Marco Aurélio

Saturday, May 30, 2020

Afonso Arinos - a novel

Nothing makes a home more in need of a good cleaning than writing a novel; begin to write a novel and there is dust everywhere.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2020

I find myself thinking of John Lennon lately. So much so, that I ended up in Yoko Ono’s lap. My mind wonders into “conceptual art” and grapefruit. I hate grapefruit. It is a bitter and unrealized fruit. The one fruit that God, if He exists, would come to admit as a blunder.

Yoko Ono appropriated the name for her book, hailed by critics, who certainly know more than I do, as a masterpiece. On this day and age, it says a lot about our way of living, that one can safely question God’s creations before one can disregard a well known personality. Nevertheless, I believe the title to be appropriate to her endeavor, and a “freudian slip” of sorts on her part.

When one creates art, one strives to completion above all, because to achieve it one must teach through whatever medium one has chosen. Countless artists have denounced this idea, humbly suggesting that an artist is lucky to stumble into truth of any sort. Regardless of the road traveled, there’s no such thing as art that doesn’t teach us something.

The artist is solely responsible for the realization of the art, and a true artist will fail with the force of a hurricane that dismantles all in its path. In conceptual art, the artist never fails. He places on our shoulders the burden of the creation. He walks unpunished through what it is known by others as a torturous valley where one must connect with some sort of universal truth or face the wrath of the gods. Becker or Rank empathetically labeled this misfires as the “artiste-manqué.” I can’t quite remember who said it. Who’s the messenger and who’s the messiah. In the spirit of “conceptual art,” I will let you research who "said what" on your own.

That’s conceptual art, I assign to you a work that should have been mine. The “conceptual artist” can work within the safety of someone who realizes that his success is only hindered by the lack of imagination of his audience. The canvas will be as white as the audience’s imagination allows it to be.

I came to wonder today on how we can apply conceptual art to other art forms, such as cinema, science or technology. And it came to me: not as a film; for the Gods of cinema are not kind- and to that art I gladly toil in pain.

It came to me as an invention.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AN INVENTION CALLED The remake of SHADES OF GRAY

I now

stand in an empty room

and you stand before me.

I insist

that your hands are clean

and I have a pair of white gloves

for you to wear.

I watch

as you struggle to vest them.

I ask

that you close your eyes

for a brief time,

and I hand you

the most revolutionary device ever created by men

in the past four hundred years.

Can you see

the beauty of it?

What does it do?

Go out there

tell the others

tell the world of my invention.

Tell them of how brilliant I am. *

And now a sample of GRAPEFRUIT by Yoko Ono

The most interesting piece of art in this book is a "conceptual art" entitled: PAINTING TO EXIST ONLY WHEN IT'S COPIED OR PHOTOGRAPHED

Legend has it that Yoko was inspired by a dream she had, wherein she found herself surrounded by some of the greatest artists in the world: Micheangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Cézanne, Van Gough, Picasso. When they asked for a sample of her work, she was inspired to create... two samples below.

PAINTING TO EXIST ONLY WHEN IT'S COPIED OR PHOTOGRAPHED

Let people copy or photograph your paintings. Destroy the originals.

1964 Spring

PAINTING TRANSMITTED BY A MEDIUM

Yoko touched the shoulder of Leonardo, Cézanne, Van Gough and closed her eyes, vowing to transmit the painting she imagined. "Whenever you feel the urge, paint." -she said.

2020 la la land

* Mr. Aurelio owns the copyright for any device you come to imagine.

Thursday, May 21, 2020

White Page

The next page
will be free.
The space
bellow the last words
my heart wrote.

How beautiful
the white is!

In the purity of a white page,
all possibilities are eternal.
I suggest a poem
to make Neruda weep,
to conquer all hearts:
Pessoa, Camus, Cervantes,
and the illustrious english gentleman;
the author ought be you.

The critics will insist
on a structure,
a method.

So,
take a fresh paper
and separate from the others.
Leave it there
being beat by time
everyday,
just like you and I.

As life goes on
hold it from time to time
but write no verses on it
no stories,
a tear or two
that makes its way on it
it’s ok
just don’t make a habit of it.

Leave the page there
vast with whiteness.
If glory
is what you are after,
before you die,
mail it to someone;
one of those contests
that spread like carcinogenic
entities everywhere.

Send it to them
if you must,
your white page,
as old as you
and the tree that made it,
and the page
will be unique,
filled with you.