Still, The Earth Moves— Coming to the Kada Gallery, November 4
Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes
To pace the ground, if path be there or none,
While a fair region round the traveller lies
Which he forbears again to look upon;
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,
The work of Fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.
If Thought and Love desert us, from that day
Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:
With Thought and Love companions of our way,
Whate’er the senses take or may refuse,
The Mind’s internal heaven shall shed her dews
Of inspiration on the humblest lay.
-William Wordsworth, Most Sweet It Is, 1835
I wasn’t planning on using another poem today from one of the big-name poets of the past since I had employed a short verse from Longfellow yesterday. But while searching for something to accompany the new painting above, I came across the line:
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.
Those two lines seemed to align well with what I was seeing in this piece. But finding and reading the rest of the verse, I found that the whole of it also echoed my thoughts on the painting. I read it to mean that clearing one’s mind of thought and all that we know sometimes leads to inspirations and revelations that spring from within– The Mind’s internal heaven, as Wordsworth phrased it.
The title of this painting, Still, The Earth Moves is from my own slightly longer phrase:
Yet while I am still, the earth moves.
Looking at this piece made me think of hopefully possessing the ability to quiet my thoughts, to shed away all worries and concerns, to the point I might reach a sense of stillness where I could almost feel the earth as it moved, with me on it, under the sky above.
That sort of deep meditative stillness has always fascinated me though it often seems to evade me or, in those few moments when it does come to me, be quickly fleeting. I suppose that finding bits of it in my painting will have to serve as some sort of surrogate.
In the end, that is not a small thing.
Here’s the great Carole King and I Feel the Earth Move from her classic 1971 album, Tapestry. I think a lot of people have forgotten what a huge album it was at the time. Actually, at any time. It has sold over 30 million copies, making it a 14X Platinum record and one of the bestselling records of all time. This song was a big reason. It might also have fed my own fascination with a stillness that allows one to feel the earth move.
Redtree Times 