The Garage Years 1998–2001
This was my garage, the garage in which I painted, from Summer, 1998 to Summer, 2001. O my garage! I painted pure abstractions. I invented what came to be called “Tonal Cinema”, both a form of poetry and a visual expression through paintings. I did many things there, living in the basement of a three-storey townhouse, adjacent to the famous garage.
The Influence of Cut-Ups
I had been reading a great deal of Beat literature, from the poetry of one Allen Ginsberg, to novels by Jack Kerouac, as well as everything I could get my hands on by William S. Burroughs.
I was writing a great deal of poetry back then, too. I officially started writing poetry in 1995, unofficially a few years before that. In the early 1990s, I started playing the guitar and piano and began writing songs. Song lyrics, therefore, were my first poems.
By the time the Summer of 1998 came around, when I first moved into the basement adjacent to the garage that housed my art studio, I had already been reading a lot of the works of William S. Burroughs. I was reading all sorts of literature and philosophy, art history, and so forth, and took a particular liking to the dry prose of old William Lee. Little did I know that I was actually causing myself and others great harm, not merely by reading Burroughs, but because I didn’t know what I was doing, and a serious author, and literary genius, such as Burroughs is not something to be read lightly. (Actually, reading itself is not something to be taken lightly!)
Yet I read it lightly, and invested too much into it, and in any case, those were The Garage Years, 1998–2001. One may say that that was a long time ago, that I should forgive myself, you know, forgive and forget, let sleeping dogs lie. Yet every day I wake up to the severe consequences of my actions at the time, and before, and after. I for one cannot take my past lightly, not when I was so young and foolish.
Foundational Years: The Birth of The Artist
Yet as far as The Garage Years 1998–2001 go, those were some of the best years of my life. I did so much studying, so much research, read so many books, did so much development as an artist. It was also around this time that I achieved official professional status as a painter. (I also officially began my career as an “interdisciplinary artist-researcher”.)
In other words, as an artist and a thinker, those years were foundational for me. And that’s just it, while I was doing great work as an artist, that doesn’t mean that it was all my best work of all time. It wasn’t. It was very immature work as far as the development of an artist goes. It just goes to show you that having professional status doesn’t mean you aren’t a fool, or a drunk, an imbecile, or anything else. It just means you can do what professional artists do.
Being a professional artist means you have the recognition of your peers, but “recognition” doesn’t mean you are an absolute authority on all things under the sun. It just means you have “proven” that your work is “quality-enough” to be sold on the market. That in itself is a great achievement, but what I am saying is that the development doesn’t stop there.
And so, to conclude on The Influence of Cut-Ups, Burroughs & Gysin’s ideas on and experiments with cut-up methods had a great deal of influence on me, but not being “mature” enough to truly grasp the seriousness of such experimentation, I made all sorts of mistakes. Rookie mistakes, one might say. (Mistakes nonetheless and quite serious ones).
For instance, I learned that “what goes on in the laboratory stays in the laboratory”. Experimentation is necessary for a young artist. There is really no other way. One imitates other artists, makes copies, all sorts of things, so that one can truly “find one’s voice” or “style”. My “Burroughs Period” was anything BUT art of the stature of William S. Burroughs, and I would never want my “childhood experiments” to have any negative influence on the PERCEPTION of the great work of William S. Burroughs in the world.
In other words, don’t try this at home, kids. “There is nothing here but the recordings.” That last line comes up a few times in Burroughs’ work, and it took me a good 20+ years to really get it, and I’ve only scratched the surface. If you are a young artist in an experimental phase, keep all experiments “inside the Atelier” the studio or workshop, and don’t feel you have to talk to anyone about it. Talking to others about your work is never a good idea. The priority is doing the work, getting the work done, and seeing if it is any good. Once you have done it, if it passes ALL proper quality testing, then maybe you can show it to others. But you always start by doing the work, and the work is very hard. If it isn’t hard, you shouldn’t be doing it, as far as art work goes.
One last thing. I mentioned that I invented a style of poetry and painting that I called “Tonal Cinema”. Between the years 1998 and 2001, I wrote a series of 16 interlinking/interconnecting novellas, or short novels. It was called, and still is still called, “The Exhibition in Tonal Cinema”. It had three “tracks” or “Modes of Expression”, which are still the modes I use today in my practice: IMAGES / SOUNDS / TEXTS. That is to say, I wrote the nearly 1000-page Exhibition and also produced dozens of works of painting as well as dozens of pieces of sound design, as well as songs for guitar and voice. As I said, this is the period where I not only gained professional status as a painter, but it is where the “interdisciplinarity” of my interdisciplinary practice officially took hold. (I also got a degree in Computer-Assisted Sound Design during this period, hence the term interdisciplinary.)
But I was young and still not mature as an artist. I did a few exhibits here and there and had a “garage band”, as the title of this piece suggests, that never really made it anywhere (though we did create a lot of musical material which would go on to influence my music 20+ years later).
All I mean to say is to never stop experimenting as an artist. Especially in your youth, do as much experimenting as you can, because if you want to have a career in the arts, you may one day lose some of that delicious independence and liberty you once had, and time! The average intelligence around you is lukewarm. It always has been, it always will be. Do NOT expect that you will change the world. The world is unchangeable, you will realize this at some point, indefatigably so. You will NOT be listened to, people won’t really understand or appreciate or respect you work. People will take you for an fool or an imbecile and abuse you physically, mentally, morally, financially. I’ve had people break into my studio and destroy my entire production. I’ve had people steal my art works and others were graffiti’d upon, and yet others were lost due to water damage (that happened twice in the same year!).
Never give up. Always remember this expression, in Latin, “Esto perpetua”, which means in some translations, “May she endure forever.” I always took this as referring to “Beauty with a capital B”. Or it can mean The Muses. Whatever it means, work hard and work as though every single one of your pieces is going to be hanging at The Louvre, or that you will play Carnegie Hall or Madison Square Garden. You books will be read by millions and you will publish prolifically. That doesn’t mean that any of this will happen, for it most probably won’t, but you should always work as though your work will last an eternity.
Think back to some of the first real works of writing in history, the cuneiform clay tablets of ancient Sumeria. Many of these works are still extant several thousands of years after they were created. I mentioned the highly experimental writings of William S. Burroughs — and his cut-up novels — who so inspired me as a young man. Burroughs’ work is not only still being widely published, but there have been countless studies and PhD theses written ABOUT his work as an interdisciplinary artist-researcher. (Yes, Burroughs didn’t just write fiction, he also wrote essays and painted a great deal as well as made many audio recordings and even works of cinema.)
As for my “Tonal Cinema”, and in guise of a real conclusion this time, it began when I noticed that my poems were made up of a long “strip” of short lines, all of equal length. The images and sounds produced by each line made it so that as you read downwards through the text, your mind’s eye was producing a kind of “abstract cinema”, i.e. “images-in-sequence”, and the sounds were creating a kind of music in your inner ear. So the Tonal Cinema brand of writing had two “tracks” in and of itself, a sequence of images (“Cinema”) and a sequence of sounds (“Tonal”). That’s all I have to say for today. I reserve the right to come back to these subjects at a future date. Art requires, as Erik Satie’s inscription to his Vexations piano piece says, “…it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.” Don’t do it for the fame and glory. Do it because you care about preserving the documentary heritage of humankind, because that’s what artists do. Remember to have what I call a “Heart of (Infinite) Resolve”, because you have a very long road ahead of you. The artist in society is supposed to have a special “Status”, as UNESCO’s 1980 Declaration so soundly puts it:
“The 1980 Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist calls upon Member States to improve the professional, social and economic status of artists through the implementation of policies and measures related to training, social security, employment, income and tax conditions, mobility and freedom of expression. It also recognizes the right of artists to be organized in trade unions or professional organisations that can represent and defend the interests of their members.” — UNESCO, 1980 Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist
Don’t try too hard to have your works published too early. Work hard, dedicate yourself to your work with lots of heart and love for what you do, with courage, discipline, and perseverance, keep experimenting, and focus on the work and nothing else. The rest will come of its own accord. Don’t tempt the fates for they will eat you alive! And remember your place in History. Art could be said to be “that which is relevant for all time(s).” Seek to create work that is not only current, in line with the modern, contemporary society that you live in, but also think about posterity — and not prosperity. In fact, think about it a lot, every day, with every passing moment. Your life, and your work, and the spinning world around you depend on it. Remember these words: The documentary heritage of humankind.
May you live a long, productive life as an artist. May all your best wishes and wildest dreams come true. Be careful not to take yourself too seriously, at least not all the time. Put some humor into it, it will pay you many dividends well into the future. Experiment, but don’t feel the need to tell everyone about it. It’s important that “what goes on in the Atelier, stays in the Atelier.” Don’t confess your secrets to anyone! (The tradition of Secrecy in art practice goes a long way back. The master builders who designed and bulit the Gothic Cathedrals were very secretive. They had to, they were building Gothic Cathedrals, veritable Towers of Babel!). And so peace be with you.
A.G. © 1998–2023. All Rights Reserved.
