Redtree Times

 

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There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life ; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw — but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of–something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it–tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest–if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself–you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’ We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the things we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1947)

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I included a portion of the passage above from C.S. Lewis in a post from a couple of years ago that concerned itself with the painting at the top, Something Beyond. It seemed appropriate to revisit it today and expand Lewis’s passage.

I have been thinking lately about how each of us is drawn to certain writing, music, and art that speaks to us in a singular way, that has certain words, phrasing, and forms that make up a connecting thread that runs through them, one that instantly binds us to whatever we are experiencing in the work.   The writers and poets I read tend to deal with subjects that speak directly to me and with a rhythm, pace, and clarity that communicates with me instantly. The same with songwriters and visual artists.

With writers, poets, and songwriters, there are words and phrases– I guess you might call them buzzwords– that communicate more than their singular meaning in the context of what you are reading. With visual artists, this comes across in form, contrasts, and color.  You read, see, or hear certain things that connect with you instantly, before thought has a chance to catch up.

It is a form of instant understanding, a recognition that there are shared ideals, values, and desires that are not the same as what is considered the usual, something that extends beyond the ordinary and the everyday.  Words, music, and images that express real depth, not just skim the surface of what we are. Things that speak to that part of our secret selves that we barely know ourselves.

As Lewis expresses it, this is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want.

This connection sometimes occurs with people you meet, those who are to instantly able to communicate with you in mere gesture and inflection, as you are also able to with them.  People who somehow express a desire to speak of things beyond the mere small talk you share when you meet.

I feel a bit like I am floundering this morning as I try to describe something that remain fairly indescribable. I think that must be as it should be. My and your secret signature is mostly a secret to us, after all. How can one easily write or sing or paint that which they don’t fully know?

That secret that lies forever beyond us, hidden in buzzwords and rhythms and forms and people that inexplicably attract us.

Again, not sure that this makes sense. That’s the risk you take writing in this way– put it down as it comes to mind and put it out. I’ll catch the grammatical errors somewhere down the road, probably in a year or two when I reread this for some unknown reason. The errors in logic, well, that’s not something I can correct.

That’s part of my secret signature, I guess…

Here’s a song from a favorite Glen Hansard. I feel the connection I tried in vain to describe above with his work. Sometimes it the connection comes as much in the effort he put into the performance of each song. It always feels like a total effort, as though each might be his last. That’s something I understand and try to emulate in my work. For him, I think it comes his years busking on the streets of Dublin where baring your secret signature was the only way to make people stop and listen. This is an acoustic performance, without audience, of Didn’t He Ramble. I am throwing in a version of Say It to Me Now from the same session only because I like how things go wrong in it and how he reacts.

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We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger. People will want to obey the voice of Authority, and many strange constructs of just what Authority is will arise in every mind… The public yearning for Order will invite many stubborn uncompromising persons to impose it. The sadness of the zoo will fall upon society.

–Leonard Cohen, The Book of Longing (2006)

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I recently came across this passage from the late Leonard Cohen, from a book comprised of poetry and writing primarily from the 1990’s. a period in which he lived for five years at a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy in California. I was moved by the prophetic nature of what he wrote, how it mirrored the events that have brought society to its current state of chaos and confusion. A period of bewilderment, as he called it.

In such periods people seek order and an Authority willing to impose this order as they see it. As he says, therein lies the danger. In seeking order, they will willingly move to acceptance that is extreme, one that they view as being sanctified with religious authority.

In doing so, their desire for their own sort of order creates even more chaos and confusion.

You see, one man’s sense of order is another man’s cage.

I could easily understand the parallels drawn in his words to our current situation. But it was the phrase in that final sentence that slayed me– the sadness of the zoo.

I knew exactly what he meant by those words. I have often felt that sadness of the zoo.

Growing up, I enjoyed zoos as most kids do. I have memories of time spent as a kid at the Bronx Zoo and the National Zoo in Washington. There are photos of a trip to the Buffalo Zoo with me at around three years old reaching out to touch the fingers of a chimpanzee who was extending his hand out of his cage. At the mere mention of a zoo, my mom used to laughingly recall how the hyenas at the National Zoo hungrily fixed their gaze on me and followed me from side to side as went around their enclosure.

The idea that these creatures were there in cages for us to stare in wonder at them seemed perfectly natural to me at the time. It was my experience then.

But that changed over time. As I grew older, I began to more and more see animals as the sentient being that they are. I saw them as being little different in their feelings than us. They feared. They loved. They played.

They had an intelligence and perceptiveness that was different than our own but often deeper. They had to have this in order to survive in the wild, something that is well beyond the abilities of most of us.

I began to see myself in them and them in myself.

The idea of finding myself in a cage seemed horrific to me, as it would be for any feeling human. Why would it be any different for an animal?

I can no longer go to zoos now. Nor can I go in pet stores with pets stacked in cages. There used to be a pet store at our local mall– it  might still be there for all I know– and when we needed something from it for our own pets, I refused to go in and would walk a distance away to wait while Cheri completed her transaction. The yips of the puppies and the blanks longing in the stares of the kittens were like knives to me, filling me with a deep angst and sadness.

The sadness of the zoo.

I now also feel it every morning when I come into the studio. Today marks a month since my three studio cats– Mom and her sons, Buttercup and Gary–became fulltime prisoners of mine. They were originally a true feral family when they first came to us when the Boys were tiny kittens. They lived the first couple of years completely outdoors, spending many nights in the protection of my studio’s garage, especially in the cold of winter.

About two years ago, my beloved Hobie, passed away after having spent twelve years as the sole inmate in my little prison. After enduring a number of years in the wild, she was at first a part-time prisoner, coming and going as she pleased during the day. But after being chased into the screen room of the studio by another nasty stray cat, she became a willing prisoner. That attack and her prior hardships had made her willing to trade her freedom for security, food, and my affection.

When Hobie died, the family moved in. They were part-timers then, spending most days outside terrorizing the wild creatures around our place. They were extremely happy to come and go during the day then come to the protection and comfort of the studio each night. But four weeks ago, as I noted here then, the boys were attacked by a stray cat. We believe it was their father but that’s another story. I intervened as Gary was being pursued with the other cat on his tail but Buttercup had already been injured. As I wrote then, this incident sent the whole family to the vet and me, subsequently, to Urgent Care.

At that point, we made the decision to revoke their roaming privileges. They would be fulltime from then on. This decision really bothered me then as it does still, though to a lesser degree. Most mornings are spent with Buttercup slowly trudging around the studio meowing in a most forlorn manner. Gary does this a bit, as well. But he settles down quickly and finds a spot to sleep or look out the window.

Mom seems the most content of the three, most likely since she spent most of her life fighting to survive and is simply satisfied to be safe and warm with plenty to eat and a prison guard who will lay on the floor with her to pet her while she grinds out a deep purr while she gazes at me with a most pleased look in her eyes.

I know that they are safe and sound, that they will not be harmed or killed by another wild critter in these woods. We’ve had that happen before and it is crushing. I spend time with each of them and try to make things good for them. I put up one of those big ugly cat towers in my studio’s front window, for god’s sake, which they still look at with suspicion and refuse to climb on.

Yes, they are my pets now. But even so, as Buttercup protests as I write this, I can’t help but feel that same sorrow for them and the loss of their wild selves.

They are my prisoners now. I am their warden and their zookeeper.

And in many moments, that sadness of the zoo permeates my being. Just this very moment, I had to stop and pick up Buttercup. Cradling him for a few minutes bring an audible purr up that satisfies him– and me– for a bit.

I could be mistaken but I think the guards do that for anxious inmates in most prisons.

I don’t know that I will ever be free of the sadness of the zoo– here in the studio, in a pet store, or in our society in general. Maybe it is the remnant of some wild creature from which I am descended that makes the idea of being restricted in a cage or in any way so alarming.

I don’t know. But it often feels that their cage often becomes my own.

I must stop. Though I could easily continue, especially about how we as a society are experiencing the sadness of the zoo, I have went on far too long. Again, I blame the damn hormones. But what are you going to do?

I couldn’t figure out what image to pair with this and settled on the painting at the top, Island Getaway. My thinking is that though I see being alone on a remote island as an idyllic setting, some might see it as a nightmare.

One man’s heaven is another man’s hell.

One man’s contentment is another’s cage.

That’s it. Done. Get out of my cage now or I swear to god I’ll keep writing.

And that is not an idle threat…

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I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

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The painting, Galvanic Memory, shown above has long been a favorite of mine. It was painted in 2002 and is among the paintings I call my Dark Work. That phrase has two meanings. The simplest was that it was among my first forays into painting on a black surface, which naturally gave the painting a darker tone. My typical work of the time was brighter, in transparent inks over a white background, which made the darkness of this work seem even more evident. 

The second meaning is the one that I normally use. It all emerged in the aftermath of 9/11 in 2001, a reaction to the seismic shift in this country and in the world brought on by the attacks and our reaction. The work’s darkness reflected both the tone of that time and my own.

This particular painting always spoke to me in a most personal way. I know that sounds funny since my work, and most art for that matter, is all personal by its very nature. But this one felt narrower in scope, like the message it was communicating was meant for me alone.

I don’t know that this is true. It just felt that way at the time. 

It even felt a little different in its appearance. The colors, bright but somewhat muted, and forms, a mix of angles and arcs, gave it what I took as an abstract quality.

There was no full representation of any of its elements. Everything appeared in fragments. You never see the whole tree or the whole chair. Even the window and door are not seen in their entirety.

I saw this as being much like some of my memories. They have a vivid, electric quality in my remembrance, which is where the galvanic part of the title comes in. But even though they are filled with vivid energy, the memories only come to me in fragments. I only experience it in bits and pieces. A remembered glimpse out a window. The way the light broke on the horizon. The chair in the room or the way the tree outside the window stretched across my vision at the time.

I think of the memory of any time as being whole but in fact they are more often mere fragments that we reassemble. It reminds me of a line from a 1992 interview with the late poet Derek Walcott that appeared in The Guardian:

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.

Sometimes our memory of any given moment takes on greater significance in our minds over time, more than we recognized when it took place. We didn’t take in all the details originally and because the memory has taken on greater importance as we try to fill out those details.

But it is all bits and pieces. Fragments.

I know it’s that way with memories of my parents, especially my mom who died back in 1995. I have vivid memories of moments with her but time and my inattention at the time have robbed me of the whole of that moment.

Moments I took for granted then. Moments seen only in fragments now.

Fragments reassembled with love but fragments, nonetheless. 

I debated about making this piece part of my upcoming June show, Flow, at the Principle Gallery. I wasn’t sure I could give up this painting, representing as it does those shards of my memory. In the end, I decided to let it go. It came down to the fact that it would please me more if someone else were able to find something in it that sparked a response to their own distant broken memories. If it was the beginning of their own loving reassemblage of a past moment, so much the better.

It has already helped me in that way. It deserves to move out into the world again. After all, I forever have the memory of this painting now, even if it comes sometimes in bits and pieces. And if I can’t remember, I have the image to remind me.

Here’s a song that always makes me stop and listen when it comes on. This is Windows Are Rolled Down from Amos Lee. Though the song’s intended meaning is probably not the same as my own take on it, I chose it because there is imagery in it that instantly pulls out distant fragments of memory for me. A childhood summer day riding in the front seat with my dad with the windows rolled down. I don’t know where we’re headed, but I can see the gleam of the chrome of the small triangular wing window that old cars once had. I can feel the wind on my arm as I put my hand out to catch it and feel tis resistance. We’re not talking but at any moment he might break out in some nonsense song, maybe one he made up, that I still know and can hear like it was written in my bones. 

Fragments all, reassembled with love…

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Robot Feelings

It is curious, too, that though the modern man in the street
is a robot, and incapable of love
he is capable of an endless, grinding, nihilistic hate:
that is the only strong feeling he is capable of;
and therein lies the danger of robot-democracy and all the men in the street,
they move in a great grind of hate, slowly but inevitably.

–D.H. Lawrence, published posthumously in 1932

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I was intrigued by the poem from D.H. Lawrence when I came across it a few days ago.

First, I was surprised by him focusing on robots. But thinking about it, it was written sometime in the 1920’s at a time when futurism and robots were in vogue, with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis hitting the movie theaters in 1927. The term robot itself was also first coined and came into use in 1920 in the play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) from Czech writer Karel Čapek. So, robots as a theme might not be as unusual as it first seemed to me.

But it was Lawrence’s cynicism about man living in modernity that caught me off guard. I was ambivalent about it at first. It seemed such a harsh analysis of humanity.

But then again, Lawrence has seen the world spiral into a senseless World War that took far too many lives. Plus, he himself had suffered in the court of public opinion as his work was censored and banned, labeled as pornography. For the last decade of his short life, Lawrence went into a self-imposed exile from his native Britain. He died in France in 1930 at the age of 44.

That might well explain his harsh judgement of the man in the street.

Was he correct?

There are certainly days when I share his feelings, that the collective crowd has become more openly mean-spirited and more prone to hatred than love. Reading the comments of many social media posts makes one believe that we are indeed capable of that endless, grinding, nihilistic hate that Lawrence described. That our ability to collectively love has been replaced by an infinite capacity to hate.

Some days it feels like we are forever being prodded toward hatred, manipulated as we are by media that has become the servant to power and wealth.

Even so, I am probably more generous in my opinion of humanity than Lawrence. While I can see the robotic nature of those who let themselves be pulled into the vortex of hatred, one that makes them small and bitterly unkind when we are, in my opinion, meant to be large and generously kind.

I believe that the individual who thinks and feels freely, who resists the crowd, will persist to outlast the ugly, naked nihilism we are facing today.

That might be my naive hope speaking.

Maybe.

But I will choose hopeful naivete over bitter cynicism and hatred any day.

Here’s a song to cleanse the palate. This is a young Ren (again, sorry) and The Big Push doing an impromptu rooftop performance from a while back. The song is their cover of Bongo Bong which was a hit song around Europe back in 1999-2000 for Manu Chao. It’s a fun song plus it is kind of maintains the theme of this post as it is about being who and what you are and not caving into the pressure of the crowd.

Hopefully naive? Sure, why not?

You be you. Go bang your bongo anyway you want…

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I’m gonna tell you fascists
You may be surprised
The people in this world
Are getting organized
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose

— Woody Guthrie, All You Fascists Bound to Lose (1943)

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“Ria-Ria-Hungaria!”

That was the chant heard throughout Hungary last night as massive crowds filled the streets of the country’s cities. It was a chant of victory and release as voters showed up at the polls in huge numbers to defeat Viktor Orbán, who had ruled for the past 16 years. Over that time, Orbán created an authoritarian state that became the template followed by other would-be autocracies, such as our current administration.

His reign was marked by staggering corruption, cronyism, control of the press, a consolidation of all governmental powers into his hands, a restructuring of the judicial system to favor his ruling party, a stripping of rights from the LGBTQ+ community, virulent anti-immigration measures, and most importantly in a subservient toady to Putin’s Russia. In this position, Orbán served as Putin’s wingman against the constraints of both NATO and the EU, weakening the power of both. He often cast a vetoing vote against measures that would counter Russia’s western reach and influence.

In the end, it was the corruption, staggering inflation, and the increasing limitation of rights in Hungary that drove the massive surge in voting that created a landslide victory to Peter Magyar. It was a huge mandate for Magyar and his party, which produced a supermajority in their representative body, the National Assembly.

It was also a huge blow to the authoritarian cabal that is in place at the moment. Orbán’s “electoral autocracy” had seemed indomitable with its iron fisted control of the country for much of the past 16 years. If it can happen there, why can’t it happen anywhere where oligarchs seek total control of any country or people?

Seeing his reign crumble so quickly and decisively should serve as inspiration for everyone standing against those with fascist aspirations.

The world owes the people of Hungary a great deal of gratitude this morning.

They proved that the seemingly all powerful, the dictators and kings of this world, are never as powerful as they want us to believe.

They are only as powerful as we allow them to be.

I extend a big Thank You to the people of Hungary.

Much like the good folks in Minnesota in their resistance to ICE brutality and overreach, let their example fuel our own resistance and strengthen our resolve.

Here’s a tune from Woody Guthrie that speaks of the universal truth that led to Orbán’s downfall, that when the people organize and unite against the greed, hatred, and corruption of those who seek to control them, they will inevitably be victorious.

Why? Because fascism and authoritarianism of all sorts, eventually devolve from their own inbred mediocrity. A system that values loyalty over excellence, expertise, and plain old competence is bound to collapse at some point under the weight of ill-advised decisions and unintended consequences.

We’re seeing that play out in real time here with an administration that is based almost entirely on mediocrity, ignorance, and hubris.

With that potent combination, how could you do anything but lose?

The version at the bottom is from one of my favorite albums, Mermaid Avenue, from the collaboration of Billy Bragg and Wilco. This is All You Fascists. Below are Woody’s original lyrics. 1943 or 2026, they still apply.

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I’m gonna tell you fascists
You may be surprised
The people in this world
Are getting organized
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose

Race hatred cannot stop us
This one thing we know
Your poll tax and Jim Crow
And greed has got to go
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose.

All of you fascists bound to lose:
I said, all of you fascists bound to lose:
Yes sir, all of you fascists bound to lose:
You’re bound to lose! You fascists:
Bound to lose!

People of every color
Marching side to side
Marching ‘cross these fields
Where a million fascists dies
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose!

I’m going into this battle
And take my union gun
We’ll end this world of slavery
Before this battle’s won
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose!

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Baby I got your number
Oh and I know that you got mine
You know that I called you
I called too many times

You can call me baby
You can call me anytime, you got to call me
Give me one reason to stay here
And I’ll turn right back around

— Tracy Chapman, Give Me One Reason (1995)

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I’ve recently been painting a series of small paintings like the one shown at the top, Give Me One Reason. All have the same elements with a few variations, and all are painted in shades of gray and back with the only color coming in the form of a red sun and a sometimes-red roofed house. All contain a small figure, most standing on the peak of the roof of the house, all addressing the red sun in some manner of conversation. There is generally a single bare limbed tree in the near foreground and sometimes one, as here, in the distance. Some have skies with clouds and some, like this one, do not.

The variations I mentioned come in the placement of the figure, the clouds, the tree, the house, and the red sun, as well as how they all sit in the landscape. There is also subtle but important variation in the posture and gesturing of the figure.

I like working with these limitations in mind. It becomes a mental challenge to arrange a small number of the same elements in a small space without the benefit of color and still maintain the individual nature of each painting. It is like assembling a puzzle but doing it different way each time.

It reminds me a bit of an early series that I did around 1995 and 1996. I called the series the Haiku series. The paintings were very simple– a block of color for the sky and one for the field that made up the foreground both separated by the thin white line of the underlying surface. The variations came in the color and ratio of the block of color to one another. There was also an important variation on each side of the white line where the multiple glazing layers of color each left a sharp edge. These edges stack up in an overlapping irregular way, creating an impression of low hills in the distance.

So, like the three lines of a haiku, there were three elements to create an atmosphere in which the reader, or the viewer in my case, could interpret the meaning in how those limited elements came together and played off one another.

These new paintings feel similar in that. The one major difference is the inclusion of the small figure. As I have noted a number of times before, once a figure enters the painting, it becomes the focus of that painting. We humans are always curious when another human becomes part of the picture, wondering what that human might be doing and why. There is ample evidence of that in these pieces.

I find myself asking myself why these figures are in these paintings now and why they often appear on the peaks of the roofs. Why are they speaking to that red sun? And why is that sun red in the first place?

I don’t really know. Maybe in the future when this series has run its full course in my mind, I will see an answer in the assembled imagery of the work. Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not. I suppose some things are meant to be a mystery.

The easy interpretation, and one that has certainly come to my mind, is that it relates to my health issues. Perhaps the figure is attempting to ask some higher power represented in the form of the red sun for a reason why things like this happen. Perhaps that figure is berating or begging that red sun for answers or mercy?

Could that be me up there? I don’t think so. I have not been angry or even questioning as to why I am going through this. As I have said, I know and accept that it’s just the price of admission we pay to experience the wonder that is this world. Everybody has to pay that price in some way.

This is mine.

And I think I might be getting a bargain. Seriously.

And that somehow doesn’t seem fair. So, if that is me up there on the roof, maybe I am asking why some people pay so much more for this privilege and others slide by on the cheap.

All I am asking is for one good reason. Then I’ll climb off that roof.

Let’s get to this week’s Sunday Morning Music. I am sure some of you could foresee this week’s pick. The painting was titled with this song in mind, after all. The song is Give Me One Reason from Tracy Chapman. I was surprised when I discovered I have never shared this song after all these years. Like so many of her songs, it has long been a favorite.

Enjoy it then show yourself out. Sorry to be abrupt but the roof is waiting for me. That red sun has some explaining to do…

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One cannot fix one’s eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.

—Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)

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This line from Jane Austen really speaks to me, both in the inspirational quality of nature and in the way the mind takes off in any direction at the slightest breeze of thought. Mine certainly does. Even more than normal recently. Reading has become a chore because every sentence from an author often sends my mind racing away from it to some other path of thought. It sometimes takes me half an hour to read a page, most of that time spent following my rambling fancy.

I don’t mind, outside of not getting things read that I feel the need or desire to read. I know that this is just how I am and that it is part of how I process things. How I keep things straight in my mind and find some clarity or order in it. I kind of think I need to do things this way now in order to be to write or paint.

Need to follow that rambling fancy.

My mornings in the studio are most always a ramble of some type. If I don’t have something in mind for the blog when I sit down–which is quite often–I begin a quest of a sort. I listen to music, watch videos, check out the news, look at some sites that I follow, all in an effort to find that food for a rambling fancy, as Austen put it.

This morning, for example, I’ve watched a number of music videos, looked up some musicians of which I was not aware, read several short articles, and did several searches for a variety of things. I try to gauge my rambling fancy on how much my emotions are triggered by whatever catches my attention at the moment. If it moves me, I follow it.

This hasn’t been as accurate a gauge recently because my emotions are already on high alert as a result of the hormone therapy I am undergoing. I have always been highly reactive as far as my emotions are concerned. They have always been right under the surface of my skin ready to burst out at any moment.

Just the way I am designed.

Unfortunately, the new hormone broth running through me has supercharged some of my emotions. They are throbbing on the surface of my skin now. I can’t get through a day now without something I hear or see or read moving me to tears. Hell, this morning I have cried several times already.

I’m crying right now. Not really. Just threw that in for dramatic effect.

Another effect of this is that my writing tends to ramble on, and my personal filters seem ineffective. You probably noticed that if you’re a regular reader. Today is good example of this.

I thought there was a point to be made but now I am not so sure. I’ve rambled off whatever path I began down when this began and now I am in No Man’s Land.

But that’s okay. Well, okay for me. I apologize for wasting your time with my hormone-driven babble.

Here’s a song. Maybe that will make up for my transgression. It’s a wonderful performance of the Led Zep classic Ramble On from Robert Plant and Saving Grace from the other night on the Colbert show. I featured Plant and Saving Grace is an earlier post. Good stuff all the way around.

Got to ramble on now. I have another rambling fancy beckoning to me…

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We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

–Johannes Kepler, as quoted in Cosmos (1980) by Carl Sagan

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The painting shown from 1998 is titled The Way of the World. It hung for a number of years over my desk in my old studio and for the last 18 years had been on a wall in my back bedroom in my new studio. I guess after 18 years, it isn’t really new anymore. but that is beside the point. 

The Way of the World was painted during my transition to being an artist on a full-time basis. I had recently completed a large commission for Corning Inc. and my work was showing and selling well in three galleries. This piece is very representative of my work at the time, done as it was in transparent inks on untreated paper. I had not yet begun to work on surfaces with underlying textures created by layers of gesso.

It also represented an upward trend in the size of my work, even though it is not large in relation to what I consider my bigger pieces. It is 12″ by 28″ in a 16″ by 32″ frame. A substantial piece but not really large.

The piece only showed for a short time before coming back to reside in my studio. It was with me for so long that, as I recently realized, I began to not see it. Looking at it just a few eeks ago, I tried to understand how this came to be.

It didn’t take long to figure out. 

At the time, as I was saying, I was showing more and more work in several venues. Up to that point, I was dependent on framing my work in store bought frames. I had found a couple of outlets that sold frames that were just okay but limited in sizes. They added nothing aesthetically to the work. They were neutral at best. Plus, it was quite an outlay of cash for me given the number of pieces that were going out to galleries then. I needed to figure out a way to obtain a frame that was affordable, unique, and complemented the work in the way a good setting highlights a fine gem.

I enlisted a good friend of mine who was also a woodworker. It took a couple of iterations before a suitable and effective frame emerged, the one that came to be recognized as my frame. A simple profile in poplar, stained an orange/yellow color that highlighted my work beautifully. Well. at least in my eyes it did.

However, some of the early attempts at finding a frame came up short. And The Way of the World was always in one of those early frames. It was– is–a horrible pine frame stained in blue that has the appearance of dirty pair of blue jeans. It is ghastly on every level.

I took it off the wall recently and freed it from that frame and for the first time in probably 28 years, saw it for what it is without the specter of that awful frame impinging on it. It was no doubt what I saw in it before I imprisoned it back in 1998. It felt like I had come across a hidden treasure, one that had been right in front of me the whole time but was inexplicably invisible.

I put it in one of my regular frames and it feels new in so many ways that please me greatly. I like the way the tree is styled, for example. It is representative of the manner in which I painted trees at the time, two years before the Red Tree began to appear and take hold of me. I like its color and solidity that makes it stands out against the background.

There are flaws in it as well that thrill me. In the hillside on which the tree stands, the large block of blue in the bottom right, there are ink marks that occurred while I was painting. They result from the ink drying too quickly as I am working on the whole block of color. You don’t see them in my work as often now since I can remove them on a surface treated with gesso. The untreated paper I was working with then had no such safety net.

As I said, seeing these sorts of flaws thrills me. I like seeing the hand of the artist, be it the exposed edge of drying paint or in bristles or hairs that become trapped in the paint. It gives me a sense of looking at the work through the eyes of the artist.

It is a very human thing, this willingness to show our all too human flaws.

The flaw of the human hand. Something you can’t produce with AI. 

This painting now feels like a completely painting to me now. Without that crappy blue frame, it can speak its truth. And I see and hear it now. And I like it. 

I don’t know that anyone will else see it in that way. And to be honest, I don’t give damn. I am going to show it again at my show at the Principle Gallery in June, to let it be visible after too long a period of being unseen and unheard.

Here’s song that I am required to play today. It immediately came to mind when I decided to write about this painting but was pretty sure I had played it not too long ago. Looking it up, I found that I had last shared it on this very same day one year ago in a post that was about, of all things, synchronicity. It featured this passage from Tom Robbins:

What we, thanks to Jung, call “synchronicity” (coincidence on steroids), Buddhists have long known as “the interpenetration of realities.” Whether it’s a natural law of sorts or simply evidence of mathematical inevitability (an infinite number of monkeys locked up with an infinite number of typewriters eventually producing Hamlet, not to mention Tarzan of the Apes), it seems to be as real as it is eerie.

The sheer and eerie synchronicity of it made me laugh this morning. Sharing the song was obviously an inevitability that I could not resist. To not share it would have went against the will of the universe and the way of the world.

And who am I to go against that? 

This is That’s the Way the World Goes Round from the late John Prine.

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Worry is a form of fear, and all forms of fear produce fatigue.

–Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

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So desperately tired this morning. Bone tired.

Even trying to think seems exhausting. I don’t know if it’s a result of the effects of the radiation coming to a peak. I was warned that this would be about the time it would occur. But part of me wonders if it’s not that combined with mental fatigue of helplessly witnessing the madness taking place here.

I don’t know.

Sat here looking at my computer for too long this morning and was about to hang it up and not post anything today. But that seemed like I would be giving in to my tiredness, as though it was something separate from me, something trying to keep me from being who I am. So, I decided I would post something, anything, even if it is short and not saying much.

It’s an effort, at least. And I guess the same can be said for the collective fatigue we are all experiencing.

Make an effort, even a small, seemingly insignificant one. It is movement and movement is life.

Like they say, use it or lose it.

Okay, here’s a tune I haven’t shared in several years. It is Cry No More from one of my favorites, the ultra talented Rhiannon Giddens. This performance and was produced in the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston, SC church shooting in which 9 church members were murdered. The words below appear at the end of the video. They apply now more than ever.

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