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The House Where Nobody Lives

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 8, 2025| 2 Comments »

House of Blues – At Principle Gallery

‘Cause I have all of life’s treasures and they’re fine and they’re goodThey remind me that houses are just made of woodWhat makes a house grand, oh, it ain’t the roof or the doorsIf there’s love in a house, it’s a palace for sureBut without love it ain’t nothin’ but a houseA house where nobody lives

–Tom Waits, The House Where Nobody Lives (1999)

It feels like America in the year 2025– a house without love or joy. Or happiness. Or grace, vision, or humor.

Any of those things that make a house feel lived in.

Those things that make a house a palace of love.

We instead build endless chain-link cages to fill with our hatred and bigotry.

That’s all I will say this morning.

You might not agree. Fine.

Just calling ’em like I see ’em, as the ump behind the plate would say. Just hoping your individual houses are filled with love and laughter.

Here’s the Tom Waits song that made me think this with the full lyrics below.

There’s a house on my block that’s abandoned and cold
The folks moved out of it a long time ago
And they took all their things and they never came back
It looks like it’s haunted with the windows all cracked
Everyone calls it the house
The house where nobody lives

Once it held laughterOnce it held dreams, did they throw it away, did they know what it means?Did someone’s heart breakOr did someone do somebody wrong?

Well, the paint is all cracked, it was peeled off of the woodThe papers were stacked on the porch where I stoodAnd the weeds had grown up just as high as the doorThere were birds in the chimney and an old chest of drawersLooks like no one will ever come backTo the house where nobody lives

Oh, and once it held laughterOnce it held dreams, did they throw it away, did they know what it means?Did someone’s heart breakOr did someone do somebody wrong?

So if you find someoneSomeone to have, someone to hold, don’t trade it for silverOh, don’t trade it for gold‘Cause I have all of life’s treasures and they’re fine and they’re goodThey remind me that houses are just made of woodWhat makes a house grand, oh, it ain’t the roof or the doorsIf there’s love in a house, it’s a palace for sureBut without love it ain’t nothin’ but a houseA house where nobody livesBut without loveIt ain’t nothin’ but a house, a house where nobody lives

–Tom Waits, The House Where Nobody Lives (1999)

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The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Entanglement— Now at Principle Gallery

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

–Dylan Thomas (1933)

This is considered the poem that more or less brought Dylan Thomas to fame as a poet. I read it again recently and was surprised at how well it aligns with the theme of my show, Entanglement, at the Principle Gallery. It basically describes how our timed existence here on this world is simply part of the timeless driving force of the universe. How that in this place made of time, the very force allowed us for our short stay here, the life force that energizes us, ultimately destroys then leaves us to regather with its timeless source.

Not sure that it is something that is easily explained and I am not sure if I was able to adequately convey that message with this show. But since the show ends today, I felt it was worth sharing this morning along with a splendid reading from Thomas’ fellow Welshman Richard Burton. And for good measure, I added a favorite song from a favorite guitarist, Martin Simpson. Last shared here a couple of years back, it’s titled She Slips Away, and was written about the death of his mother, as she moved from time to timelessness.

As does my Entanglement show which ends today. So, if you want to see it, today is your last opportunity to see it in its entirety before it moves into the realm of the timeless.

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Rhythm of the Blues

Posted in Uncategorized on July 6, 2025| 2 Comments »

NIghtFlare– At Principle Gallery

Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;
Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,
He had the passion and the power to roam.

–Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Still a little out of it this morning. For some reason I felt like hearing some Mary Chapin Carpenter. I listened to her music quite a bit back in the 90’s but for some unknown reason it faded from my listening rotation. But every now and then, a song of hers will pop up and I am reminded of what it was in her music that I found so appealing. It’s the same now. She has a beautifully warm and personal style that I find comforting.

Don’t know if the triad of word, image, and song is perfect this morning. But it works for my aching head and that will have to be good enough.

Here’s Mary Chapin Carpenter with her Rhythm of the Blues.

PS-Today and tomorrow are the last days to see my Entanglement show at the Principle Gallery.

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Headed Home/ Entanglement Coming to a Close

Posted in Uncategorized on July 5, 2025| 15 Comments »

Headed Home— At Principle Gallery

If you take Greece apart, in the end you will see remaining to you an olive tree, a vineyard and a ship. Which means: with just so much you can put her back together.

–-Odysseus Elytis, The Little Seafarer (1988)

Still feeling way under the weather. It’s lingered for the past 10 or 11 days and I thought it was passing a few days ago. However, it came back with a vengeance yesterday and this morning. Even so, I feel obligated to remind you that my show, Entanglement, will only be hanging for three more days at the Principle Gallery.

I also realized that I had not yet shared the painting shown above, Headed Home. For me, it represents Odysseus’ epic journey and return to Ithaca. I thought a passage from Greek writer, Odysseus Elytis, who won the 1979 Nobel Prize for Literature, was therefore appropriate. It speaks to the resiliency of people to bounce back from great loss. We need to be reminded of that.

Here’s a slideshow from the Entanglement exhibit. which closes after July 7.

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fourth of july

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 4, 2025| 1 Comment »

States and Nations don’t exist as such. There are only people. Sets of people living in certain areas, having certain allegiances. Nations won’t change their national policies unless and until people change their private policies. All governments, even Hitler’s, even Stalin’s, even Mussolini’s, are representative. To-day’s national behaviour — large-scale projection of today’s individual behaviour. Or rather, to be more accurate, a large-scale projection of the individual’s secret wishes and intentions. For we should all like to behave a good deal worse than our conscience and respect for public opinion allow. One of the great attractions of patriotism — it fulfils our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what ’s more, with a feeling that we ’re profoundly virtuous. Sweet and decorous to murder, lie, torture for the sake of the fatherland.

–Aldous Huxley, The Diary of Anthony Beavis / Eyeless in Gaza (1936)

Fourth of July 2025.

There you go– that’s my acknowledgement of the day. No parade. No blindly patriotic songs playing. No fireworks. No flag waving.

The flags above are from a big box of old damaged and dirty flags I have picked up at our local cemetery over the decades. I have hundreds of these old cheap flags. I don’t know why but I do. I think they say more than the grandest giant flag billowing over a car dealership or in some saccharine AI photo with purple  mountains majesty above the fruited plain.

Maybe that’s just me.

Okay. I am getting out of here quickly today before I say something I might regret. Here’s a song that I think says more about this country than the most chest pounding, flag waving, patriotic nonsense. It is about the hope that we maintain for a better life as well about the way that hopes are quashed. It is both sad and gloriously hopeful. What can be more American than that? This Tracy Chapman and her Fast Car for this fourth of july.

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Wanderlust

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 3, 2025| 3 Comments »

To the Main Road– At Principle Gallery

I knew that I had ample room in which to wander, since science has calculated the diameter of space to be eighty-four thousand million light years, which, when one reflects that light travels at the rate of one hundred eighty-six thousand miles a second, should satisfy the wanderlust of the most inveterate roamer.

–Edgar Rice Burroughs, Pirates of Venus (1932)

Still feeling a bit off kilter and definitely not feeling celebratory in any way for the Fourth of July tomorrow. In fact, I am a little crotchety this morning. Writing that makes me wonder about the origins of the word crotchety. One of the numerous benefits of the instant information of the InterWebs– we won’t go into its equally numerous pitfalls — is that one can answer questions like this within seconds. No more finding and dragging out the dictionary or encyclopedia or whatever reference book you have stacked on your shelves. I accumulated a bunch of compendiums of knowledge, both general and odd facts, over the years that sometimes answered such queries. Not always which meant writing it on a list to be looked up the next time I went to the library. Information moved much slower then and usually by the time I got an answer I had lost interest.

FYI, crotchety is derived from the word crochet which refers to the craft and hook used in it. The term came to represent someone who was hooked by peculiar thoughts, resulting in a brusque, rude attitude towards others.

Yeah, I fall into that category this morning. Crotchety old man shaking my fist at the sky.

Anyway, the theme today is wanderlust. Maybe by the description of searching for info that should be changed to wonderlust. Is that even a word? I guess I will have to take to the InterWebs once more.

While I am doing that, here’s a tune called Wanderlust from the immortal Duke Ellington and sax legend Coleman Hawkins. This came up on my playlist earlier setting this whole fiasco in motion.

Now, either listen or get out. I got things to do. Like I said, I am crotchety this morning and wonderlust  calls…

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Pity the Nation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 2, 2025| 4 Comments »

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

–Pity the Nation, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (after Khalil Gibran) 2007

I leave this here today without image, comment, or music, except to point out that Ferlinghetti took inspiration in 2007 from the Kahlil Gibran poem of the same title, published posthumously after his death in 1931. Both poems clearly speak to their own times as well as this present moment. Here is the Gibran poem:

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
and eats a bread it does not harvest.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.

–Kahlil Gibran, from The Garden of The Prophet (1933)

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Self-Consciousness/ Ray Bradbury

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 1, 2025| 1 Comment »

Betwixt and Between— At Principle Gallery

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things. 

— Ray Bradbury

I ran a post featuring a Ray Bradbury quote the other day which reminded me of another of his quotes and a favorite blog entry from the past that employed the above quote. It’s a refinement of a quote from a 1962 essay, The Queen’s Own Evaders, in which Bradbury wrote about his time in Ireland writing the screenplay for the 1956 John Huston film, Moby Dick.

Never wanting to be a screenwriter, Bradbury adapted only his work for movies or television but made an exception when offered the chance to adapt the Melville classic. He struggled for months and months trying to adapt the novel then one day realized he was being too self-conscious, overthinking every word and element. He began anew and, at the end of an epic eight-hour writing session, finished the script.

The original quote was:

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all. 

Ridding one of self-consciousness was a subject that popped up in many of his essays and interviews over the next 20 years or so as he refined the message. I well understand his view since I feel that I am least self-conscious when I am painting. My paintings are my world much like Bradbury’s world was that of Mars or the October Country or the strange, animated skin of the Illustrated Man.

Bradbury also stated over the years that an artist should not attempt to explain an artwork while it is being created. That’s how I feel about painting, as well. You do it. Then you think about it. As a result, that is why I seldom even begin to think about what the painting is about or what it might be called until it is done or at least well into its process.

Bradbury’s words on creativity are worthwhile for anyone, not just writers or artists. As he said, living is the greatest art of all. Here’s that earlier blog post, last shared here in 2018:

I came across this quote from famed sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury on an online site with quotes on creativity. This struck close to the bone for me as I have proudly not thought for years now. I have long maintained that thinking usually inhibits my work, making it less fluid and rhythmic.

It’s a hard thing to get across because just in the process of doing anything there is a certain amount of thought required, with preliminary ideas and decisions to be made. I think that the lack of thought I am talking about, as I also believe Bradbury refers, is once the process of creating begins. At that point you have to try to free yourself of the conscious and let intuition and reaction take over, those qualities that operate on an instantaneous emotional level.

I can tell instantly when I have let my conscious push its way into my work and have over-thought the whole thing. There’s a clunkiness and dullness in every aspect of it. No flow. No rhythm. No brightness or lightness. Emotionally vacant and awkward. Bradbury’s choice in using the term self-conscious is perfect because I have often been self-conscious in my life and that same uncomfortable awkwardness that comes in those instances translates well to what I see in this over-thought work.

So, what’s the answer? How do you let go of thought, to be less self-conscious?

I think Bradbury hits the nail on the head– you must simply do things. This means trusting your subconscious to find a way through, to give the controls over to instinct.

And how do you do that? I can’t speak for others but for myself it’s a matter of staying in my routine. Painting every day even when it feels like a struggle. Loading a brush with paint and making a mark even when I have no momentum or idea or at hand. Just doing things and not waiting for inspiration.

You don’t wait for inspiration– you create it.

So, stop thinking right now and just start doing things.

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Wearing the Mask

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Finis Terrae (Land’s End) — “Entanglement” Ends July 7,2025

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

–-Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince & Other Tales

I basically believe these words from Wilde. To a point. There is a certain class of folks however who wear a mask to hide behind, to prevent them from telling truth. Usually for duplicitous reasons, to benefit themselves or to avoid responsibility. Certainly not to spare the feelings of others.

But then again, maybe wearing that mask reveals their truth, after all. It exposes their weakness and greed, their contempt for the truth as well as their lack of compassion and unwillingness to even attempt to feel empathy.

You can probably think of somebody like that. Or a whole bunch of them.

Don’t make me put a label on this group this morning. I am still reeling a bit from whatever has ailed me for the past several days and don’t want to get any more aggravated than I am feeling at the moment.

On the broader subject of Wilde’s quote, I have often wondered which is the mask I wear — my actual self or my painting? Which is more likely to tell the truth? Which is real? Or are they now one and the same? I say now because they were once two distinctly different entities, one being decidedly more truthful than the other.

I won’t say which was the more honest being.

If I did, it might well be a lie.

I do hope they’re one and the same.

And I am not just saying that. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Let me finish with song and a reminder that this is the final week to see my Entanglement exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, as it comes down July 7. If this work is my mask, I am proud to wear it.

I think it tells truth, for both me and the work.

Here’s John Lennon and Gimme Some Truth.

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Revitalization

Posted in Uncategorized on June 29, 2025| 8 Comments »

Reunion— At Principle Gallery

“And what, you ask, does writing teach us?

First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.

So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.”

― Ray Bradbury, The October Country

Been under the weather for a few days now but wanted to at least share a song as is the custom here on Sunday Mornings, along with an image and a bit of writing. I chose the Bradbury passage because I feel in need of some revitalization. I also think we can use a reminder that art has a role to play in trying to maintain this broken democracy cannot be overstated.

I think we could all use a little revitalization about now.

A little hope.

A light at the end of the tunnel. Something to move towards.

Here’s a favorite Neil Young song, Helpless, to round out this morning.

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