From Art Muscle by Mike Zetteler
Surely, as a rational person, I'm beyond being affected by magic. And yet, some stubbornly contested domestic battles were clarified for me -- a practitioner of neatness -- when I read somewhere that my partner -- if not a slob, somewhat less than tidy -- and I were both using our habits as a form of control over the terrors of fate. In short, magic. She (actually, several of them over the years), in essence demonstrated her independence from destiny, from age, from death and the need to (in the eyes of some) choose a career and a respectable mate. Scattered scarves, dirty ashtrays, discarded newspapers, dishes in the sink: What does it matter? She was alive now, here in the present, and if she doesn't acknowledge the future it won't get her. Of course, I trailed behind, emptying cat boxes, diligently piling clothes on her dresser, straightening magazine stacks, keeping tables and counters clear. My unanswered plea, the cry of all neatniks: Why can't you see it takes no effort to do this as you go along, rather than save it up for a tremendous push before company is coming or you're finally overwhelmed into spending a fine Saturday morning getting out from under? Still, with my passion for order (alphabetized spice rack, book spines aligned parallel with the front of the shelf, everything in the fridge returned to its designated spot), is my behavior ultimately directed to the same end? I am told that it is. In short, I am showing that I am in control of my universe, making magic to keep unwanted influences at bay. (I don't remember who said so, but no matter; it's pretty common knowledge.) The funny thing is, as a rational person who perhaps takes rationality to an extreme where it serves no purpose except to preserve the principle of having a system for everything, I can accept this explanation as just another signal that there should be reasons for doing things -- but the partner was usually enraged at the suggestion she was practicing supernatural thinking and that our behavior had a common root, aversion to being controlled by the inevitable. This, of course, is just another symptom, and it gets more convoluted. I am by no means a prisoner of my routines, since if they don't produce for me I have meta-systems to evade what would otherwise become intolerably burdensome. As a temporary worker, a longshoreman free to check out or work extra hours, a cab driver who made my own schedule, a banquet bartender on call but allowed to turn down gigs, I have avoided most of my adult life responding to the iron laws of regular employment and the hours that go with it (not to mention the decent paychecks). In short, though I may follow one of several customary routines when I arise (including type of food depending on the day of the week), I generally get up when I want, and sometimes not at all, choosing to start on a case of bargain beer in bed. Now, there are myriad causes for any type of behavior: genetic, familial, rebellion against family, personal history and influences, and so forth, and magical thinking certainly is not always the key. But when it exists, it does have implications for any art involved. Though inclined now towards journalism as a freelance writer, I've published a bit in other areas as well -- poetry, fiction -- and believe they, as well as the urge to reportage, spring out of, again, a desire to find order and meaning in events and be of them, experience them, while not making a commitment to any way of life in particular. Reporting -- any form of re-creational writing about events, including fiction and probably the visual arts as well -- is a heightened form of existence in which mundane details take on a significance only a few (the artist/magician and his cabal/audience) appreciate. At the same time, one can step back into the timeless arena of the creative life where ordinary occupations, and their attendant arcs of productivity, decline and retirement, their inevitable social rigidities, don't apply. This may lead to loneliness, substance abuse and poverty, but as Robert Stone wrote of alcoholism in A Hall of Mirrors, "It's a way of ending the day." Oddly enough, those misguided spirits who thrive on disorder in their personal lives often make good journalists and artists. Many reporters, novelists, painters and such are notoriously chaotic, though they may be meticulous in their products (others relied on a Maxwell Perkins to make them acceptable). I have to conclude that they are capable of relying on two forms of magic at the same time, one artistic and one individual, and more power to them as long as I don't have to cope with their excesses. Because it happens that two of the women I alluded to became good reporters themselves, with the regimentation any such profession brings with it to well beyond the entry level, at least. This means responding to the alarm clock every working day and only scheduled vacations each year, while I am free to lounge around and write the occasional article such as this one. Neither approach is inherently superior, of course; it is just that from the time in my twenties when I finished a night at the can company on second shift and was doing my laundry at three a.m. near Downer Ave., eating George Webb's cheeseburgers and drinking a six-pack while reading a book of French symbolist poetry for a course at UWM, that the words of Verlaine, written in an entirely different context, have resonated for me: "Dive deep, leap clear." If you can do it, it may be good or destructive -- or both -- but it's surely the essence of magical living, and art lets you do both.
(A slightly different version of this essay appeared in Art Muscle, February/March 1994, which examines the uses of magic in art.)
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