Redtree Times

As In a Dream— At West End Gallery

The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials — in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves. By a happy dispensation of nature, the poet generally possesses the gift of experience in conjunction with that of expression.

–Aldous Huxley, Texts and Pretexts (1932)

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

I love that line.

That is probably because I have lived a relatively small life that, for the most part, hasn’t taken me very far from where I sit right now yet still seem to have an endless vault of stories.

I tend to be a mythologizer. That sounds like I am saying I am a liar, doesn’t it? And while I have been a great liar at points in my life– too many points–here I am not talking about telling lies at all. It is more about seeing the extraordinary in the everyday, seeing stories in those things we so often see and just blindly accept in our desire to get to the next day.

I am sure that most people living in the past, in those times we now see as more mythic than historic, didn’t recognize what was happening around as being out of the ordinary. It took someone to see the uncommon in the moment and express it. To mythologize the ordinary.

This is not always a helpful asset in normal life but fortunately it is of great help in my life as an artist. Art, after all, is about doing just that– seeing the wonder hidden in the ordinary and expressing it in a unique manner and make the viewer or listener or reader feel as though it is somehow their own story. To mythologize it.

Is it lying? I don’t think so. A lie is a lie. It lacks the essence of reality that myths possess. Is there embellishment. Sure, sometimes though not so much as you might think. The weirdness of this world doesn’t require much embellishment.

The bad part is that mythology is often lost to most people. Few people want to hear old stories of people and places that are only of tangential interest to them. I certainly understand that. I am sure I showed little interest to some storied my parents told which I came to realize was a tragic mistake on my part. On the surface they led what appeared to be normal lives. Nothing exciting. But beneath that surface was world of mythology that would soon be lost after they passed on. Fortunately, a few of their stories are part of my mythology now. But most are gone. After they had died, I realized how many questions I wanted to ask them, wanted to goad them into telling the stories that had long stopped trying to tell children who seemed to show no interest.

The same holds true for my grandparents. I was too young when they died to know what amazing myths their lives could render, especially my grandfather who was a professional wrestler and a stage manager in vaudeville in his early life. I found out more stories about him in old newspapers than I was ever told as a child. And I am sure my grandmother who grew up among the lumber camps that her father ran in the Adirondacks of the early 20th century had a world of myths as well to share.

It’s understandable that children or others don’t want to listen to these stories. Our parents and grandparents always seem boring and uncomplicated, hardly the source of myths especially when they are discovering the new world in which they exist. The myths seem irrelevant.

I often still feel the need to tell these stories, but I am becoming more and more tight-lipped as I age. It’s the natural progression of things, I guess. You see eyes glaze over enough and you tend to silence as far as storytelling is concerned.

I still try to paint with those myths in mind, however. Maybe in some small way they will live on after I move on. More so than the stories that inspired them.

Who knows?  Or cares for that matter. There is a world of myth out there waiting to be tapped in each of us. Most people have stories in them that they don’t realize possess great magic and wonder.

This is something that deserves more time and thought than I can give this morning. I’ve already spent way too much time here and I am sure I have made a mishmash of it.

Oh, well, that’s the story of life, isn’t it?

Hey. it’s Sunday Morning and that means music in these parts. Here’s a favorite from the Beatles and their mythic rooftop concert. This is Don’t Let Me Down. I last shared this song here right before the 2016 elections. I felt that I was, to say the least, let down soon after. Hope this works out better this time.

Hey, I can hear that they’re calling for you. If you know what’s good for you, you best git…