When s/he sees that s/he has become "The great Wretched Worrier", the greatly desired long suck,
the willing victim of "The Great Insidious Devourer" whom s/he has spawned from her accumulative habit of obsessive worrying, she must become the conductor of her dangerous thought patterns that "The Great Insidious Devourer" has lived on.
Once this obsessive energy is conducted & transformed by "The Great Wretched Worrier" the grubby opaque veil falls from her tormented head in a pile of writhing dust
"The Great Wretched Worrier" becomes "The Great Transformer" of the black stream of worried energy, transforming it into a spiral of living energy
bringing immediate death
to
"The Great Insidious Devourer"
GT: What metaphor would you use to describe the “soul”? CC: A translucent sheath - this Soul sheath holds all the experiences,
the imprint of every life lived by the individual;
the Soul distills this imprint into the essence,
the stench, the perfume of every life.
As the bee gathers pollen, the soul gathers the essence.
The Soul releases this essence into the emotional & mental body
of the heart & mind - we are the sum total of our experiences ,
each life a different body, each life a different mask.
We act out life's dramas, tragedies, comedies, past, present & future, colliding, clashing, coming together on that mad, collapsible stage
of Life & Death, the voice of the individual Soul echoing in the vehicles - in the blood - uniting with the collective memories of the group Soul -
all the voices, apocalyptic, living, dead.
At night, the Soul, uniting with the mental & emotional vehicles,
lifts up out of the sleeping body in a transparent sheath of ancient colours - the colours expressing the mood of the sleeping person,
ancient hallowed colours, lurid, angry, hungry, desirous -------
ah, i have seen these vehicles lift up out of the body in a translucent sheath
& fly, a kite on a long silver cord,
an ancient scar on long dark nights when the body,
oblivious of Souls flight,
sleeps wrapped in dreams, where everything is created
out of little sparks of spinning light.
GT: What new medium would you like to explore?
CC: ah un-materialized ideas spill in a torrent –
the soul flies back & forth bearing news
i cannot yet decipher
i want to perform - speak
create a new shape
yea - i am ravening- for the birth of an idea
ah how it gleams
a mad mercurial opal
nesting in an obscure chamber
of the sequestered
Heart - mind
GT: Arianna Huffington wrote: “Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an after-life.” What kinds of figurations of an after-life do you entertain, if any?
CC: entertain hmmmm i stare at the bloody floor of my collapsible stage
I am a timid child flung by an invisible force into the dark realm of my mother's long hallway.
I see myself on quavering legs, a mysterious power fills me, the white fire of my central eye penetrates the great looming shadows of life upon life, the masks - skeletons of those lives gyrate around me.
I become part of the ancient bodiless life. Each life the same play, different voices, different faces, stored in the bloody cage of the heart, the miser's vault - the mind.
I see myself in a schoolroom sharing a double desk of ancient wood with metal legs. On the lid of the desk, hundreds of names scarred in the wood. On the double seat next to me a girl sits. On her head above of her high polished forehead a blue bow trembles. She puts her hand inside my side of the double desk. The hand takes my fat chalks; the hand puts them in her side of the double desk.
Sitting next to me on the double seat she draws on a black board with my favorite fat vermillion chalk. I ask her if i can borrow the fat vermillion chalk.
She says, "NO,
"these fat chalks are Mine."
i stare at her high polished forehead,
her quivering blue bow.
Who do the fat chalks belong to?
are the fat chalks hers?
or mine
for one year i sit next to her
the fat chalks lie inside
her side of the double desk
i watch her hand take the fat chalks out of her side of the double desk
i watch her draw with the fat chalks
i see this from my side of the double desk
i see what appears to be me
reflected in that which appears to be
her high polished forehead.
GT: In other interviews, you have said that to create one must be willing to play the fool. Do you mean that one must be humble? Would you articulate one way (or trick) you use to get around the ego?
CC: hmmmmm Gene i do not think "one must be willing to play the fool."
One is the Fool or one fatally becomes "The fool".
i was born a fool, the fools feet sank into the floor, floor appeared to be made out of marshmallow
there were no sides no top no bottom.
All attempts to hide one's sliding mania, one's weird lack of coordination one's mad obsession with the self posing as a fetish, secretly parading as a million people squeezing in & out of Love's mirror studded with millions of haunted eyes.
I tried to find a way to squeeze inside the mirror to become one with the other selves crying out piteously to be fed.
Ah Gene the Fool has nothing to do with humbleness as we know it. One becomes or is a medium.
The white flame of inspiration shoots up into the miser's vault - the mind-heart.
The flame devours extraneous knowledge, all the dross one has swallowed.
One becomes a slumbering mediumistic vehicle. One must conduct the white flame or die.
ah i have been commanded by a hidden self to leap thru 7 hoops of white flame, wearing the weird attire of the Fool.
For years i cowered unable to leap, covered in the suppurating wounds of Ego's vice,
tailored to fit an ignorant state.
Gene you ask would i articulate one way or trick i use to get around the ego
alas we are the Trick, the Eternal Trick, tricked by the trick of the self in its monumental
deceit. However the Trick in its crazy attire becomes horribly singed in the leaping flame of inspiration.
As for Ego we created Ego's illusionary realm, Ego oft appearing as a befurred monster we imagine we cannot live without so oft do we feed & stroke it. However the Ego is a mental concept we swallowed eon’s ago, rising & falling under the weight of that illusionary concept, that seemingly singular agonizing addiction we service. The universal Ego studded with millions of eyes eternally staring, plucking at the stuff of that gyrating illusion, that mad Juggler, that delirious effigy we perceive as the self.
ah Gene there is no recipe, no tricks to get around the Ego. The power of inspiration forces one to temporarily let go of one's image, to temporarily drop the bloody bone. However, one must pay an invisible toll. When this toll is exacted one loses that which one clutches blindly,
layer upon layer of precious stagnation.
GT: I am not the first to parallel your work with that of Charles Simic. In his book “The Uncertain Certainty,” Simic writes: "All I know is that what I love in poetry is a kind of devastating simplicity and empathy, and that fortunately can be found equally in Shakespeare and in so-called primitive poetries." What would you like to say to members of your audience who cast you as an outsider artist or a primitive poet?
CC: The outsider artist hmmmm this takes us back to the role of "The Fool" drowning in his own juice,
blind beneath her swirling mantle of darkness. Lo, an apocalyptic light sears the Fool,
her central eye awakens, an arrow of light penetrates the Fool's heart, mind.
In a flood of mad longing the Fool raises the white stick of the blind,
striking heart & mind, knocking them off their double dealing thrones.
The Fool in her role of conductor takes up her white stick & conducts this whirlpool of fertile chaos.
if this is what they call outsider art - the Fool is firmly labeled, hung outside the door of society.
Will the door open or will the Fool in her ridiculous hat, starve?
Ah Gene, Poetry the primitive Poet
here is only one winged sound one winged word in its glorious flight it gives birth to sounds, shapes pictures - all existing within the one sound. Out of the flood the famine of tribal memory - we write, draw with instruments of divine ignorance, vomiting up an iron-gate leading to Justice, who dons the stolen wig of a million judges.
We place labels on those who dare to chalk up universal visions on that bleeding suppurating wall of life
GT: Do you consider yourself a feminist artist? If any, what role does gender play in your work? How has this changed over the arc of your career?
CC: Ah, the scandal of being a woman, one of the obsessed - a cursed artist -
that creature who doth
host a Cunt,
that seat of emotions, that blood red throne.
Those who mount it die.
How, i ask you, can a woman who doth house the insatiably desired cunt,
a woman who is born to serve within a circle of outdated concepts,
how can she be a mother & an artist?
In the name of love she doth house orphans in warm fervour, in dappled shade of womb.
She must host the multitudes who hunt the universal cunt.
Disguised as eels they slide in & out, diving swooning, seeding in her living waters.
Possessed by un-conducted longings for love, unfathomable energy vaults thru her vehicles
shaking her to the core. She must find a way to conduct this energy or die.
In her terrible longing - her mad obsession to birth ideas - she must become
A Great Universal Juggler. Unable to become a Great Juggler of the clashing emotions of
the primordial instincts of a mother versus the apocalyptic energy of an artist
ah, how can a woman, an obsessed artist, be a mother when she hath fallen into the whirlpool of living chaos - that apocalyptic light that quicksand of rampaging ideas crying out for the life, heart, mind of the creator, who must give soul, heart, mind, body, to invisible ideas, or die.
AH Gene you ask about the arc of my career.
Ah we are the Arc The Great Universal Arc falling, rotting-living, flaming.
A crucible.
Ah, in a great rainbowed arc we flood our pastures with desire.
