Redtree Times

 Two Sides  (2006)

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return – sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

–Henry David Thoreau, Walking (1862)

As I have mentioned here recently, I have been going through older work for inclusion in my upcoming solo show at the Principle Gallery in June.  I don’t hold tightly to many objects, including my own work. That said, it’s been difficult trying to choose which pieces I am willing to let go.

It comes down to the question: Which paintings do I hold too precious to part with? And if so, why?

There are a few paintings that I consider untouchable. The painting at the top, for instance. It is titled Two Sides and is from my 2006 Outlaws series. It now sits directly in front of me at my desk and serves as a constant reminder of the dualities that make up our lives– darkness and light, good and evil, etc.– and the choice we have to make between the two. it may not be a monumental painting nor may it appeal to many others, but it is one which feels like a part of who I am.

One that I will carry with me to my grave.

A heart to be embalmed.

A Prayer For Light— Exiles series 1995

The same goes for the painting, A Prayer For Light, shown here on the right. It is from my Exiles series that began in 1995 and has so much personal meaning that parting with it seems impossible to me.

Its absence would haunt me. It would be like tearing out my heart before it had a chance to be embalmed.

With this in mind, I recently came across this passage from Thoreau’s deathbed essay that was published posthumously in The Atlantic in 1862. In the context of what I was doing, I wondered what pieces, if any, of my work might someday serve, as Thoreau put it, as an embalmed heart.

A relic to be sent into the desolate kingdoms of the future.

I don’t think that’s a question I can answer.

I would like to think so, but I know that it might be a long shot. And if so, it would most likely be as an obscure relic. And whether any of the paintings I consider untouchable– the two shown here and several others– become these obscure relics is probably even a longer shot.

It’s not for me to say. I have not control or sway on those desolate kingdoms that make up the future. Hell, I have little sway here and now.

But I continue my walk through this life, putting my heart out here, alive and beating. Whether it finds its way into the future as a relic tucked away in some dusty closet or as another bit of trash in some dank landfill is irrelevant.

When I finally end my walk, let them do what they may with my heart.

When that time comes, I will have no longer use for it. It will have served me well and if someone finds a use for it, so be it.

Here’s a song that I played with the painting several years ago. I always think of this song as an accompaniment to this painting. This is Shoot Out the Lights from Richard and Linda Thompson.

Only You Know and I Know (2026)

If I seem to mislead you
It’s just my craziness comin’ through
But when it comes down to just two
Ah, I ain’t no crazier than you

‘Cause you know that I mean what I say
So don’t go, and never take me the wrong way
You know you can’t go on gettin’ your own way
‘Cause if you do, it’s gonna get you someday

–Dave Mason, Only You Know and I Know (1970)

This past week, I failed to mention this past week the death of musician Dave Mason last Sunday at the age of 79. It’s not a name    familiar to most folks born after 1980 unless they are really into music.  And many born well before that year might not know his name but will no doubt be familiar with his work.

He has been referred to as the Forrest Gump or Zelig of rock and roll, always on the fringes of rock greatness and sometimes in its spotlight.

He was one of the founding members of Traffic and wrote one of their biggest hits, Feeling Alright, which was also a huge hit for Joe Cocker. He had a good run with solo career in the 1970’s that yielded 3 gold albums.His song Only You Know and I Know became a big hit and a staple of early FM radio for Delaney and Bonnie in the early 70’s.

Mason contributed 12-string acoustic guitar on the legendary Jimi Hendrix version of All Along the Watchtower, as well as backing vocals on Crosstown Traffic. He also played the Shehnai, a South Asian double reed instrument, and bass drum on Street Fighting Man from the Rolling Stones. He was in the earliest incarnation of Derek and the Dominoes, played on the George Harrison album All Things Must Pass, was a member of Fleetwood Mac in the 90’s, recorded with Michael Jackson, and sang backup on the hit song Listen to What the Man Says from Paul McCartney.

I am sure I am missing a lot here. He was just one of those guys who showed up in a lot of interesting places at the right time.

I listened to his albums quite a bit in the 70’s and 80’s. Some of his songs are among my favorites, including Let It Flow, We Just Disagree, Feelin’ Alright, and Only You Know and I Know, which I am sharing today for this week’s Sunday Morning Music.

I finished up the small painting at the top a day or so before hearing of Mason’s death. After listening to Only You Know and I Know again for the first time in quite some time, the title seemed to fit the painting for me.

Maybe that first verse at the top is custom made for this piece? Maybe.

I might be on-the-rooftop-yellin’ crazy but I ain’t no crazier than you.

You know it and I know it.

Beheld— At West End Gallery

We are an exceptional model of the human race.
We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves.
We no longer raise our young.
We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon.
We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us.
We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived.
But when the lights are off we are helpless.
We cannot move without traffic signals.
We must attend classes in order to learn by rote numbered steps toward love or how to breast-feed our baby.
We justify anything, anything at all by the need to maintain our way of life.
And then we go to the doctor and tell the professionals we have no life.
We have a simple test for making decisions: our way of life, which we cleverly call our standard of living, must not change except to grow yet more grand.
We have a simple reality we live with each and every day: our way of life is killing us.

— Charles Bowden(1995), Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America 

I had never heard of journalist Charles Bowden, who died in 2014 at age 69. But I came across a number of passages from his 1995 book, Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America, that really jumped out at me with their blunt and sometimes harsh observations of our American way of life. The bit above stood out immediately for me. It was something I have been thinking for some time, that we are becoming less and less capable and more and more dependent on others for so many aspects of our lives.

With it comes an ever-increasing need for more of everything. A greediness has seemingly been planted in our psyche. As Bowden wrote, the only change we will willingly accept is to grow more grand.

I say this with hesitance, but it’s hard to not agree with how ends this passage: our way of life is killing us.

Maybe Bowden’s is a dark vision. I don’t know. But what I have read does not feel out of step with my own limited observations and the thoughts I have about what we have become. And I include myself mainly in that we. I often think of ancestors, particularly my great-grandfather, at such times. I have researched some of their histories, seeing how they lived in their times, and I wonder how they would think of what we have become and how they themselves might fare in these times.

My great-grandfather, Gilbert Perry, was born in 1855 at the northern end of the Adirondacks, near the Canadian border. His Canadian-born father was a farmer, as most people were in that time and place. In 1872, at age 17, Gilbert was emancipated as an adult (a notice appeared in the local newspaper proclaiming this fact) and set out into the woods with a crew of men he had enlisted to harvest trees. They set out with nothing more than double-bit axes, crosscuts saws, and a team of horses.

That first foray into the woods with his small crew turned into a way of life for Gilbert. Over the next forty years his small crew grew and at one point, as one of the pioneers of the Adirondack lumber surge that fed the building boom that was taking place in this nation, he employed over 350 men and had over 50 teams of horses.

This was all at a time when everything was done by hand and brute force or with the assistance of a horse. There were no chainsaws, tractors, or trucks. No electrical power, only kerosene lamps or candles at night. No smartphones guide you via GPS, to call home with, or to check the radar weather reports. No doomscrolling nor blogs from fools like me.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not saying that I would trade this time for that time. No way. I am too much a product of this time, too used to the ease of modern life. I have experienced that way of doing things to a small degree and am grateful for the experience, I don’t want to repeat it at this point in my life. I am too damn tired.

When I started building my house, much of it was built before the electrical lines were ran. Many of the boards were cut with a handsaw. Thousands of nails were driven by the swing of a hammer. No nail guns.

I now have all sorts of specialized tools to do things that I once did by hand, as well as all sorts of gadgets that usually do one limited task and sometimes not all that well.

Every time I see a TV ad for some new ridiculous gadget that does tasks that are still easily done by hand, I think of my great-grandfather. I didn’t know him (he died in 1936 at age 81) but can imagine him scoffing at the fools that think they need to pay hard earned money for this foolish gadget to do something he could do in mere seconds with his hands and mind.

While I say I wouldn’t want to go back, I do think there is something lost with us now. It’s a loss of self-dependence and the belief that we can do things with our hands and minds. We don’t have to be tethered to machinery and technology.

I see this in myself. I have got to the point where I often forget that I can do things or can figure things out. Every so often I am forced to get past that mental block. Something will happen and I find myself forced do things with my own hands and mind if things are to be set right.

So, I just do it. I find that it is invigorating, even liberating, to rediscover abilities that have faded beneath the weight of technology. I feel more confident afterwards, more able. It reminds me of another passage from Bowden’s book:

There will be no first hundred days for this future, there will be no five-year plans. There will be no program. Imagine the problem is that we cannot imagine a future where we possess less but are more. Imagine the problem is a future that terrifies us because we lose our machines but gain our feet and pounding hearts. Then what is to be done?”

The part that jumped out at me was imagine a future where we possess less but are more.

I don’t know that we can do that.  It is human nature to seek the easy way, the path of least resistance. And this would be anything but that, at least in our minds. And that might be the problem. We have the ability but no longer have the will.

That brings to mind another passage from Blood Orchid:

Imagine the problem is not physical. Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not the ozone layer, it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old-growth forest, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes on unconcerned. Imagine the problem is not some syndrome of our society that can be solved by commissions or laws or a redistribution of what we call wealth. Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can effect real change, that our civilization, our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness. Imagine the problem is not physical and no amount of driving, no amount of road will deal with the problem. Imagine that the problem is not that we are powerless or that we are victims but that we have lost the fire and belief and courage to act. We hear whispers of the future but we slap our hands against our ears, we catch glimpses but turn our faces swiftly aside.

Those last two sentences are brutally honest. The future is so often laid out before us, but we refuse to see it or to act on it. I suppose part of it comes from the helplessness that has been pushed upon us by our dependence on technology.

Yes, we often feel incapable and helpless. Been there, done that. But we must remember that we are still capable of self-dependence.  Even greatness.  Our ancestors did it and we are no less than they were, despite everything we see and are told.

We are cut from the same cloth.

Okay, enough for today. Maybe too much. Probably not enough, actually, since there are no answers or solutions in this.

But that might be the point, that the solution comes from each of us.

We are capable. We are not helpless.

Or hopeless.

Here’s one of my favorite songs, one I have shared a number of times. This is Helpless from Neil Young. I love this performance from The Last Waltz accompanied by The Band with an unseen Joni Mitchell providing backing vocals from backstage.

Zenith 

Man, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness.

–Charles Caleb Colton, Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan, 1823

Woke up late and tired this morning so I am replaying a post from just a few years back. The painting is a large one that sits in my sightline here in the studio, one I always felt was underappreciated in its short time out of the studio. But it speaks to me. Maybe for the words at the top and those below. I don’t know for sure. Maybe it says something to me that I can’t articulate. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I’ve been really dragging in recent days. Last week I was two weeks out from the end of my course of radiation and was beginning to feel pretty good finally after some rough days. I made the mistake of thinking I was past the effects. Since I was doing well in taking several short walks a day at an ever-increasing but still slower pace, I thought it might be okay to attempt a short session on the old exercise machine, a sort of combo rowing/bicycle contraption that has been very effective for me. 

Big mistake. After a brief ten-minute session at an easy pace in both the morning and afternoon, I found myself in agony the following day. It was not anything like the achiness that comes with working out after some time off. I know that feeling well and this was well beyond that. It was like full body inflammation. Every part of my body hurt. 

This pain hung around for the several days and even today, though I don’t hurt, my fatigue is on me like a monkey on a cupcake. Sorry, I had to throw that phrase in. I discovered that when my doctors told me to take it easy, they meant very easy. It turns out their definition was not the same as mine and therein lies the problem.

It felt like I kicked my recovery backwards a couple of weeks, something I certainly was trying to avoid.

I will be taking it easy according to their definition, not mine, for the next couple of weeks with the hope to soon be back to whatever the new normal turns out to be. Here’s that post from a few years back.

I came across aphorism above from Chares Caleb Colton and it got me thinking. Not that it is pertinent to my thoughts here, but Colton (1780-1832) was one of those interesting British eccentrics of the 19th century. He was a cleric, a writer, an art gallerist, a high-stakes gambler, and a wine collector.

His words at the top made me think about how we perceive our own strengths and weaknesses. How much power do we really have? Is our strength as mighty as we sometimes perceive it, especially when we often only see as far as the wall of the bubble in which we exist?

Probably not.

If we extend our realm beyond our bubble of familiarity, we often discover our true significance. Or should I say, insignificance.

I guess it’s just another way of putting the big fish in a little pond versus a small fish in a big pond thing. Except I believe we need to have the experience of both. We need to feel strong and powerful in some way just to know that we are necessary. But at the same time, we need to recognize our limitations and smallness in the greater scheme of things.

It’s that balancing of these two worlds, our little and big ponds, that we really need. We need to feel big and small at once. Proud and humble in equal amounts.

Whoa, Nellie! Have to pull on the reins and bring this old horse to a stop. I started this without any real thought as to where it was going and now I am afraid my original riff is at peril of running wild.

I want to get off right here before I get too far from where I’d hoped I’d end up which was in pointing out that our power and weakness is at the mercy of the amount of love we produce, give, and receive in our worlds, be they little or big ponds.

Love is the zenith of all power.

I guess I should have just written that.

Oh, well. That’s what you get when you read someone else’s journals– ramblings, half-baked thoughts and half-witticisms from a sometime half-wit.

Let’s end today with a favorite song, Love Reign O’er Me, from Quadrophenia from The Who.

Pretty powerful stuff. Zenith-level.

Why? (2026)

As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man.

 —Ernst Fischer, Memories and Reflections (1969)

I wrote the post below back in 2010 and have reshared it here a couple of times over the years. I thought it might be worth revisiting this morning and maybe adding a bit here and there. It’s been sixteen years since I first wrote this and, being imperfect, am sure there are flaws in it that I might be better equipped to recognize now and correct.

Eh, maybe not. Let’s give it a shot, anyway.

I’ve wondered about the concept of perfection for some time, given the way some folks are always going on about it and trying to reach some form of it. Nobody wants to freely admit that they are imperfect. Maybe even a mass of them.

Not me, of course. Quite some time back, I came to that conclusion that perfection is not a human quality, that we are defined by our imperfections and the manner in which we cope with them. How we adapt and compensate for all the areas in which we are lacking is a basic survival skill, one that defines us.

And that’s somewhat what the quote above says, as I read it.

When I read it, it struck me at once, but I had never heard of the writer, Ernst Fischer.  Looking him up, I found him to be an Austrian Marxist writer/journalist born in 1899 who waved the banner for Stalinist policies for many years but in his later years– he died in 1972– Fischer came to regret his past. His memoir of his life began with a chapter that was titled Was That Me?, indicating his astonishment at looking back and seeing the many phases and changes he went through in his life.

I think most of us could start our own memoirs with that same first chapter title.

I know I could, even though I feel that I am very much the same at the core now as I was in my earlier days. However, my actions were not always consistent with that core and didn’t really reflect well on me. I did some things that were–how should I put this? — less than perfect.

I was then, and am now, a walking exhibition of flaws, imperfections.

As are we all. At least, that applies to everyone I know. I say that without judgement and with affection.

Maybe it’s when we recognize the sort of person we want to be that we begin to alter our actions to what we are at our core. If we can bring the two into alignment, there is an easing in ourselves, a relaxing of tension. Life then becomes somewhat easier to swallow.

In the 2010 version of this I wrote that our imperfections then become less evident, not worn on our sleeves for all to see. 16 years of being imperfect have brought me to a different conclusion. When the person we wish to be starts to align with what we are in our core, I think our imperfections are just as evident as they were in the earlier versions of ourselves.  The difference is that the earlier us felt shame at these imperfections and tried desperately to cover them up. The later version feels less shame and is less afraid to wear them on full display, mainly because they know that is a futile effort.

They know then that we are a mass of imperfections and to deny them is to deny part of who and what we are.

I’m not talking about trying to acquire imperfection. No, I mean that we just try to recognize the flaws that make up each of us and to accept them. Life is in toleration- of others as well as of ourselves. And in adapting to and overcoming our shortcomings.

How we learn to wear our imperfections on our sleeves in a comfortable way.

Please bear with me here. One of the negative aspects of doing a daily blog is that I often post things as though I were writing them in a journal, unedited and just as they fall out of the mind. They are not always fully realized thoughts or ideas and will soon be questioned in my own mind.

It’s like reading an old journal written when much younger and wondering, “What was I thinking there?” or, echoing Fischer, “Was that me?”

You hope that, as we age and gain experience, that this is a less frequent happening in our lives. But writing in this public forum, forcing out words each day, it sometimes reappears. One’s imperfections become apparent.

Phew!  I don’t know what I just said here and I don’t really want to reread it so I’ll let it hang out there for now, flawed though it may be. Someday in the near or distant future I just know I’ll read it and ask myself, “Was that me?”

Well, it’s sixteen years later and that question is still with me. Some days it is about something I did or said just days before. I feel like I am closer to the person I want to be now than even a mere 10 or 16 years ago but we never stop asking that question since our aim is an ever-changing target. The closer we get to it, the more we realize that maybe we could be more. Or at least, that’s the hope.

Okay, I have to run. I am also sharing a song from Nick Drake, whose work I have shared a few times over the years. I wrote this about earlier: Nick Drake seems to have created echoes with his music in this manner. He recorded three albums from 1969 to 1972 that never really found an audience at the time. He tragically died from an overdose of antidepressants in 1974 at the age of 26. In the years since, his work has gained that audience that eluded him during his short lifetime and has a cult following. His songs have a unique quality that draws me in but is hard to pin down.

He never really got ask himself the question: Was that me?

I am sharing his song, Pink Moon. I was planning on sharing the new small piece at the top, Why?, and thought this song would be a good match.

After all, wouldn’t a red sun create a pink moon?

The Writing’s on the Wall (1995)

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

—I Ching (Book of Changes), Ch’ien (The Creative) ca 1000-750 BC

I originally used passage above in an earlier and credited to Alexander Pope, who it was attributed to online at the time. I was not doing as much authentication at the time, but when I came across it recently I immediately questioned the attribution to Pope. It only took a minute before I found that it came from the I Ching, the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, which was a method of divination.

Fortune telling, basically. I don’t fully understand the methodology and can’t say I have much faith in divination, so I am not going to try to explain it. But the bulk of the wisdom attached to it rings true after several millennia.

For example, the Creative working through change and transformation. Much of the art that moves people across a broad spectrum comes from some form of crisis and catharsis. Being transformed by our experience of the hardship in this world is a universal human quality.

We all suffer at some point in our lives, and we find comfort in both expressing it and being heard. And in empathizing with others who are expressing their own experience.

I can’t speak for other artists, but I feel that transformation and change have been the major impetus in my work. I was going to add   for better or worse, but I believe it has been for better in my case. My work would be infinitely less without my experience of life. It would certainly feel less authentic.

Well, that’s my opinion, for what it’s worth.

This is a subject on which I could go on and on. I’ll give you a break today.  Plus, I simply didn’t want to do that this morning. I need more time to think than I have right now.

I mainly wanted to correct my attribution of the passage and share the song below. I could have sworn I had shared this song before but it turns that I have not. It is an emotionally charged cover of a Black Sabbath song, Changes, from the late soul singer Charles Bradley, who had a full-throated, gritty delivery that evoked the deepest  depths of feeling. He died in 2017 at the age of 68 after finally attaining wider recognition in his later years after toiling in obscurity for much of his life.  His was a long and hard road and his voice oozes with his life experience.

That is the way of art– revealing the meaning, beauty, and connective nature of our suffering.