Redtree Times

Fiddler’s Moon— Now at West End Gallery

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

—Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to the End of Love

Still a bit under the weather this morning. However, the force of habit of having done this nearly every morning for over seventeen years compelled me to post something this morning. I am featuring a painting, Fiddler’s Moon, from my current West End Gallery show along with a favorite song (of many) from Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to the End of Love.

I was torn between using the lyrics from the song as the opening for the blog or the poem, A Sign, from Walter de la Mare. I decided it was easier to simply use both, a snippet of the song lyrics at the top and the entire poem below, since there seems to be a common thread running through them about things coming to an end, all as the fiddler plays.

Fiddler’s Moon deserves more words than I am able to provide this morning. But then again, maybe saying less is more in this case. It speaks pretty well without any confusion I might add. It hangs at the West End Gallery as part of my annual solo show, this year titled Guiding Light. The show ends November 13, 2025, so try to get in to see it before things come to an end.

Also, there is a Gallery Talk accompanying the show which takes place on Saturday, November 1. It begins at 11 AM and will once again feature a drawing for one of my paintings. And perhaps some other stuff. I have an old electric can opener and a pair of slightly worn Reeboks, both from the 1990’s, that I might give away.

Well, probably not those things. But maybe other stuff. You never know.

Got to go. Thanks for your attention to this matter.

A Sign
by Walter de la Mare

How shall I know when the end of things is coming?
The dark swifts flitting, the drone-bees humming;
The fly on the window-pane bedazedly strumming;
Ice on the waterbrooks their clear chimes dumbing —
How shall I know that the end of things is coming?

The stars in their stations will shine glamorous in the black:
Emptiness, as ever, haunt the great Star Sack;
And Venus, proud and beautiful, go down to meet the day,
Pale in phosphorescence of the green sea spray —
How shall I know that the end of things is coming?

Head asleep on pillow; the peewits at their crying;
A strange face in dreams to my rapt phantasma sighing;
Silence beyond words of anguished passion;
Or stammering an answer in the tongue’s cold fashion —
How shall I know that the end of things is coming?

Haply on strange roads I shall be, the moorland’s peace around me;
Or counting up a fortune to which Destiny hath bound me;
Or — Vanity of Vanities — the honey of the Fair;
Or a greybeard, lost to memory, on the cobbles in my chair —
How shall I know that the end of things is coming?

The drummers will be drumming; the fiddlers at their thrumming;
Nuns at their beads; the mummers at their mumming;
Heaven’s solemn Seraph stoopt weary o’er his summing;
The palsied fingers plucking, the way-worn feet numbing —
And the end of things coming.