What I'm reading, etc.

Recently started:  Your Brain at Work, audio;  why I can't do more than one complex or even simple task at a time.  I'm not retarded.  http://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Work-Strategies-Distraction/dp/0061771295

And 2666 by Roberto Bolano, also on audio via Audible credits.

Very excited to get the Bolano book for just one credit.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2666_(novel)

Also went to the library today with Abhaya in the ergo, read some amazing William Carlos Williams and checked out Hemingway's Boat, a new book in hardcover, which I started to read.  

http://www.amazon.com/Hemingways-Boat-Everything-Loved-1934-1961/dp/1400041627

I also checked out another book which is now on my reading list, http://www.amazon.com/Camus-at-Combat-Writing-1944-1947/dp/0691120048

This is the first translation into English of all of the articles that Camus wrote for Combat, the Resistance underground publication during WWII Nazi occupation.  

I am also reading plenty of comics, and keeping up on the news.  South Sudan, the Republican Primaries, etc. Things are hopeful in Burma/Myanmar.  

I need to finish publishing my new novel, and try, maybe, to get to my studio sometime soon, or find one closer to home.  Having a studio somewhere close to the Oakland Art Murmur might be great, as long as I was not required to be ready to show every month.  It could happen soon.

There is a lot I could say about being a dad, working the office job, life in Oakland now.  Being a dad is wonderful and challenging of course, but not in a bad way.  Office life is a way of earning a living I enjoy and can get by on 8 hour days with my short commute most of the time.  I am lucky in that way. Of course there are times when I need to work more and travel and that's fine.  Being a parent can make one more efficient to make the most of every hour of the day.  I also know that I help thousands of people with the services and software that I sell in a pretty direct way, in terms of education and related areas.  Right now reading about Hemingway I am inspired to live and write.  Writing is more difficult.

new images online

I am posting this and other images online at my redbubble site.  I'm happy how they are turning out:  these are a collection of images that sometimes represent a finished work, in part as detail or as a complete work/print, or they are works in transition or meant to be "temporary" and captured or documented as such, including views of the work space and materials which are integrated with the work.  These are prints, photographs, conceptual pieces, and representations.  I believe this is part of what I am now calling the "altered view" series.  conceptual work that does not fit into any standard category and is inspired by an artist who built small detailed models of his studio, photographed them, and presented the photos as the "end product" more or less.  

texture/life

Atrocity, a novel

Atrocity is my first full-length novel.  It deals with the death of a friend and an escalating series of events that lead to technological and ecological "terrorism".  Told in a dreamlike or fragmented style mixing elements of literary, experimental, and technology-based writing, Atrocity deals with ambivalence, evil, sex, grief, and friendship or mentor-ship and the implications.  

My first book, Blue, a novella, was published in 2001 and dealt with drugs, addiction, mental illness, and murder in college and post-college lives in Philadelphia and Ohio.  It has been compared favorably to Kerouac and Joyce.  

A visual artist and writer, I have been writing poetry and prose since 1988 and have been published in several small journals like Jawbone Open and Cup of Fiction, the Wilde Childe.  Atrocity is a finished manuscript seeking an agent or publisher.

Atrocity is my first full-length novel.  It deals with the death of a friend and an escalating series of events that lead to technological and ecological "terrorism".  Told in a dreamlike or fragmented style mixing elements of literary, experimental, and technology-based writing, Atrocity deal with ambivalence, evil, sex, grief, and friendship or mentor-ship and the implications.  

My first book, Blue, a novella, was published in 2001 and dealt with drugs, addiction, mental illness, and murder in college and post-college lives in Philadelphia and Ohio.  It has been compared favorably to Kerouac and Joyce.  

A visual artist and writer, I have been writing poetry and prose since 1988 and have been published in several small journals like Jawbone Open and Cup of Fiction, the Wilde Childe.  Atrocity is a finished manuscript seeking an agent or publisher.

thirty essentials from jack kerouac

Among the writings he set down specifically about his Spontaneous Prose method, the most concise would be Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials".

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy 
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening 
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house 
4. Be in love with your life 
5. Something that you feel will find its own form 
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind 
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow 
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual 
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is 
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest 
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition 
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time 
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog 
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye 
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself 
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea 
19. Accept loss forever 
20. Believe in the holy contour of life 
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind 
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better 
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning 
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge 
25. Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it 
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form 
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better 
28. You're a Genius all the time 
29. Writer-Director of Earthly movies 
30. Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

more or less!  more!

Trying is good, sometimes

My mother gave me her version of Yoda's famous "There is no try" teaching when I was a lad in the 70's, so apparently he did not invent that.   There is no try, only do.  When you try, you fail, etc.

I think the concept of trying can be useful.  If I am trying to do a better job at work, that points me toward various actions with a certain intention.  Then I have to specify or think about what it is that I need to do.  If I need to call certain people or do other tasks, that is part of trying.

Trying to go to the gym more, eat better, make more art, meditate more does not work as they are specific actions.  I have to just meditate more.  Like every day or whatever.  But if I want to try to write more, or better, that seems ok.  To just say I am going to write more is one of those delusional statements people make, like I am going to stop dating crazy people.  It is not so black and white.  There is more to it than that.   If I want to write more/better I need to do certain things to make that happen, create an environment or sense of place for that.  If I want to stop dating crazy people (which I rarely did), I need to make a lot of changes and look at a lot of things, not just "stop".  I can try to improve my life including my dating life, etc.  It's about the intention to create a space for something, as hooey as that may sound.  You can pick up a fork.  You can try to pick up a tree, or levitate an x-wing.  Thanks Mom!

What do you think?

None of the Above

None of the Above = a group show

various works on mixed media/supports

charles keatts (one of the group)

September 10, 2010 7-10

Art Explosion Studio,Gallery and Studio 112 (in the back)

Potrero Hill, San Francisco

17^th and Potrero/Hampshire

The title, None of the Above, implies choices. You had choices, on your test, in life, in art, and you chose, not the first three or ten, but the last. None of the above. Or maybe the last is, All of the Above.

In my art I choose some of the above. Not one, not all. It's a flowing process that swings from the conceptual cerebral photograph processes to found objects to pure abstract color painting on canvas. Certainly color is part of all of this, one denominator, one of the above, and paint or paintlike substances, things that dry, and various objects, and process. Nothing happens without a process in time and space, even a blank sheet of paper nailed to a wall.

I'm not saying anything about what is art. That is your opinion, however that turns out. I try to make things that are interesting, beautiful, good in some sense, maybe something else. Something that you and I will like, that you will want. If I like it, or love it, what are the chances that you will?

1. High

2. Moderate

3. One in ten trillion

4. one of the above

5. none of the above

6. one nanosecond

7. if/then

8. mu

   

karma will always trump dogma

Y'know the expression "my karma ran over your dogma"?  I think it's true.  Or one way or another, karma, action of a positive or negative, harmful or unharmful, skillful or not, will trump or run over, overcome, any dogma, eventually.  Because dogma, relative as it may be, is a form of negative, unskillful karma.

Ajahn Chah and Buddhist Transmission Modes

"At this time Ajahn Chah was wrestling with a crucial problem. He had studied the teachings on morality, meditation and wisdom, which the texts presented in minute and refined detail, but he could not see how they could actually be put into practice. Ajahn Mun told him that although the teachings are indeed extensive, at their heart they are very simple. With mindfulness established, if it is seen that everything arises in the heart-mind. ..right there is the true path of practice. This succinct and direct teaching was a revelation for Ajahn Chah, and transformed his approach to practice. The Way was clear."

from a bio: http://dhammatalks.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=36:ajahn-chah&Itemid=65

Ajahn Chah was a Buddhist Teacher in the Thai Forest tradition, and he taught many western students who still teach here today.

It strikes me that in this case, as in many others in many Buddhist traditions, the person who has a very powerful experience of transformation or enlightenment usually has it in a state of meditation, as the Buddha did, or a vision, or through a "conversation" with a teacher.  It rarely seems to happen when they are reading books or text, although in many cases there were no texts to read.

Most students who became enlightened in some sense did study texts, or the verbal early teachings, and recited them, over and over, which in some cases seem to prepare them for the final teaching and sometimes not.  In our age as we go over books and words on the internet, how much value is there in this?  Is there enough value placed on the meditative state of the Buddha or the one-on-one chats like Ajahn Chah?  I have to say that one of my most powerful connections was with youtube videos of Pema Chodron and my physical connection of darshan with Amma.  The first was both energetic and verbal manifesting in thought and a feeling, metta, compassion or lovingkindness which extended as far as I could be aware.  The latter was energetic and not words, more Zen really, in that sense, the tradition I have focused on most of my life.  

Amma is not Buddhist nor does she attach to any school or path.  Because I feel an affinity with Vedic teaching and Buddhist schools, I feel comfortable in the realm of Amma or Tibetan Buddhism as they hold or encompass many views or stages.  

recent Buddhist studies

In addition to doing more daily sitting meditation lately I've been listening to a lot of online dharma talks, mostly Theravadan but some Zen.  These two traditions seem to fit very well together for me.  My roots, if you will, seem to be in Zen, with the Mindfulness Practice of Thich Nhat Hahn in there too.   

various online connecting points

my main website: charleskeattsart.com aka simulacra.squarespace.com

here. my main blog resides. although the old one on blogger is still there. is it all one site, meta site, meta blog? a group ofs. my online presence.

linkedin is another one.

also twitter charleskeatts

and facebook, which I am thinking of making public since I put so much stuffthere, it's not like anything is really private anyway...

started using tumblr a bit

tried a few other networking sites for artists, designers.

signed up for redbubble.com and started using it to sell my art. looksgood.

and posterous! iceage.posterous.com