Competition? Cooperation?

The artist who acts as if he could have conceived his art by himself, sealed off from other artists, is stupid—he merely tries to conform to the idiotic romantic image of the artists as primeval energy, as a demiurge. The continual interaction of ideas among artists is the very condition for the existence of an artist. There could no more be one artist than there could be one man. … [An artist] ought perhaps to acknowledge that all outside ideas are really part of him. He ought to accept the others as facts of himself. … Instead of being in a constant state of anxiety, he can be in a constant state of absorption.  —Jack Tworkov

How does Harold Bloom’s theory about writers always competing with those who came before work with or refute this? (“Anxiety of Influence” he called it.) Is it an either/or situation? Either the artist/writer sets out to best those who did it before him or he tries to channel their work into his own to see where it leads. I am reminded of Russell Kirk’s (or Eliot’s?) statement on the critic who does little more than look for the allusions/influences in a work but misses the importance of what the author has added or synthesized. What is this critic missing? Perhaps everything.

It’s looking like I have a choice: competition or cooperation.

Then again: is it a matter of epistemologies? Is this either/or situation (black and white) really all there is, or does something else exist?—something that can be seen only if we allow different epistemologies to come out and play?

As I sit here thinking about all this, my mind continues to work on other problems, including what to do with the art journal that is becoming smaller all the time (because I hate what I keep trying to create) and whether I should type this up and post it to The Ruff Draft. Those two issues do belong together. After all, I am talking about an art journal and a blog: a web log. Again and again: the idea of audience sticks its big, fat nose into the conversation, and I want to punch it.

What I do know is that everything seems to be pointing me towards deliberation. I have tried to hide from the fears and worries that limit me by “living in the present,” but I have been doing even that wrong. Just traveling from moment to moment and grabbing the ideas, tools, images, and words that randomly enter my orbit is not living in the present; it is working hard to avoid worrying about the future. The problem is that taking hold of the random does not obliterate the worries about the future. It just stuffs them in the closet, where they will inflict themselves on me as soon as I open the door. How often does wandering really amount to running away?