"Do more than expected, expect less than deserved" -- Emma Elb (The Conqueror's Creed)
Before the philosopher sage Emma Elb launched herself into self-imposed abstractionist dementia, she was valued as the foremost authority on how to tame, cultivate, and forge the fires in the creative spirit. Indeed, her writings were considered sacred to her many dedicated and (some say) cult-like fans, supporters, and crusaders. Sadly, most of her work perished when her publishing house burned to the ground one winter night (on the same historical day as the great fire in ancient Egypt that destroyed the libraries of Alexendria).
The circumstances surrounding the fire are still unexplained and no one was ever captured or blamed. But the volumes she authored on the ethos of being a successful, (somewhat) satisfied, and powerfully productive "arteest" gave rise to an eruption of new and dangerous thinkers, speakers, artists and provocateurs. Only a few copies of her work remain and only a few lucky souls have had their eyes and minds feed on her syllables. I am one such lucky soul.
Born to an Irish father and Tsalagi (Cherokee) mother in the super suburbs of San Francisco, she was privy (early on) to the subtle breach that exists between realities. Her mother's family moved from Oklahoma in the early part of the century and settled in Northern California. Emma's grandfather, Vincent, was an electrical engineer who studied the conducive powers of sea salt and in the process discovered a new kind of mollusk with a particularly powerful venom with astounding pain killing properties. It would later be synthesized and used as an anesthesia, and in the treatment of certain types of bone cancer.
With the money he made, he was able to buy the biggest, most level row house at the steepest part of Swanky Hill. Vincent raised his family to be scholars and musicians. He and his wife, Jules, raised their only daughter, Bonnie, to be a scholar, dancer, and part time pastry chef. Bonnie went away to boarding school for a few years before being kicked out for "sassing." She lived at home for a while, helping her father document and catalog the sexual habits and reproductive processes of all his mollusks. Bonnie met her future husband (and Emma's father), Winston, at the Winnfield National Bank & Loan during a robbery. As luck would have it, they ended up next to each other when the assailants were lining up the patrons, face-down, on the ground. Their eyes met, sparks flew, and true love was born.
Winston's family was, as they say, "straight off the boat" from a small shire in Northern Ireland. They stowed away on a Chinese fishing vessel and after arriving in New York City, hitched across America until they got to San Francisco. Not much is known about Winston's family. His father is rumored to be a mass murderer who barely escaped capture in Ireland. Others say he was a retired boxer and butcher who just wanted a better life for his family. Most scholars agree that Winston's mother was a mute who lost her tongue in a brawl over a rather dubious soccer match. Her name has been lost to history. Winston's father died in poverty in the slums of Dublin after being forcefully deported back to Ireland during the great anti-immigration movement which sparked many memorable ethnic rants such as, "If the Irish invasion is not ceased, our children's children will all be eating potatoes, smelling of stew, and worshipping shalaylee wielding drunken dwarfs who may or may not be hiding pots of Gold!"
Winston was a handyman who did odd jobs for a minor loan shark named Bennie the Blue. He was fond of drinking a pint (or 12), painting with watercolors and rebuilding small gas powered engines. He and Bonnie married shortly after they met and, using the generous dowry from Bonnie's father, bought a grand house on the water. Soon after they settled, Emma was born and the world has never been the same.
Emma's parents forged a world of fire and ice, love and hate, wealth and poverty. She went to the best schools, was taught all the things one needs to be a productive citizen, and met all the 'right' people of high society. But, in all of this, they propagated a strong sense of the bohemian spirit. She was to find her own way in life, choose a unique path, and learn self-sufficiency. Emma spent much of her youth studying the transcendentalists and surrealists, and poking fun at her less inspired friends and associates in such intellectual manners that the rubes rarely recognized the insult.
She could quote William Blake, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, and Fyodor M. Dostoevsky on a whim. She spent her teenage years studying abroad and sneaking back to indulge in the decadence of sweet San Francisco summers. Sadly, she was one of the thousands who were caught up in the ether craze of 1958 and spent some time in a Belgian sanitarium to get clean. She never spoke of the methods used during detox, but most recognize that it had a profound effect. Upon her return, she began writing with the mania of a zealot.
Her work first appeared in a small poetry magazine called Beat Heads published anonymously in the Bay area. It was primarily an experiment in free-verse but was well received. Her passion, though, was the many essays she scribed on what she saw as "the laziness of the American artist." She could not abide the complaints her artist friends had of being "misunderstood" or how they were being driven insane by writer's block especially when she observed they did little else but drink, dance, sleep, hangout and experiment with a variety of hallucinogens.
She began writing profusely on the habits of being a bad artist and denounced any lay-about, ragamuffin, or riff-raff who only sought to call themselves artists to get out of doing any real work or having any real responsibility. She hated charlatans, copy-cats, half-asses, half-wits, simpletons, and close-minded fossils who were terrified of change. She believed art was a living muscle that must be exercised everyday in order to make it stronger. Creativity was a lover that must be caressed, coddled, kissed, poked, prodded, provoked, nourished, day in and day out. The artist must be "a sponge absorbing the world around them, taking in everything until there is no choice but to abate the pressure of all that has entered you. Art, like sex, must be a sacred event."
She believed that artists must produce everyday. "Writers write, painters paint." In the end, she wrote over 6,000 essays and poems and authored almost 250 books. She never married but there were rumors that she had a lifelong love affair with a lady known only as Mia. She was rumored to be the daughter of a very prominent Ambassador (last name of Wallace, I believe) and the affair was kept quiet for his safety and protection.
Her eventual madness was brought on, I believe, to maintain her sanity. "Only could a crazy person choose to continue in a world such as this," she wrote. For years, she would cover herself in full length red veil and walk about San Francisco handing out chicken bones as flowers and telling everyone, "Smile, you're dying. Live it up." She ceased writing professionally, though many believe there are many, still undiscovered, private journals and diaries. I believe the onslaught of TV sitcoms, celebrity cookbooks, and the growing illiteracy in this nation numbed the fire burning inside her. On her 92nd birthday, she moved to French Polynesia and disappeared into obscurity. Her vast fortune has been left in perpetuity and untouched for decades.
I leave you now with one of my favorite quotes by Emma Elb, mother of all invention:
"Art does not exist in commerce or in fiscal realities, but in the blood, bones, flesh, and souls of those who are mad to create it"
The world owes you a big debt, Emma. Thank you for teaching us to burn.
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