Redtree Times

Private Song, 2006

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

–Richard Wright, American Hunger (1977)

The other day, we talked about how a book, painting, or other work of art is often a kiss or a hand reaching out from its creator. It is an effort to create a link to others in order to validate the existences of both the creator and the recipient.

Today, we get a passage from Richard Wright equating it to yelling into the dark abyss then waiting for an echo. And that makes sense to me because this act of creating art often feels like that. You put work out into the world and wait to hear an echo from where it has landed. A faint trace of its recognition.

This brings to mind yet another analogy from the past. Creating art is often like tossing a tiny pebble into a large lake. It plunks in then sends out a small wave in all directions with the hope that it will intersect with other waves in the lake. Sometimes it is a wave that glides into nothingness. Other times, it runs into other waves that send it into others and others, becoming more than it seemed when it first plunked into the water.

You just never know what might happen when you bellow into the abyss or toss your pebble into the lake. Or offer your hand or kiss into the darkness.

I wasn’t planning on writing any of this as I first sat down. It was just going to be a typical triad of image, word and music with some sort of loose connection. The theme for today was either darkness or the abyss.

I can’t decide which, if either, fits. You might take in all three and come away with a different take on the theme.

One never knows. That’s the beauty of art.

Here’s the song to complete today’s triad. I played an excellent version of this song from Robert Plant a couple of years back but felt that the original deserved to be heard. Written by Jesse Colin Young, this is him and The Youngbloods performing Darkness, Darkness from 1969.