Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.
–Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862)
Eclipse– At West End Gallery
Perhaps all people sometimes live through periods of eclipse, times when the light on which we depend seems to go away. Science tells us now that the light will soon return but to those who lived in the earlier ages of man, the sudden departure of light must have felt apocalyptic. I can only imagine the fearful panic and worry that must have filled them, not knowing if the light would ever return. Wondering if their lives, their futures, would be forever changed. How would they survive?
Maybe I don’t have to imagine. Maybe we are now in the time of a great eclipse.
I don’t know. But those feelings that our distant ancestors must have felt when the last bit of light they saw was obscured seem closer to the surface now, not lost in the mire of our long dormant DNA memories.
I want to believe that like the natural type of eclipse, the darkness of this cultural eclipse will soon give way to a reappearance of light. And I think it will.
The question is how long will this eclipse linger? Will our desire to see the light once more hasten its return? Or will we learn to dwell in a state of constant darkness, forgetting all that the light once gave to us?
Again, I don’t know. Not sure than anyone out there has a credible answer, one way or the other. All we can do is bide our time, lighting candles and torches against the darkness. Keeping light alive somehow.
After I finished this small painting, Eclipse, I knew that I liked it on a surface level. I liked it simplicity, forms, and colors. It seemed to work, to have a life energy. But I also felt that it was offering a message beyond its surface appeal.
This symbolic idea of an eclipse was the first thing that entered my mind at that point. I often attach symbolic meanings to my work that might only apply to my own interpretation. You might not see it that way at all. After all, we all perceive the world around us in different ways with different preferences and prejudices.
You might think that an eclipse is just an eclipse, and a cigar is just a cigar. That’s okay. We all take what we want and need from art. In this case, I see the bigger symbolism of this little piece and find myself waiting for, as Hugo put it, dawn and resurrection.
For this week’s Sunday Morning Music, here’s a song that I have shared a few times over the years. It’s alive version of Darkness on the Face of the Earth from Willie Nelson with Emmylou Harris sitting in. He wrote the song in 1962 and it was originally released that year by Hawkshaw Hawkins, who was a big country star at the time. He died in the same plane crash in 1963 that killed Patsy Cline. Nelson released the version on which this performance is based on his 1998 album, Teatro. Great album.
Eclipse is a 2″ by 4″ piece on paper that is now at the West End Gallery for their annual Little Gems show, opening February 7.
Redtree Times 