Solitude and Reverence– Now at Principle Gallery, Alexandria
I came here to be for all and with all, and what I do today in my solitude will be echoed tomorrow by the multitude. What I say now with one heart will be said tomorrow by thousands of hearts…
–Kahlil Gibran, A Tear and a Smile (1914)
Back in the studio after a day spent delivering the work for my show, Flow, to the Principle Gallery. Though it was a long day it was good one, with gorgeous weather and a drive made easier by lighter than normal traffic.
The stars seemed to be aligned.
So, the work is out of my hands now and in the gallery. I always feel a great sense of relief in simply successfully getting the work there. Of course, that feeling is always short-lived as the worry of how the work and show will fare at the gallery replaces that sense of relief. That anxious feeling hasn’t hit me yet and I am not sure it will come this time with the same impact as in past years.
I think this slightly more relaxed feeling comes from the fact that I have lived with much of the work for quite some time. In some case, for well over twenty years. I know this work completely and intimately. I have lived through my initial excitement and the subsequent doubts and worries about each of these older pieces and have arrived at a place where I am totally confident in the strength and force of every one of them.
They feel battle tested to me, like they have been put through long and grueling batteries of tests to determine their durability. And in my eyes, they have passed every test.
For example, the painting at the top, Solitude and Reverence, has been personal favorite of mine since it first came the easel in 2015. It is one of those pieces that feel perfectly capture how I view my role, at least in an aspirational way, as an artist and a human. Though every piece contains some of that same aspect, there are some such as this one that I feel more fully capture it. The sort of pieces that at the end of my time here I could look at and say with great satisfaction, “That was who I was.”
I could go into a lot more detail on this painting, about the meaning held in its title for me and how I see the symbolism held in its forms. But I am not going to right now. I think what I have written says enough for me at the moment.
Here’s a favorite song from the Beatles, covered by Sara Niemietz, who came to prominence as one of the many talented vocalists who have worked with Postmodern Jukebox. It’s a lovely rendition of In My Life.
Solitude and Reverence is 24″ by 36″ on canvas and is now at the Principle Gallery for my annual exhibit there. This year’s show, Flow, is my 27th solo show at the Principle and opens on Friday, June 12. The work is in the gallery and, though it is not yet hung, is available for previews and prepurchase.
Is prepurchase even a word? Doesn’t matter– I’m going with it either way.
My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.
–Aldous Huxley, Adonis and the Alphabet (1956)
On the road this morning, heading down toward Alexandria to deliver the work for my upcoming solo show at the Principle Gallery. This year’s title for the show, my 27th there, is Flow, and it opens on Friday, June 12. I think it’s going to be a very good show.
It feels good right now.
Actually, it always feels good any time I finish the work for a show.But this show feels even better in getting it done and into the gallery. It was a hard fought, tough slog right up to late this afternoon (this is being written Saturday afternoon) when the last piece was loaded into my good friend and neighbor Bob’s van. This show was completed with a great deal of satisfaction in simply getting it done. Plus, though it was a grind, the show excites me very much.
What more could I ask?
Applying the finishing touches over the last few days have been especially draining so I am also thrilled to be able to be a mere passenger on this trip as Bob pilots the whole route down and back. Damn good man.
Sometimes it is nice to simply be the passenger…
Here’s a song that fits that thought pretty well. It’s a cover of an Iggy Pop song, Passenger, performed by The Big Push— featuring Ren, of course– busking on the streets of seaside Brighton in the UK. Their live street performances always sound great which is probably why they drew such large crowds.
Good road music, as well.
I won’t be there to yell at you but stay off my lawn anyway. Believe me, I’ll know…
Everpresent (2003)- Coming to the Principle Gallery
Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
–John Updike, Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989)
This painting, Everpresent, has lived with me for a long time now. It was painted in 2003, and I believe it was shown in a gallery setting only once before returning to me. It is a piece I have looked at thousands of times over the years. So often that after a while I was looking and not really even seeing it, if that makes any sense to you. I think it was a matter of me thinking that I had absorbed everything it had to offer, that it was completely within me.
I took for granted that it had nothing new to offer. And as it happens so often in those cases where we take something for granted, we are wrong. I realized my mistake one day a year or two ago with this painting. It was hanging in a bedroom here in the studio that serves as a library, with filled bookshelves lining two of the walls. It had hung in that spot for probably a decade or more. I stopped and looked at it. Really looked at it, trying to see if it had something that I had missed in the thousands of sometime cursory views I had given it over the years. I tried to see it with new and fresh eyes, not my old, tired ones.
Could it offer anything new?
For many years, as the title suggests, I viewed this as though the everpresent I referenced was a spiritual force. That perception made sense in my mind. Seemed natural.
But with new eyes looking at it, I perceived something quite different. I saw the Red Tree as being symbolic of those dreams we hold for ourselves and place before us as goals and destinations. The Red Roofed houses were assembled in this piece as being a sort of roadblock, a barrier that stood between the viewer and that distant dream as personified by the Red Tree. The same held true for the body of water standing between the viewer and the Red Tree– another barrier to be overcome.
The Everpresent I saw now was not some omniscient spiritual force. No, it was the dream, the aspiration, that one holds forever in their mind. Some of us stay forever separated from them by the roadblocks and barriers between us and our dreams. Some don’t even attempt to get past them. But the dream remains always though sometimes it fades into the distance for those that have given up hope of ever reaching their dream.
And the lucky few do reach that distant land where the dream in the form of the Red Tree dwells.
It was a much different reading of the painting than I was expecting. And this delighted me, even though I was happy with what the painting was expressing to me before this new view. It made me think that maybe the dreams we hold are a spiritual force of some sort.
They certainly might constitute a belief system– self-belief. It seems to me that the stronger one’s belief in their ability to reach their dream, the more likely it is achieved. But like any belief system, how we go about practicing it is our affair, something we must deal with on our own terms. There is no one way to go about it.
Everpresent is 11″ by 14″ on canvas and is included in Flow, the exhibit of my work that opens June 12 at the Principle Gallery.
Here’s the late Roy Orbison doing his Dream Baby backed by an all-star band from back in 1988.
Okay, got to get going. Much to do still and little time to waste on the likes of you. You do know I’m kidding, don’t you?
Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.
― Donald Woods Winnicott (1896-1971), British Psychoanalyst/Pediatrician
Well, the June issue of the American Art Collector is out.
I should be excited since it contains a short preview of my solo exhibit, Flow, that opens at the Principle Gallery two weeks from today, June 12th. While I can’t deny there is some excitement in seeing my work in a national magazine, I would describe it more as a form of nervousness or anxiety. Maybe fear.
You see, I like giving the work the exposure, getting it out there to a wider audience. I think it deserves it. But there is that neurotic part of me that fears it will reveal all its weaknesses and flaws, which by extension are my own.
Reveal me as a fake. Imposter Syndrome, I guess.
So, when I look and begin reading, it is always with a great deal of trepidation. It makes a phrase in the first sentence describing my work– child-like quality–seem more insidious than I am sure it was intended. Thinking about it for a few moments, I actually come to like the phrase since I have sometimes described my work as having a naive quality, not unlike the artwork of children, which I regard as being very honest and true in the way they express emotion.
Once I got past that child-like thing, I was actually pretty pleased with the article and think that the images of the paintings show really well in the magazine. They certainly don’t look like anything else displayed in the magazine. I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing but for right now, it pleases me greatly. I have always worked to have the work carry a unique identity and I think this displays that quality pretty well.
In the end, I find myself happy with the article. As I am buried in getting work ready for the show, this is a great relief. One less thing to worry about. My Imposter Syndrome quelled for the moment.
I have to get to work right now, in fact. If I am slow in responding to comments or emails, please bear with me. I will get to them soon, that’s a promise. I am a little worn down and things seem to be taking twice as long or more to finish. But I should be done tomorrow and have the show delivered on Sunday. Then I can rest a bit before the show opening.
That sounds pretty damn good right now.
Since this is about a little publicity, here’s a song that sort of deals with that, though nobody is looking to put me in the movies. This is Ringo Starr and the Beatles doing an old Buck Owens song, Act Naturally.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
–Wendell Phillips, speech to Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, January 28, 1852
This is another older piece that is included in my upcoming solo exhibit that opens June 12 at the Principle Gallery. Titled Vigilant, this 8″ by 14″ painting done in transparent inks was painted in 2002 as part of a print series that circulated at print galleries in the Mid-Atlantic region for a few years. The prints from this painting were easily the most popular of the series. For some unknown reason, the painting itself was never exhibited, spending the last 24 years hanging in my studio.
I never even considered showing it, to be honest. And, again, the reason for this remains a mystery to me. But while I was assembling work for this show, I began to consider sending it along. It is, after all, both a fine example of my work in inks at that time and a bit of an anomaly, with the Red Roof houses displaying windows and doors, something that is seldom seen in my work.
It also has a striking presence on the wall and carries
This was painted not long after the 9/11 attacks and the idea of being super alert to threats from abroad was fresh in our minds. The Red Tree here stands on a hillock that casts a wary eye out towards open water and protectively over the homes below it. It has the posture of a watchdog.
It carries a message that was on point in both 2002 and 2026. However, today the Red Tree casts an equally wary eye inland. Some threats are home grown, as we now know. It seems that our watchfulness for foreign threats suffered a lapse in our own self-vigilance. Hopefully, we can recover from this and bear in mind the words at the top from Wendell Phillips, that if we wish to remain a free people, we must be ever on the alert for the corruption of the power we bestow on our leaders.
By the way, Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) was an attorney who was an abolitionist, an advocate for the rights of women and Native Americans, as well as a labor reformer. Phillips was held in the highest esteem by abolitionists and especially among the Black community. George Lewis Ruffin, a black attorney, stated that Phillips was seen by many black people as “the one White American wholly color-blind and free from race prejudice.”
I mention Phillips for partly selfish reasons. When I read his words, I thought I would compare his to the Phillips line in my own genealogy and found that we descend from common Puritan ancestors. He is a distant cousin. Of course, it means absolutely nothing. He has hundreds of thousands, maybe even in the millions, of such relatives. Probably a bunch of you out there, as well, though you might not be aware of the connection. Not that it changes anything in my or your life.
I am always just glad to find a distant relative that makes me somewhat proud. As anyone who has done genealogy in any sort of depth knows, that is not always the case.
There aren’t many songs that come to mind that have anything to do with vigilance. Here’s one that does but in a somewhat creepy way. It’s a great song, nonetheless. This is Sting with an acoustic version of the Police song, Every Breath You Take.
Okay, I have a lot to do so get out. But remember, I got my eye on you.
Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.”
–Wisława Szymborska, Speech for Nobel Prize in Literature, 1996
I don’t know…
I would guess that I’ve said or written that phrase a couple of hundred thousand times in my life. Or maybe even a million times.
I don’t know, of course.
As years pass, I am constantly fascinated by how little I know despite consciously trying to obtain more knowledge. It turns out the only thing I really know is that there are an awful lot of things out there that I will never know.
That doesn’t make me happy, of course. Who wants to know they’re not as knowledgeable as they once thought they were? But I have learned to live with it and take some comfort in knowing that I am not alone. I don’t think any of us really knows as much as we let on. Oh, some speak with absolute certainty and an air of confidence but that’s just bravado or a simple failure to recognize their lack of knowledge.
Stupid doesn’t recognize stupid.
I do know that.
From personal experience, unfortunately.
So, I cringe a bit now when I spot that arrogant certainty in the declarations coming from myself or others. Then I cast a darkly skeptical eye towards these claims, my own included.
I borrowed most of the few paragraphs above from a post from 2017. If you’re a regular reader you know that I often make that statement– I don’t know— quite often and that absolute certainty runs contrary to my very being.
You probably also know that I often struggle to describe the why and what of my art. Why do I do it? What does it mean?
So many questions and never any real answers. Oh, I try to answer. Over and over, again and again. But it ultimately comes out like a long, extended belch– a lot of noise but nothing of substance.
I wrote in the paragraphs above from 2017 that I had come to accept my lack of knowing and had learned to live with it. That’s true to an extent, but I have learned you never really accept it. I might tell myself I am okay with it but deep down I am still trying to figure things out, trying to find some clue, some insight that exposes the whole of the puzzle to me.
I know I am a fool for trying, for spending days and weeks alone in my studio trying to somehow interpret unanswerable questions by pushing paint into images containing vague symbols that hold little meaning for most people. In the end, I’m okay with that. I wasn’t aware of it at first, but the decision to set out on this fool’s errand was mine alone. It turned out to be my passion and filled in all the emptiness that haunted me through the first half of my life. More than that, it provided an endless source of inspiration.
That might sound like an answer, but it has a lot of open air in it. Like I said, a long, extended belch.
This ends up being a long lead-in to the inspiration for today’s blog, which is that short quote at the top from the late poet Wisława Szymborska. It comes from her speech at the 1996 Nobel Prize ceremonies where she accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature. I have read it several times over the years, every time coming away feeling as though it was written for me, always feeling better about my own uncertainty. It’s a peach of a speech. It evens mentions the perils of certainty that comes with those who have found their passion in being, as she put it, torturers, dictators, fanatics, and demagogues, something we are seeing in real time these days.
I’ve mentioned inspiration. Contemporary poets answer evasively when asked what it is, and if it actually exists. It’s not that they’ve never known the blessing of this inner impulse. It’s just not easy to explain something to someone else that you don’t understand yourself.
When I’m asked about this on occasion, I hedge the question too. But my answer is this: inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners – and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.”
There aren’t many such people. Most of the earth’s inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn’t pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them. Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven’t got even that much, however loveless and boring – this is one of the harshest human miseries. And there’s no sign that coming centuries will produce any changes for the better as far as this goes.
And so, though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
At this point, though, certain doubts may arise in my audience. All sorts of torturers, dictators, fanatics, and demagogues struggling for power by way of a few loudly shouted slogans also enjoy their jobs, and they too perform their duties with inventive fervor. Well, yes, but they “know.” They know, and whatever they know is enough for them once and for all. They don’t want to find out about anything else, since that might diminish their arguments’ force. And any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life. In the most extreme cases, cases well known from ancient and modern history, it even poses a lethal threat to society.
This is why I value that little phrase “I don’t know” so highly. It’s small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself “I don’t know,” the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself “I don’t know”, she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families, and would have ended her days performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job. But she kept on saying “I don’t know,” and these words led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where restless, questing spirits are occasionally rewarded with the Nobel Prize.
–Wisława Szymborska, Speech for Nobel Prize in Literature, 1996
Her line, Fortune’s darlings, always makes me chuckle. Though I often feel that way in getting to live my life doing what I want to do, there are plenty of days when I think Lady Fortune was a little off her game on the day she chose me.
But then again, what do I know?
That’s just another way of saying I don’t know. You got to mix things up every so often. Here’s a song from R&B Queen Ruth Brown with the right title though it might not directly apply to anything written here.
Doesn’t matter– it has a good bluesy vibe for a May morning that is still a little hazy as I write this. Good enough for me.
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
–Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder (1965)
Still much to do as I ready the work for my upcoming June show at the Principle Gallery. I am grinding down a little more energy-wise in recent days but as the tile at the top says, I am tired but not weary. The world is too beautiful in so many ways to ever be too tired to not take notice and dip into those reserves of strength that Rachel Carson mentions above. I am hoping that my ground down self pulls from some of those reserves today.
I did take time yesterday to visit my parents’ graves at Woodlawn National Cemetery. It’s a lovely peaceful place with its neat rows of white marble slabs and their gravesite is on small gentle rise that gives a nice overview of the whole cemetery. We went a while after the Memorial Day ceremonies there had concluded, and it was fairly quiet, as far as the crowds that are sometimes there on such holidays. It was a nice break from the work in that quiet place, giving me a chance to think about my folks.
That brings me to a favorite song of mine, Feeling Good Again, from Robert Earl Keen. I wrote the following a number of years ago in describing how this song triggers memories of my dad.
Whenever I hear this song, I am reminded of the time in my youth spent with my father, especially after my brother and sister were gone and I alone remained at home. I spent quite a bit more time alone with my father then.
On many Saturdays (and Sundays) we ended up at the horse track in Canandaigua. Before heading out for the drive there, we would stop at a local tavern in town to give a first look at the Racing Form and to have a cup of coffee for Dad and a Coke for me. It would only be about 9 or 10 in the morning, but the place would be fairly crowded, with some guys drinking their morning coffee and some their first of many, many beers for the day. When we walked in, there would be smiles and shouted greetings to Dad from around the bar. Everyone knew each other and there was a terrific sense of friendship and camaraderie in their banter. Looking back, I can see how that place was a safe haven for a lot of tough, working-class lives and how those friendships, though maybe not deep, were long and reassuring, a connection they often couldn’t find in other parts of their lives.
They might struggle through the week but for s few short hours, they had a kinship that made it tolerable. Those times had them feeling good again.
That feeling returns every time I hear this song. I am once more that 12-year-old kid walking through the door that bar on a Saturday morning and seeing my father smiling and feeling good in that place and time. That made me feel good then. And now.
I won’t tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world’s voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)
I am including the painting at the top in my upcoming solo exhibit, Flow, at the Principle Gallery. As I have pointed out here, this year’s show, my 27th at the Principle, will be a hybrid retrospective, mixing both new and older work. This painting is titled The Choiceand is 18″ by 24″ on canvas. It was painted in 2017 and has long been a favorite of mine. This painting always hit hard with me, both in its visual pop, which it has in spades, and the meaning I take from it.
That meaning, which always jumps out at me when I stand before this piece, is that we all choose the path we take in this life. For some it is an unconscious choice but for others it is a deliberate decision.
We all too often walk through life on a path guided by the expectations and demands of others. Maybe it is family, friends, society– the whole world. We seldom if ever stray from that path, following their rules of the road and accepting their definitions of who and what we are.
And so it goes. We shuffle down the path and play the part. We don’t make waves, don’t step out of line, keep our heads down, and take what we’re given. And there is considerable pressure from others to do so. It is a heavy burden trying to live up to the expectations and opinions of others.
When we are young, most of us wants to be pointed out or be considered the odd one who is out of place. So, while we have the desire to break away, we often keep in place in the safe security of the crowded path.
We all want to be included, to be part of the club. We want to please others and not disappoint them by not living up to their expectations.
For some of us, this path continues throughout our lives and for many that is enough. And there is nothing wrong with that. How can anyone decry someone choosing to be safe and secure?
But for some, that is not nearly enough. The words at the top from Oscar Wilde‘s play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, perfectly capture this feeling.
For those folks there is a nagging thought, a strong desire to veer off that path and break free from the bonds of society and its imposed expectations. You want to stand apart, to live in the world in your own way, and be that person that you see yourself to be. To set aside the labels imposed on you so that you can begin defining yourself.
To be that person you know you are.
It sounds simple, even easy. Of course, it’s not. The pressure of pleasing the desires and expectations of others is replaced by other stresses created by the lack of the safety net that that one has when staying on the main road. But that is mostly overcome by the knowledge that you are on your own path, with as much freedom available as your dare to grab.
It can be hard going, not for the squeamish. But it is there for those of us who never felt at home in the crowd on that main road.
It is an always available choice.
Choose…
Here’s a tune whose chorus has lived rent-free in my head for nearly 50 years. Here’s David Bromberg from How Late’ll You Play Til?, his 1976 album. This is Get Up and Go. Here’s that chorus:
You’ve got a mind of your own Why don’t you use it? You know your way home or did you lose it? Well, you knew right where you were going When you walked up to that door And anytime you wanna leave Get up to go
Fine words to bear in mind if you’re at that spot on your path and have to choose which to follow. Whichever you choose, get up and go.
Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.
–Howard Zinn, Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?, The Boston Globe, June 2, 1976
Memorial Day weekend. I’m no historical anthropologist so I can’t be completely certain when I say that I don’t believe there is any one group of people on this planet who have not been touched by war in some significant way, especially since the advent of the World Wars.
The history of this world has been written in the bloody ink of war.
A few years back, when I began doing genealogy for the families of my wife and myself, I was surprised at the many, many generations in each line who had taken part in the wars of their times, putting their lives aside to give so much of themselves– in some cases, their very lives– out of a sense of service for causes that often might have been mere abstractions to them.
In fact, we have both have ancestors who have fought and died in every war and conflict waged on and by this nation since the Pilgrims first landed at Plymouth Rock. I have a 7th great grandfather from the 1600’s, Benjamin Church, considered the founder of the Army Rangers, who led his Ranger unit in King Phillip’s War and other early wars of the mid 1600’s. There are direct ancestors who fought on both sides of the conflict during the American Revolution. There are ancestors who were prisoners of war at Andersonville and a number of others who are buried throughout the American south, from Louisiana to Georgia to Virginia, as a result of the Civil War.
Part of me is proud that these people have answered the call to be a small part in something bigger. But another part of me is simply sad to think that they were called on to give so much in order to satisfy or deny the baser motives of those in power. War has usually been about greed and acquisition, nationalistic pride or ethnic and religious hatred– in each instance proposed with the greatest conviction and certainty by the leaders of each side of the cause.
And on Memorial Day, we remember the people who actually fulfilled the pleas of these leaders, be they right or wrong. These citizens did what they were asked and what they felt was necessary in their time and place. And I have nothing but respect for that.
For today’s image, I chose the daguerreotype of the Civil War soldier at the top because there was something in him that seemed to show the sacrifice of war. Maybe it’s the steely stare of his eyes. Or maybe it was his belt that is cinched into what looks to be a ridiculously tiny diameter, showing how emaciated he appears to be. I’m not exactly sure but there is something in him that seems contemporary, less dated. He could be the guy behind you in line at the convenient store, except without the gun and with a lot more tats.
For today’s Sunday musical selection, I have chosen the song Ben McCulloch from Steve Earle. It tells the story of two brothers who enlist in the Confederate Army in the Civil War and discover the hard realities of war as they serve under General McCulloch, who was a real person who died in battle in 1862. The chorus probably echoes the sentiments of many soldiers through time for their commanding officers who foolhardily place them in situations where they face overwhelming odds.
The post above originally ran in 2015. With an unhinged commander-in-chief currently trying to push through a defense budget of about a 1.5 trillion dollars–which is such an absurdly high number that it loses all meaning for most folks– I think the song here has pertinence. How many people– soldiers and civilians alike– have died from the megalomania of those we entrust to lead them?
Let us honor and remember our fallen today but let us work towards ensuring that future wars provide fewer graves here and abroad. We can blame our political and military leaders but it ultimately comes down to us to manifest change. I think this is summed up beautifully in one of the scenes from a favorite movie, The Americanization of Emily. Charlie Madison, a WWII American officer stationed in Britain, has an exchange with the mother of Emily, his British romantic partner. The mother still grieves her husband and sons who both died in the two World Wars.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: I don’t trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It’s always the general with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. It’s always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.
Emily Barham: That was unkind, Charlie, and very rude.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on the ministers and generals, or warmongering imperialists, or all the other banal bogeys. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers. The rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widow’s weeds like nuns, Mrs. Barham, and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices.
So, this holiday weekend while we honor the fallen, let us also recognize the incredible waste that comes from war and vow to work towards a more peaceful future where those who would die in war will instead be allowed to strive to reach potentials that would otherwise be lost.
Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.
―John Cage, 1957 lecture Experimental Music
Running on fumes and late as well this morning so this will be short and sweet– hopefully. You never know about such things.
I came the quote above from the late and influential avant-garde composer John Cage from a 1957 address at the national convention of the Music Teachers National Association. I liked his thought here, that we should not be so focused on finding order in the chaos that swirls around this world. The nature of this earth is just as it is and needs no improvements. What we see as a problem in nature, is our problem. We are the ones needing improvement.
In our quest to tame or alter the chaos of nature, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that the order we seek is already in place. It is the harmony that comes from our awareness of our place in this unfathomable swirl that carries us along. Straining to understand or change this keeps us from seeing the richness of our place in the swirling chaos.
Relaxing and going with the unalterable flow allows us to better see and feel the beauty and excellence of this world and our lives.
That’s it except for a piece of music from John Cage. I can’t say that I always understand all of Cage’s work. Some of it evades me completely. That is probably my own shortcoming as there have been times in the past when I listened to his music when I was still fighting against the chaos whereas his music requires you to go with the flow and find the harmony and stillness within the chaos. I thought his 1948 composition, In a Landscape, was fitting since I attempt to reveal the harmonies in the landscape. This is a lovely piece that pays homage to composer Erik Satie, best known for his Gymnopédies which I have shared here a number of times as well as using them for the inspiration for a number of early paintings. This just seems like a perfect accompaniment– quiet and meditative– for the dark, cool, and rainy May morning here in my part of the world.
