I’m remembering a fascinating article I read in the New York Review of Books some time ago about Joseph Cornell. In many ways, he feels like my spiritual father. I love his quirkiness, his living on the periphery, his unique vision. Reading about him makes me want to go out and haunt junk shops for interesting memorabilia to make things with, to start a collection that I can draw from. I had an image of turning an old radio into a kind of Cornell box.
My writer self also finds his way of working very appealing. Charles Simic describes Cornell’s boxes as platforms where inner and outer worlds met. I would like such a place to give concrete expression to my dialogue with the unconscious. My writing does that to a large degree, allowing me to make discoveries through settings, characters, dialogue—through language and all its associations. But I feel the visual arts draw on another facet of the brain. Another dimension.
I also felt inspired by what Cornell did with 16 mm film, cutting up old ones and taking from them what he wanted in order to make a new statement. It’s what I’ve been doing by appropriating certain things from books, fiction and non-fiction, in my writing. Collaging. I’d like to do more, and to be more conscious of the act.