Redtree Times

And Dusk Dissolves – At the West End Gallery

I slept and dreamt
that life was joy.
I awoke and saw
that life was duty.
I worked — and behold,
duty was joy.

–Rabindranath Tagore

When I first read the short poem above from the great poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore some time ago, it struck a chord with me. It so simply, in just a few lines, put across an observation that takes most of us a lifetime to realize. That is, if we ever do realize it.

Duty was joy.

But what is duty? Is it in being a good parent? A faithful spouse and a loyal friend? Is it in what we do to make a living? Or is it in simply being a decent and caring human being?

Perhaps, it is how our lives touch the lives of others? Could that be a duty?

I don’t know for sure. Most likely, duty and joy is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

My own feeling is that duty is much like having a purpose, a motivating reason for living that can be seen as a personal obligation or promise that we will finish the mission we have accepted as our own.

This reminds me of the transcendent book, Man’s Search For Meaning, from Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, which described his time in the Nazi’s Auschwitz death camp. Frankl observed that those who were able to survive the horror were those who somehow had a purpose for their life, who saw a future that they needed to reach ahead for. This purpose, even a modest one, often served as their given mission, providing the motivation needed for survival, creating a path forward for them into the future.

In the year after being liberated from Auschwitz, Frankl gave a series of lectures that were the basis for his book. In one he spoke of the poem above from Rabindranath Tagore and its final line: Duty was joy:

So, life is somehow duty, a single, huge obligation. And there is certainly joy in life too, but it cannot be pursued, cannot be “willed into being” as joy; rather, it must arise spontaneously, and in fact, it does arise spontaneously, just as an outcome may arise: Happiness should not, must not, and can never be a goal, but only an outcome; the outcome of the fulfillment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty… All human striving for happiness, in this sense, is doomed to failure as luck can only fall into one’s lap but can never be hunted down.

In short, lasting joy and happiness cannot be pursued as a goal on their own, without a responsibility to some higher purpose.

I am writing this because sometimes I need to be reminded of this. I have been struggling at times recently in the studio, seemingly fighting with myself to find something that just doesn’t seem to be there. The harder I tried to find it, the further away it seemed. It was like I was looking for something to quell my anxieties and bring me some form of easy happiness. To bring me effortless joy.

I should have known better.

Yesterday, I just put down my head and worked without thinking about the end result. I focused solely on my purpose in each moment, the task at hand. Concentrating on doing small and simple things with thought and care was my duty, as it were. As the day went on, my burden felt lessened and I began to feel joy in the work, joy in small aspects that I had been overlooking in prior days.

It was a satisfying day, one that left me feeling that I had moved in some way toward fulfilling a purpose. It may not be a grand, earth-shaking one but it doesn’t need to be.

It is mine. My purpose. My duty.

And that is enough to bring me a bit of joy.

I didn’t feel like writing this morning. I have lost a bit of the glow off my committed optimism and find myself more concerned than ever about the future of this republic as a result of last evening’s events in DC. So, instead of venting, I thought that I should focus on what I can do in a constructive way. This post from a couple of years back seemed to hit the mark for what I needed this morning, describing the link between duty and joy.

A lot of us believe that joy, like our rights or freedoms, is something that just comes to us without our input. But joy seldom comes without duty and sometimes duty may not be pleasant or easily accomplished.

But those difficult duties often yield the greatest joys.

Let’s keep that in mind.

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Last Kind Words– Headed to the Principle Gallery

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

― Wendell Berry

I often wonder about our minds, how they work and how things move in and out of our consciousness. It baffles me.

Take this morning. I go through my process of dressing in the dark of the house, putting on my outerwear for my walk to the studio in the cold in a way that makes me feel like I’m an astronaut about to walk in space.

The morning is cold, though not as cold as the temperatures forecast for the next several days that will go down to around -10°, and the moon is full and now low in the sky. Everything outside is sharply defined in blue and yellow shades of moonlight. The snow sparkles.

It is gorgeous.

As I start walking a song comes into my mind. How Can I Be Sure? by the The Rascals from way back in 1967. I am soon humming and singing the parts I can recall as I trudge along the shoveled trail.

And I begin to wonder why this particular song entered my mind in this early morning darkness. What combination of subtle indicators or observations prompted its arrival at the front of my mind? Is it something left over from the nightly data purge that my brain undergoes while dreaming?

Why this song this morning?

Of course, I don’t know and maybe it doesn’t matter. After all, I enjoyed the song. It seemed to fit the emotional tone of the moment.

Maybe I needed to hear it. Maybe my mind was seeking it before I even knew that I needed to hear it.

Who knows?

Like I said, I am baffled.

Here’s the song. Maybe you need to hear it, as well.

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Comforter – At the Principle Gallery

A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

― E.B. White

The words above from author E.B. White, best known for his beloved Charlotte’s Web, struck a chord with me.

I have been having a hard time in the past year or two in simply sitting still and reading for more than few moments at a time. I have felt severely distracted by current events along with the tensions that come with them. It’s often hard to focus and as a result my reading had suffered mightily.

It has left me feeling unmoored and adrift, which certainly has added to the anxieties already in place.

Reading has always been my comforter. It has been a refuge, an enlightener, a mentor and a sage. It has made me laugh and cry.

And to think about those inner conversations I have had with those people, as White points out, who have stayed alive by hiding between the covers of those books.

So much is lost by the absence of my reading. Unfortunately, it’s one of those losses that come as you slowly drift further and and further from your base, that rock on which you have built the world in which you live. It comes in small, barely noticeable increments until you reach a point where you have drifted far from those solid shores and begin to notice things are missing.

You feel lost and even a bit panicky. If you’re lucky, you recognize the dilemma and begin to paddle back in the direction where you believe your little rock of being remains.

The unlucky of us are destined to drift even further out to sea, And that is sad and lonely as it sounds.

I think I have caught it early enough in my case. I hope so. I am trying to reconnect with my rock, to find company in that world of wonders that live in those books.

Excuse me while get to it…

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Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

– Martin Luther King Jr.

About 10 or 12 inches of snow overnight so I am spending most of this morning plowing and shoveling. Put in a couple of hours already but wanted to post one thing about today that celebrates and honors the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This year might be one where his birthday and his legacy is legacy might be as pertinent as anytime in the past. We are facing a crucial time in the history of this country, one with choices that will determine the path we follow going forward. The two choices are not similar in any way from a human rights standpoint.

His words above speak to this moment.

Now more than ever.

Here’s U2 with their song in tribute to MLK, Pride (In the Name of Love). Good tune to have in my head while continue plowing.

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Private Space— At the West End Gallery

I said, unthinkingly: “I should like to go back.”

It was a true statement. But then it came to me that I could not go back. One cannot, ever, go back to the place which exists in memory. You would not see it with the same eyes — even supposing that it should improbably have remained much the same. What you have had you have had. ‘The happy highways where I went/ And shall not come again . . .’

Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.

― Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

-5° this morning when I headed over to the studio. Walking over the wooden walkway and the small bridges that span the runoff creeks in the woods make them pop and crack in the icy stillness. Two of the feral cats, the males Buttercup and Gary, wait for me and walk in front of me, halting every few feet so that I am forced to stop and give them a pet.

I call these two the Snow Leopards. They seem impervious to the cold, sometimes rolling and playing in the snow with a weird kind of glee. Even so, I have a heater set up in the garage for them so they can escape the cold and a heated water bowl so they can drink easily. Occasionally, they stay in the warmer garage for a long spell but more often than not, even in this cold, they want to be out and about.

Coming into the studio this morning, I began looking for a song to play for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. I went through a bunch of videos and ended up watching some live Bruce Springsteen performances from the late 1970’s. I watched several songs from his legendary performance at the No Nukes Concert at Madison Square Garden from 1979.

It was like seeing a wild colt suddenly feeling the power of its legs and then racing about with frantic, unleashed, joyfully giddy energy.

I remember those days, both in his performances and in my own life.

Those days now seem like ancient history.

Would I go back? I don’t know. I doubt it. While there were those moments of this giddy, unfettered joy and energy, it was not a perfect world in any way.

And while the world now is in turmoil and a constant source of anxiety, I certainly wasn’t any more happy or content with my lot in life back then.

Actually, much less.

But we always seem to want to return to some idealized past, one where we edit out the bad memories of unhappiness, darkness, and sorrow.

But the past can’t be resurrected. Things and circumstances change. We change. 

So I watch these performances from Bruce and get emotional at the memory of the joy of that moment, knowing that it was a moment then that can’t be replicated now. Having that moment must be enough for me.

And it is.

That brings us to this week’s song and no, it’s not one of the No Nukes performances. But it is a Springsteen song. It’s Waitin’ On a Sunny Day which has much to do with what I just wrote. The song is from his album The Rising which came out in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The song expresses the desire of a person wanting to go back to an earlier and supposedly simpler time, before the attacks and the accompanying losses.

But as we all know, you can’t go back.

I like this particular rendition of the song. It is performed by 200 local musicians assembled in the fields of Belgium as both an homage to Springsteen and an invitation for him to come play a concert in those field of Belgium. It was filmed in the late summer of this past year. Given what has taken place in recent years, who can blame them for wanting to play a song that expresses the desire to go back in time somehow.

It is joyful and optimistic. Nothing wrong with that…

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Moonlight Sublime— Part of Little Gems at West End Gallery , February 2022

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb that thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn:
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear,
And draw her home with music.

– Lorenzo, Act V, Scene 1 , William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

A very cold Saturday morning, hovering around 0°. But instead of focusing on that let’s move on to a trio of art, verse, and song. The theme today is pretty obvious.

The painting at the top is Moonlight Sublime which is a new painting that will be part of this year’s edition of the annual Little Gems show at the West End Gallery, opening in early February.

As I have noted here in the past, the Little Gems show in 1995 was the first time I ever displayed my work. It has been a favorite show of mine ever since. I think this particular painting, one that has many things in it that appeal to my own eye, is a good start for this year’s work for this year’s show, my 28th at the West End Gallery. 

Let’s add some Shakespearean lines and a favorite song from Neko Case to complete this triad so I can get to work on this icy morning. Here’s I Wish I Was the Moon.

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The Understanding– At the Principle Gallery

Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand—that of finding a workable compromise between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.

― Annie Dillard, An Expedition to the Pole

In her essay, An Expedition to the Pole, Annie Dillard compares the search of her fellow Catholic worshippers to the great Polar expeditions of the late 19th/ early 20th century. Both were seeking an idea, a concept of something distant and barely imaginable.

She called it The Pole of Relative Inaccessibility.

Or in other words, the sublime.

But whatever one seeks, as Dillard points out above, there is always a constant rationalization between the power and beauty of our search and the reality of ourselves– what we truly are as humans and the limits of what we are capable of being. 

It’s a hard and cold calculation, this compromise. And it most likely differs for each of us.

For me, it comes down to finding a place on the earth where I can simply stand and feel no desire to search any longer. To simply be and have a comfortable acceptance of the place where I stand, an understanding that I am as near my own Pole of Relative Inaccessibility as I can ever be.

To feel at peace, to feel that I have pushed to the edges of my limits and my search has been worthwhile in simply knowing that I sought something in my time here on this planet.

In the end, perhaps we all need some our own Pole of Relative Inaccessibility.

I don’t know…

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The Questioner of the Sphinx, Elihu Vedder, 1863

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

–Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

If you have ever been to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, you have no doubt seen the painting above. I’ve only been there once and the image of this painting and its strong presence in the space really sticks in my mind. It was painted in 1863 by artist Elihu Vedder, an American expatriate who lived and worked in Italy for over 60 years.

Its title is The Questioner of the Sphinx and it shows a man listening intently at the lips of the ancient monument with the hope, no doubt, of hearing some eternal truth. The skull in the sand makes clear that the Sphinx will not easily relinquish its secrets. The kneeling listener is said to represent man’s futile desire to find immortality.

With the still sand covered Sphinx and the scattered toppled columns, the painting presents us with echoes from ancient history of once mighty empires that are long fallen and forgotten. It is reminiscent of Shelley’s great poem, Ozymandias, shown above, that speaks to the hubris and folly of those who think they can lord over this world.

This was painted at a time when the US was in the midst of the Civil War and there was great doubt as to whether the county would be able to endure the struggle. The US was not an empire at that point. It was still young and finding its way but we still represented a great triumph of democracy, a country ruled by its people and  not kings or dictators or despots– a rarity in the whole of history. But in that civil war we found ourselves in an existential crisis, a tipping point, that put us in peril of being consigned to the dustbin of history before we even grew into any form of our potential.

I write about this painting this morning because it feels to me that we are again at a tipping point, divided in many ways as a country. It feels like there is going to soon be some sort of revelation that is either going to set us on a course that will either allow us to continue to grow our American experiment or will cause us to plummet into a darker and much more dangerous future.

It all hinges on people who are ethical and principled standing up and doing what is right and exposing the truths of our time.

But in the meantime, I find myself feeling like that man with his ear anxiously pressed to the lips of Sphinx.

This post ran nearly four years ago in 2018. As close as I felt then that we were at the precipice of sliding into some form of autocratic or fascistic governance, I now realize that we could only see the edge back then. There was more treacherous ground to cover before we arrived at the true tipping point.

We certainly have covered much more of that ground in the past four years.

That precipice edge might be upon us at this moment. Over the next several days, as the House and Senate Democrats attempt to pass comprehensive election and voter rights legislation against the intransigence and obstruction of the GOP, we may well know the answer. 

It will not be bipartisan. It cannot be so, not when one of the two parties has set its sights solely on an anti-democratic form of minority rule. The GOP has a shrinking voter base and is determined to gain and hold power through ever increasing voter suppression and gerrymandering districts to favor their minority of voters in the Electoral College and in statewide elections.

They have no apparent policies to offer the American citizens outside of their manipulations of the electoral system and attempting to stop any legislation that threatens their plan. 

As I say, the next several days could be telling. If accomplished, it may be the most consequential act of Congress in our lifetimes or for generations to come. It may well keep us from that dark and violent slide into the dustbin of history.

Fingers crossed.

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GC Myers- Early Work, 1994

He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

–Jack London, White Fang

Much distracted lately, I needed a personal reminder that I had to apply myself a bit harder. This post from back in January of 2011might be just what I was looking for. It’s about reaching the furthest potentials of one’s talents and abilities but even if one wishes to attempt to do something for which they believe they have no real talent, it still applies. The hard work they put in will yield real progress and reward them with confidence and lessons that can be applied throughout the other aspects of their life.

From 2011:

I had a nice email from a gentleman who told me about a prize his 16 year old daughter had recently won for a painting she had submitted in a scholastic competition.

I took a look at the piece and responded to him, telling him it was a well done painting, nicely composed with strong lines and color. It was far ahead of anything I was doing at that age, especially by the virtue that it was complete. I could see this young person doing more with their talents in the future. I wrote him back and told him this but with my standard warning, one that I have written about here before: Potential must be actively pursued with constant efforts and a consistent pushing of one’s abilities.

I wrote him to tell him this, to let him know about some of the young talents I have seen come and go because they felt their talent was something that was innately within them and could be turned on and off with the flip of a switch.

I told him to tell her to look at the work required in the way a musician looks at rehearsals. Perhaps even look at their talents as being like those of a musician, talents that need constant exercise in order to stay sharp and strong. For instance, even if you have great innate talent, you can’t expect to play the violin like Itzhak Perlman if you don’t devote your talents in the same way as he does. A great part of his life is in nurturing his abilities.

I always feel like a sourpuss when I’m giving this advice. Nobody wants to hear that they need to work harder. Everyone wants to think that they have this great talent born within them and it will flow like a spigot whenever they so desire.

If only that were true.

I think you will find that those who succeed at the highest levels in any field are those who understand this need to constantly push and work their talents. I’m sure there are exceptions but none come immediately to mind. I wrote about this in a blog post when I first started this, over two years ago. I wrote about something author John Irving had said about his work habits. He saw himself competing as a writer in the same way as he did in his time competing as a wrestler.

To reach the potential as writer required  putting in the same levels of intense effort as those needed to compete as a wrestler or any other athlete on the Olympic level.

Hard work– it’s not glamorous especially in this world of instant gratification but it is a proven entity .

I’m showing the piece above to highlight this. It’s a small painting that I did before I was showing in any galleries, in 1994. At the time, it pleased me very much and I could have very easily kept painting in that style and been pretty happy, without much effort. But there was a little voice in me that kept saying to push ahead and work harder, to see what I could accomplish with greater effort. It became not an end but a stepping stone to move ahead.

That is how I hope this man’s daughter see her painting– as a stepping stone. She may think it is the best thing she has ever done but if she is willing to push ahead and put in the effort, she will look at it someday as a mere step in a journey to reach her true potential.

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GC Myers- Third Stone From the Sun, 1994

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.

― George Bernard Shaw

The piece above  was painted in my earliest days of painting back in 1994. It was strictly an experiment, an exploration of colors and shape.

My personal interpretation of it was shaped by the Jimi Hendrix song, Third Stone From the Sun, which I was most likely listening to around that time. I saw the Earth as a line-jumper trying to force its way ahead of Mercury and Venus to be nearer the Sun, as though by doing so the Sun might favor it somehow.

I was seeing the greedy human impulse, I guess.

But over time, this piece has come to represent the inner conflicts that we all experience.

Well, I think we all experience them. I am sure there are some who have a moral compass– for good or bad– that is unshakably set. I don’t whether to envy or pity those folks.

But for most of us, we struggle much like the Native American elder who Shaw referenced in the quip at the top. We all have a good and a bad dog within us fighting, trying to kill or gain dominance over the other.

Whichever we feed most will no doubt win.

Please feed your good dog today…

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