Redtree Times

Pondering Blue- At West End Gallery

How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.

–William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)

I think it’s been about three months since I missed a day with this blog thing. Even on the days when I share an older post, I usually spend too much time in editing the old post, correcting the sometimes many missed grammatical and punctuation errors in the original and adding or subtracting content.

It verges on compulsion at this point.

And this compulsion appears to be in hyper-drive in recent months. Not only am I posting more, but they seem to be much longer, I didn’t really notice at first, but it recently became more obvious, even to my often-oblivious self, that there seems to be a progression in the length and frequency of the posts.

I had to ask myself if this was just a reaction to the recognition of my own mortality. Was my own endpoint appearing much closer on the horizon now? Was this making me furiously produce something– words, images, thoughts, songs, whatever– that would mark and, in some way, extend my time here, like a pine tree under stress producing more pinecones?

I have probably written some of this here before. I tend to overwrite, overtalk, over explain when I am in a state of anxiety so there’s a good chance that some of this has come up over the nearly 18 years I have been doing this blog.

When I think about how long I have been doing this blog and how it feels like its volume has increased in recent times, I have to ask myself: Does it have any meaning or serve any real purpose outside of temporarily quelling my anxieties?

Does it authentically express anything or is it merely empty words, images, and sounds pointlessly filling a void?

I probably shouldn’t use the word authentically. Few, if any, of my thoughts and ideas and even my work are totally original. They are all built on a foundation created by those thinkers and artists and writers who came before me. I am just a regurgitator, a synthesizer, who absorbs as much as will fit in the much too limited space of my mind then tries to put it into some order that makes sense to me, outwardly re-expressing it in my work and words.

My only authenticity comes the voice with which I express this synthesization.

And even that may have traces of mimicry in it to some.

The only c0nsolation I take from this is that this holds true for all artists, but for those rare geniuses who change our way of seeing, hearing, and thinking in ways that border on the unearthly.

I knew from an early age that I was not among that group. I knew that the best I could do was find a vehicle for expression. Even then, though I felt a compulsion to have my say and make my voice be heard, I wasn’t certain of what I wanted or needed to say.

And that made me ask myself yet another question: Is expression without meaning even expression at all? Without meaning, is it not just pointless sound that fills the void of time and keeps us from recognizing both the true sounds we are meant to hear and the necessary silences?

Of course, I don’t know answers to any of these questions. Do I ever? Hell, I don’t even know why I am writing this this morning, outside of the fact that I truly felt a need to say this at this moment.

I want to believe there is meaning and purpose in this or in my work, but I cannot do with any degree of certainty. It might just be another mass of pinecones being produced as the result a stressful winter, hoping that one will find fertile ground to perpetuate my life and line.

Or this might be just the moan of this pine tree in the winds of time.

Amen.

Here’s a song that I have shared here before. See? Never original and usually repetitive. Just kidding. Here’s  the jazz standard Born to Be Blue, written by Mel Torme in 1946. It’s been performed by scores of singers over the years but it became a signature piece for the late Chet Baker. The version I am sharing below highlights his vocals rather than his horn work and features great piano playing from Bobby Scott. Good stuff to hear on a rainy, dark morning.

Before I push you out the door and lock it behind you, let me point out that even though I am featuring a blue painting, a blue song, and a rather introspective (probably too much so) post, I am not actually blue myself right now.

More gray/green, I think.

Sometimes you just wonder about things, don’t you?