some words about the art of Jill Moon

Jill Moon, a university professor, painter, set designer, glass artist, and doll maker who passed away this July, was a painter of distinct style and approach who hadn't been given a great deal of critical notice during her too-short life. This would be due in large part, though, to the fact that she retired from public life soon after she left her teaching position in set design and art history at Cornell. She did some design work for the theater, but she had no showings that I can remember. She willingly pursued anonymity that was her right. Jill didn't stop making art, however, and indeed her productivity was prodigious and prolific. Jill Moon's otherworldly figuration was a marvel. She was a dear friend of mine for the better part of thirty years and change, and it was my good fortune to "see her in action" as she took to the canvas with her paints, brushes, and assorted implements. Jill had a sense of how to bring the incongruous together and make it do work as if the disparate details--a fairy in a pope's Miter, leotards and a polka dot skirt, a red/green/orange trout standing upward blowing blue bubbles, a rainbow-crested dandelion waiting patiently for the fairy and the fish to notice its glorious impersonation of an umbrella--belonged in the same space. 

Poet Wallace Stevens' had a theory of the Supreme Fiction, that space between imagination and the real world that it's about to work upon, where the notions, ideas, imagery is worked out, arranged, finessed as though being fussed upon before going out the door for the business day, but always without explanation to justify their visualization or placement before the eyes of the observer. This was the sphere where there were no secrets, only matters you hadn't discerned yet, or explanatory narratives to connect her figures with a cogent suggestion of what makes sense in the reality they were brought into. 

There was a painting Jill had done for a show of hers at UCSD that featured small, mischievous devils scattered about the color-saturated straits of a particular portrait. Someone asked her what they were and she explained, laughing so slightly, that "...they were devils playing with the other things in the painting. I painted them because I like them. What they mean is private. Actually, I'm not even sure if I know what they mean..." 

I wouldn't doubt that at the time, Jill would have to create something that would contextualize the leitmotifs and tropes and her use of a flat style for a critical appreciation to be applied and calm those minds that demand how the contents of paint operate as a critique of how we live. Still, in the moment of creation and long afterward, she was taken with the joy of creating this space where instinct, dreams, mystery, and ominous ritual, combined in the odd and angular ways that fit Jill's idea of allowing forms to migrate, mutate, associate as they may.  

I remember Jill, in one of those graduate student bull sessions at the Pub following an art show she had been featured in, reflecting on the ideas of Derrida and deconstruction and the insight that because meaning is not fixed in a text, whether be it a book, painting, movie, play, saying that she gave her art over to the idea of play. "I don't think art needs to be about anything," she said firmly. I don't recall what she followed that declaration with. Still, I do recall many a conversation that artists can only be responsible for making the art and making sure that the pieces they introduce to the world have their own integrity, on their terms.  "What the painting means isn't my job," she said at one point, "that would kill the happiness someone else could have creating their own meaning and sharing it with others." Jill was taken with the idea that art had no commitment to reaffirm or even threaten an audiences' shared cosmologies; the artist wasn't required to speak to how the world does or does not work or dwell in the joys or depressions that art lovers might project on the campus. 

The poetic analogs are obvious, I think, the first being Ars Poetica by Archibald McLeish.

Ars Poetica

By Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute   

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   

As the flight of birds.

                         *               

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs.

                         *               

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   

But be.

a poem for Jill Moon, 1952-2015

From the top of your head

Jill Moon, 1952-2015

  (Jill Moon, the woman I loved more than nearly anyone or anything else, has passed away. This is a love poem I wrote for her back in  1996. It says it all and has nothing close to how deep our friendship was and how deep the loss is and will remain. She was 63 years old, a painter, a set designer, a college professor, a loving mother,  a glass artist, a wit, a smart person who loved beautiful things and interesting people..

Jill Moon was a beautiful, brilliant, funny and passionate person who brought energy, humor,
and wit where ever she went in whatever she undertook. Her art in painting, set design, sculpture shared the qualities of innocence and play, mystery and just a hint of the ominous. Her canvases bristled with activity and color, small items and large that seemed to move about their terrain in some grand dance to keep this world balanced and ultimately serene. Jill was a loving person, gregarious, outgoing, a loving mother and a champion of the talent and virtues of her friends, a believer in social justice, and kindness toward others, someone who believed that harnessing the creativity in all of us makes the world a better place to live in. She was inspired to create and continued her art up to the end, adding glass art and doll making to her splendid body of work in painting, set design, and public sculpture. Being with Jill was one of the richest experiences of my life and her loss leaves a gap that cannot be easily filled, if at all. Jill was a beautifully singular human being. - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/sandiegouniontribune/jill-moon-deroos-condolences/175366955?cid=full&page=4#sthash.dSfay1v5.dpuf

Jill Moon was a beautiful, brilliant, funny and passionate person who brought energy, humor,
and wit where ever she went in whatever she undertook. Her art in painting, set design, sculpture shared the qualities of innocence and play, mystery and just a hint of the ominous. Her canvases bristled with activity and color, small items and large that seemed to move about their terrain in some grand dance to keep this world balanced and ultimately serene. Jill was a loving person, gregarious, outgoing, a loving mother and a champion of the talent and virtues of her friends, a believer in social justice, and kindness toward others, someone who believed that harnessing the creativity in all of us makes the world a better place to live in. She was inspired to create and continued her art up to the end, adding glass art and doll making to her splendid body of work in painting, set design, and public sculpture. Being with Jill was one of the richest experiences of my life and her loss leaves a gap that cannot be easily filled, if at all. Jill was a beautifully singular human being. - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/sandiegouniontribune/jill-moon-deroos-condolences/175366955?cid=full&page=4#sthash.dSfay1v5.dpuf

Jill Moon was a beautiful, brilliant, funny and passionate person who brought energy, humor,
and wit where ever she went in whatever she undertook. Her art in painting, set design, sculpture shared the qualities of innocence and play, mystery and just a hint of the ominous. Her canvases bristled with activity and color, small items and large that seemed to move about their terrain in some grand dance to keep this world balanced and ultimately serene. Jill was a loving person, gregarious, outgoing, a loving mother and a champion of the talent and virtues of her friends, a believer in social justice, and kindness toward others, someone who believed that harnessing the creativity in all of us makes the world a better place to live in. She was inspired to create and continued her art up to the end, adding glass art and doll making to her splendid body of work in painting, set design, and public sculpture. Being with Jill was one of the richest experiences of my life and her loss leaves a gap that cannot be easily filled, if at all. Jill was a beautifully singular human being. I will miss her terribly and will be forever grateful that she was part of my life. - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/sandiegouniontribune/jill-moon-deroos-condolences/175366955?cid=full&page=4#sthash.dSfay1v5.dpuf

I love you, dear Jill. --tb)

From the top of your head
flowers grow that I’ve never seen
in the nature of my asking
the meaning of this thing, so beautiful, the wind.

The wind in all uses highlights
the shift of your hips
leaning against rocks, the meaning of this,
the earth, the mother of the deals
that have us eating out
of  the hands that pick the roots of your hair
that goes on growing like flowers on hills
with all the houses we ‘ve  never lived in.

A clap of thunder is applause enough for pausing
to smell the turpentine that revives the hem and haw
of  the wood under our shoes,
rainy nights are ovations and the trance
of  still looking into your eyes
where I’ve always seen them,
on pyramids, in circles,
thirsty yearning.

From my hands comes ruined meaning
about hammers and nails and the holes that made them,
I’ve stared at your face on the ceiling all night,
water flows where there is no resistance,
insistence makes me forget and remember your names,
every center has a heart
and every heart is broken.
Into your face    t
    all roads split down the middle,
    the wind is a whisper
and a rustle of notes
    coyotes cry
    in the wake
    of our progress,
    so beautiful, the wind,
    and water rolling
in circles, in circles, in peace.

This is just my opinion,

 Came across a great rant, of sorts in the Houston Press about the habit of many of the hair-trigger opinion mongers in the world to dash behind the phrase "this is just my opinion" as way of giving themselves permission to suck the air the air from whatever proximity they happen to be in and replace it with misrepresentations, unsubstantiated blather, corrosive gossip, dubious science , historical inaccuracy and the like. More than a rant , to be sure, as author Jef Rouner measures his obvious distate with  examples of the evasive practice is made, and demonstrates the fallacies in the reasoning ,  or exposes the lack there of. 

"This is just my opinion" is a cop out in truth, an addendum to a comment that is meant to inoculate both remark and remarker against a closer inspection of their views. It is a lazy swerve into a convenient and know-nothing relativism that maintains that opinions that put forth dubious criteria as immutable fact are , it seems to them, all the same. I get especially irritated by conversations where I have knowledge of and strong views about the subject--literature, poetry, politics, films, --where the person I'm disagreeing with responds with "that's just your opinion". 

It's a go-to strategy that works as an attempt to both diminish my view point to the babbling chorus that have already opined on whatever the subject might be, and to get the opponent off the hook and relinquish from offering a cogent response. I don't know why this is, but the person who opts out of conversation with "just your./just my opinion" segues are, in my experience, the ones who raised the subject and pressed me for an opinion. In essence, it's a irrational swerve for someone who first approaches a topic with a head full of factoids (Norman Mailer's original definition of factoid, those things that are false that are not sufficiently vetted and which get repeated so often that everyone, including responsible news media, take them as true , at face value) with it mind to set you set you straight and then retreat into the marsh of uncertainty when presented with a srong counter proposal. 

Not all opinions are equal. Some are more interesting than others, some are better stated, some are better supported. Mailer himself was wrong and offensive on a host of issues, and he was spot on and righteous on others. He was, though, never dull in his what he said, and even in pursing a line of thought that was contrary to conventional wisdom, he provoked a conversation, a debate among the readership that , I think, made people smarter for remaining intrigued by the details both sides presented, wanting more than snarky summaries or pathetic sarcasm . That seems to be a quality we are being robbed of; the internet, of course, has made it possible for millions to have heard of a great many things, from authors, obsure wars, theories of economics and the like, and to know exactly nothing about them in any socially or creatively useful way. That is a shame.

Ant Man: yes, a small fete, but nicely done all the same

I always regarded Ant-Man as the least intriguing superhero from Marvel Comics 'Silver Age" offerings. The problem was that AM's power, the ability to shrink to the size of an ant yet maintain the strength of a full-sized male, and the ability to command ants to do his bidding had limited applications in stressful situations. There were, and remain, superheroes who have skills and gimmicks that are of curious necessity at face value; part of the joy of seeing what could be done with Batman, Green Arrow, and others was how the writers could come up with a convincing dilemma in which the odd skills would be precisely the element needed to rescue the day. Ant-Man didn't give that anticipation. One sensed that writer Stan Lee and whoever else helped him with the scripts was reaching issue-to-issue for a predicament where Ant-Man's limited skill set was what the contrived situation needed. I had low expectations for the movie and found myself pleasantly surprised. Director Peyton Reed's stewardship of this film reconfiguration of a one-dimensional comic book hero dredged up from Marvel's farm leagues is sure, swift, efficient. If not spectacular on a level with the first Captain America movie , Man of Steel, or the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, it does the work a good comic book is meant to do on the psyche, pleasantly distract you from worry, and want.

The plot was nothing to brag about, a standard mad scientist with daddy issues going rogue with a plot to rule the world (or at least ruin it all together for a vengeance-motivated profit). Still, it was well-paced, superbly edited, and the effects were smartly held in check and well-used when they were deployed. What was impressive especially is how Ant-Man's skill at shrinking can be handy in a fight, as in disappearing rapidly and just as quickly reappearing from another angle to sucker punch a hapless villain (or an expectedly sucker-punch prone henchman). Very cool stuff. And Paul Rudd was likable as the well-intentioned ex-con recruited by scientist Hank Pym (Kirk Douglas) to take on the mantel of being the Ant-Man. He seems a bit embarrassed telling people his silly superhero name is a winning touch. 

It was the best that Marvel has done, but it was superior to the over-rated and needlessly busy Guardians of the Universe. Reed and credited screenwriters  Rudd, Edgar Wright, Adam McKay, and Joe Cornish did the work of going to school on what is now recognizable as the Marvel Studios style of film, familiarized themselves with the formula, and produced something that was created in the same mold as the Marvel films that have popped up in the last decade. I hesitate to say they "created" something here. A good way to think of this is that Ant-Man might have been a decent car built by Ford, GM, or Chrysler, a nice ride in most respects, but nothing truly distinct from anything else on the competing showroom floors. Just a pleasant ride, a professional bit of more-of-the-same. Ant-Man is a film that accomplished its mission, to entertain and distract for a brief period and then recede from recent memory. That these folks managed to do that without the usual dinner theater mellow drama and scene-chewing that usually goes in Marvel's big-ticket films is something else that recommends the film.

Serious like a good crying jag

Inveterate television watchers have been extolling the worth of cable drama for some time now, honoring the programming as solid evidence that television has entered a new Golden Age. It's a view I share in large part. There has been and continues to be so much interesting and artfully convened fiction and comedy spread  out along the cable channels that participating in a TV show carries the sort of prestige that had been the exclusive claim of movie work. Small wonder for the tremendous ground swell in quality, as movie producers, directors and writers, finding it more difficult to get serious dramatic films produced for theatrical release, approached premium cable stations like HBO and Showtime, along with FX and AMC on the non--premium side, to see if they could get their projects done. The rest, of course, is a changed industry, with new technologies, more viewing options , and more demand for original content. Not everything that has emerged in the vein of serious cable drama has been compelling, which was to be expected by anyone who knows the basic dialectical precept that "quantity changes quality". (Consult your Hegel, Marx and Engels for more elaboration, or browse this handy cheat sheet on the issue). The upshot of that abstract dictum is that familiarity breeds contempt on the audience's part, who eventually become so saturated in the fundemental mechanisms of serialized drama that what was once fresh and refreshingly unexpected becomes cliched  and , further, lends itself to parody. Worse, the dramas parody themselves. That would be a sad state to find ourselves in, a sad state to return to, not much different than when the broadcast networks ruled the airwaves and ruined us with decades of shtick.

This is to put forward that the sort of drama introduced to cable television introduced with the 1997 HBO prison series OZ  has been around long enough to develop, inspire further plot innovations and variations to the extent that the quality fiction programs we've come to know have developed their own generic structural particulars and developed , as well, their own cliches. Part of that seems to be the draining of humor, even gallows humor, from a good amount of the newer dramas and the drastic draining of any ironic sense that might give the relentless pursuit of gloom a breathe space or at least a chance to laugh hysterically at some sudden funny quirk that would release tension before building it up again. 

The Atlantic Magazine has an article titled "Why Prestige TV is So Depressing" .This article is a pretty good overview of the current crop of prestige dramas that have filled the cable channels. I pretty much share the opinion that television has matured to the point that it can have splendidly plotted, directed and acted serial dramas that provide the grittier and compelling twists of the human heart at war with itself (a paraphrase of Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech quote), an audience desire that theatrical motion pictures have not been able to do in large part for at least the last 20 years. 

 Humor in these most recent series,, though, seems to be on vacation and matters are several shades too dire and too serious . Game of Thrones should have been conceived as a limited series with an end game in sight, different from Martin's unfinished novel series. This last season was a humorless trudge for the most part , and killing off the characters you're sympathetic with is no longer effective means of keeping interest.The end of this many -layered saga is open ended and the story arcs , given the shuffling pace of the last two seasons, appear that they'll require several more seasons before anything resembling a conclusion arrives at our doorstep.

Focus is the key for series that want to dwell in the baser aspects of our nature. We would benefit from producers, writers and directors having very good outlines of where their proposed serial dramas begin and end, that the adventures in the middle area are interesting but don't wind up in a dead end or mired in the metaphorical swamp of distracted character chatter. We need more dramas with that have the element of irony , surprise and humor, dark humor of course, to make the complicating action of flawed characters seem more vivid--those moments of relief make the dramatic momentum have more power. Think Sopranos, think Six Feet Under, think Breaking Bad. All isn't lost, though, as we have Fargo, Better Call Saul at our disposal, shows that realize that dramatic power isn't limited to a cast of frowny faced psychopaths, rapists and killers who are working out their issues sans a punchline of any sort.

"True Detective", Season 2: a beautifully rendered muddle

The second season of True Detective has taken some hard knocks from viewers who are steamed that creator and writer Nick Pzzolatto hasn't created a new series of the show that would better compliment the masterful first season. I nod, of course, acknowledging the lack of polish in some of the more ambitious bits of dialogue and agree, as well, that this investigation is far more ambiguous than the supernatural aspects of the serial murders that were the focus of the first set of episodes. Acknowledging that, I think Season 2 has its own style and embedded genius. This is classic noir material, worthy of Hammet, Chandler, Cornell Woolrich , Jim Thompson; it is a world of scummy characters and their soulless undertakings ,  darkly lit and dark-hearted. If the investigation is unclear at times, but not incoherent, and this is the tone and spirit of this kind of story telling, which involves very screwed up people trying to redeem themselves by trying to discover a hidden truth behind a fatal incident.

Whether the characters find redemption of any kind--a second chance in a job or relationship, a healed relationship, self-acceptance--is up in the air at this point, and that gives this show a Calvinist aspect that is simply irresistible: none of the nominal heroes have an idea whether the investigation they're conducting will benefit them in this life (or the next, for that matter), but their hard work in applying their professionalism toward an inevitable discovery of ugly facts can be construed as hints, clues, indications of their chances of achieving some relief from their existential dilemmas. And for all the awkward philosophizing? Fine with me: these are cops and creeps with an appreciation of nuance and distinctions that abound in the life, but when they try to articulate it, it comes out awkward, confused, lacking an over all clarity. For all the plans, explanations, justifications and action , these are cops and creeps who are stumbling over themselves looking their lost selves in the middle of a crime scene. It is a perfect, beautifully rendered muddle.