Tired in
the evenings, so that doesn’t always bode well for writing, either for its
quality or its quantity. In other words, I don’t get many words on a page
before my eyes start to close and I feel sleepy. Twenty-five years ago, I could
pack another life into my evenings, and I did. I worked sixty to seventy hour weeks
then, and sometimes on the weekends. Sometimes I took courses at night—accounting,
Italian, business courses, or sometimes I attended evening seminars having to
do with investing. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a course. I’m more into
learning how to do things myself these days, and less interested in traditional
ways of learning. I suppose that has to do with how the brain changes and
learns as one grows older. I like that aspect of growing older. Everything
feels more fluid and less rigid. There is not one right way to do things
anymore, like we were ‘taught’ when we were young.
Inspiration
comes from films—I watched ‘Exit Through
the Gift Shop’, a documentary film from
2010 about street art as viewed through the eyes of Thierry Guetta, a would-be
filmmaker, who followed street artists around the world for years as they pursued their
art. One of those artists was Banksy, who ended up using Guetta’s video footage
to make this film, because the film that Guetta first made was (presumably) a chaotic mess. Hard
to know for sure how tongue-in-cheek this movie really is—is it a hoax film or
is it for real? Thierry Guetta followed these street artists and ended up
besting them at their own game—setting up a big ‘street art’ show happening in
Los Angeles as MBW (Mr. Brainwash) and making millions. By the end of the film,
Madonna has hired him to do the artwork for her latest album cover. The
question then becomes, who was the brainwasher and who was being brainwashed? Are
we being hoodwinked, or is this film for real? The film is well-worth watching,
as it is a good introduction to the lives of currently-popular street artists
from around the world.
Apropos Madonna (“…You know
that we are living in a material world, And I am a material girl”), another
good documentary film I watched this past week was from 2011—‘George Harrison: Living in the Material
World’ (director Martin Scorsese). Scorsese did a great job with this film;
we get a real introduction to the spiritual Beatle, and to his spiritual
journey as well as to his progression and evolution as an artist. We also get a
real sense of the conflict that pervaded most of his life—how to remain
spiritual in a material world. Harrison was truly an amazing artist—creative,
spiritual, persistent, focused, dedicated. All of this came through in the film.
Mostly when you think of the Beatles, you think of Paul McCartney and John
Lennon. This film shows you why George Harrison was an artistic force to be
reckoned with. He was way ahead of his time in terms of collaborating musically
with ‘foreign’ artists—Ravi Shankar and other Indian musicians--as well as
organizing the first charity concert for Bangladesh in 1971. But mostly, I was
impressed with his spiritual journey. Here was a man who thought it was
important to prepare for death, for the time when he would leave his body for
another world. He never denigrated or poked fun at the world of the spirit. And
he was a pretty good example of practicing what he preached, with the possible
exception of the few periods in his life when he dishonored his body through
excessive drug use. I like films about artists of all kinds; I like watching the
creative process at work—how artists think, act, work, live in a family, relax—all those
things.
