Give My Regards to Eighth Street - discussion 1

For "The Avant Garde" class with Steve Drury last semester, one of the books that we had reading from was "Give My Regards to Eighth Street - Collected writings of Morton Feldman." I didn't start reading it until sometime either last month or 2 months ago, very off and on (mostly off because of my crazy schedule). Lately, now that I've regained my motivation to not be lazy, I've picked it back up, and I came across something that I really feel I should either discuss or work out with many people. Of course, any view on the subject matter is a matter of perspective. At any rate, not to leave one hanging any further, here's the quote:

"Guston tells us he does not finish a painting but 'abandons it.' At what point does he abandon it? Is it perhaps at the moment when it might become a 'painting'? After all, it's not a 'painting' that the artist really wanted. There is a strange propaganda that because someone composes or paints, what he necessarily wants is music or a picture. Completion is not in tying things up, not in 'giving one's feelings,' or 'telling a truth.' Completion is simply the perennial death of the artist. Isn't any masterpiece a death scene? Isn't that why we want to remember it, because the artist is looking
back on something when it's too late, when it's all over, when we see it finally, as something we have lost?"

This quote immediately made me think of two Emily Dickinson quotes: "Success is counted sweetest by those who near succeed," and "It might my easier to fail with land in sight, than gain my blue peninsula to perish of delight." So, what's better, coming really close to success or working your ass off, being successful, and dying, not allowing yourself to enjoy it? The death may not be physical, though. Many businessmen who have worked themselves to success find it hard to stop working, thus killing their lives. But if all they know of living is work, then are they truly living?

Of course, all of this brings up questions about what it is to truly live. Dickinson spent most of her life in seclusion, and, according to her poetry, she was content with this. The line "to perish of delight" does not imply that she is afraid of death, because her other poems definitely show that she was not afraid of it ("Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me," or "...they say it doesn't hurt"). This "perish of delight" line just implies what Feldman was talking about: when you get your goal, what's next? Achievement is a death. Once you have done something, then all the actions, all the work, all the sweat, toil, labor, pain, agony, grief - the process dies. If successful, then the end result leaves you happy in your death - but it is still a death. Right?

Wrong. There is a difference between a death and an end. Semisonic in "Closing Time" sang it best when they sang, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." A masterpiece isn't the death of a process. It isn't even the death of a part of you. It's a learning a process, and the beginning of new work - new life. Making a masterpiece, to me, is like learning a language. Just because you've learned a set of words doesn't mean you're going to forget them when you learn a new set of words. To be fluent in a language, you must hold on to as much as you learn. When Beethoven finished his F-minor sonata, did he not lose his sense of genius construction? No! What he learned from that sonata stuck with him. That's how he was able to create is op. 109, his 9th symphony, his Grosse Fugue - by using EVERYTHING he learned, even from his masterpieces. Schoenberg - did he forget Pierrot when he composed "Ode to Napolean"? I highly doubt this. Just because you've composed a masterpiece, doesn't mean the lessons die. They will always be a part of you. The miraculous thing is the life that the masterpiece leads on its own. If, as an artist of any kind, you view this life as a seperation from yourself, then why are you even an artist?