I look at the art process as one method of creating a lifestyle that can in some way allow an alternative to the elements of twentieth century culture which are dangerous and destructive.  However, there was a time after I wrote "The Composition of a Landscape" that I began to wonder if the art process wasn't just a convenient way of escape. It was at the height of this introspection that the story of the Jonestown suicide broke and I remember riding to work on the subway facing rows of commuters reading the Toronto Sun.  Some of the people held the front page to me which was a huge full colour picture of the nine hundred bodies and other people held the picture of the semi-nude woman which was a regular feature of that paper called "The Sunshine Girl."  To this day, the visuals of that morning spin in my head, the rows of pictures of the dead bodies and the one semi-nude body  and the ads in the transoms above the heads of the people and I thought it has all gone too far, nothing I can do could counteract that; what am I going to do, write a poem?  It all seemed so pointless and puny in the face of this global madness and I gave up writing and read nothing but journalism and only went to political films and I resented the pretentions of all art and literature and if I met someone who asked what I did I would say "nothing" which was true.

 

Several months after I returned to Calgary I began to slowly tip-toe around the idea of art and I began to become involved in the process again.  I still believe that it is basically useless except for the fact that without the involvement in the process, my life is without tension and excitement and besides; I refuse to give bastards like Jones the satisfaction of yet another person giving up.