The artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos?
–Romare Bearden
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I think the beginning of this quote from the late artist Romare Bearden (1911-1988) is an important statement and observation.
The artist confronts chaos.
That really speaks to me. It better defines a bit the purpose and necessity of art, both in a general and personal sense.
Maybe the purpose of art is to bring clarity and order to the world that confronts us, to illuminate the hidden or overlooked elements of our existence.
I don’t know for sure but these few words and my own experience make me believe it to be so.
For me, art is a way of distilling the torrent of information and sensations that flow through each of us every day down to a single manageable expression. An expression that helps me better understand and tolerate the chaos before me.
For me, it usually boils down to familiar forms and expressive colors. Found order and harmony above the chaotic rhythm of the texture below.
Like hearing a language you don’t really know but seem to somehow understand and trying to translate it to others.
It is different for every artist, no doubt. The idea of organizing chaos might seem totally foreign to some. I can’t say for sure what drives every artist or what purpose they derive from their art.
I can only speak for myself. That, in itself, might be a valid definition for art.
To that, I answer with my mantra: I don’t know.
And that is undoubtedly the driving force behind art.
Here’s Big Joe Turner and his Piney Brown Blues, the song that Romare Bearden references in the monotype at the top of he page. Have a good day.
“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’… must someday lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing – each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father could never have imagined.”
— Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
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Yesterday, like the day before that and the day before that and like nearly every one of the 1001 days since Trump– yeah, I wrote that freaking name– took over our government, was a day filled with outrages.
It was a day that saw Trump crowing ( in his typical word salad comprised of baldfaced lies, the bombast of an ultra spoiled eleven year old and a level of stupidity that so far exceeds any other world leader that it borders on being a form of art) about a faux ceasefire that gives Turkish president Erdogan everything he wanted with absolutely no ramifications and was a final and absolute betrayal of the Kurdish people.
It all but assures an ethnic cleansing of some degree.
It was an Orwellian performance, one where the words are so far removed from the reality of the situation that one is left to wonder if they have somehow stumbled on a new dimension in time and space, some new place that they do not know from any of the life they have led to that date. It was also a remarkable display of profound weakness and defeat on his part even though he tried to sell it as a victory.
If that had been all for the day, it would have been momentous but it was only one small part of the day. There were several other instances in the day, all so outrageous that would have set any other presidency on fire in a way from which they could never recover.
But here , it was another Thursday.
It reminded me of the evolution of the evil that overtook the German people in the 1930’s, culminating in the atrocities of the Nazis during WW II. We in the present tend to think that that thing they became was there in that same form from the very beginning. But it wasn’t. It started in an innocuous, political way. It came in small, subtle changes that involved the normalization of behaviors and thought processes that would have been unthinkable in the not so far past.
Journalist Milton Mayer went to Germany after the war and interviewed a large number of ordinary Germans who lived under the Third Reich. It resulted in the book, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, published in 1955. The small excerpt at the top captures the spirit of the book, describing an environment in which each day pushed a bit further towards the evil end but in such small, baby steps that one didn’t even notice the changes taking place, both in the country and in themselves.
This situation is often described by a frog being put in a pot of warm water on a stove. It is comfortable at first and nothing seems out of the ordinary as the temperature of the water slowly increases. It swims as it always did and adjusts easily to the temperature increases, so gradual are they, until it is too late and it finds itself being cooked alive.
It feels like the water in our pot is nearing a boiling pot.
I am not alone in believing this. I urge you to read the op-ed, Our Republic Is Under Attack From The President, in yesterday’s New York Times from Admiral William McRaven, the former Commander of the United States Special Operation Command and the architect of the Osama Bin Laden raid. He tells of many senior military leaders as well as regular troops who are alarmed at what they are seeing from this president, witnessing as they are the betrayal of our allies and our long stated national mission. They see Trump’s actions as an attack on our republic, feeling that they are under fire from within.
This is not a partisan political attack from a liberal pundit. This is a man, battle tested and committed to serving this nation, who can see the clear and present danger. It is a stunning statement from a lifelong soldier committed throughout his career to being apolitical.
He can feel that the water is boiling in the pot in which we swim.
And we’re nearly cooked because it’s boiling right now. Not weeks or months or years down the road.
Now.
We must get out of that pot.
Now.
Please read the Admiral McRaven editorial. I also urge you to read a larger excerpt from Milton Mayer’s book which can be seen here.
I was contacted a short time ago on Facebook from stained glass artist Annie Fatica in Erie, PA. She told me in a few short sentences that she had been a fan of my work, having a small painting obtained at the Kada Gallery in Erie, and that she was inspired by it in her own work. She included a photo of the stained glass piece shown here adding that she had created for a fundraiser for the Democratic Party her aunt was involved with.
I was very pleased to see the work and immediately could see that she had “borrowed” a little from my work. I think it’s a fine piece of work and am honored to have had any part in its inspiration.
I naturally thought the local fundraiser was in or around Erie, where Annie lives. Even though I live 230 miles away, that was fine with me. I am happy to help in any way that gets more people involved in the political process and raise awareness of how they can use it to affect real change.
It turns out that the local fundraiser even more local than I had thought, being right in my own backyard in the form of a Grass Roots Get-Together to benefit our local Chemung County Democratic Committee. I was totally surprised and even more happy that this work would benefit the local party.
Small worlds.
And it takes place tonight, Thursday,from 5:30-8:00 PM at the Hill Top Inn, overlooking the Chemung Valley and the city of Elmira. For my friends not familiar with this area, the Hill Top is but a few miles on the same hillside from where Mark Twain spent many a summer, writing some of his best known works at Quarry Farm.
This piece of work will be part of a silent auction and I am hoping it raises a bunch of cash for the local party. If you’re going tonight, hope this gives you a bit more of a background on this particular work from Annie Fatica. I checked out some of her other work and was totally impressed by her skill and vision. Great stuff! Below is a favorite of mine.
[Because I knew I would not have any time to write this morning, I wrote this post yesterday before. After witnessing the absolute traitorous madness that our president* displayed yesterday at several separate instances, I am more pleased than ever to have this work support a party that stands in stark opposition to him. This must stop now.]
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which arethere.
–Richard Feynman
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I was thinking recently about the importance of imagination and came across the words above from the late physicist Richard Feynman. His thought really meshed with my own thoughts on the imagination, which focused on the importance of it not only in art or literature but in so many aspects of our lives.
Actually, my thoughts were more about the lack of imagination I was sensing in all too many people. They seem to not be able to see beyond what is immediately in front of them or to extrapolate what might happen in potential situations beyond the next few minutes. I guess you would call it being short-sighted, a condition that often leads to fear and cynicism. Fearful of the new and cynical of anyone who dares to see beyond tomorrow.
You see this in how people react to many of our current events. This lack of imagination makes them willing to accept only what they can see now, blocking out any vision of what the ramifications might be into the future. This lack of imagination also makes these same folks blind to the patterns that brought us to this current condition.
Their shortsightedness tends to go hand in hand with a short-term memory, one that easily discards facts– and often their own words– that don’t coincide with what they see in the present moment. As a result these folks tend to fall prey to leaders offering them hollow promises and easy answers.
And scapegoats.
Because besides shortsightedness and short-term memory, a lack of imagination also often leads to a lack of empathy and compassion. These folks lack an ability to envision people different than themselves living in different situations. They can’t imagine the hardships or injustices that affect the lives of others. It’s all too easy to turn these people with differences into scapegoats for those lacking in imagination.
I am not writing this because I feel I have any special amount of imagination. I certainly have at times limited my life through my own lack of imagination and the fears and cynicism that it enables. I am sometimes small when I could be large and large when I should be small.
I just want to know how to communicate clearly with those folks who seem to have this lack of imagination, to get them to see possibilities and potentials beyond their own noses now and years into the future. This chasm between those with and without imagination seems to me to be the dividing line in this world right now.
I can still, against the evidence of the present, imagine a better world. But I can also imagine a much worse world. I believe it all depends on inflaming the imaginations of those who have refused to use them to this point.
At this point, I don’t know what or who can do such a thing.
I used the beginning paragraph from an Immanuel Kant essay as an intro when I first wrote the blogpost about the painting below, Dare to Know. Recent events sent me back to the 1784 essay, What is Enlightenment?, from which they were taken. I found that the rest of the essay was equally as compelling as that first paragraph, describing how the vast majority of people are willing to relinquish the choices in their lives to others. It seems to say that people are basically fearful of taking responsibility for much of anything and will gladly sacrifice the freedom to think and decide for themselves to anyone willing to tell them what to do, even when it is not in their best interest. This essay urges people to step forward into the light, to question things, to think independently, and accept responsibility. That is how enlightenment can be found.
It seems to me that this describes the current divide in this nation and throughout the world. There are those willing to blindly believe that those in positions of trust, such as our leaders or clergy or captains of industry, will act responsibly, doing what is best for the vast majority of the population without self interest. They choose the path of least resistance, believing hollow promises that require little from them.
And then there are those who question, those who seek truth and clarity, those who demand that trust be earned. They want take responsibility for the decisions in their lives, even those that are difficult and require sacrifice. They desire accountability for themselves and for those others who claim to know what is best for them.
While it is not always an easy path, that willingness to dare to know may well lead to enlightenment, as Kant indicates. Myself, I prefer that path.
Here is the original blogpost:
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“Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude!- ‘Have courage to use your own reason!’- that is the motto of enlightenment.”
― Immanuel Kant, What Is Enlightenment?
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Sapere Aude! From the Latin for Dare to Know.
I came across the passage above from the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant and felt immediately that it was a great match for this new painting. In fact I am calling this piece, 11′ by 15″ on paper, Dare to Know (Sapere Aude!)
The Red Tree here is removed away from the influence and shading of the other trees and houses in the foreground, out of darkness and into the light. There is a light about the Red Tree and a sense of freedom in the openness of the space around it. It is free to examine the world, free to seek the knowledge it craves, and free to simply think for itself.
It’s a great idea, this concept of enlightenment and one that we definitely could use today. Too many of us form our own base of knowledge by relying on the thoughts and opinions of others, often without giving much consideration as to their truthfulness, motives, or origins. Or we shade our base of knowledge with our own desires for how reality should appear, holding onto false beliefs that suit us even when they obviously contradict reality.
In short, there is no enlightenment based on falsehoods, no way to spin darkness into light. Enlightenment comes in stepping away from the darkness of lies and deceptions to see the world as it is, with clarity. It means stripping away our own self defenses and admitting our own shortcomings, prejudices, and predispositions.
It may not always be what one hoped for but it is an honest reality. And maybe that is enlightenment, the willingness to face all truths with honesty.
I came across a short quote from the late Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, that I wanted to share here:
“In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”
I found that these words came from his speech given at his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. But while researching this quote, I came across this other poem that really spoke to me. I thought I would share this as well. It was written in Warsaw, Poland in 1944 in the midst of the German army’s destruction of that city.
Basically, he is saying that though the world might seem to be in chaotic and deadly turmoil, that the world for some is ending, there are those who will not notice it. The sun is shining as it always does and the moon will rise soon after as it, too, always does. Birds sing and fish swim as they always do. People go about their days, working and playing, as they always do.
How can this be the end of the world if such things go on unaffected?
But the end he may be describing may not be the actual end of the world, though for some it surely does. The world is always changing sometimes in small ways and sometimes in large swipes. Every change means the end of one world and the beginning of another. Perhaps, while he is surely pointing to an actual ending of worlds for his neighbors in WW II Warsaw, he is also referencing a symbolic ending to worlds of innocence, of worlds of gentleness, replaced with worlds of violence and treachery.
I don’t know for sure but that is how I am reading it. Take a look and decide for yourself.
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A Song on the End of the World
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.
It’s the first word that comes to mind this morning. I wanted to turn to other things, wanted to crow a little about the Yankees’ victory last night. Maybe talk about painting, music, the weather.
Anything.
Anything but face the ugliness of what one infinitely weak man’s decision has unleashed on people who saw the US as their ally and believed the promises and assurances we gave.
But it’s something I can’t turn away from and still believe that I have an iota of humanity left in my soul. I see the reports and videos of men being shot while being on the ground along the roads in northeast Syria with their hands tied. Of mothers crying over dead and severely injured children.
Of the report of the rape and stoning death of the Hervin Khalef, the Kurdish human rights activist. The image above on the right is from a tweet that includes a video with a boot kicking at her to see if she is alive. Her body is mortified and simply rocks from the push of the boot.
Or of the reports from our forces still on the ground there ( huh, is it possible that the president* lied when he said they had been withdrawn?) that the situation has deteriorated rapidly and that they are being bracketed with shelling from the Turks. Bracketing is a term for using artillery fire to either move opposing forces in a desired direction or keep them from moving at all. It was severe and close enough that the leadership on the ground requested permission to respond with fire. It only subsided when US planes approached the Turkish artillery positions and set the lasers from their missile guidance systems upon them as a warning that we would soon be firing on them.
Or of the mass escapes of ISIS fighters from the prisons where Kurds once held them. Or of the emerging reports that Russian planes have been specifically targeting civilian hospitals in Syria in recent months.
Or so many other reports, all while the cretin slumps around one of his golf courses for the umpteenth time then later in the evening whines about how he is so unfairly treated, all the while heavily slurring his speech while threatening those who dare to hold him accountable. And the idiots of his audience cheer.
Maybe I shouldn’t care. It is 7000 miles a way after all and maybe these people, these Kurds, need to finally stand up for themselves. What have they done for us lately? That’s what you hear on social media from those who are willing to turn their backs on our promises and throw away all the credibility of this nation as a loyal ally to any other nation.
People who can somehow believe that atrocity committed on any person anywhere because of our inaction is somehow okay. People who can simply shrug and say it doesn’t affect them.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Maybe that’s the reason I feel compelled to air my despair and anger this morning, again. I am not willing to let people shrug it off and ignore it. I want to keep it in your sight and in your mind. I want you to see that dead Kurdish woman whenever that horrid creature opens his vile mouth because he is complicit with his inexplicable actions, if not directly responsible, for these atrocities and must be held accountable.
You must consider that if he is willing to tolerate and ignore the suffering his actions have inflicted on these people, it is not a stretch to believe that he will do the same when and if it comes to this land. He is not moved by the suffering of others, doesn’t have the ability to see himself in the faces of those less fortunate than himself in any way.
He is devoid of humanity.
Maybe that’s why I do this thing this morning– because I need to know that I do possess humanity, know that I am a creature of compassion and refuse to close my eyes to the horrors we have wrought upon the lives of others.
I don’t have much. I am powerless in many ways to affect real change. But I am a fucking human being and I will not turn away from atrocity or try to make it less than it is. I have eyes and ears and a mind and a voice that won’t be silenced.
So do you. Use them.
Here’s this Sunday morning music selection. It’s from the Kurdish singer Aynur Doğan who is considered a cultural icon who is keeping the traditional music of the Kurds alive. It’s quite a beautiful piece. While I don’t understand the words, it translates.
The true work of art is born from the Artist: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.
–Wassily Kandinsky
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Leave it to the great Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) to so well describe that sense of life I am looking for in my work and about which I have often written here. When it is real, it takes on a life of its own. It still possesses the personality and psyche of the artist but grows, adding layers and dimensions that take it well beyond the reality of the artist.
These two sentences from Kandinsky hit the mark squarely — animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being–and are just perfect for how I see this process.
There are three signs of a hypocrite: when he speaks he speaks lies, when he makes a promise he breaks it, and when he is trusted he betrays his trust.
–Muhammad
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We are living in a time of treachery.
We are led, if you want to call it that, by a fool gifted with a huge ego, a tiny intellect, and absolutely no morals who has consistently been proven to be untrustworthy throughout a life filled with episodes of him screwing people over.
On Tuesday night, he spent the balance of the great trust that much of the world had placed in the United States over the past seventy or so years on an act of ultimate betrayal. He basically gave Turkey the green light to invade the Kurdish territory of northern Syria, an act that took the defense department by surprise and left the ethnic Kurds alone on a virtual island of death within a week or so of them being assured that we would continue to stand with them.
These same Kurds have been our allies for a number of years and have sacrificed greatly in the fight against ISIS in that part of the world. They have done most of the fighting and paid for it with their blood. Over 11,000 of their troops have died and over 24,000 have been wounded in the fight. To compare, we have lost 5 soldiers in this fight. Our investment there is small by normal defense department standards with a relatively small force. We basically are there to train and, by our mere presence, deter invasions from the Turks, the Syrians and the Russians.
We have a small but vital footprint there. When I say vital I mean lifesaving in the most literal sense for the Kurdish people.
They are now under attack from the Turks, who began airstrikes on Wednesday, targeting the civilian population. There are about 2 million Kurds in the region and all are at risk. We may well be looking at casualties in the hundreds of thousands. Call it what you will– a massacre, ethnic cleansing, genocide or holocaust.
Doesn’t matter. Many, many people will die, families will be slaughtered. And we will just stand and watch it happen. For no good reason other than the whim of the American Fool. Or because of a request or order from his masters in Moscow and Riyadh, who his every action seems to serve in some way.
And if you don’t think the Turks would do such a horrific thing, ask the Armenian people. In 1915 through 1917, they suffered what is termed the Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Turks of the then Ottoman Empire. Estimates for the number of Armenians killed go as high as 1.5 million.
There is a history there. It happened once before and it may very well be happening again right now.
And all because this thing, this vile creature who sullenly inhabits our white house, has no moral center and no sense of loyalty to anything but his own appetites. He is willing to betray anyone or anything so long as it serves his personal purposes. He has betrayed one of our truest allies, most likely sending them to the slaughter. He has betrayed our military and its leadership, who had worked side by side with the Kurds. His betrayal makes their task much more difficult and dangerous going forward. He has betrayed our earned goodwill as a nation and so long as he is in power, we will remain untrustworthy as a nation. A pariah.
I listened yesterday to republican senators yesterday venting their outrage over this betrayal. They somehow thought there is some sort of immunity from the traitorous behavior of this creep, that those things they deemed important would be spared from his treachery. Fools. He will screw every one of them, given enough time.
And that betrayal will eventually extend to the idiots who still stand up for this wretched being. I am willing to give someone a pass for their initial vote for this thing but if you can’t see him for what he really is –and has always been, if you had been paying attention– by this point, you are stupid beyond all belief.
Yeah, I said stupid. Moronic. Imbecilic. Whatever you want to call it.
When he said he liked uneducated people, did you think he was kidding? Whenever he says stupid crap like that, people wave it off and make excuses for it, saying he is just joking around. Well, let me tell you this– he is not funny in any way nor is he a comic. He is a vampire and stupidity is the lifeblood that feeds him.
Maybe you’re not stupid. Maybe you’re just racist or homophobic or xenophobic. You can’t be christian because there are going to be plenty of christian Kurds killed along with their muslim countrymen and no christian would stand for that, right? Whatever the reason, you enabled and made this amoral monster and if you still stand with him, you are no better than him in any way.
That may make some of you angry. I don’t care. You don’t have to read this. You can go to another website that defends this whiny and weak willed cretin or you can write me poison letters and curse my very existence. I don’t give two shits and am sick to death of simpletons and toadies making excuses for the inexcusable and indefensible behavior he has continually displayed these past three years.
This creature is a malignant cancer on this land and on this world. There is real blood on his hands. And by extension, it is on all our hands now and we are much less safe for that.
I wrote most of this late yesterday and set it aside, wanting to cool off and rethink the whole thing before I hit the publish button. I take what I write seriously as it is an extension of my works and myself. I don’t want to write this sort of invective and I certainly don’t look to offend people.
But I knew I had to let it fly after watching that twat stand there yesterday and say that one of his reasons for his betrayal was that the Kurds didn’t fight with us on the beaches of Normandy in World War II. Well, maybe not but plenty of them fought heroically and died in the other theaters and fronts of that war. You know who didn’t stand with us? Turkey and Saudi Arabia who both claimed neutrality and played to both sides. You know who else? The whole goddamn Trump clan. They haven’t served our nation in the five generations and 150 years that they have darkened our shores. They see service and sacrifice as something that only suckers do.
I am furious at the inhumanity we are witnessing and the fecklessness of his followers. He has crossed lines that have taken us to new depths. I am not sure there is enough time in the remaining years of my lifetime to see us fully recover from the harm he is inflicting on this world. That is, if we can ever recover.
He has set the house on fire and it’s a matter of urgency to save as much of it as we can before it burns to the ground.
Here’s a fitting song for the day from the O’Jays. Watch your backs, stupid people. He’s coming for you soon.
Redtree Times 