Screwtape Letters

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 3: On Originality

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Monotype experiment, Suzanne Edminster
Monotype experiment, Suzanne Edminster

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis

Stormy weather outside, for California, that is. There’s a beautiful grey light against the too-early bloom of the magnolia petals outside the classroom door. magnolia

This C.S. Lewis quote really spoke to me, especially as I flounder about in a new media for a while. Reduced to the status of a beginner, questions of originality pale against simple technical ignorance. As I get older, I feel less unique and special, less original, as a person. I share experience with so many, and, as and adult, know it.

Dear Wormseed,

Congratulations on  the recent sale of the Gauguin for 300 million dollars. A flood of artists will feel discouraged in their own art, and the price obscures the painting itself completely, making it nearly impossible to view with fresh eyes.  Corruption rules!

The Subject-Artist recently proposed making a tableau of dream images.  This is very dangerous, as these inner vapors carry far too much information and spirit, and may speak to others as well.  Keep her in the familiar territory of easily understood beauty, like your recent Artist-Subject Thomas Kincaid.  You earned a sizeable bonus on him, did you not?

You are on still on shaky ground with the daily studio visits.  You must redouble your efforts to keep her away, or you will feel the consequences.  Keep your team on the streets with graffiti– it was brilliant to unify the art impulse with vandalism.  Keep it up.

In Venom–

Screwtape

Archived:  Letter 1 and Letter 2

 

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 2: Studio Time

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Goose Game series monoprint, Suzanne Edminster
Goose Game series monoprint, Suzanne Edminster

I decided to ask my artist friend Karina Nishi Marcus to join me in a studio time game. From January 30 to February 14, we’re going into our studios every day. The only rule is to walk in and touch something. That’s it. We’re curious what effect that it may have on our productivity. We do email check ins to report without judgement how we’re doing. I’ll let you know how it goes. Care to join us?

Here’s the second Screwtape letter for artists. In case you have just joined me, you can read the introduction to the letter series here. It is a letter to the demon Wormseed, who’s trying to capture the Artist’s soul.

My Stygian colleague Wormseed,

The situation with the Artist grows worse and worse. Each day she enters her studio, your goal fades like the bright colors of the Old Masters or the wild painting on Greek columns. You,  Wormseed, have been assigned to suffer Inquisition Number 25631 to remind you to keep working harder. It won’t end soon enough. If only you could succeed as well as the your brother Ifrit did recently in the book burnings.  Murdering books is the most delicious snack after eating souls.

I’m afraid you may have to concede defeat on keeping her out of the studio, a tactic which worked so well for so long. Now you must concentrate on subtleties. Early exposure of immature work is a sure-fire way to shut off the tap. Refusal to “practice the scales” of repetitive trials is also good. Perfectionism is a superbly subtle dagger… it bleeds out their disgusting passion for making in a very satisfactory manner.

I see you have activated the string of disquieting dreams that used to derail her from her work in the past. Even those seem to be ineffective: she’s broken their code and now know that they mean she is creating something new. However, a good nightmare or emotional crisis can go quite far. Just don’t let her make any art from them, or the jig is up.

I hope for your sake that you make more progress soon. A molecule of your diabolical existence vanishes each time a brush stroke or line is applied to paper, a reversed Dorian Grey. ( You were involved with him as well, though Oscar escaped us at the end, and after such a promising start. ) I have my faceted fly eye upon you. Do not fail again.

Your ball and chain,

Screwtape

P.S. Despite our continual efforts at the destruction of beauty, new painted caves continue to be found, obscured masterpieces restored. To offset this, the internet offers so many new opportunities for degrading artists, especially if they identify with digital “fame.” The hand of the artist is chopped off and dismembered from the Work, carried out to sea in an exquisite virtual tsunami of mediocrity. Divide et impera!  

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 1

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

Suzanne Edminster, mixed media on paper
Suzanne Edminster, mixed media on paper

The Screwtape Letters, written by C.S. Lewis in 1942, is a series of wickedly funny and ominous letters from a higher demon, Screwtape, to a sub-demon, Wormword, who is in charge of corrupting a human soul or “patient.” Of late, it has been fashionable to read of “gremlins” who want to steal your creativity, block you, and so on. I’ve never been fond of the word gremlin. It’s actually a 20th century coinage used for mechanical problems on airplanes, and is “imaginary.” It trivializes and reduces temptation to a cute, manageable,  pet-like critter  and whitewashes the tempters’ fierce battle for your art.

Artists deal with the shadow; it comes with the territory. But I think we need to correctly name our underworld enemy, and honor it with a measure of gravitas. In this spirit I have hacked the cosmic mailbox to expose some new Screwtape letters for artists, written to a certain Wormseed, who has been assigned the soul of my art. Read the original: it’s a fresh as ever today. I write these to discover what I might have to say to myself about my life and art.

My dear Wormseed,

I see you have been making good progress with the Artist.  She’s slowly slipping into a low-key despair, which is always a highly desirable state.   Since the advent of the Internet, which I had a gargoyle eating manlarge role in creating, your job is so much easier!  In some senses, the progress from the medieval artisan to the 21st “artist” has been our major achievement in the Arts.  Ironic, isn’t it, that those stone masons, as hungry and poor as they were,  accurately carved our likenesses as gargoyles. Portraiture was not dead!  Despite oppression  and all the fabulous  corruption of that  Church,  they were often closer to escaping us than the sleekly fed, well-medicated artists of today. The Cathedral of Technology holds so many new opportunities for us!

But I digress. I see she’s starting a new project.  This is your chance to make more progress.  Please amplify the level of distraction in her life.  A turn to “reality”– money, job, status, looks, and so on– is one of the best methods we know, because it is so supported by the society at large.  Involve her in her own reality show drama, as opposed to her actual life. By all means, keep her from daily walks and home cooked meals, as these fortify her, stopping up those wonderful chinks and holes through which we enter.  And DO NOT LET HER OPEN JOURNALS OR SKETCHBOOKS.  As soon as she creates even one word or line, our power begins to ebb.

If you keep her in this state of stasis, you will soon see a satisfactory decay.  Best of luck to you.  Sorry about the turn to non-toxic materials in her studio.  You can’t win them all.

Your  Master,

Screwtape