1944, pp.51–54 and in Anni Albers: On Designing, 1959 and 1971.