wild geese

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

the object and the negotiation

Art-making is a constant negotiation. Between the world, its movements, this city, a job, family, personal roadblocks. As a child, I looked at the artist as free from restraints, free to create, to make, to live outside of the every day negotiations that seemed to plague the non-creative. I see this as a faulted view now. No one is unrestrained. The artist almost has a more difficult relationship with these factors, as she is constantly clawing out time in the day to create, paving a route that walks between the fantastic creative spirit and the world. I wonder, if given all the time in the world, what kind of art would she create? I believe that it is this relationship with the social order, the daily grind, the negotiations made with time and interest management that make the desire stronger. The work is at times a response or a release from social restraints. It comes from a place that is here and now. The negotiation is as much a part of the art as the object.