When she was younger, Allison Moorer used to believe that she wanted an intellectual existence, a life of the mind. But now, at 42, she sighs, “What I’ve realized that I have is a life of the hands—I’m always just making something, or I’m writing or drawing something, because it makes me feel connected; it makes me feel real. It’s the same way with music—I just want to make it.” Hence, her latest ambitious set, Down To Believing, which documents her recent split from her husband, Steve Earle, and even the motherly guilt she felt when their son John Henry, now four, was diagnosed with autism two years ago. Moorer will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on her.
Moorer: I stumbled upon this book, a New York Times bestseller, in the gift shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City one afternoon last summer. It’s a brilliantly, thoughtfully woven collection of ruminations and examinations on artists and the pursuit of the artistic life, and Michael Kimmelman expounds on just what it is to live creatively. Running the gamut from Marcel Duchamp’s signed urinal to Ray Johnson’s life, stunts and ultimate suicide inspired-ly based on numerology, to Michael Heizer’s commitment to isolation for physical space to complete City, and Matthew Barney’s film work in the Salt Flats in Utah, the book is an astounding and revelatory look at what art is and what the artist is, no matter the form. Inspiring, humbling, and great.
Video after the jump.
