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Archive for November, 2024

Everything is Broken—-

Posted in Uncategorized on November 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Everything is broken

For this week’s Sunday Morning Music, I want to share a longtime favorite song that seems appropriate for many folks in this place at this moment. It’s a version of the Bob Dylan song Everything is Broken performed by Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell.

It was written and released by Dylan back in 1989. Things felt broken then and now. Things have always felt broken throughout history. People in every period of history and in every place have declared their society and civilization as being near its end. You can look at the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and injust about every time and place. For the most part, they were wrong. Things often work out.

However, there have been more than enough examples of them being right that you can’t discount the thought as a whole. I don’t know where we stand on that spectrum that ranges from needless worrying to dire existential danger for society as a whole. It feels like the latter at the moment but who knows what the near future will bring?

Which way things fall will depend on our actions. If everything is broken, I guess it’s up to us to do what we can to somehow piece it back together. Hopefully, we can set aside our fears and do what needs to be done.

Now, here’s that song.

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That’s Where It’s At

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 9, 2024| 2 Comments »

Winnie the Pooh and Piglet sketch EH Shepherd 1958

“Piglet?” said Pooh.

“Yes, Pooh?” said Piglet.

“Do you ever have days when everything feels… Not Very Okay At All? And sometimes you don’t even know why you feel Not Very Okay At All, you just know that you do.”

Piglet nodded his head sagely. “Oh yes,” said Piglet. “I definitely have those days.”

“Really?” said Pooh in surprise. “I would never have thought that. You always seem so happy and like you have got everything in life all sorted out.”

“Ah,” said Piglet. “Well here’s the thing. There are two things that you need to know, Pooh. The first thing is that even those pigs, and bears, and people, who seem to have got everything in life all sorted out… they probably haven’t. Actually, everyone has days when they feel Not Very Okay At All. Some people are just better at hiding it than others.

And the second thing you need to know… is that it’s okay to feel Not Very Okay At All. It can be quite normal, in fact. And all you need to do, on those days when you feel Not Very Okay At All, is come and find me, and tell me.

Don’t ever feel like you have to hide the fact you’re feeling Not Very Okay At All. Always come and tell me.

Because I will always be there.”

—A.A. Milne, 1926

Lots of folks out there feeling Not Very Okay At All. We all could use a little tenderness, a little kindness, right about now. A moment to unclench. Let’s continue that mood with a powerful tune from the great Sam Cooke. This is That’s Where It’s At.

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The Day of Great Confusion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 8, 2024| 5 Comments »

1995-V1 The Day of Great Confusion sm

The Day of Great Confusion–1995, At West End Gallery

It was a murky confusion — here and there blotted with a color like the color of the smoke from damp fuel — of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened.

–Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

I was looking at some older work for the West End Gallery, pieces that had been with me for decades and had never been shown for a variety of reasons. Some just were never meant to be shared with the public, work not complete in one way or another. Some were drab and dull.

And some just didn’t completely click with me at the time. They didn’t hit whatever mark I had established for my work at the time they were painted. I don’t know if the criteria on which I was basing my judgement was that much different from what it is now or if it has shifted subtly over time due to time and circumstance. Whatever the reason, my appreciation for some of these unshown early pieces grew over the intervening years. 

Such is the case for the painting at the top of this page. It was painted in 1995 and, for reasons I can’t determine now, never made a journey outside my studio. Maybe it was that its colors were a bit different than my normal range of color in that time. Maybe I felt that the spew lines from where the watercolors broke free from the body of painting were too sloppy and distracting. Maybe it was the title I had jotted at the bottom of the sheet on which it was painted back in 1995, The Day of Great Confusion. Trying to determine why I applied that title always taxes my memory. 

I still don’t know why it didn’t quite hit the mark for me in 1995. 

However, looking at it at various times over the years, this painting greatly grew on me, showing me qualities I hadn’t recognized earlier. Those things I thought might have caused me to withhold now seemed like strengths. And in the past decade the title took on great significance as our country undertook an unnerving political transformation that still causes confusion and bewilderment within me.

Maybe that was the reason? I don’t know for sure, but I think there are other factors at play, as well. I think, even though it slightly differs from other pieces of that time, that it is a fine example of my early work in most every way. It’s one of those pieces that made me always pause in appreciation when coming across it in past years.

You might not see it that way and that’s okay. I just felt that if there was ever a time for a painting with that title to be shared, this was that time. It has put in its time with me and deserves to be seen.

Here’s song that kind of sums up the moment. Well, at least for me. It’s I Don’t Get It from the Cowboy Junkies. It’s from their fine 1988 album, The Trinity Session. It has bluesy vibe and lyrics that bite into the here and now.

 

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Deep In the Woods

Posted in Uncategorized on November 7, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- I Was Lost 1997

GC Myers- I Was Lost, 1997

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

—Henry David Thoreau

I think I’m beginning to understand…

The painting above has been on my mind lately. I was going through some older work and stopped, as I always do, when I came across this painting from 1997. It’s titled I Was Lost and was an experimental piece. I don’t think it ever showed in a gallery but don’t hold me to that.

It’s been with me for all these years and never fails to make me stop and think when I come across it. I can’t say exactly what it is in it that speaks to me, even after 27 years. And that might be part of its appeal.

One thing about it that I do recognize is that it speaks to my own feelings of sometimes feeling lost. The way forward seems blocked and present seemingly endless challenges.

Had that feeling of standing before these trees too many times before. And now. I imagine there are many of us who feel like the forest is too deep and foreboding to pass through at the moment/

But me and many others have made it through. We may seem lost but so long as we understand who we are and hold on to that, not becoming something that we are not, we will pass through somehow. That is all we can do. Persist as we are.

To put it another way, as in the lines from Christopher Fry’s 1949 verse play, The Lady’s Not for Burning:

The best
Thing we can do is to make wherever we’re lost in
Look as much like home as we can.

Know and hold on to who you are and keep moving forward.

I am letting go of I Was Lost, taking it to the West End Gallery later today. I am trying to get better at letting certain pieces go and figured this was the right time for this painting. It has served me well and maybe it can help someone else in the same way.

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Who We Are Now

Posted in Uncategorized on November 6, 2024| 4 Comments »

20241106_061131

And then it was over.

I went out this morning and stood in the driveway of my studio. The sun was just putting light over the horizon through the trees. The sky was filled with colors, both beautiful and ominous. The first thing that came to mind was the sky in Gone With the Wind.

And that seemed about right.

I stood there taking it in and a thought kept running through my mind: This is who we are now.

It was a statement. There was no question in it.

This is who we are now.

It’s going to take time to wrestle with this, to find a rationale that makes any sense, one that allows me to feel any sense of communion with this new definition of who we are. Maybe this who we always were, and I am at fault for not recognizing it.

For now, I stand in the semi-darkness with that sentence running through my mind. This is who we are now.

And I feel like a stranger in a strange land…

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Wishin’ and Hopin’/ Election Day Edition

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- A Prayer For Light

A Prayer For Light— Exiles series

“Of course, there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”

–Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, 1911

…until you make them happen.

A lot of us wish and hope for better things and a change from those parts of our lives that disappoint us. But until we act on those wishes and hopes, nothing usually happens.

Things stay the way they are. Or go in ways we never wanted to go.

Of course, wishing and hoping can be viewed as the primary stages of making a plan of action or setting a course and goal for the future. And that’s important.

Action without a goal can be as fruitless as wishing and hoping without action.

But the two– the wish and the action– put together can produce a sort of Magic, much as Colin the bedridden boy discovered in The Secret Garden. It’s a Magic that is within our grasp once we realize this fact.

I am going to give a really basic example. Many years ago, when I was in the early stages of my art life, I wished and hoped for a solo exhibit. I had only been showing my work publicly for a very short time, less than two years, so I didn’t have a reputation or name to pave the way. I didn’t expect anything and it would have been easy to shrug it off and do nothing.

But I decided to try and experiment, to act on my wish.

I had been working on my Exiles series, work that was very personal. It was done during the battle my mom faced with cancer, ultimately losing her life to it in November of 1995. I put together a proposal for show of these paintings and introduced myself to the director of the Gmeiner Art Center in Wellsboro, PA, about an hour from my home. She was impressed by the work and the presentation and gave me a solo show that winter featuring the Exiles paintings.

One thing that struck me about this was when a couple of other artists approached me at a local gallery opening around the time the show at the Gmeiner ran. Both were established artists who had been working much longer than I and had actual bodies of work. They seemed kind of envious that I was having this show and asked how I got this show.

My answer was simple.

“I asked for it.”

I could see on their faces that this was a revelation, that this simple action was something they had never thought to do.

You can’t wait for your hopes and wishes to come to you. Sometimes, you have to take the step towards them, to put things in motion and to make Magic happen.

Unfortunately, a lot of us don’t ever get the connection between wishes and actions. And that’s a shame.

Make something happen today. Make some Magic.

Of course, if you read this blog regularly, you probably know that this is all just a setup for playing a song. I thought that today’s words and image would match up nicely with a hit song, Wishin’ and Hopin’, from Burt Bacharach, who died this past week [February, 2023]. This is the 1964 hit version from Dusty Springfield. Though it seems a little dated and she seems a little needy in this song about getting a guy, the premise that it takes action to achieve wishes and hopes is correct: You won’t get him/ Thinkin’ and a-prayin’, wishin’ and a-hopin’

You got to put wishes and hopes into action…

This post ran early last year. As I walked through the woods to the studio in the dark this morning, the chorus from the song Wishin’ and Hopin’ kept rolling through my mind. It seemed like a great song for the nervous anticipation that has been building for this Election Day. The post seemed to match up well with the day as well. Today is the day to put our wishes and hopes into action. It is a day of great privilege and responsibility, one where your vote is equal to the vote of any billionaire. In some places with tight races, it might be worth more.

Today, put your wishes and hopes into action. Make some magic.

Vote.

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Nearing Election Day/ Rockwell

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 4, 2024| Leave a Comment »

norman-rockwell-election-day

I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them “You are supreme: exercise your power.” They say, “That’s right: tell us what to do”; and I tell them. I say “Exercise your vote intelligently by voting for me.” And they do. That’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.

–George Bernard Shaw, The Apple Cart

Shaw’s dialogue above is both the best and worst of a democracy. It extols the power of the voter while at the same time acknowledging that much of the electorate wants to be told what to do. Blindly following any candidate certainly is not a surefire method of putting the right man in the right place. There is ample evidence of that.

My hope is that the voter understands their power and the responsibility that comes with it, which is to fully examine the issues with clear eyes and an open mind before voting for that which is best for the country as a whole.

Country over party or self-interest.

With that in mind, I thought I would show a couple of previously posted paintings concerning our election process from Norman Rockwell who chronicled this country for many, many decades and often seemed to get to the core of things in his work. At the bottom, I included a couple of his most famous paintings to show that our elections are something more than popularity contests. They do indeed have consequences. They do shape our view of and in the world.

Voting is our right, one that has long been battled over. People have bled and died for this right. But more than that, it is an obligation. We must play our part, to raise our singular voice in how our nation moves ahead in a way that is best for all its citizens.

Do not take this right and obligation lightly–VOTE.

norman-rockwell-election-day-with-dog

norman-rockwell-elect-casey

norman-rockwell-election-debate-october-9-1920

norman-rockwell-the-obvious-choice-1948

norman-rockwell-at-polls-368x448

norman-rockwell-undecided

norman-rockwell-a-time-for-greatness

norman-rockwell-golden-rule

norman-rockwell-the-right-to-know

norman-rockwell_the-problem-we-all-live-with

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Enduring…

Posted in Uncategorized on November 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- In the Light of Stillness 2024

In the Light of Stillness— At West End Gallery

I decline to accept the end of man.… I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

–William Faulkner, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 1950

You’ve been inundated with enough sound and fury this week, including here. Let’s just have a song for this cold Sunday morning. This is from The Last Leaf on the Tree, the new album from Willie Nelson. It is his 76th album. This song, Last Leaf, was written and first recorded by Tom Waits.

I am generally moved by the work of aging artist, when they can somehow maintain their artistic power and relevance despite diminishing physical and vocal abilities. The last works of Johnny Cash comes to mind. It is a fitting song for Willie as he enters the sunset of his life and career.

Talk about enduring…

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Pedal to the Metal

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Releasing the Fire 2024

Releasing the Fire–At West End Gallery

Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one’s stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life.

—Boris Pasternak, as quoted in The New York Times (1 January 1978)

I was determined to write something lighter as a counterpoint to my last couple of diatribes here. But desperate times require a little more effort or at least a rousing call to action. I think the song at the bottom serves that purpose very well.

No time to relax now. Full effort required.

Pedal to the metal.

I played this song a couple of years back in the runup to the 2022 elections and what follows is from that blogpost.

I recently became aware of a new album from the Boston-based Celtic punk band, the Dropkick Murphys. The album is called This Machine Still Kills Fascists and is their take on a group of unrecorded songs written by Woody Guthrie.

This is not a new idea. One of my favorite albums is Mermaid Avenue from a collaboration of Wilco and Billy Bragg in which they did very much the same thing, setting music to Guthrie’s unpublished lyrics. In both cases, the Guthrie family approached these artists and invited them to take on the project of bringing these lyrics to life.

In the case of the Dropkick Murphys, this began about 20 years ago when Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, made them the offer, saying that she thought her father would have felt like a kindred spirit with the band and what they were doing.

They took it on then and the result was their version of Woody’s Shipping Up to Boston. It is, by far, their most well-known song. It was used effectively in a pivotal scene in Martin Scorsese‘s film of Boston gangsters, The Departed. It is also considered the unofficial anthem of Boston. To be honest, though I was a fan of the song, I didn’t know Shipping Up to Boston was a Woody Guthrie song and only recently became aware that they had recorded that small group of his songs that were included in their 2005 album, The Warrior’s Code.

This new album is a more direct collaboration with Guthrie’s music, comprised only of his songs and borrowing its title from the message famously scrawled on Woody’s guitar, This Machine Kills Fascists. They also went out to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is Woody’s hometown and home to the Woody Guthrie Center, to record the album at Leon Russell’s The Church Studio. Leon Russell was also a Tulsa native.

The result is stirring group of Guthrie’s pro-union/labor, anti-fascist songs infused with the Celtic fighting spirit of the Dropkick Murphys. The song below is titled Ten Times More which has Woody saying that in order to beat back those who would oppress you, you have to meet their effort with not equal effort but ten times more effort.

In short, you can’t take half measures with would-be fascists– you have to overwhelm them with the fire and energy of your resistance. Like the song says:

When the crooks they work, we gotta work
Not once, not twice, but ten times more
Where the robbers they walk, we gotta walk
Not once, not twice, but ten times more

Pedal to the metal, folks…

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Psychotics in High Places

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 1, 2024| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- The March

It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don’t put psychotics in high places and we’ve got the problem solved.

—Tom Wolfe, Our Time (1980)

I wasn’t going to write about the election today, instead focusing on art or music or anything else. This election has been an overwhelming time for many people, me included. A break seemed in order.

But seeing the words that the GOP candidate spoke at one of his events last night made me shake with fury this morning. It needs to be seen and addressed by every single American today.

For those of you who were not aware, this is what he said at an event last night in Glendale, Arizona. He was in the midst of an unhinged tirade against his perceived enemies, calling them scum and other things throughout. These are the words he directed at Liz Cheney, the ultraconservative former GOP rep who has stood against his authoritarian march:

Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.

Nine barrels shooting at her face…

That is not political rhetoric. It is not hyperbole. It is not an offhand comment meant for comical effect. This is dangerous in every possible way. It borders on psychotic. This has to stopped now.

I know there are legions of gutless GOP politicians and operatives who are going to hit the airwaves trying to defuse the situation, claiming his words were misinterpreted in some way. And his cultish followers will accept it fully and even cheer it on even further.

We are about nine years of his madness and throughout he has always had an army of people who are constantly trying to explain away his crazy bullshit or divert the meaning to something altogether different. I have never seen a politician with so many minions willing to debase themselves by twisting words and meanings into illogical pretzels.

But throughout those nine years, he has always revealed himself clearly despite the best efforts of his minions. We know what he is and what he wants. You can’t cover that up with all explanations or makeup. There’s not enough bronzer in the whole goddamn world.

It has been evident to me since he began his first campaign that he wanted absolute power. The funny thing is that he had it in his hands but didn’t know what to do with it.  The power that he had as president far exceeded the perceived power he so adored in foreign leaders. His ignorance kept him from recognizing that he held all the cards against the authoritarian leaders out there that he fawned over. With all due respect to the people of these countries, Hungary, Turkey, North Korea and Russia pale in magnitude alongside the strength of our nation. Yet, he often sees America as somehow lacking when compared to these countries as he speaks glowingly about these autocrats who hold tight grips on their countries.  He just wants to be part of their little club, even if it means subjugating himself and this country.

It shows his weakness of character, both as a person and as a leader.

I think this stems from a dislike he holds for the principles of America– justice, equality, fairness, sacrifice, responsibility and accountability.  To be honest, I don’t think he truly likes this country or its people. This just happens to be where he is at the moment, and we are just the rubes to be exploited.

He doesn’t hold a single drop of care or empathy for the plight of any one of us. Or this country. If he did, he wouldn’t try to hurt or destroy so many of us in his quest for power. He would sacrifice any or all of us to get what he wants. That is only form of sacrifice he understands. Never self-sacrifice.

If he has to, he will burn down the house with all of us in it. And unfortunately, he has convinced some of us to willingly stand in the fire he has set.

If he somehow gets back in power, expect the worst, just as his words imply. It is up to each of us to stand against him now with our votes and voices. Especially our votes.

I am sorry if this isn’t what you wanted to see this morning. I get that. I sure didn’t want to write it nor even have to feel the need to do so. But I had to post this, for myself, if only to get it out into the air. I felt that if I could somehow ignore such language and intentions, others will as well.

The psychosis then becomes the norm. And I don’t want to have any part in that. Just vote, okay?

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