Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.
–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
Short and sweet this morning. Just a painting, a short passage from Oscar Wilde, and a song to round out this week’s Sunday Morning Music.
It all seems to nest together well.
The song is Colour My World from Chicago in 1970. Though it doesn’t have the power of the band’s normal horn section or the epically underrated guitar licks of Terry Kath, who sings lead here, and was only released as the B-side for two singles, and has only one single, short verse, the song had great impact with its quiet moodiness and haunting flute solo. Frank Sinatra is reported to have wanted to record it but wanted band member James Pankow, who wrote the song, to add a verse but Pankow and the band declined the offer.
Fixity is always momentary. It is an equilibrium, at once precarious and perfect, that lasts the space of an instant: a flickering of the light, the appearance of a cloud, or a slight change in temperature is enough to break the repose-pact and unleash the series of metamorphoses. Each metamorphosis, in turn, is another moment of fixity succeeded by another change and another unexpected equilibrium. No one is alone, and each change here brings about another change there. No one is alone and nothing is solid: change is comprised of fixities that are momentary accords.
–Octavio Paz, The Monkey Grammarian (1974)
It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.
–Henry Miller, Sunday After the War (1944)
Yesterday, I was working– more slowly than I would like– and a favorite Philip Glass composition, Metamorphosis II, came on. Glass wrote five Metamorphoses piano pieces in 1988, taking inspiration from the Franz Kafka story, TheMetamorphosis. I am sure most of you are aware of the story in which a young man, Gregor Samsa, awakens one morning to find that he has been transformed into a large insect. There has been a lot of conjecture over the years as to the meaning of Samsa’s transformation and, like most works of art, is subjective. We each see what speaks to our own circumstances, values, and concerns.
I am a big believer in personal metamorphosis. Certain constancies seem appealing, of course. To always be honest, fair-minded, or kind, for examples. I would hope they would remain unchanged. But in many other ways all I can think is how awful it would be to always remain the same, to never change even as the world around you constantly transform itself. And wouldn’t it be shameful to stay the same if you were to become aware of your own shortcomings or past errors of judgement?
I know that I have experienced some degree of metamorphosis in my life. And I am thankful for that because the idea of being that same exact person from 50 years ago seems terrifying in an almost Kafkaesque way. Kind of a reverse Gregor Samsa situation, where he wakes up one morning to find that he has totally been unchanged by the events– the tragedies and triumphs, the sorrows of loss and the joys of love– of his life. I think
I would prefer to be a large insect.
Maybe that is one way to look at Kafka’s story, that Gregor Samsa found that after everything that occurred in his life, he woke one morning to find himself changed not for the better. Instead, he found that he had become the absolute worst version of himself.
That’s a scary scenario and, unfortunately, I would not be surprised that there are many such Gregor Samsa’s out there.
You might be wondering, for good reason, what is the point I am trying to make here.
I don’t really know. except to say that change is a universal constant which no person can fully resist. Learning and adapting to these changes ultimately metamorphosizes, like that of the caterpillar into the butterfly, into something more, perhaps wisdom, truth, and beauty.
Resist change and instead of a butterfly, you’ll find yourself a big cockroach or maybe a stink bug. Your choice.
Probably not the ending you were expecting here. Oh, well.
It all really comes around to sharing the Philip Glass piece, Metamorphosis II. I recently found out that this piece was greatly influenced by another favorite piece, Fratres, from composer Arvo Pärt, whose work I have featured many times over the years. Probably why it so appeals to me.
“They are all in the same category, both those who are afflicted with fickleness, boredom and a ceaseless change of purpose, and who always yearn for what they left behind, and those who just yawn from apathy. There are those too who toss around like insomniacs, and keep changing their position until they find rest through sheer weariness. They keep altering the condition of their lives, and eventually stick to that one in which they are trapped not by weariness with further change but by old age which is too sluggish for novelty. There are those too who suffer not from moral steadfastness but from inertia, and so lack the fickleness to live as they wish, and just live as they have begun. In fact there are innumerable characteristics of the malady, but one effect – dissatisfaction with oneself. This arises from mental instability and from fearful and unfulfilled desires, when men do not dare or do not achieve all they long for, and all they grasp at is hope: they are always unbalanced and fickle, an inevitable consequence of living in suspense. They struggle to gain their prayers by every path, and they teach and force themselves to do dishonourable and difficult things; and when their efforts are unrewarded the fruitless disgrace tortures them, and they regret not the wickedness but the frustration of their desires. Then they are gripped by repentance for their attempt and fear of trying again, and they are undermined by the restlessness of a mind that can discover no outlet, because they can neither control nor obey their desires, by the dithering of life that cannot see its way ahead, and by the lethargy of a soul stagnating amid its abandoned hopes.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
I haven’t written any kind of diatribe in recent months. Still feeling under the weather but felt that I needed to let this one out, some of it written several months ago, before the 2024 election, and some in the months after the January 6 riot in 2021. I have not shared it here and know that it’s out of my normal lane, but I needed to have my say this morning. Like we all do once in a while.
I was reading an article that referenced the essay De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life) from the Stoic philosopher Seneca that written sometime around 49 AD. The passage above really struck me because it seemed to describe the dissatisfaction so many people have with their lives and the actions that result from this.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it feels like the underlying current of what we’re seeing take place these days in this country. There is a lot of dissatisfaction that has morphed into anger among predominantly white middle-class men, which has been nurtured and encouraged by right-wing billionaires who seek to ride this angry tide to power.
But the question remains: Why are they so angry and what do they want?
They are, by and large, not the downtrodden nor poor. They are not without voice or political power. There’s a high probability that most of them have good livelihoods and assets that place them well above that of the average American.
They are not trying to gain rights for themselves. And certainly not fighting for the rights of others whose rights have been denied. If anything, they are angry because they believe that the others are attempting to get same rights that these guys have enjoyed for their entire lives.
They are not fighting true injustice or inequality. Far from it. If anything, they are fighting against justice and equality for all.
And if they succeed with their crusades of anger, they have no plans for a future. Certainly not a future that will be in any way better for most people.
All they have is anger and dissatisfaction with their lot in life. As entitled and privileged as they are in relation to most others, their lives lack purpose and meaning. It is a spoiled and bored existence, devoid of real consequences for bad behavior and fortified by the highs and unreality of video games, reality television, and action flicks that develops into their undeserved bravado, cosplay costuming, and an absolute trust in conspiracy over evidence so long as it suits their needs.
And that’s a recipe for disaster. Lacking meaning and purpose in life makes them susceptible to those who appeal to their sense of grievance, serving it up as a substitute for hope. As the Longshoreman PhilosopherEric Hoffer put it in his 1955 book, The Passionate State of Mind:
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. A grievance can almost serve as a substitute for hope; it not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.
This echoes a similar thought Hoffer put forth is his 1951 book on cults and mass movements, The True Believer, which was primarily written in reference to the Nazi and Fascist movements of WWII:
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.
This appeal to grievance in place of hope has been the obvious gameplan of the GOP and its totalitarian loving leader for years now.
I could be wrong here, but don’t think so. I wrote some of the above a few years back just after the January 6 riot., referring to the insurrectionists who descended upon the Capitol Building. I don’t think much of what I wrote then has been disproven in any way. I still have no idea why they are so angry or what they really want, outside of the freedom to be openly hateful and cruel. And they still have not exhibited a single plan that would work for a better future for anybody, themselves included.
Well, the billionaire class would be even better off and that is all that really matters once you sworn your allegiance to it.
It feels like they want to revel in their anger and dissatisfaction, using it as an engine for retribution against the others, those people on whom they seek to place responsibility for their own shortcomings. To use their sense of grievance as a rationale for the release and satisfaction they find in their cruelty.
Here’s a topical song, Unsatisfied, a favorite of mine from The Replacements and their very satisfying 1984 album Let It Be.
A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
–-Albert Camus
These lines above are from an early essay, Between Yes and No, written by the French Nobel Prize-winning writer Albert Camus. It basically states, in sometimes grim detail, his belief that art “exalts and denies simultaneously.” In short, truth is generally somewhere in the middle, never absolutely in yes or no.
Yes or no is generally an oversimplified view, the extreme ends of the pendulum’s arc on which we swing.
While I may not fully understand all the subtleties of Camus’ essay, I do fully agree with the premise as I see it in my own simplified way. I think that art communicates best when it contains both the yes and the no— those polar oppositions that create a tension to which we react on an emotional level. For example, I think my best work has come when it contains opposing elements such as the light of hope or optimism tinged with the darkness of fear or remorse.
The Yes and The No of things. The certainty and uncertainty of all things.
Beyond that, I find this line about the artist’s effort to rediscover those few simple images that somehow first stirred something within their heart and soul intriguing. I certainly recognize it within my own work. I had no idea what I was trying to find when I first began to paint those many years ago. But the idea that there were some inner images that needed to be expressed nagged at me, even though I wasn’t fully aware of what those images were. They were slowly revealed to me and though I often didn’t fully understand their meaning, they somehow made sense and began to fill an emptiness.
That continues to this day. It is, as Camus, says, a slow trek. I still don’t know what to expect when I begin to paint and still have the nagging feeling that there is still an image out there– or in there– that eludes me. But I have some small degree of certainty, for whatever that is worth, that it is there waiting to be discovered. I just have to keep moving towards it.
Here’s a favorite song from a favorite artist, Rhiannon Giddens. The song is the folk classic Wayfaring Stranger. It’s one of those songs that has been covered by a multitude of singers and is such a strong tune that every incarnation is equally wonderful.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
–Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
I was going to write something else this morning but am feeling a bit foggy and tired. Instead, I thought I would share a post from a few years back and add the Don McLean song, Castles in the Air, at the bottom.
This is a well-known quote from Walden. Maybe the most well-known. It basically states, in my opinion, that we are meant to dream, to imagine better things and circumstances for ourselves. But there comes a time when we have to put the necessary work if these dreams are ever to become a reality.
Pretty sound stuff. The value of work and dreams is not lost on me. My life as it currently is, relatively simple and humble, was once a castle in the air. I was leafing through an old journal from when I was 16 or 17 years old and came across a list of goals for my future.
I had forgotten that I had made such a list and was surprised at how closely it matched the life I now live. Apparently, though I stumbled and fumbled around for too long a time, I somehow subconsciously made my way back to those castles I had built in the air with that list as a teenager.
I was pleased at first for it validated this idea that you somehow eventually reach destinations for which you set a course. Then I began to wonder what might have happened had I built my castles even further up in the sky.
Were the goals of an unexceptional and naive 16-year-old too restrained and self-limiting? Or did that 16-year-old know itself better than I currently think it did, that it already recognized its own core strengths and deficiencies?
I don’t know the answer to that question. But I can say that I don’t regret placing the foundation under the castle that I first built in the air when I was young. It suits me.
My one wish is to have time enough to put other foundations under a few other castles that float in the air above me. We shall see.
As it is with most of the quotes I use here, I like to seek out the context in which they appear in their original form. I felt that the paragraphs that end with these words from Thoreau should be shared in full.
There’s still a lot of meat on this old bone from Mr. Thoreau:
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.
–Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941)
In what is considered her masterpiece describing the history and culture of Yugoslavia, author Rebecca West wrote in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon that art and culture, especially in the form of myths and storytelling, provide both countries and individuals with a revitalizing well from which they can drink in order to survive the difficulties of life and history. Art and culture connects us with symbols, stories, and myths that changes our mere existence into one brimming with purpose and meaning.
I know that West is writing primarily about storytelling and the myths of nations, which is evident in the passage from which the lines above are taken, which I am sharing below. But I feel that the purpose they serve, as West sees it, is very much the same for art in general. Art moves us beyond our own day-to-day existence, connecting us with our known and unknown pasts and futures. It allows us to feel as though we are part of some greater vehicle, serving both as a function of memory and desire.
Indeed, art is not a plaything. It is an elixir that invigorates the spirit and soul.
Below is the expanded passage from Rebecca West. I think there may be relevance in it for this country at this juncture in history.
Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted. If one’s own existence has no form, if its events do not come handily to mind and disclose their significance, we feel about ourselves as if we were reading a bad book. We can all of us judge the truth of this, for hardly any of us manage to avoid some periods when the main theme of our lives is obscured by details, when we involve ourselves with persons who are insufficiently characterized; and it is possibly true not only of individuals, but of nations. What would England be like if it had not its immense Valhalla of kings and heroes, if it had not its Elizabethan and its Victorian ages, its thousands of incidents which come up in the mind, simple as icons and as miraculous in their suggestion that what England has been it can be again, now and for ever? What would the United States be like if it had not those reservoirs of triumphant will-power, the historical facts of the War of Independence, of the giant American statesmen, and of the pioneering progress into the West, which every American citizen has at his mental command and into which he can plunge for revivification at any minute? To have a difficult history makes, perhaps, a people who are bound to be difficult in any conditions, lacking these means of refreshment.
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
–Martin Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem (1955)
Wasn’t planning on posting anything today but a song popped into mind and I thought I would share it. Not sure that it fully lines up with the painting or the words of Martin Buber at the top, which do mesh well together. The idea of secret destinations, of arriving at a point that is unexpected, is the basis for the story of many life journeys, after all.
How many of us can say our lives ended up exactly where we thought they would be when we first set out? And for those who did arrive exactly where they intended, I don’t know whether to envy or pity them. There’s something to be said for the security of sticking precisely to your set course. On the other hand, that insinuates that will travel unchanged throughout your long journey, that your desires and values won’t be shaken up and reorganized by things encountered along the way. That you won’t at some point realize that where you thought you wanted to arrive then was not the same as it is now.
For myself, it’s pretty obvious that I never had a real plan, a true set course to any destination. And though at times it’s been hard, and that even now, though my journey is much closer to its end than its beginning, I still am not sure where it will ultimately take me, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Here’s that song. It’s another gem from that perfect coupling of artist and composer, Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach. From 1966, this is Trains and Boats and Planes.
Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn. Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
–Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)
Was reading some Joseph Campbell and came across this passage and it immediately struck me as another way of looking at the Entanglement paintings from my recent Principle Gallery show. Perhaps the twisting bands of ethereal energy as I see them are also representative of the twists and turns of the hero’s journey. It’s the story of human’s existence, one that takes them through a winding and often dark labyrinth filled with dead ends and numerous paths that seem to be leading to one’s desired destination only to be found to have led the traveler even further away.
And then when we are exhausted and filled with fear, all hope drained away, we take a turn on the twisting path and we find ourselves facing the light that gives us hope, the light that energizes and illuminates all that is behind and before us, showing us the unity of all things.
Hmm. Got to think about this a bit more.
Here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music. Not sure it exactly fits the theme. I think it might. but it doesn’t really matter since I like this song and wanted to hear it this morning. It’s from one of my many favorites, Neko Case. This is Hold On, Hold On.
The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation.
–Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912)
It’s been about a month since I gave a painting demonstration at the Principle Gallery. In the days after, I shared an image of the progress that had been made on the demo painting at the end of the session. I was fairly pleased with how it had emerged but could immediately see that there were changes– additions, subtractions and alterations– that needed to be made before it would truly come into form, at least to my eyes. There were a number of small adjustments and a couple of major changes.
Among the larger changes was altering the shape and color of the distant mountains in the lower right quarter. I simply wasn’t satisfied with the original. There was something in them– or not in them– that just didn’t sit right with me.
I also changed the shape of the Red Roof house in the upper left. Again, the original just didn’t feel right to me. I depend on my ability to sense rightness in my work, and it was not meeting the mark.
I changed the angle of the roof and extended it a tiny bit, which allowed me to clean up some messiness in the sky behind it. It’s not that I mind a little messiness. The late biophysicist Max Delbruck (1906-1981) had a theory that he called the Principle of Limited Sloppiness. which stated that too much sloppiness was unacceptable in scientific research but allowing a little sloppiness sometimes revealed startling, unexpected results that could then be cleaned up.
I guess you could say I adhere to Delbruck’s theory. A little sloppiness is fine and sometimes revelatory. However, in my work it’s a problem when the messiness is out of the rhythm of the painting and becomes a distraction, pulling focus from the whole of the painting.
Cleaning up that bit of messiness really honed the feel of the painting for me as did the fine tuning of the colors throughout. The rising road was lightened and a bit of darkness added to the left side of the hill, away from the sun, which, along with its light arrows, was brightened a bit.
It may not seem to the casual observer that the painting was greatly changed but to my eyes it emerged in a much different form., one that truly reaches that sense of rightness that I mentioned. Looking at it now here in the studio, it doesn’t feel like a hurried demo piece. It has its own feel and life now– an extension of the inner world I try to show in my work. It feels like it is truly part of that world now.
I used a Kandinsky quote at the top about an artist needing to train both their eye and their soul. I think of all the hours I have spent alone working in my studio have honed whatever skill I possess– the eye that Kandinsky mentions– as well as the sense of rightness which might well translate as the Kandinsky’s soul. I don’t really know that can express what I am trying to say but I like the idea that an artist is seeking their own soul in their work.
I am pleased I was able to share a little of what seeking looks like with the folks who made it to the demonstration a month ago. Many thanks again to everyone who made it possible.
I have yet to title this piece. A reader suggested the title of an old Cat Stevens song, Road to Find Out, as a title. That might work but I am open to suggestions. Let me know what you think.
Let’s listen to that Cat Stevens song. There’s larger image of the completed painting below. That is, if it is truly completed. Like people, art sometimes needs to change…
No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people’s eyes, to reveal the marvels around.
-Paolo Coelho, The Witch of Portobello
Shine your light somewhere, somehow.
That’s all I have to say this morning. Trying to light my own lamp this morning.
Here’s a fitting tune from the Rolling Stones‘ classic 1972 album, Exile on Main Street. This is Shine a Light.
Redtree Times 