Redtree Times

For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

I think we’re always listening for echoes.

Echoes of sound, of sight, of every sense. Echoes of history.

Echoes help us determine how we should react in a given situation.

With music, we listen for echoes of the music we know, to see if it rhymes with that music, if it pleases us in the same manner.

We do the same with words and images. When we look at a piece of art, we search for the echoes of past works of art in it. We try to find congruence with works we know that already echo some sort of emotion within us.

I think it’s a matter of comfort, this looking for the familiar, that thing to which we already know our reaction.

That’s probably why the new so disturbs us. It has few, if any, echoes from the past and the echoes that it does carry have been reshaped beyond our senses to the point they are barely discernible.

We can’t rely on echoes in gauging our reactions to the new. The new– the new sound, thought, or artform– has no echo and may not be comfortable, perhaps even shocking us.

We might, at first, dismiss it for that reason alone. But if it has merit, if it speaks to some part of us that has not yet echoed, we come to accept it.

And it creates echoes of its own.

Okay, let’s leave it there for the morning. I will have to read this again later to see if it makes any sense. Sometimes these early morning riffs seem better at first glimpse than they are in reality.

Some echo and some don’t.

I guess we should strive to create echoes. Words to live by.

After three or so years after posting this, I did read this again and it does seem to have an echo. That’s always good to discover in these things you put out there. They are often too much of their own time and there is little of substance to echo forward– or backward. But sometimes they hold something that makes me nod my head in agreement. 

It made me think of those times when my work ventures outside what might be considered its normal place, its normal look. This new work, though it might excite me and feel to me as though it is a natural echo of my prior work, sometimes doesn’t immediately capture an audience. Because it is such a departure from the earlier work, it doesn’t carry as loud an echo with it that people can relate to in their mind.

The work has to create its own echo going forward. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. It is a bit disappointing when it fails to create an echo outside of myself. However, this underappreciated work often continues to speak loudly in my mind, allowing me to hold on to the hope that it still can echo at some time in the future for others.

Nick Drake seems to have created echoes with his music in this manner. He recorded three albums from 1969 to 1972 that never really found an audience at the time. He tragically died from an overdose of antidepressants in 1974 at the age of 26. In the years since, his work has gained that audience that eluded him during his short lifetime and has a cult following. His songs have a unique quality that draws me in but is hard to pin down. I’ve shared a couple of his songs before, and this one spoke to me this morning. It works for this post and painting. This is Time Has Told Me.

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Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm.
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.

Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm,
So ‘gainst the winter’s balm.

Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm.
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

—Ezra Pound, Ancient Music

Bitter cold this morning, -1º when I went out the door at 4:30 and most likely still dropping. Though it is crystal clear and razor sharp dry, it reminds me of the poem above from Ezra Pound. It’s the kind of cold that inspires swearing, especially in early December when the memory of the milder temperatures of autumn are still fresh in my mind. You expect this kind of cold in February but in December it feels like an ambush.

I looked for a painting of mine that fit Pound’s words and cadence, but his hard chops and ire don’t show up much in my work, at least in recent times. So, I focused on the ancient part of the poem and chose the piece above, Dusk of Time, which is in a way about the connection of all times. The same cold that drove Pound to swearing when he wrote it, and myself this morning, is that same bitter cold that probably caused the ancients to utter a profanity or two. This painting is not so much about the cold as it is about how our experiences of this world, in the end, are little different than those who lived hundreds and thousands of years before.

Cold is cold. Dark is dark. Alone is alone. 

Then and now.

I thought someone might have put Pound’s verse to music but only a single composer wrote a piece of music and it is not recorded anywhere as far as I can see. Pound’s verse has a kind of Kurt Weill rhythm that reminds me of some Tom Waits music. Here’s a song, God’s Away on Business, that feels like it would work with Pound’s words or in a Kurt Weill Threepenny Opera-type piece. It’s got that bite and spit, just right for swearing away the cold.

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The Welcome Tree–At the West End Gallery

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound. 

 — Herman Melville, White-Jacket: Or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850)

This painting, The Welcome Tree, always captures my attention when I come across it in my files. There’s something in the look and feel of the painting that strikes a very personal chord, one that is both invitingly warm and uneasy.

I gave it its title because it symbolized for me the concept of home, that one place where you are always welcome without conditions or questions. It reminded me of the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son who leaves home and squanders his inheritance.  He finds himself in poverty and returns remorsefully home, expecting to be berated or turned away by his father. Instead, his return is celebrated by his father. The story serves as a lesson in repentance and grace that comes in forgiveness and mercy.

While in the process of naming this painting, I also took a different view, one that viewed this scene as an idealized dream, a destination that could not be reached. At the time, I had been pondering a passage from the 1952 novel, Wise Blood, from Flannery O’Connor. If you have read the book or saw the 1979 film adaptation from John Huston, you know that it is grimly difficult to read or view. Its message is that there is little grace, mercy, or forgiveness in this world, except that which we find or create within ourselves.

This is that passage from Wise Blood: 

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place.

Nothing outside you can give you any place,” he said. “You needn’t look at the sky because it’s not going to open up and show no place behind it. You needn’t to search for any hole in the ground to look through into somewhere else. You can’t go neither forwards nor backwards into your daddy’s time nor your children’s if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got. If there was any Fall, look there, if there was any Redemption, look there, and if you expect any Judgment, look there, because they all three will have to be in your time and your body and where in your time and your body can they be?”

It is obviously a much darker take to associate with this painting, one seemingly completely counter to the parable of the Prodigal Son. But I don’t think their meanings in relation to the painting are all that different.

The painting works for both in my eyes. It is an idealized dream of both, as a welcoming refuge for those who seek hopefully home and as a realization that all we have in the present moment is in ourselves, that we have to make our home in this moment that is the Now.

For me, it’s a more complicated painting than it lets on in a quick view. It is both joyful and sorrowful, containing both an embracing sense of love and an alienated loneliness. I think it is the contrast in this polarity that makes this piece always draw my attention. It certainly always makes my mind reel a bit as it experiences both ends of its spectrum.

Here’s a classic song from Simon and Garfunkel that I surprisingly haven’t played in many, many years here. To me, their Homeward Bound has the same kind of feel that I get from this piece.

And to my way of thinking, that’s a good thing…

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Beguiled– Now at West End Gallery

For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

I’ve been rolling this sentence from The Great Gatsby around in my mind for a while this morning. It makes me think about our capacity for wonder and whether we still have it to the same degree as those Dutch sailors that Fitzgerald was describing as they looked for the first upon the New World.

Have we become jaded? Has the constant infusion of computer-generated imagery and spectacle online dulled our sense of wonder? Are we still able to fully appreciate the truly remarkable or beautiful when it presents itself to us, unannounced?

Can we still be enchanted by the rise and presence of the moon? Can simple beauty, grace, and harmony still take our breath away? Can we still experience a sense of catharsis in the structure of poetry, in the flow of a piece of music or dance, or in the presence of a work of art?

I want to say yes for myself and for you folks reading this but in general I honestly don’t know.

Are we capable of knowing when we have lost that simple sense of wonder?

Again, I don’t know.

Funny how a simple random sentence can unlock such a large of questions.

That might be the answer to the general question posed in this post: simple.

Maybe simple is the antidote to the emotional numbness brought on by constant extravaganza and spectacle? Could be…

I’ll let you ponder that and move on to this week’s Sunday Morning Music. It’s a piece that comes up regularly on the channel I listen to here in the studio. It’s a composition titled Breathtaker from Seattle-based musician SYML. His name is Brian Fennell but goes by Syml which is the Welsh word (his birth parents were both second generation Welsh immigrants) for simple. True to his name this is a seemingly simple piano piece, but it never fails to make me stop and listen when it comes on, no matter what I am doing at the time.

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Watchful Presence— At West End Gallery

Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.

― Hakuin Ekaku

Wise words from Hakuin Ekaku, the 18th century Japanese Zen Buddhist master. You have probably heard of his famed kōan (a short story, statement, or question meant to test a Zen student’s progress) that basically asks: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Heady stuff. But today we’re focusing on two of his thoughts, the one at the top and this gem:

At this moment, is there anything lacking? Nirvana is right here now before our eyes. This place is the lotus land. This body now is the Buddha.

We are creatures of desire and envy. We want constantly what others have, somehow thinking it offers us some intangible that will somehow provide us with lasting happiness. We envy other places, seeing in them qualities that we believe are lacking in those places we now occupy and believing that those places will provide a higher level of happiness or contentment.

But is happiness better found in more things or in far flung places? As Hakuin points out, in this moment, is there anything lacking? What prevents you from knowing what your happiness or what your truth might be?

Those two things–truth and happiness– are interior qualities. No place or thing can provide lasting truth or happiness. The secret is in not straining for these things but in recognizing that they are at hand, available if only you open yourself to them.

You may still want to improve things in your life, acquire things or even physically move. But remember that they are not the way to contentment because it is already here, wherever that might be.

I write these words as a reminder to myself. I am as susceptible as anyone to falling to the lure of thinking that I can find happiness in external things and places. But a simple reminder helps me remember the happiness found in simple things, in recognizing the good things present in the humblest moments.

I thought about just that the other day. I was trudging through the mud outside my studio, a common thing at this wet time of the year. At first, it made me cringe and grump about it for a bit. Then I wondered why it bothered me so. It was part of the place that is a very important piece of my life and simply a product of the ever-changing seasons. Soon it would be dry and the grass would again be growing. I changed my point of view and felt a pang of happiness in that wet moment.

Contentment.

Simple things are not necessarily small things.

And vice versa.

This post first ran in 2016 and again ran about four or so years back. Just felt right this morning. A fine reminder for any time.

I had to chuckle a bit at the part about trudging through the mud. I must have changed my view since this originally ran as I no longer complain about the mud. We now actually call ourselves Mud People, as opposed to the Pavement People.

And do so happily.

Here’s a lovely piece, Spiegel im Spiegel, that has been shared here before from a favorite composer of mine, Arvo Pärt. The title translates from the German as Mirror in the Mirror. Think of an Infinity Mirror where two mirrors facing one another produce an image that is endlessly reflected back upon itself in ever smaller variations until it finally disappears. In some ways, some art serves as an infinity mirror for those who dare to look deeply into that mirror.

This version featuring cellist Alan Black and harpist Andrea Mumm Trammell was playing as I wrote this. Its peaceful tone felt in tune with what this post is trying to get across that I thought it should be shared.

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A Prayer for Relief   1995

No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

–Helen Keller, Helen Keller’s Journal:1936-1937

While I’ve been blocked as I wait and wait, I’ve been looking at some of my older work. Lately I’ve been focusing on some of the pieces from my Exiles series from 1995. Hard to believe it’s been thirty years.

The Exiles series was created in the time just before and after my mom’s death back in November of 1995 and focused on how I saw her suffering in the last several months of her life as cancer ravaged her body. It’s a personal series, one that was important to me in many ways, both personally and as an artist.

This work has taken on new meaning in recent times for me. Not that I am going through nor do I anticipate going through anywhere the same sort of experience of suffering that my mom endured. Or the even the experiences of so many others who are now enduring far more suffering than me.

But I am a little more aware of her experience now and saddened a bit by my lack of this awareness when she was in her final months. I would like to say it was youthful ignorance but I was not a child at that point, in my mid-thirties. I suppose was at that time beginning the journey from my selfish nature of childhood to one of more understanding of our connections and responsibilities during our time here. I see Mom’s suffering now as an important and formative segment of that journey. I hate to put it this way, but her suffering was great gift in a way.

It put things into a wider perspective, allowing me to see that we all suffer in some way sometime and that my suffering is no greater than that of anyone else.

The suffering of anyone should be felt by all.

That’s the hope, of course. If we fail to feel the suffering of others, our journey stalls and we fail to gain what might be the better part of ourselves.

That might be the greatest gift that Mom gave me. And that means a lot because she was a great and generous gift giver.

Here’s a video from about 20 years ago with some of the Exiles series. This film is flawed and doesn’t contain all the series images, but it captures the series perfectly, at least in how I saw it then and see it now. Still makes me emotional…

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Rockwell Kent– Man With Plow woodcut

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Often I think that however much I draw or paint, or however well, I am not an artist as art is generally understood. The abstract is meaningless to me save as a fragment of the whole, which is life itself… It is the ultimate which concerns me, and all physical, all material things are but an expression of it… We are part and parcel of the big plan of things. We are simply instruments recording in different measure our particular portion of the infinite. And what we absorb of it makes for character, and what we give forth, for expression.

-Rockwell Kent

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Running late this morning. Wasn’t going to post anything but remembered revisiting the post below yesterday, one from a couple of years back about a favorite artist Rockwell Kent. So, while I may be feeling too rushed to write anything substantive today, like the catchphrase from the old Jell-O commercial, there’s always room for Kent. I’m also adding a song Let it Be Me from Ray LaMontagne at the bottom. Its vibe just felt right for me this morning. Maybe it works for you as well.

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There are writers, musicians, and artists with which we often feel a kinship. The music, literature, and art they produce feels like it speaks directly to us, that it emanates from a creative wellspring that we share.

For me, one of those artists is Rockwell Kent, whose work I have shared here several times over the years. There is just something in his imagery and in his writings that feels close to my own feelings and perspectives.

For example, his words above could very well describe my own view on our existence and our need for creative expression. Like Kent, I see us as part of some larger plan, the infinite, and that our purpose here is to record and express those things– the emotions and sensory sensations– that make up our particular corner of the mesh of being. This expression of our experience here is meant to makes others aware of our omnipresent connection to the infinite.

Sometimes, it is good to come across Kent’s words and work just as a reminder that there is a purpose to this all. It might be more obvious for some but we all have our purpose here.

And that is good to know, especially on those dark or difficult days when pushing paint onto a canvas seems pointless while the world, our little piece of the infinite, feels as though it is coming apart at the seams.

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Rockwell Kent– Sturrall Donegal Island

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No Mail– 2010

You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place…

— Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

Looking at this painting yesterday in the studio reminded me that I need to let folks know that I will not be sending out my annual Christmas card this year. With all that is going on personally, I haven’t been able to produce a card and will be too busy or preoccupied to do the addressing/mailing part.  Plus, we are in belt-tightening mode which played a small part in this decision.

It wasn’t an easy decision. I have been sending them out for well over twenty years now and I get messages from so many people who say they enjoy and look forward to them each holiday season. So, it feels kind of weird to not be sending them this year. Maybe next year I can resume. Sure hope so.

Also, for those of you who have reciprocated in the past, please refrain as we no longer receive mail at our former PO Box 25. If you feel the desire to do so anyway, please contact me via email for an address.

Looking at this painting also brought back the memories from my childhood that always arise from looking at this piece. The painting, No Mail, is another orphan, one of those pieces that went out into the world 2010 and came back without being able to find a home. I normally try to figure out if there is an apparent flaw in these orphans and sometimes there is something that is just not right in its composition or some other technical aspect that degrades it somehow. But sometimes I notice that these pieces are often pieces that I see as being more personal, more connected with my own life’s narrative. Pieces where I see more in them than might not be apparent to others. This painting falls into this category. It evokes a certain time and feeling so vivid in my memory that it immediately emerges for me when I look at this painting.

I went back in the archives for the blog and found what I had written about this piece several years back. I’d like to share it just to show the connections that some paintings make even though they may not reach out to everyone. It’s very much about the anticipation that comes with waiting, something I am all too acquainted with these days. Waiting is often the bane of a child’s existence. It was for me back then and it remains so, stuck here as I am in the Waiting Place.

[From 2010]

This is a piece that’s been bouncing around my studio for a month or so, one that I call No Mail. It’s a smallish painting on paper, measuring about 8″ by 14″. I haven’t decided whether I will show this one or simply hold on to it. It’s a matter of whether I believe others will see anything in it rather than me wanting to keep it for myself. Maybe it’s that I see a very personal meaning in the piece that is reflected in the title and I can’t decide if it will translate to others.

For me, this painting reminds me of my childhood and the house I consider my childhood home, an old farmhouse that sat by itself with no neighbors in sight. Specifically, this painting reminds me of exact memories I have of trudging to the mailbox as an 8- or 9-year-old in the hot summer sun. There’s a certain dry dustiness from the driveway and the heat is just building in the late morning. It was a lazy time for a child in the country, especially one that didn’t live on a farm. Late July and many weeks to go before school resumes. The excitement of school ending has faded, and the child finds himself spending his days trying to find ways to not be bored into submission.

The trip to the mailbox is always a highlight of the day, filled with the possibility that there might be something in it for me. Something that is addressed only to and for me, a validation that I exist in the outside world and am not stranded on this dry summer island. Usually, the tinge of excitement fades quickly as I open the old metal mailbox and find nothing there for me. But occasionally there is something different, so much so that I recognize it without even seeing the name on the label or envelope.

It’s mine, for me, directed to me. Perhaps it’s my Boy’s Life or the Summer Weekly Reader. I would spend the day then reading them from front to back, reading the stories and checking out the ads in Boy’s Life for new Schwinn bikes.

Oh, those days were so good. The smell of the newly printed pages mingling with the heat and dust of the day to create a cocktail whose aroma I can still recall.

But most days, it was nothing. Just the normal family things– bills, advertisements and magazines. Or nothing at all. The short walk back to the house seemed duller and hotter on those days.

That’s what I see in this piece, even though it doesn’t depict everything I’ve described in any detail. There’s a mood in it that vividly recalls those feelings from an 8- or 9-year-old, one of eager anticipation and one of disappointment that came in those childhood days with no mail.

Sigh.

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Souls Adrift (2019)

The Barbarian is very certain that the exact reproduction in line or colour of a thing seen is beneath him, and that a drunken blur for line, a green sky, a red tree and a purple cow for colour, are the mark of great painting.

The Barbarian hopes — and that is the very mark of him — that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at the pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is forever marvelling that civilisation should have offended him with priests and soldiers.

The Barbarian wonders what strange meaning may lurk in that ancient and solemn truth, ” Sine Auctoritate nulla vita.”

In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been true.

We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid.

We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh, we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.

We permit our jaded intellects to play with drugs of novelty for the fresh sensation they arouse, though we know well there is no good in them, but only wasting at the last.

Yet there is one real interest in watching the Barbarian and one that is profitable.

–Hillaire Belloc, This and That and the Other (1912)

Based on the first paragraph of this passage from his 1912 essay, The Barbarians, author Hillaire Belloc would have no doubt viewed me as being among the Barbarians as he saw them. My red trees and multicolored skies and fields, not to mention my distorted faces, would have certainly put me in that category.

In the essay, Belloc was writing about how traditional culture and Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, was being threatened to be overrun and obliterated by the changes being introduced by modern culture.

That first paragraph is a jab at the modernist art that was quickly blossoming at the time, art that veered wildly from the traditional painting that was once the sole province of Kings and Popes, a world Belloc seemed to pine for. Belloc was known to be a diehard believer in the absolute authority of the Catholic Church and monarchs. Evidence of this comes in the phrase he employs, sine auctoritate nulla vita, which translates as without authority there is no life.

In short, he felt that the world was going to hell in a handbasket as the world was quickly racing towards modernity.

Funny how the context of times changes how we perceive words such as those above from Belloc. I read this passage and all I could see was our current president and his corrupt and cruelly lethal administration.

It describes how he came to power as many just laughed at first at his clownish, childish antics like they were watching a dancing bear in the circus. Harmless and entertaining.

And when he began to exercise power many said it was refreshing to see the traditions and precedents that kept our nation afloat challenged and swept aside.

But it is that second paragraph here that damns him from my perspective. The president is a creature who wants to have his cake and eat it too. He will consume everything he sees. He has no respect for that which brought him to this point and has no concern at replacing in any way those things he consumes or throws on the trash heap.

History and tradition are nothing but a hindrance to his appetites and whims. He doesn’t give a damn about governing or reforming anything for the benefit of the citizens. The citizenry is not there to be helped or guided– they are there to be used and controlled. Any changes or actions are designed to benefit him first and foremost.

He is a barbarian in the truest sense of the word.

And as Belloc writes, there are those large and awful faces who watch him without smiling and laughter. They see in him an opportunity for profit, a way to ride his barbarism to more money and control.

Of course, that’s a fool’s gambit. A barbarian never shares his conquests for more than fleeting moment. Eventually, those who profit from him become fair game for his next conquest.

It’s been a while since I had a good rant. I’ve have been (and am) occupied with other things but I felt like I needed to write this, if only to get it out of my system. There’s no room for it in there at the moment.

One cancer is enough.

Try as I might, it is hard to block out the barbarity and lawlessness (along with an ample serving of stupidity and incompetence, thankfully) that is taking place as institutions are being damaged or destroyed while those who profit from it turn a blind eye.

I know a lot of you don’t want to be reminded, that you see this as a haven of some sort. I do, as well. But even havens are not spared from barbarians. At some point, truths as we know and perceive them, need to be spoken aloud.

I probably won’t serve up another rant for a while. It’s too taxing and I am trying to conserve energy these days. I need to focus on the haven part here. But be warned: I stand ready to speak up should the need arise.

Now, get back on your boat and get the hell off my island…

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We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its roots in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone and we are not alone when we imitate. It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

–Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee: Artist of Life

Never thought I’d be writing about Bruce Lee here. I have never seen a Bruce Lee film nor any other martial arts film, for that matter. Well, there was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but that was outside of the typical kung fu flicks as I knew them. As far as Bruce Lee, I have only seen clips of him in action in his films on the Green Hornet TV show, and in some public demonstrations. They were always impressive. But that was the extent of my knowledge on Bruce Lee. 

I came across the passage above from Lee recently and was intrigued. Was this from an interview or from a film? Doing a bit of research, I discovered that Lee had quite a philosophic streak, one that was readily revealed in his published books during his lifetime (three that mixed martial arts and philosophy), his notebooks (he always carried a small notebook), interviews, and letters. It included his thoughts on subjects pertaining to martial arts, of course, but to a wide range of other subjects. And even when writing about martial arts, especially the mental and philosophical aspects, his observations often held wisdom and meaning that transcended the subject.

Life lessons for everyone. 

His daughter compiled many of his observations in a book Bruce Lee: Artist of Life. And in Lee’s view, living life was an artform in itself thus making each and every one of us an artist. It contained wisdom for life artists of all sorts, not just martial artists or people actively engaged in the creative arts.

When I came across the passage above it struck me that it held a truth that applied to both life and art. A least as far as I was concerned.

I have often felt most uncertain in my work when I feel it is at its most original form, that it can’t be compared easily with the work of others. It is the work that I often feel is my best.

Work that will an enduring legacy–if there is to be one. Work that stands alone.

And while I feel the certainty of my belief in this work, there is never the absolute certitude, as Lee puts it, that I am correct in my belief. Because it originates in me and is not derived from or imitative of the work of others, I feel the need to question its validity even as I know deep inside myself that its strength is its authenticity.

And when this work is not received with the same level of enthusiasm or belief in it that I hold for it, I am thus quick to question if I was wrong in my belief. 

It is then very much as Lee points out, that I begin to believe that what I am — in the form of my work–is what other people say I am.

I begin to trust the opinion and hearsay of others.

I fight this urge now. My avatar, that Red Tree, has stood apart for 25 plus years now and has thus endured. But that doubt still lingers in me, this uncertainty to move away from the other trees of the forest and stand out in the open. 

Lee’s observations make me believe my doubts are not uncommon to many of us in the arts. And in life, in general. While there is some comfort in knowing that others experience this same doubt, it is also is a bit sad that we often defer to the opinions and hearsay from others in how we view and know ourselves. It makes us even more imitative, more willing to simply blend in and less likely to dare to venture out into the open where we can stand alone.

We find ourselves safer and more comfortable in the density and shadows of the forest. But to grow in an unencumbered way we have to sometimes seek open air and sunlight, trusting that we are strong enough to stand alone.

Ther’s a lot more that could be said at this point, but I am going to leave it here for now. Here’s s favorite song that I play every couple of years. It’s a remake from horn player Takuya Kuroda of the 1976 song, Everybody Loves the Sunshine, from jazz artist Roy Ayers. The original is great, but I personally prefer Kuroda’s remake. It seems right for someone wanting to stand out in the sunlight this morning…

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