One's Work

I know, you know, here I have this studio made for drawing in, and for some reason recently I've been coming out here to the couch. I don't get that at all. It's like this latest crop, these 20 drawings which I did, I started doing about a month ago, and that, I don't know, for some reason I just, I like being out here. I would have the TV on. Do you consider yourself an artist? Oh my God. Wow. An artist? I don't know. I don't think of anybody as an artist exactly. I mean, it wouldn't be the first word I would use to describe anyone, even Michelangelo or somebody. That would be stupid. I mean, yeah, and what else is new? I mistrust categorical words of almost every stripe. I don't think there's one that I can use without bristling a little bit. So I think I have things I love to do, and among them is drawing. Well, the poems were things I've been writing for years before these, and one a day. I have an absurd number of poems, and now I have more than 4,000 drawings, you know. Yeah, fine, I'm talking thousands. It's like You know, it's like this, it's like, it's got a weird compulsive disease that I have. Around about 2007, '08, getting into 2000 to April 1st, April Fool's Day, 2009, I started putting photographs in, or just, 'cause I wanted to, I wanted more, I wanted something that wasn't words. I was getting really good at words. I mean, I like some— I think a whole year of my poems in 2006 are probably the best I've ever written, ever. I was getting frustrated because it wasn't enough. It didn't feel like enough. The photographs started to come in, but they were too static to me, and I didn't have complete control of them. See how I kind of saved them? I'm not done with them yet, but you see the faces turned into something kind of okay. But the only thing I really knew how to do was draw, in addition to this. And then we can get pencils in here and we have all sorts of stuff that you can do. No, I start with drawing first. And it is an interesting moment when I sit down to write a poem. I look at the drawing. Rarely do I feel any need to say anything about it though, or to explain it. And that doesn't mean that sometimes a poem that comes out appears to, you know, have that as one of its missions. But the poem is just as autonomous as the drawing. I mean, I've— it's kind of a funny way to put it because it makes me laugh a little bit. They agree to be seen with each other. That's all I can definitely say. They agree, and they want to be. I mean, back when I said the poem wants something else, it did, but it didn't need it to, like, do its work for it. It just wanted to be in the company, in its company. So this is what I do. You know, once you're done, it's whoever views it. The drawing belongs to whoever looks at it. Don't look at it that way! I mean, you can't do that. You can, but— what? How do you know when you're done? 'Well, I don't know what I do.' I do know what— and that doesn't mean that I haven't gone back to drawings and changed them. I mean, it's usually because I've got to correct a mistake, and so I just, 'Oh, I'll make a bit of a dragon.' You know, what— but it's not a— I know. I may be wrong, and if I'm wrong, I'll go back to it if I see it, you know. But it's like, like this, I feel like I'm gonna know when this is done and I'm gonna like it. That's it. I have to like it. I have to like it. I know it's done when I like it. Oh no, no, no, when I laugh. That's always true. Always, always true. It's true of a poem and it's true of a drawing. When I laugh at it, that's when I know it's done. That is when I know it's done. Because it's— oh yeah, yeah. Well, think of why you laugh. I mean, something's perfect in a certain way, you know.