RUDIMENTS 1163.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,163

(generalizations, mostly erroneous, we have)

There's no legal maneuver for

keeping a sound body and mind,

and I truly think most people

have already lost it by about

age 15. Maybe before. Once a

person seriously begins to accept

the foul assumptions of society,

and then directs efforts towards

only ITS version of success and

accomplishment, you've either

already lost your mind to it or

are well on your way to the

adoption of their ways of both

assuming and thinking. The

unreal world is somehow

bolstered enough by fantasy

realms to, by silent force,

become everyone's 'real '

world - no one ever knowing

it's all bogus. There's little

more annoying than seeing

some 15-year old snot-nosed

kid put on a shirt and tie and

begin acting 'grown-up' and

writing some Elks propaganda

essay about like 'What America

Means To Me.' Real dumb

craphead stuff. I was always

reminded of that scene in Catcher

In the Rye, when Holden gets

that cranky taxi-driver and asks

him that dumb question about

where the Central Park ducks

go in the Winter. And then it

escalates into an argument over

what the fish do, under the ice,

in the deep cold, while all those

people are ice-skating above

them. The taxi-driver (an

image almost unimaginative

today, but once quite common),

represented gruff reality, when

it was still named Joe and Harry

not Ahmed or Malefumo Obo,

as today. Holden here personified

the rat kid who tears the curtain

from reality, and then starts asking

weird questions about the window

and the view which everyone

else had been ignoring or

unaware of. In this case, at

least Holden Caulfield was the

anti-proper-kid; meaning he

was snide and annoying. I'd

hate even to have seen (read)

him as a snot-nosed, know-it-all

brat going on about nothing but

one who would please the adults

to whom he was nosing up. J. D.

Salinger (dead now) gets a lot

of flack, reputation-wise, for

writing cheaply of pretentious

and chippy young people; a

wise-acre collection of privileged

'Glass family' wealth-brats. Some

of that may be true but there's a

lot more there if one can poke

through the veneer. There's a

rich stream of recognition that

the average, or schooled anyway,

adult can share. Bratty, punchy

kids can surely be annoying,

even at 15, but Holden was a

hold-out. None of that 'Society'

trash for him.

-

Being an artist involves dwelling

on color. Color has a long and

strange history, ignored by most,

except for the usual 'decorating'

pang or the choice of colors for

that new KIA Almagordo one

is about to get. It's funny how

something that is so much around

us gets overlooked, ignored, and

so little entered into our lives.

For the 'ancients' it was different.

Color was an intuitive factor in

everyday existence; ringing bells

of emotion and signification.

The factor, for instance, of 'blue,'

which we know and which is so

common and multi-hued today,

for them did NOT exist. Any of

this takes time, and necessitates

an average person stepping out

of their own, rank and common,

everyday set of assumptions and

'worldview' to learn about. Color

sort of resists generalization, but

is what the everyday world has

become. Color is also a 'cultural'

construct, erected by that very

society which overlooks it. It's

a 'culturally localized' quality -

meaning that there is no real

form of 'transcultural' truth to

color perception. The Arab's

'red' means one thing; the

Westerner's red means another,

and to the Asian, it yet signifies

something other. 'The first set

of problems concerns documentation

and preservation. We see the colors

transmitted to us by the past as

time has altered them (LSD and

altered reality, anyone?). Moreover,

we see them under light conditions

that often are entirely different from

those known by past societies. And,

finally, over the decades we have

developed the habit of looking

at objects from the past in

black-and-white photographs

and, despite the current diffusion

of color photography, our ways

of thinking about and reacting

to these objects seem to have

remained more or less black

and white.' Studying color

itself is difficult, in light of the

past, because there is, or was,

no methodology, and paleontologists

had to make their own way as it

all was developed. Images and

logic had to be extrapolated,

from unknown things, like the

apparent 'red madder' hue in

ancient cave paintings, for a

signification. Representing

blood? Joy? Trembling nervousness

about Reality? In what weird and

torch-lit half-light anyway were

such cave-places and wall paints

located, and why? It was all a

sort of make-it-up-as-you-go

theorizing, which, of course, had

to fit the modern assumptions.

Our ideas, however, about the

dawn of consciousness and the

beginnings of any societal and

group reality are pathetic. Why

reflect that? Anyone trying to

explain cave-paintings away as

extra-terrestrial classrooms run

by Middle-Earth, landed creatures

extending their knowledge to

early Mankind and to Earth's

creatures so as the help them

learn of and define their advancing

world as they were patterned and

regimented into working Earth

creatures, would be scoffed at,

in the same way you just scoffed

at what I just wrote.

-

Which is, by the way, all true.