In the Weave of Time– Coming to West End Gallery
Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
–Delmore Schwartz, Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day (1938)
Sometimes I begin to write about a new painting fully intending to describe what it means to me. But there are times when those intentions go out the window. Then I find myself just staring blankly at the piece.
I should say staring blankly into rather than at the painting because it’s not one of those cases where you stare straight ahead without focusing on or even knowing what is in front of your eyes. The mind is so preoccupied with something else that it commandeers your eyes.
No, this is the opposite, more like having what is front of my eyes push away all thought and empty my mind.
The eye commandeers the mind. I suppose that would be a form of involuntary meditation. Maybe that’s the best kind, one that comes without trying.
That’s kind of what happened first thing this morning. I was intending to write a bit about the new painting at the top. It’s an 18″ by 18″ canvas titled In the Weave of Time and is included in my October solo exhibit, Guiding Light, at the West End Gallery.
I pulled up the image and before I knew it, I was staring into it with an empty mind. I say empty but it was not a pure void. It had a harmony, a tone of great calmness. It had a space as well, one that placeless and timeless.
It’s hard to explain. Placeless and timeless things often are.
But frustrating as it was to find my mind empty at a time when I was desiring words and thought, I was pleased by the effect. It gave me some much-needed stillness at a moment when time and deadlines plague my thoughts.
It felt like a gift in the dark of morning.
This not what I intended to write about this painting but maybe it should have been. It certainly says more about it than the meager words I probably would have spewed.
Unfortunately, I have to return to a world filled with time and place and deadlines right now. But first, I am going to spend a few more minutes in this painting. I need it.
Here’s a favorite song, The Stable Song, from Gregory Alan Isakov. It came on while I was writing what I hadn’t intended writing and it felt right in the moment. I often have music playing while I work and much of it plays without me noticing the song or artist due my focus on the work in front of me. But whenever this song comes on, I stop and listen for a few minutes.
There’s a familiarity in it that rhymes with some memory of in the weave of time. And that’s all I could ask for this morning.
Redtree Times 