Redtree Times

Time Passage— At Principle Gallery

Predictions can be very difficult—especially about the future.

–Niels Bohr

On the last day of this year, I wanted to write about what might be ahead for us in 2024.

Decided against it even after spending too much time putting together a weird word salad filled with half-assed predictions that made me feel and sound crazy. Who needs that kind of anxiety on the last quiet Sunday morning of 2023?

However, I did come across the quote above from the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr that made me laugh. It felt a lot like it could have come from Yogi Berra, who also famously said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

Actually, the quote is attributed to both Bohr and Berra, which sounds like the name of a very odd vaudeville act. It is said by people familiar with both men that though there is no direct evidence of either actually saying the phrase, it sounds like something both might have said.

I guess it’s better to have a laugh on the last day of the year than wring our hands over what 2024 might deal us.

So. let’s end 2023 on a lighter note. I felt like sharing some Joni Mitchell for this last Sunday Morning Music of the year and her Raised on Robbery has a light touch. Always makes me smile. Maybe it will do the same for you.

Now get out of here. See you in the New Year– maybe. No predictions here today.

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In Stillness and Rhythm-At Principle Gallery, Alexandria

The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.

–W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

As we near the end of the year, let’s focus on blocking out the noise this morning. There was much noise this last year and there will no doubt be even noise next year. Let’s just have a few moments of quietude while we have the opportunity.

Beautiful quiet…

Here’s a favorite from Astrud Gilberto, Corcovado, also known as Quiet Night of Quiet Stars. It doesn’t get much cooler or quiet than that.

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First View, 1994

His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.

–Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

[From 2016]

I am at a low ebb right now in my energy, a bit tired and unfocused with some extraneous things pulling my attention away from the work that keeps me on an even keel. It’s not an unusual feeling for this time of the year for me. It just seems more pronounced, more worrying, this year. But, as in the past, I take some measure of comfort in knowing that I am always only one short moment from putting all that behind me.

An acceptable uncertainty. It’s the nature of what I do.

Sometimes when I am trying to break out of this cycle of funk, I look back and today I came across a blog entry from around this time a few years back. It features a small, very early painting that possibly means more to me than anything I have painted over the past 20-some years. I see this modest little piece now as a sort of roadmap that set my course those many years ago. I thought this might be a good day to rerun that post.

[From 2013]

It’s that time of the year when I get to take a deep breath and begin to look forward into the next year, trying to determine where my path will lead next. It’s never an easy time doing this, trying to see change of some sort in the work especially after so many years of being what I am and painting as I do. It always comes down to the same question:

What do I want to see in my paintings?

That seems like a simple question. I think that any degree of success I may have achieved is due to my ability to do just that, to paint work that I want to see myself, work that excites me first. I have been doing just that for most of my career, painting pictures in colors and forms that I want, or shall I say, need to see. But there is another layer to the question:

What am I am not seeing in my work that I would like to see?

That’s a harder question. How can you quantify that thing that you don’t know, might not even have imagined yet?

It might be a case of knowing it when you see it. I know that my first real breakthrough was like that.

I was a beginning painter simply fumbling along. Even then I knew I would never be a great craftsman following in the long tradition of fine art painters and I had little interest in representing the world or people in any sort of exactitude.

I saw it then and now as way of painting the unseen. But I wasn’t able to visualize in any way what that unseen might be at that point. I found myself looking for something that nagged at the edge of my mind, something that called out to me from just out of reach. I wasn’t sure what it would look like, had not a concrete idea of what it might be. It was just there in a gaseous form that I couldn’t quite grasp.

But when that thing finally stepped forward into view on my painting table and revealed itself in a tangible form– which is the painting at the top here, First View, from 1994– I instantly knew what it was that I had stumbled on and that it was something that held something very important to me.

It might not look like much to the casual viewer now but in an instant I could see in this little painting the completeness of what I had been sensing in that gaseous, hazy form that hovered at the edges of my mind. I could see a full realization of all of the potential in it, in the present and shooting forward into the future. It was as though I had been in the dark and suddenly found myself holding a flashlight that lit up everything before me. Even now, after years of evolving from it, I can see how it connects to everything in my work, even those things I had could not yet see when I painted it.

And that’s where I find myself at the moment.  There’s something out there (or in there, I probably should say) that I want to see, might even need to see.

But I don’t know what it is yet. But I will know it when I see it.

And, trust me, I do plan on seeing it.

[From 2023, Now!]

— This is a bit of an oddity a replay of replay of a blog entry. I wanted to rerun the original post from 2013 but liked the intro from a replay in 2016 and decided to keep it, adding only the Victor Hugo passage. It seems that my creative year is very much like Groundhog Day as I seem to go through the same cycle of frustration, reflection, and breakthrough at the same time year after year. So, this old blog entry fits perfectly because as it was then, it remains the same now.

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Absorbed– At West End Gallery

What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
that living men have honoured in bronze.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
somehow-the central heart that deals not
in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
yourself, authentic and surprising news of
yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

—Jorge Luis Borges, Two English Poems, Verse II, 1934

Wasn’t going to write anything this morning, again. So, I didn’t write this morning. Haven’t felt much like writing lately. Just a little worn down, I guess.

But later in the morning, I came across a draft of a blog entry that I had never shared containing the second verse of a Jorge Luis Borges poem, Two English Poems. It sent me thinking and writing. It is basically about finding and losing love in the first part, followed in the second part by weighing out what the narrator has to offer in order to regain love.

I focused on the second verse of the poem. Its first line– What can I hold you with?— is a thought that often goes through my mind when I stand before a blank canvas. In my conversation with some unidentifiable and indistinct viewer that I imagine being present in the studio, it is often phrased in a slightly different way– What part of myself can I give to you?

The meaning is much the same though. When I paint, I am making an offer of myself to the viewer.

But what has the greatest impact for me was the final part of the second verse, highlighted in red above. It reminds me of the thoughts I sometimes have when trying to describe what I hope others see in my work, those things I have to offer with the hope that it will entrance and hold the viewer.

The artist hopes that what they have to offer, while being their own memories and feelings, opens up new avenues of perception for the viewer of themselves. As Borges put it:

I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
yourself, authentic and surprising news of
yourself.

I have struggled to say just that for a long time. It is just what I want from my work.

And that final line just crushed me:

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

I felt like it was describing much of what I have to offer in my work. You hope that your work represents the totality of you, all the many facets that make up your humanity, with the hope that others see their own similar feelings in it. That includes the deepest of feelings. These are sometimes a bit darker and more somber than feelings of joy and happiness but they are as much a part of who we are as the brightest of our feelings.

As I said, Borges’ poem is very much a poem about what one has to offer in order to gain one’s love. In a way, sharing one’s art is often very much the same thing– a love offering of the deepest and most intimate parts of yourself. It may not be real love but when you connect with art in a deep way, you often feel as though you are connected with the artist and know and understand them.

I don’t know that I can fully explain what I mean here. It may even sound a bit off the wall to you. That’s okay. I am used to that. Just felt like I wanted to share this poem today.

Here’s a reading from Tom O’Bedlam of the whole poem from Borges.

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Monde Parfait— At West End Gallery

Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.

–Thomas De Quincey, De Quincey’s Writings: Miscellaneous Essays, 1851

I’ve always contended that perfection is an unnatural state of being except in the case of nature. And even nature is never quite perfect as it is forever undergoing continuous adjustments to find its state of equilibrium.

That balancing of imperfections is in its own way a form of perfection, which might well affirm the statement above from Thomas De Quincey, the English essayist best known for his Confessions of an Opium-Eater.

As it is with most things I encounter, I equated his words with creating art. I never hesitate in pointing out that I do not seek perfection in my work– probably because I know it is beyond my meager talents, discipline, and patience.

You will not find perfect lines or forms in my work nor will the surface ever be glass smooth. You might find paintbrush bristles, cat hair or my hair or thumbprints in the paint. I once came across a tiny spider who found its final resting place in one finished piece. You will never suspect that it has been created by an algorithm or artificial intelligence of any sort.

It is meant to show the hand of the artist, to show the adjustments and efforts that are made to create equilibrium and bring it to my desired end for it which is a sense of rightness.

My ideal state of imperfection.

I guess in my own small way I am trying to replicate the way of the nature, trying to find an ideal state of being while dealing with unending imperfection.

I probably have said all this before on this blog. And someone else has said it in some other place before that, maybe a hundred or a thousand years ago. Or last week. Who knows? This not knowing and repetition are parts of my imperfection.

Just felt like saying what came to mind. Another part of my imperfection.

Actually, I just wanted to share the painting at the top that is now at the West End Gallery. It is titled Monde Parfait, which translates as Perfect World. The title reflects pretty much what I’ve been saying here which is probably why this piece remains a favorite of mine.

I was going to play a song called Perfect Day. There are several but none really capture what I was looking for. So, here’s a song with perfect in the title that better captures what I am trying to say. It’s Perfect Day from Lou Reed, another favorite that has played here before. It’s not about the world being perfect or even the day. More about finding that sense of rightness and satisfaction in the moment or place– or painting.

Something I am about to do…

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The Christmas Stick, 2023

The Christmas Tree

Put out the lights now!
Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled
In oriole plumes of flame,
Tinselled with twinkling frost fire,
Tasseled with stars and moons – the same
That yesterday hid in the spinney and had no fame
Till we put out the lights now.

Hard are the nights now:
The fields at moonrise turn to agate
Shadows as cold as jet; in dyke and furrow
In copse and faggot
The frost’s tooth is set;
And stars are the sparks whirled out by the north wind’s fret
On the flinty nights now.

So feast your eyes now,
on mimic star and moon-cold bauble;
Worlds may wither unseen,
But the Christmas tree is a tree of fable,
A phoenix in evergreen,
And the world cannot change or chill what its mysteries mean
To your heart and eyes now.

The vision dies now: candle by candle
The tree that embraced it
Returns to its own kind,
To be earthed again and weather as best it
May the frost and the wind.
Children – it too had its hour; you will not mind
If it lives or dies now.

–Cecil Day Lewis

The poem above is from the late Cecil Day Lewis, who was Britain’s Poet Laureate at the time of death in 1972, as well as the father of Daniel Day Lewis.

Below is Cecil Day Lewis reciting his poem. It begins with a very short description of the themes that marked much of his work which I found very interesting. His recitation of the poem itself is lovely and gives it an emotional shape that I found comforting.

Wishing all a peaceful day.

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If you’re doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there’d be no point. I’m trying to think if there’s sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children — oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that’s true, there really isn’t. And there’s probably no happy nonsense, either.

–Edward Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

Going to keep it short on this Sunday Christmas Eve morning. Always been a fan of Edward Gorey and his darkly skewed perspective on things. I think his words above echo my own feelings on things, that anything that really reaches across to people on an emotional level, be it children’s books, music, literature, painting or any other medium, is seldom totally happy.

That probably applies to holidays, as well. I imagine that mixed in with all our happy memories of past holidays there are more than a few instances of sadness and disappointment.

And that might be the beauty of it.

Who knows?

So, for this Sunday Christmas Eve morning let me share the images and prose from the collaboration of Edward Gorey and John Updike that is The Twelve Terrors of Christmas. It is darkly droll, the perfect counterbalance to seasonal saccharinity of Hallmark movies and wooden Christmas songs from popstars.

It makes me smile and that’s all I need today.

At the bottom is the full instrumental version of Christmas Time is Here from the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Somewhat like the work of Gorey, it is bittersweet. Beautiful yet not fully happy.

Enjoy.

M28292-96b 001

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Practice giving things away, not just things you don’t care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don’t bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked.

–Robert A.F. Thurman, American Buddhist author/professor

I like this bit of advice.

Give away things that mean something to yourself, something to which, as Thurman points out, you have a mental attachment that must be overcome. That’s always been the yardstick I use when giving away work at my talks or simply as a gift. It has to be something that hurts a bit to give away, something that you just want to hold onto a bit longer.

But giving away the valued things of self brings on a feeling of magnanimity in myself, a feeling that seems so much larger and grander than that which usually comes along with clinging onto something. The feeling of generosity is warm and encompassing, like a field of fully opened sunflowers reaching toward the sun. On the other hand, miserly stinginess feels cold and all balled up, like a hard raisin sitting on a frigid garage floor.

And you most likely will find that the more that you give away, your desire to cling on to these things will fade away.

Let me clarify– I am not saying that you should give away everything you have. Again, as Thurman also points out, don’t bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse. First of all, a large or expensive gift doesn’t necessarily have any emotional attachment. Sometimes a small but thoughtful thing, even something that might appear trivial to someone from the outside, can hold the most lasting meaning.

So, don’t equate price with meaning. But give when you can or when it is needed and don’t be afraid to give of yourself, even if it’s only a few sincere words on a piece of paper. Those always ends up being the gifts that hold the most meaning for both the giver and the receiver.

But you probably knew this, right? So, let’s listen to a song with a similar message from JD McPherson and his fun holiday album, Socks, from a few years ago. This is All the Gifts I Need.

This post ran a few years back, in 2020. I was reminded of it when a longtime reader of the blog recently reminded me of the enjoyable Christmas album, Socks, from JD McPherson. Doing a search to see when I last shared a song from the album, I saw that it was attached to this post. Reading it again reminded me that it is the same guiding principle I use when choosing paintings that I sometimes give away at gallery talks. I want the choice to mean something to me, to have a small pang of regret or feeling of having sacrificed something when it leaves my hands. I believe– or at least, hope– that the recipient senses this feeling and perhaps values it a bit more knowing it was given with real consideration.

I have also added the album’s title song, Socks, at the bottom. It’s a live version and captures the feeling of a kid getting a gift without much meaning, one that is just given just to be a gift.

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Santa, Early Work July 1994

“But how did he get in?” asked the children.

At this the fathers shook their heads, being themselves unable to understand how Claus had gained admittance to their homes; but the mothers, watching the glad faces of their dear ones, whispered that the good Claus was no mortal man but assuredly a Saint, and they piously blessed his name for the happiness he had bestowed upon their children.

“A Saint,” said one, with bowed head, “has no need to unlock doors if it pleases him to enter our homes.”

And, afterward, when a child was naughty or disobedient, its mother would say:

“You must pray to the good Santa Claus for forgiveness. He does not like naughty children, and, unless you repent, he will bring you no more pretty toys.”

But Santa Claus himself would not have approved this speech. He brought toys to the children because they were little and helpless, and because he loved them. He knew that the best of children were sometimes naughty, and that the naughty ones were often good. It is the way with children, the world over, and he would not have changed their natures had he possessed the power to do so.

And that is how our Claus became Santa Claus. It is possible for any man, by good deeds, to enshrine himself as a Saint in the hearts of the people.

–L. Frank Baum, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, 1902

I have shared a shorter version the passage above from the 1902 book, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, from L. Frank Baum here in recent years. I thought that a bit fuller version would be more appropriate, especially with that final line.

I also liked the explanation of how Santa could enter a home without anyone knowing. It also reminded me of a poem from the late Shel Silverstein, called Christmas Dog which gave a dog’s viewpoint on Christmas. This pup was definitely aware of Santa’s entrance.

Tonight’s my first night as a watchdog,
And here it is Christmas Eve.
The children are sleepin’ all cozy upstairs,
While I’m guardin’ the stockin’s and tree.

What’s that now–footsteps on the rooftop?
Could it be a cat or a mouse?
Who’s this down the chimney?
A thief with a beard–
And a big sack for robbin’ the house?

I’m barkin’ I’m growlin’ I’m bittin’ his butt.
He howls and jumps back in his sleigh.
I scare his strange horses, they leap in the air.
I’ve frightened the whole bunch away.

Now the house is all peaceful and quiet again,
The stockin’s are safe as can be.
Won’t the kiddies be glad when they wake up tomorrow
And see how I’ve guarded the tree.

Let’s finish this off today with a holiday song. I’ve played this song, Must Be Santa from Bob Dylan, a few times over the past decade. It’s a great song, a rollicking polka with a klezmer feel that takes Dylan back his Jewish roots. Plus, in the entertaining video you get the bonus of seeing Dylan dance. Good fun.

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