Redtree Times

Caspar David Friedrich- Monk by the Sea (1808-10)

The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should desist from painting what he sees before him

–Caspar David Friedrich

[5:45 AM] To be honest, I am not going to write anything here today about Caspar David Friedrich, his paintings, or the quote above. I admire his work very much, agree whole-heartedly with his words above, and have particularly loved the painting at the top since the first time I caught a glimpse of an image of it. I would love to see it in person but doubt that I will ever get to Berlin to see it.

While many of my own pieces that work in the same vein were painted before seeing this image, I can still see its compositional and tonal influence in them. Maybe influence is the wrong word. Maybe I find validation. Or maybe it is a familial feeling. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.

I am sharing these things today not because I want to talk about them, though now that I have started I probably should continue.

10:30 AM]

I probably should have continued on that subject. Instead, I went off on a profanity-filled diatribe on that thing who people call president and the multitude of offenses he unleashes on the citizens of this country and nearly every other nation and person around the globe on a daily– no, an hourly– basis. It is 24/7, week after week, month after month, year after year without pause.

To say the least, my point was that I am sick and tired of it.

I couldn’t post it earlier. It was too angry, too raw. I decided I needed to take a pause and reconsider even though it accurately represented my true feelings. In the end,I decided to not share the profanity-laced post. I saw no purpose in it outside of my own exorcism of pent-up anger and frustration. Just writing them for myself went a long way towards that.

In a way I wish I could have shared that post. It was a thing of craftmanship and beauty. If every vulgar word and phrase I used in it were a block of stone, I might have built a cathedral of profanity that might have stood on a hill where it could be seen– and heard– for miles around.

Though I didn’t share that initial post this morning, I am still angry and frustrated. It might emerge again someday soon. After all, the blueprints for that cathedral are still here in my head, of course, and there is no shortage of building blocks.

I was aways a bit too free with my cursing but, for whatever reason, the hormone therapy I am undergoing seems to have opened new avenues of expression and taken away many of the restraints that kept me from throwing around f-words in polite company.

I’m learning to deal with the changes…

This is how I ended that unpublished post. Still seems to fit:

Right now, I am going to try to chill out and imagine myself as that monk standing by that sea with that sky above me. That cool breeze feels pretty darn good on my cheeks.

No music today. Just the silence only being broken by the sound of the waves against the shore. That’s its own music.