“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
Short one today for this Sunday morning. The painting above is a little guy, a new 2″ by 4″ piece called What Was, headed to the West End Gallery for the Little Gems show. It’s one of those pieces that speak to me of the search for home, a theme that has been pretty prevalent in my work over the years.
I very much identify with the excerpt above from Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence whose story incorporates the search for home by Paul Gauguin, which eventually took him to Tahiti. I have always felt a bit out of place, even in this place where I have lived all my life.
Yet, I don’t know what place or situation might ever make me feel truly at home. Maybe that’s the purpose of my work, at least for me personally. To formulate an idea of what home might be.
I don’t really know. But I know that it has a strong pull.
Let’s leave it at that. For this Sunday, on the theme of home, I am returning to an old Staple Singers song from the late 1950’s. I played Uncloudy Day on this blog recently and this song, I’m Coming Home, is very much in that same vein. It’s from the same timeframe and has that same sort of sharp underlying guitar line from Pops and powerful vocals from a very young Mavis Staples. Great song to kick off a cold Sunday morning.
Have a good day.
Redtree Times 