an old writer and his words

  • PRACTICE THIS

    He is, he claims, a practitionerof feng shui, and will, fora nominal fee, arrange our homein the harmony it requires. His fee, of course, is nominalto him only, and hardly onewe would incur with the expensesof a new home, with twoof too many things, and noneof some necessities, whichour local merchants will providefor their own…

    Lou Faber

  • MONA

    Of course, she’s sitting there,calmly, staring off onto space.She has to know somethingis amiss, no one has cometo visit her in days, but sheknows that whenever, if ever,whatever it is that is happeningis finally over, that theywill once again return, stareat her, wonder aloud and silentlywhy she is smiling, and shewill as always say nothing,…

    Lou Faber

  • A MOMENT

    He would be the first to admitthat he hated most things avant-gardeparticularly when it appliedto either art or music.It was simply a matter of beingin the moment, and he knewyou could not be ahead of timefor there was only the momentin which you were in.

    Lou Faber

  • THE GIFTS

    They brought him myrrh on a flaming salver and all he could do was say “This is something I would expect from a butcher or a carpenter, and the camera angles would never work, so bring me napalm or punji stakes that we have proven to work.” They brought him ripe oranges and the sweet…

    Lou Faber

  • STATUE

    “You have to go all the way to Washington,” he said, “to find decent statuary.” “Oh, you can find one or two in almost every city. Its founder, some general or admiral, some animal that oddly represents a metropolis that has cast out its animals, or penned them up in zoos, put them on leashes.…

    Lou Faber

  • HERE

    We greet as long lost friends, having never before met save sharing a place a decade apart. I strive to cling to what was there in that place, she, fueled by the frustration, has turned away just because of it. I go home to my words, she to her art, and we know our paths…

    Lou Faber

  • THOSE WHO CAN’T DO (OR TEACH)

    “You know,” she said, “it is the critics, they are the real problem, all holy and self-proclaimed arbiters of taste, deciding what is and is not art, as if God spoke late one night and declared to each one that he or she and only he or she would determine what is art.” I wanted…

    Lou Faber

  • ART

    As you walk through this particular space will you see a small child perched on a stool, crayons in hand, a small rectangle of paper on the top of the desk laughing, creating a world you could never hope to understand, or an older woman, leaning on her walker, staring into the canvas, struggling to…

    Lou Faber

  • AN INKLING

    Writing is an art form that very many never see but the unseeing of the work is what elevates it to art. This is what you often hear from the unpublished, or even from the denizens of small press purgatory, the one the Vatican will never acknowledge, for the poets corner of heaven is so…

    Lou Faber

  • TREACHERY

    René Magritte was born and died in Belgium, neither happened on this day, but he painted a most realistic picture of a pipe, which he captioned “Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe,” which of course it was not since it was only a picture of a pipe and he entitled the work The Treachery of Images.…

    Lou Faber