Posted by panch from pool0232.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.232) on Friday, June 21, 2002 at 6:02PM :
I feel awfully listless...like I'm dragging my feet. Just about finished with the armature for the Lamasu today...next week I'll start applying the chicken wire, then plaster and burlap and finally add the clay. I don't klnow if it's because the memory of this kind of project depresses me...all the stuff that happens everytime I try to make a momument for Assyrians...for me too...but there is a feeling of dred...something trying to tell me to "run"...to save myself.
I think it will be a stunning piece...and maybe that's why I feel a lack of energy...because as much as I might get excited and worked up over it...I know in the back of my mind there will be that much more reason for people to attack it and me...to get more staisfaction out of ruining it, just because it is "too beautiful" and powerful.
What an odd place to be in...if I was just a little mediocre, barely competant, person...Assyrians would embrace me and take me in...I wouldn't threaten them...there would be no risk to a Jackster or a Nimrod...whatever I did or made would be well below their own dismal capacities when working for "our people"...meaning for themselves. The last thing they want is to lift us to excellence...it would ruin the franchise and their position at the top of the depressing heap we've allowed ourselves to make of this heritage.
Imagine knowing ahead of time that people don't want your best work...that they will resent and feel hostile towards you if you do something beyond them in every way...something that exclaims..."see what we can do when we concentrate our energy and give it our best shot?"...when they are doing the exact opposite.
If I make three pots, this nation in Diapers will heave a collective sigh of relief...and pat me on the head...and relax. Now if it were medicine we were talking about and the patient had this low an expectation of his surgeon, we'd say the person had a death wish...which is exactly what I think we really have...not a desire to live and thrive AS Assyrians...but to make the point that we sacrificed pride and health and "life" when we became Christian...which as we understood it meant eating shit now so we would prove ourselves worthy of caviar in heaven. And that's why people are satisfied with, and want to turn my work into...shit. We are not supposed to be the objects of envy or positive attention here on earth.
Like a dummy I've been going around for 20 years and more basically asking Assyrians to stop believing in Christianity. I didn't know that's what I was doing...never meant to do it, never came out and said it...but after witnessing the resistance to excellence that drives this nation of Diaper wearing people...the insistence on and the LOVE of mediocrity that I've seen on all sides...it's hard to escape the conclusion that we don't WANT to have any reason to feel pride in ourselves...and believing the version of Christianity we do, it isn't even desirable, hell it goes against the very essence of it, to strive for pride of place and positive recognition. I don't hate Christianity per se...just what we've done to ourselves with it.
-- panch
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