Calling Me Home– At the Principle Gallery
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
The painting above is titled Calling Me Home, a little 2″ by 4″ painting on paper that is part of the Small Works show that opens Saturday, December 4, at the Principle Gallery.
Sometimes small pieces can be easily overlooked because of their size. But a diminutive size doesn’t prevent them from speaking with a much larger voice and meaning. I think this piece falls into that category.
In an earlier post about this small painting, I mentioned that I named this piece after a song from one of my big favorites, Rhiannon Giddens. The idea of being attached to a place called home is a powerful one, indeed. I saw that in this piece. But there’s a line in the song that stood out for me:
Remember my stories, remember my songs/ I leave them on earth, sweet traces of gold
It made me think of that existential question: What is it we leave behind?
That immediately brought to mind a favorite excerpt, shown at the top, from Ray Bradbury in his sci-fi/ dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451. It’s those things to which we devote our full effort, our mind and time, that have lasting effect. Often, things that are done with no real expectation of anyone recognizing your thought or effort in doing them.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.
This line says a lot. Maybe it’s the reason that home holds such meaning for many of us. It is that place where we were shaped, where we touched and formed by the influence of our parents and other family members.
In many cases there may be no remnants of home left, no door to pass through nor rooms to wander. Nothing left to touch. It may no longer exist and parents and family members might be forever gone.
But the memory remains. It is an artifact, evidence that that place and those people touched and changed your life. We carry many of those changes throughout our lives.
It is a real and powerful thing.
Now, here’s the song from Rhiannon Giddens.
This post was adapted from an earlier post.
Redtree Times 