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Kompromat

Posted in Current Events on December 14, 2016| 1 Comment »

attackIt seems that we may be engaged in a war at this time that the public may never know about.  But not one of bullets and bombs.  No, this is a war that consists of the 1’s and 0’s that make up computer codes.  And while it may not have the sheer terrifying effect of explosions and carnage, it is equally chilling in its own way.

Building may not fall but institutions may crumble.

People may not lose their lives but may lose their faith and hope.

We might not lose our surface sovereignty but may find unwittingly ourselves serving and aiding a foreign master.

These things seem a little cryptic and maybe a bit hyperbolic but they also seem like logical extensions when you take in all that has been occurring as of late in the way of the Russian hacking of our election.  There was a great piece of journalism in yesterday’s New York Times, The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S., that I urge you to read.  It lays out the facts from this episode in a clear chronology.  It may require some effort on your part but it is well worth the read.

The next weeks and months may be among the most remarkable we have ever encountered.  And I don’t mean that in a particularly good way.

There well may be a response in the near future.  As stated in the article: An American counterstrike, said Michael Morrell, the former deputy director of the CIA under Mr. Obama, has “got to be overt. It needs to be seen.”

I don’t think anyone knows how this plays out and I am a bit afraid to find out.

Oh, the title of this post refers to Kompromat, a Russian term for  compromising materials about a politician or other public figure. Such materials can be used to create negative publicity, for blackmail, or for ensuring loyalty.  It may be a word that we will find ourselves being all too familiar with in the near future given the fact that that Republican accounts were also hacked and our incoming administration seems to have a much more pro-Russian flavor.

Read into that what you will.  But read the NY Times article first.

 

 

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Mugs Pugs Thugs

Posted in Current Events, Video, tagged , , , , , on December 10, 2016| 4 Comments »

harvey-korman-as-hedleylamarrI read this week that that Rex Tillerson, the president and CEO of Exxon Mobil who considers himself close to Putin, is at the top of the list as a potential Secretary of State in the Trump Administration.

Given the picks that Trump has made thus far, it makes perfect sense.

It’s not pay-to-play here.  It is actually pay-to-make-policy.

Nobody thought that when Donald Trump said he would not be appointing lobbyists to his cabinet it meant that he was simply cutting out the middle man. Why hire the spokesman when you can get  the real thing– the people who benefit most from the work of their lobbyists?

With each new pick, his chosen group has taken on an almost comic book feel.  Each departmental choice seems designed to pick the person that poses the most peril to the goals and purpose of that department.

It’s absurdity at the highest level.

Every pick makes me think that Trump sees himself as Hedley Lamarr, played by Harvey Korman, in the movie Blazing Saddles.  Below is the scene that brings this to mind.  Like Trump, Hedley is looking for some people to do some work for him. The title of this post is from this clip, in case you were wondering.

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The Dark Work/Redux

Posted in Current Events, Early Paintings, tagged , , on November 29, 2016| 1 Comment »

I wasn’t planning on featuring another older blog post.   But in recent days I have realized that some of the struggles I am going through in the studio are very similar to those I experienced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in late 2001 and through 2002.  My reaction to those attacks and the the current state of the country has been very similar.  

But there are differences between now and then.  How these will come out in the work is still to be seen.  It seemed in 2001 our angst was a matter of simple light and dark.  Right and wrong.  But the situation now is much different.  It is almost Kafkaesque in its absurdity.  Truth has become a matter of perception and belief rather than factual evidence.  We are no longer facing a darkness from some outside force.  

Instead we find ourselves in a tangle of lies, disinformation and misinformation.  Deeply divided visions for our future.  A giant Gordian knot of our own darkness.  And like the Gordian knot, the solution to undoing this tangle may come from an unlikely person or source.  A unique strategy that involves thinking outside of the box.  Or the stroke of a sword.

While I have yet to act on this impulse, I am seeing my coming work,  much like I did in 2001, in darker tones.  Deeper shadows.  And like that earlier “dark work” the focus and strength of the work will not be found in the oppressive nature of the darkness.  No, it’s strength will hopefully arise from the hope found in the light that will be there.

And there will be light.

This is from back in 2008:  

____________________

A Journey BeginsMy work had a dramatic change for a while in the months after 9/11.  Like everyone, my worldview shifted that day and this was reflected in my work.   It became darker in appearance and tone,  a bit more ominous in feel.   A lot of this had to do, technically, with the way the pieces were painted.  I was using a dark base and adding color in layers on top of this base, slowly building up my surface.  Much like painting on black velvet.  Normally I start with a white base and add layers of colors, taking away color as needed to achieve a desire effect.  As I pulled paint off the surface, the light base would come through and give the picture plane a glowing presence.  My normal technique is basically a “reductive” style whereas this new work in 2002 was “additive”.

Being untrained, these are terms I’ve adopted to sort of describe what I see as my technique.  They work for me.

Night TranceThis new work was not nearly so optimistic in feeling as my previous work.  People were a bit slower to embrace it and I wasn’t surprised at a time when our nation was still reeling.  But it was a true expression of how I felt at that time and I remember my time at the easel with these pieces as being very trance-like.  I would start a piece and have a hard time stopping. A virtual intoxication of color.  Or maybe more of a refuge in the scenes.  I don’t know.

Since the public was a bit more lukewarm to this group , which the galleries call “the dark work”, I have several of these pieces still and I am still both excited and calmed when I look at them.  They are rich and bold and very still in nature.  They may be dark but I still think there is hope in these paintings but it’s a wary type of hope.

And in the end, hope is hope…

In the Flow

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100 Days, 100 Nights

Posted in Current Events, tagged on November 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

sharon-jones-photo-credit_jacob-blickenstaff100 days, 100 nights, to know a man’s heart/
And a little more, before, he knows his own

************

Lost in the hubbub of the news this past week was the passing this week of soul singer Sharon Jones at the age of 60 from pancreatic cancer.  Releasing her first record when  she was 40 years old, she made an abbreviated but very bright arc with her career.  Backed by the Dap-Kings, Jones had a truly soulful voice, one that will be missed.

Looking for something of hers to play for this week’s Sunday Morning Music, I thought that one of her biggest hits would be appropriate for the times in which we are living.  It’s 100 Days, 100 Nights.

It’s a powerful song with a simple premise, as the lyrics at the top attest– a person shows their true self in a relatively short time.  I think most of us would agree to that.  I thought this really applied to the early days of the president-elect’s transition.  He has staffed his transition team and pick cabinet members that are beginning to show his true heart.

And it ain’t that different from the heart he showed us on the campaign trail, folks.  Did you really expect him to change?

He’s chosen primarily white men who have long histories of racist, misogynistic, nationalistic, xenophobic and homophobic words and actions. These are not men whose positions have evolved on these things.  They are there to put Trump’s words into action.  He told us who he was on the trail and he’s sticking to it now.

There are many of you out there who say that your vote for him was not a vote for those beliefs, that they are not yours, that you are not racist or homophobic or xenophobic.  I take you at your word and know for a fact that many of you are not those things.  But you must realize that your vote was a tacit endorsement of all those things right down to the nastiest little dig.  You chose and found acceptable the entire candidate who proudly wore those badges and when he follows up on doing the things that he said he would do, even the ones you thought were not to your liking, those actions belong to you.

And when you say that if he tries to strip away our rights you will stand with us, I need to know at what point do you step forward to protest?  There were plenty of Germans in the 1930’s who were not Nazis and didn’t hold any of the racist beliefs of the party.  But they also didn’t step up in protest and went along with the crowd.  They became the crowd and soon there was no place for protest, no one willing to hear a voice in dissent.  And we all know how that ended.

One of the scariest things I’ve read in the last few days was an article that stated two leading economists have stated that Trump’s economic plan could succeed in a big way.  I am not scared of his success, it’s just that under this scenario it would be an explosive growth that would be very short term and very, very costly in the longer run, perhaps four or five years.  The deficits would explode and it would all end with a huge crash in our economy, one perhaps rivaling or even exceeding the levels of the Great Depression.

That’s Depression with a D.

That in itself is scary.  But the part that truly alarms me is that in the time of this short term growth, say four years, Trump would gain popularity and wider acceptance.  The economic growth would distract the attention of the wider population from the fundamental changes to our society he would be enacting.   When our pocketbook is doing well we don’t want to pay attention to how the rights of others might be faring, the vast corruption that may be taking place, how the environment might be suffering or that our first amendment rights may be eroding.  And possibly so much more.

Our distraction will be our undoing.

And the president-elect is a master of distraction and diversion.

So while we usually judge a presidency by its first 100 days, I think we can begin Trump’s from the moment they declared him the winner of this election.  We’ll soon know his heart.  Sing it, Sharon.  Have a good day.

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It’s Not What You See… /Redux

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , , on November 19, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday I wrote about how the truth, particularly as it applies to the news, has become a subjective item.  It seems to be more about how we feel about something rather than what the facts provide. This in turn allows falsehoods to become accepted as truth in the eyes of some despite all evidence to the contrary.  It’s an unfortunate scenario that may have already affected us  and may create awful consequences at some point in the all too near future.

But you can’t judge the facts like you’re judging a piece of art.  The facts should not be affected by how you feel about them or whether you like or dislike them.  They stand as they are.  Can you imagine being innocent and on trial?  All of the evidence and testimony proves your innocence but you are convicted because the jury felt that you were nonetheless found guilty.  The jury just didn’t like something about you.

Unfortunately, that’s not that far-fetched an analogy.  

I thought I’d run the post below from a few years back that talks about how the emotional subjectivity is appropriate in art, where your feeling is as important as the facts.

Painting is a blind man’s profession.  He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.

–Pablo Picasso

********************

I love this quote from Picasso.  I think that is what all art really is– an expression of  feeling.  Emotion.  I know my best work, or at least the work that I feel is most directly connected to who I truly am as a human being, is always focused on expressing emotion rather than depicting any one place or person or thing.  At its best, the  piece as a whole becomes a vehicle for expression and the subject is merely a focal point in this expression.  The subject matter becomes irrelevant beyond that.  It could be a the most innocuous object,  a chair or a tree in my case.  It doesn’t  really matter because the painting’s emotion is carried by the painting as a whole-  the colors, the texture, the linework, the brushstrokes, etc.

In other words, it’s not what you see but what you feel.

I think many of  Vincent Van Gogh‘s works are amazing example of this.  They are so filled with emotion that you often don’t even realize how mundane the subject matter really is until you step back to analyze it for a moment.  I’ve described here before what an incredible feeling it was to see one of his paintings  for the first time, how it seemed to vibrate with feeling, seeming almost alive on the wall.

It was a vase of irises.

A few flowers in a pot. A floral arrangement.  How many hundreds of thousands of such paintings have been created just like that?  But this Van Gogh painting resonates not because of the subject matter, not because of precise depiction of the flowers or the vase.  No, it was a deep expression of his emotion, his wonder at the world he inhabited, inside and out.

I also see this in a lot of music.  It’s not the subject but the way the song is expressed.  How many times have we heard overwrought , schmaltzy ballads that try to create overt emotion but never seem to pull it off?  Then you hear someone interpret a simple song with deep and direct emotion  and the song soars powerfully.  I often use Johnny Cash‘s last recordings, in the last years  and months before his death, as evidence of this.  Many were his  interpretations of well known songs and his voice had, by that time, lost much of the power of his earlier days.  But the emotion, the wonder, in his delivery was palpable.  Moving.

Likewise, here’s Chet Baker from just a few months before his death.  He, too, had lost the power and grace of youth due to a life scarred by the hardship of drug abuse and violence.  But the expression is raw and real.  It makes this interpretation of  Little Girl Blue stand out for me.

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Living in a Post-Truth World?

Posted in Current Events on November 18, 2016| 7 Comments »

post-truth-bannerI work in a very subjective field.  Art allows you to take what is before you and interpret it through your own personal preferences and feelings.  You and I can take in a work of art and come away with very different responses to it.  You might hate it and I might like it very much.  Or vice versa.  Both of us are having the appropriate responses for ourselves. Your response is not made wrong by my response and vice versa.

It’s subjective.  It’s simply what we feel about that particular thing. There is no absolute right or wrong.  Works for art and pizza toppings.

But facts are objective, not subjective.  The facts simply are what they are.  Our feelings do not make the facts right or wrong.

That last sentence in itself should be a fact but that is no longer the case.  We are living in a post-truth world, my friends.  We are now free to believe what we want to believe to be true.

Fake news stories have displaced facts as our main source of information.

And you know that’s true because you’ve seen the stories.  Maybe even believed some of them because they reinforced your own beliefs and narrative.  How many of you read about Planned Parenthood or George Soros paying Trump protesters $18 an hour/$3500 week and busing them in fleets to sites?  How about Pope Francis endorsing Trump for president?  Or the stories that Trump won both the electoral and popular vote? Or that President Obama is signing an executive order that would invalidate the election?

Or this one:  FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE.

All are fake news stories.  And these examples are but a tiny sample.

In an article on the Business Insider site :  According to data from a Facebook-monitoring tool cited by BuzzFeed, the top 20 fake news stories collectively got more engagements — shares, likes, and comments — than 20 factually accurate news stories shared by mainstream news outlets.

Fake news has become a thriving cottage industry.  The more outlandish the story, the more clicks and higher income for the perpetrator.  In a story in the Washington Post, Paul Horner, a renowned fake news creator talks about some of the stories he created during the presidential campaign.  Some had such wild claims about Clinton that he believed they would be quickly debunked and those who ran with them would be exposed and embarrassed. But it turns out he overestimated their desire for truth and their willingness to look beyond the headlines.

A couple of key quotes from the article:

Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it.

I thought they’d fact-check it, and it’d make them look worse. I mean that’s how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it’s false, then they look like idiots. But Trump supporters — they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything! Now he’s in the White House. Looking back, instead of hurting the campaign, I think I helped it. And that feels [bad].

Well, the joke is on us all.  We have lost sight of the objective truth and facts which once served as a moral compass.

We are now dealing with subjective feeling, something that can be easily influenced by a skilled manipulator.  Believe me– and beware of anyone using that phrase!— I know this to be fact.  My job for many years now has been to manipulate material into something that can be felt.

Answers?  I wish I knew.   You can’t easily change a deeply reinforced feeling or belief even when it based on a non-factual basis.  I urge you all to read beyond the headlines.  Learn to research.  Do not easily accept that thing which seems too good to be true, especially when it fits your own belief.  Check it out thoroughly.

But be objective first.  Leave the subjective for things like paintings and music or pizza toppings.

 

 

 

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Don’t Let Me Down

Posted in Current Events, Music, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 6, 2016| Leave a Comment »

change_-masp-fotolia-com_-640x229I hear all the time that this election is about bringing change to our country. While that sounds pretty good for some folks, especially those who feel like they’ve somehow ended up with the short end of the stick, I want to speak a word of caution:

Be careful what you wish for.

You may get something in the bargain that you could never foresee and find yourself looking back at these past few years with fond recollections and a bit of nostalgia.

First of all, what is so absolutely awful that we need to change everything? Where is this hellscape that America has become? You know, the one Donald Trump so often points to in his rants on the campaign trail, the one where you get shot the moment you set foot out in the street?  I live in an area that is not booming economically and has one of the higher crime rates in NY state but it certainly doesn’t feel  much different than it did in decades past.

Despite the claims and misrepresentations of Donald Trump, violent crime and murder are at the lowest rates since the early 1960’s.

The stock market in the month or so after Barack Obama came into office was down to around 6500.  It now stands at over 18000.  If you have a 401k for your retirement, your investments have no doubt grown appreciably.

Unemployment was around 10%.  It is now under 5% and real wages are actually rising.  The demand for labor is now exceeding supply.  Plain and simple: We don’t have the people needed to fill the good jobs that are open now.  Even in my area with an economy that often underperforms on a state and national level, a large CVS warehouse/distribution center has turned to running television ads looking for 60 new employees with starting wages from $12-15/hour.  You would think there would be lines of people waiting to fill these jobs.

Interest rates are still near historic lows and the housing market is strengthening as we move away from the horror story of the Great Recession.

Gas prices have remained relatively low and we are closer to energy independence than ever before.  The USA is the largest producer of oil in the world and we are adding huge chunks of solar and wind capacity every year.

More people have health insurance than ever before with fewer people with chronic conditions being denied coverage or being forced into medical bankruptcies.  You’re probably thinking about the reported rate increases at this point.  Let me tell you, being self-employed, I have been buying my own health insurance for many years now and long before the ACA, rate increases such as these were the norm.  Obamacare or not, you are going to pay a steep price for health insurance until there is some sort of comprehensive reform that encompasses the whole of the medical, health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

There are many other ways in which we are not doing so badly after all despite what Fox News tells us.  Perhaps we don’t need to burn the whole thing down after all.  Maybe we need to affect change in our own perceptions of the world and our reactions to it.  Say , for instance, that we looked at the positive job growth that has been taking place for the past 80 months or so as a good thing, something to build on, instead of perceiving it through partisan goggles as just not being good enough.

Maybe if we stop giving in to fears and those who try to play on them, those who try to push wedges between us.  Maybe if we pay a little more attention to the world outside our little spheres of self, we would see beyond partisan opinion and see truth wherever it might be in whatever form it might come.

The general situation of this country has been much, much worse in my lifetime. Okay, there are problems in this country that have to be addressed.  There always have been and there always will be problems.  To think otherwise is foolish.  But there is nothing so terrible that we can’t figure it out if we work together.

That has always been our answer as a nation when faced with adversity in the past– we work past the obstacle before us and on to the next.

And that is why, despite what conservatives might claim, we are a progressive nation.  We have never settled for what might be good enough in the present.  We always strive for better.  We only look back in time for guidance in moving forward– not as a place to which we can return.

So, don’t let me down– get out there and vote.  Vote for a future that takes what we have built as a nation and moves forward. Please don’t vote for stagnancy and obstruction. Vote for people that want to help us all move ahead, that don’t want to return to a past that is long gone because of a fear of the future.

The future is what we make it.

Okay, for this Sunday’s musical selection I have a Beatles double-header.  First, there is Don’t Let Me Down followed by Revolution.  Have a great Sunday and when you’re listening to Revolution, remember: Be careful what you wish for.


 

 

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A Series For the History Books

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, tagged on November 3, 2016| 2 Comments »

chicago_cubsWow– what a way to end a drought!

While I was rooting for the Cleveland Indians, I was thrilled to see the Chicago Cubs end over a century of futility as baseball’s lovable losers with their victory last night in the deciding seventh game of the World Series.

It was dramatic from the very first at-bat as the Cubs’ first hitter slammed a home run to set off the festivities.  The Cubs took a strong lead but the Indians fought back then tied the game in the 8th inning with a line drive home run that looked to set the Cubs back on their heels.  You could see the anxiety on their fans’ faces in the stands as it seemed as though the curse might rise up and bite them yet again.  It was a feeling they knew all too well.

But they persisted and fought to take the lead in the 10th inning.  They held on and the weight of a century of coming up short in every way for this team was lifted off the shoulders of the Chicago Cubs.

It was 1908–108 years– since they last felt this thrill.  Think about that.  108 years.  Multiple generations of Cubs fans came and went without seeing them win.

In 1908 the first Ford Model T rolled off the first auto assembly line in October.

In 1908 we were still a decade from the World War I and Communism had not yet overtaken Russia as Czar Nicholas II still ruled that country.

In 1908 the Wild West era was still alive in America.  Buffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Annie Oakley and Geronimo were all alive.  Harriet Tubman was still alive (in nearby Auburn, NY!) when the Cubs last won the series.

In 1908 there was no television, movies were relatively new and silent, radio had yet to move into the home and telephones were just taking hold in homes.  The computer and the internet were generations away from even being imagined by early sci-fi writers.

In 1908 there was no NFL and NBA.  And in baseball, it was still nearly forty years away from the time when the first black man, Jackie Robinson, would be allowed to play in the major leagues.

In 1908 penicillin was still 20 years from being discovered.  In 1908 if you had any number of  medical conditions you were in pretty bad shape because cures, preventatives and treatments for them had yet to be developed– tuberculosis, polio, diabetes, typhus, malaria and on and on.  Vitamin D had yet to be discovered!

In 1908 Mark Twain, Tolstoy and Kipling were still alive.  So were Claude Monet, Degas and Renoir.

In 1908 Teddy Roosevelt was the president.  Mount Rushmore, featuring his face, was decades from being finished in 1941.

In 1908 Hillary Clinton could theoretically run for president but would not be able to cast a vote for herself for another 12 years.

Think about how much the world has changed since the last World Series banner flew for the Cubs.  The idea that fans of that team held on to hope for that long is amazing.  Next year’s spring training and season will be unlike any they have ever felt.  I hope they can truly savor it.

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In Heaven Now…/ Redux

Posted in Advice, Current Events, Favorite Things, Music, Quote, tagged , , , , , , on September 20, 2016| 2 Comments »

Even though this post only ran last August, I thought it was worth replaying, if only to remind us to maintain some semblance of civility and sanity in this bitter election season.  I was reminded of this post because the painting featured in it, Raised Up, went with me to the Principle Gallery for my talk there this past Saturday.  It’s a piece that I like very much as is the song at the end from John Prine.  Hope you’ll enjoy them as well…

GC Myers- Raised Up

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.

—Jack Kerouac

****************

I am not sure what to do with these words from Jack Kerouac but I do like them and think they deserve to be passed along.  I am a firm believer of kindness in all forms and believe that it is a pathway to a better life here in this world.

When I was waiting tables I found that my own attitude and demeanor often dictated how others responded to me.  If I smiled and acted congenially, more often than not the person I was dealing with responded in the same manner.  We are reactionary creatures and we instinctively respond according to the tone we encounter– rudeness with rudeness and anger with anger.

And kindness with kindness.

It’s our choice.  If we can fight against our reactionary nature and choose to act and react with kindness, we can shape our world and then perhaps realize that a form of heaven might be within our grasp.

I have never had the faith or certainty of those who believe that there is an actual heaven waiting beyond this world.  I would like to but I just don’t have it within me.  So, for me, if there is to be a heaven it is something to be sought in the here and now.  By that, I mean creating an environment that is honest, kind and gentle.  A life that is peaceful and quiet–that would be heaven to me.

So, when you’re out there today and face rudeness and anger, make the choice to react in a gentler manner and be kind.  Your world might be one small step closer to heaven.

This quote reminded me of a song from one of my favorites, John Prine.  The title pretty much sums it up: He Was In Heaven Before He Died.

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Bridge Over Troubled Water

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , , , , , , on September 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »

bridge_over_troubled_water_by_aethyrdSeptember 11.  I don’t want to dwell too much on this date.

That day has already taken so much from us that to dwell on it gives it too much power over us, keeping us tied to a moment that is becoming more and more distant.

No, I will never forget that day or this date but it must be as a memory of the departed and not as a source of fear or anger for that moment.  We can not remain in that past.  The world moves on and we must go with it.

I thought that for today I would share a song that is synonymous with unity and coming to the comfort of others, Bridge Over Troubled Water.  There are so many great versions of this song, from original by Simon and Garfunkel to the powerful Aretha Franklin and earthy Johnny Cash covers, that it was hard to choose one.  But this version from Roberta Flack is so delicately powerful and soulful that it sometimes seems like a different song when I hear it.  Just a lovely performance of a great song.

Have  a good day.

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