Kafka wanted his papers destroyed, "...his final wish before he died" and of course his wish was not respected.
My first letter published in The New York Times was over another struggle.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/bruno_schulz/index.html
My letter is on the above page and I like it because there is a drawing by Bruno Schulz but for the direct link of my letter see below.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9807EEDF1430F931A15755C0A9679C8B63
I completely understand the impulse or need to destroy one's own work. Why? For many reasons but here is one. Where were you when I needed you?
I believe I have enough work and I have for many years to move an international audience at the Gug and far more compelling than the motorcycle exhibition and I love motorcycle art believe me. It is heart, soul and guts plus pure passion. Yes, I have seen people weep in front of my canvases and listened to their thoughts and experiences that my art talked to but I could not get the support I needed when I needed.
Even with this blog which is another form of my art as far as I am concerned you note there are no advertisers and I don't want them but you get my point.
I always felt like a stranger from a strange land and "not welcome" so it is nothing new. I have destroyed work and at least I have had the deep and complete satisfaction of seeing people experience my work deeply and passionately themselves.
Sometimes I am glad that some of my work is safely in private collections and cannot be destroyed. But if after I am dead, if I do get Van Gogh like fame way after the fact I would not want any of my work to remain in private collections but be only in public arenas.
At the time I had my first letter published in The New York Times "The battle over the mural of pain", I was in a terrible struggle over an art work of mine with a mega-mega bucks baddie that to date refuses to pay me for my art work. My family knew I was in pain and they said forget it and they were sure my art work was thrown away in the garbage. I am not so sure. I remember reading the header over my letter and I felt it was so true for the context of the piece The New York Times published and felt true at that very moment for me as well. I thought the woman that edited my letter was brilliant because the letter was longer and even more emotional.
Anyway I could have a piece of construction drop on me and kill me as I walk down the street and what would it all matter...
I am in a little new home I don't like but I love most of my neighbors, really good people. I do love NYC, supersized love but I don't recognize NYC and I have supersized worries about the safety of the people of this city and it is not from terrorism but infrastructure and in the context of the this tsunami of development....
I have throat burn today extra bad -- feels like a 3 degree burn. Just want to rest and focus on the positives and there are a lot of positives.
I had the "Battle over the murals of pain" published just before Sept. 11 and I remember I visited Jerusalem shortly after the letter before 9-11. I have a drawing of a young Bruno and me on www.suzannahbtroyartist.com "what connects us"...
NYU's tear down of St. Ann's next door(120 East 12th St) was really one of the last nail's in the coffin for me, NYU's purple reign of terror as NYU finally mega dormed the East Village to death with all the other Universities jumping on the bandwagon and than came the supersized condos and hotels that fit in with NYU's mega dorms and The Red Square on Houston which looks like an NYU dorm.
