Redtree Times

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Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.

–-George Bernard Shaw, John Bull’s Other Island (1904)

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I chuckled when I came across the lines above from a G.B. Shaw play that centered on his native land. My reading of this is that he sees it as a transformative place with a beauty that inspires a balloon filled with lofty dreaming and a harshness that bursts that balloon. As a result, those there sit at two ends of a spectrum, either as aspirational dreamers or angry cynics. Very little neutrality.

I don’t know that this is true, either then or now. Most likely it was seen as such by Shaw for its dramatic effect. I can’t really say. But Ireland, as both a real and mythic land, certainly does have a lasting and sometimes transformative effect on people. Few, if any, holidays have people proudly their claiming ancestral roots in any country like they do for St. Patrick’s Day.

I have written a number of times before here about my Irish ancestors. My great-great-grandfather worked on the railroads being built here in the Northeast in the second half of the 19th century and his family settled in the Binghamton, NY area. Most of his family worked in the tobacco industry, either as leaf strippers or cigar rollers.

Like any family, it was marked by periods of happiness, endless hard labor, and tragedy.

A typical American story.

Below is post from a few years ago that I am sharing on this St. Patrick’s Day, mainly because I like the painting and the song.

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My thoughts on this holiday always go to my mom whose birthday fell on this date. She would have been 94 today. I grew up thinking we had Irish blood through my mom’s family since her mother’s family name was O’Dell, which sounded pretty Irish. Found out through genealogy that it was not Irish at all.

It was originally Wodell when they first arrived here in the 17th century. The name shifted over the early American generations to O’Dell.

Actually, they were English. Very English.

Turns out that the Irish part of my ancestry came through my dad’s side. Took many years to find much on it but with DNA testing and the greater access to records via the web, I found that these ancestors, the Tobin family, came out of Barnlough in County Tipperary in Ireland in 1852 as a whole family unit, coming through NY then heading to Rhode Island. Both parents died within months after landing here and their children, many of adult age, dispersed across the region with some heading west and settling in Chicago in the expansion that took place in the second half of the 19th century.

A typical American story.

For this St. Paddy’s Day, I thought I would share a piece of art above from a well-known Irish artist and illustrator of the 20th century, Norah McGuinness. I really liked– and felt a kinship with– her use of color and forms in this piece. She worked in a visual language that I can understand.

Also, let’s hear an Irish song. Well, it’s an Irish song written by an American that has become a very popular song in the Irish culture. It’s The Galway Girl from Steve Earle. The version below is from the Irish musician Mundy who had a hit with this song in Ireland in 2008 that topped the charts for several weeks. I think you can hear why it caught on so well.

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And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable
thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it
wishes, undirected.

–John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Chapter 13 (1952)

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I walked up the top of my property yesterday morning. My forest is a mix of different trees consisting of hardwoods like oak, maple, hickory, ash, beech scattered among a variety of conifers such as spruce, white pine, and hemlock. I wound up in the area of the forest above. It’s a section that was once mainly hardwood, predominantly birch and ash. But in the past couple of decades this part of the forest has been particularly devastated by blight and invasive species such as the emerald ash borer beetle. The white birch is now almost completely gone from my woods as are the white ash that heavily populated this section and much of the rest of these woods.

Looking yesterday at this scene in the March snow was both sad and inspiring.  It looks bleak with the tall remnant stumps of ash and other downed trees. There are a few trees whose lower trunk are twisted from finding a way to survive in the once dense forest. These are the ones that caught my eye and drew me to this part of the forest.

But soon, in mere weeks, it will be once more alive with new growth.  And like those twisting trees, life adapts.

Life survives.

Its glory continues in an everchanging form.

The photo and this bit I’ve written don’t really totally blend with the Steinbeck passage above. But in a way they do. I’m going to leave it up to you to determine that. I have included the whole section below from which the Steinbeck quote was taken. It’s been several decades since I read East of Eden and I was probably too young then to appreciate the power of these paragraphs then. It is as powerful now as when it was written. It speaks to all dark times when there are those who seek to control the minds of men.

There are some parts that I might not fully agree with, such as there are no good collaborations. Though I am not a collaborative artist, I respect and admire many works that were the result of minds and talents coming together. Perhaps he meant that an idea is first formed in the mind of one individual before others are invited in to possibly improve or expand upon it.

If you have time, please read. There is a credo of defiant hope in it. Just what we all need.

One sidenote: From my little foray up into the woods, I can predict a heavily tick-laden spring and summer ahead. I picked two ticks off my body last night. Egads…

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Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can
feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

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Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration consciousness is unusually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. Experience is in harmony.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990)

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This week, I finished the piece shown here, Flow, for my annual solo show at the Principle Gallery in June. The title comes from the stream flowing in the painting but also refers to the creative flow I am trying to find at the moment.

This is something I have written about a number of times over the years. It is sometimes easy to tap into but other times it is unsatisfyingly absent, as though I might have to resort to a divining rod to find some hidden spring that might turn into a flow.

I know it’s still there at the moment but it’s hard to completely immerse myself in it. Too many distractions, doctor appointments, and fatigue, both physical and mental. It often feels as though just when I am about to slide into the flow lately, something pulls me from it.

However much it frustrates me, I know from prior experience, having lost the flow a number of times over the years, that it’s there still. There’s reassurance in that knowledge. It often seems as though it has dried up forever but somehow, through perseverance and desire, it begins once more to flow easily. 

This new painting feels as though it has brought me closer to that flow. Much of the time as I painted, I felt immersed in it. It was great feeling and I think this painting reflects that. It has a strength and rhythm that I like in my work.

Now the trick is to carry that flow’s momentum forward. It’s coming, I am sure.

Here’s a post from 2013 that tries to explain it. I don’t know whether it does so in a satisfying way. But, as they say, it is what it is. Judge for yourself.

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I wrote the other day about my search for that intangible thing in my work, that quality that will set me off on a new path.  I’ve been thinking about it and what I think I am really looking for comes down to one word:  Flow. There’s a famous book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, from psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (please don’t ask me how to pronounce his name)that describes flow as a sense of being in the zone or in the groove, of being so totally immersed in the task before you that the external world is blocked out. He describes it as being like playing jazz, where each action, thought and movement rises from the previous one.

He points out that this flow occurs when there is a balance between the level of the challenge and the skill of the person facing it. Basically, this person is working at the far end of their skill level, pushing themselves to their boundaries in order to conquer the task before them. There can be no thought other than that thing before them. Total concentration and dedication.  

I think of it in terms of a mountain climber facing a climb that seems at the far end of their limits, who must muster up all their knowledge and abilities then concentrate on each movement in order to scale the daunting peak before them.

I have known this feeling, this flow that he describes, in painting. I have often described this feeling of immersion, of a level of concentration where each action leads to the next and time seems to fade into nothingness. I don’t hear the music playing, don’t feel thirst or hunger, don’t think about other things that I need to do or things that might be worrying me.

When I have been in this state it seems so real and so concrete that it feels as though it is always right there and attainable. It is intoxicating.

But it is not sustainable forever without creating new challenges. One you have conquered one peak, you need a new one to face up to. Without this challenge, you are at a comfortable plateau, something I have attempted to describe in the recent past. Stay put, your skill exceeds the challenge and total immersion is not necessary. While there is a level of needed concentration to simply maintain this elevation, there is also room for outside thoughts and concerns.  

The once difficult task has become the normal course.  Comfortable.

And this is fine  and, as I have said before, most artists reach a comfortable level and settle in for the long term at this high level. But deep inside, at least for me at the moment, there is a gnawing feeling to find myself hanging tenuously on a new, scary ascent, pushing my abilities to new levels. Riding the flow of the thrill of this tunnel-like focus.

That’s where I find myself at the moment– at a plateau, looking up for a new peak to attack.

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If we were humble, nothing would change us-neither praise nor discouragement. If someone were to criticize us, we would not feel discouraged. If someone would praise us, we also would not feel proud.

–-Mother Teresa, In My Own Words (1996)

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Humble. Quite a word.

When we were young the idea of being humble seemed antithetical to all the impulses, desires, and dreams surging within us. The world then sometimes felt simple and easy to conquer. It was all laid out before us. Plans were effortlessly conceived that seemed as though they could not fail.

Time and youthful energy were on our side.

We felt that all we had to do was to proclaim our greatness to make it so.

Of course, all of this had not yet came met the real world, had not shook the hand of reality.

When that happened, soon every word that corrected or criticized became a dagger. After feeling the stab of failure a few times, we were primed so that even the smallest words of praise greatly inflated our ego, our pride, and had us once again breathing the air of self-importance. It made us once again feel invincible.

But time wore on us. Where we once saw a limitless horizon in the distance that we felt was within our reach, we now looked at it knowing that it might well be beyond the limitations of our time and talent. The aspiration to greatness was replaced with an aspiration for simple goodness and self-satisfaction.

Oh, the stabs and slights still came but the scars from the past wounds to our psyche now kept the pain at bay. Tolerable because we knew they would not slay us. And when words of praise came, they now made us feel a bit lighter in our soul but didn’t have the same effect on our ego as they once did. We now knew that praise was ephemeral, little more than a smoke ring to be enjoyed and appreciated for a brief instant before it dissolves into the atmosphere.

I think I am at that point in my life. I can still be hurt by the stab and can feel a small bit of pride from praise. My aspirations now are smaller. I need less to feel satisfied in who and what I am.

As I was telling a friend a few days ago, I feel oddly content as I am now, even as I struggle with illness while living in a world seemingly set to combust.

I feel humbled by life now. Not humiliated. Simply humble.

And maybe that is the lesson of this life?

I don’t know. I can’t speak for everybody. We all have different horizons, different depths and breadths of feeling and desire. My humbleness might seem like humiliation to you. Might seem small to the greatness that you desire’

For me, it is just where I am now. Humble and happy.

This, like a lot of my recent posts, was not on my radar when I started writing. It’s kind of like painting– you make a mark and go from there, hoping for the best, hoping that something coherent and real emerges. I can’t vouch for the coherency of this, but I believe it is real.

All I can ask.

Here’s another song from Ren. Sorry to force my obsession on you but this is most likely the driving force behind this post. This song has been in my head a lot lately. In the waiting room at the cancer center yesterday, this song and its lyrics kept running through my head. It made me feel pretty damn good. This is Humble from Ren and the British singer Eden Nash.

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We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone.

This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

–Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway

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Woke up a little dizzy this morning. Not something I remember having experienced before. A bit unsteady on my feet, sometimes stumbling slightly one way or the other, like I shouldn’t have had that third martini.

To be clear here, I didn’t have any martinis. Just saying.

Anyway, I wasn’t sure I would write anything this morning. I was also a little fuzzy as far my thinking goes. Not that this is much out of the ordinary but it was little more pronounced. But the need to do this blog at this time is, for me, something I can’t neglect. It keeps me afloat in some ways. So, I decided to look for something that wouldn’t require much thought– again, not that far out of the ordinary– that would satisfy this need to put something down.

I pulled up the snip at the top from Hunter S. Thompson from a book of his collected correspondence from the 50’s and 60’s, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967. I’ve had this passage locked and loaded for some time and figured this would be a good day to shoot my shot with it, even if I can’t add much to it.

The passage itself reflects something I began learning from an early age, that you have to learn to love and respect yourself. For one thing, you can’t really love or respect anyone else — or be loved and respected by anyone–without first having done so for yourself.

And secondly and most importantly, as Thompson points out, we ultimately spend most of our lives alone, from birth to death.

Trying to exist in the happiness of others is not your happiness. There’s a lot more to be said on this last sentence but it will have to wait for another morning, he says as his eyes go a little out of focus.

No, one must learn to be alone with oneself and that requires the love and respect of self.

After all, who wants to spend their entire life tethered tightly to a person who they can’t love?

Thompson makes an important distinction in this short passage, that being alone is not being lonely. That thought was like an epiphany for me when I first realized at an early age that I could find real comfort in being alone. That’s not to say that there wasn’t loneliness. As comfortable as we might be in our solitude, we all need other people sometimes.

Wow, this has rambled on for longer than intended and I haven’t even mentioned the art of Ralph Steadman at the top. I’ve been a big fan since coming across it back in the 70’s in the pages of some of Thompson’s books, especially Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

His image at the top, Viral Menace, is from 2020, in the early days of the pandemic. In an article in The Guardian at that time that featured this image, Steadman, who is now 89, stated that we are living in weird times and that Trump is ‘the worst person in our known history.’

Who am I to argue with that? Actually, it is a thought that has ran through my mind many times. If he’s not, he is in the top 2 or 3.

My opinion. I won’t argue with you on this.

In the article, he also spoke about coming across images of his old work in books, saying ‘I’m amazed how many things I’ve done that I don’t remember; I’m going through the book and wondering how on earth I did them.‘

I think that is something I have described here before. I sometimes come across an old piece and I can’t remember painting it or how it came about. I know at once I couldn’t recreate it now, at least in any way that captured what I was seeing in that older piece.

Different moment, different person, different energy, different emotions..

I would imagine that an older singer might have that same feeling on hearing a recording of an early performance. They might try to sing that same song now but it would be different in many ways.

Art is always of the moment. Great art carries that moment within always.

Holy crap, I am just going on and on when I thought I couldn’t write anything at all this morning. Of course, writing a lot doesn’t mean I am saying anything worth remembering. This one of those posts where I will look back it in a few years– hopefully– and wonder what the hell I was thinking. Or not thinking.

Oh well. Que sera, sera. That’s okay with me. Know why? Because I respect myself.

You know I couldn’t kick you out the door without playing this song. This is the always-of-the moment classic Respect Yourself from the Staple Singers. Doesn’t get much better than this.

Okay, you can leave now.

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Sun is hangin’ in the sky
sinkin’ low and so am I
Just for the love of someone
and a big red sun
How’m I gonna lose
these big red sun blues

–Lucinda Williams, Big Red Sun Blues (1988)

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I have things that have to be done this morning so this will be short. That’s difficult for me since what is taking place in the world as a result of the actions of the idjit-in-charge here begs for comment. Okay, I can’t resist. Here one quick comment:

The situation seems like a spoiled toddler who, left alone and unaware of unintended consequences, wants a cookie in a kitchen cabinet high above his head. All he can see before him is his want of that cookie. Nothing else matters. In attempting to get the cookie, this spoiled brat clumsily sets off a series of events– the aforementioned unintended consequences— that starts a raging fire that eventually burns down the whole house.

And then the whole neighborhood goes up in flames, including a school filled with children, a hospital, and a nursing home. Firefighters are injured and some die in the chaos of the blaze. As a reward, his parents, who have always let their little cretin do whatever his tiny black heart desires and never really liked their neighbors, reward him with a new box of cookies, telling him that all bad things that happen to him are the fault of someone else.

The End. Well, except that this miscreant goes on to become President, mishandle a pandemic, start a war, crash the economy of his country and many others, create a personal army to carry out his whims in his own country, build concentration camps, kill his own citizens, steal and fill his own pockets with the money of his country, demand bribes from companies and countries, spout lies and hatred endlessly, glorify his ugly face and name on anything including a memorial to another president, vilify and deport immigrants, hire perhaps the greatest group of criminal ass-kissing toadies ever assembled to be in his cabinet, use his power to push for the prosecution of his opponents, threaten to cancel elections and reinstate the draft to fight the war he started, and on and on. Oh, wait let’s not forget play golf, strongarm a worthy recipient to give him their Nobel Prize, and desecrate the ceremony for the return of fallen soldiers who died because this creepy manchild wanted a cookie.

But, as some folks I know have told me, he has some good policies they like. I don’t know what they could possibly be, but they’d have to be pretty goddamned good to justify this.

I am sure he will change course soon and things in America will once again be great in, what, about two weeks?

As Foghorn Leghorn might say, “That’s a joke, son!”

Just my take. Okay, that’s not a short comment. But that’s the way it will have to be this morning. At least I was able to use an analogy, a laundry list, and a Looney Tunes cartoon reference.

The Holy Trinity of my existence.

Okay, I really do have things that need doing. Here’s an early song, Big Red Sun Blues, from Lucinda Williams that matches up well with the painting at the top and my own big red sun blues as the neighborhood goes up in flames.

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