But the principal failing occurred in the sailing, And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed, Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East, That the ship would not travel due West!
–Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark (1876)
I think the takeaway from this new small painting for me is that we sometimes find ourselves sailing on seas that don’t make sense.
The bearings that once guided our navigation have changed in ways that confuse us. The winds blow and the waves break in ways we have never seen before and don’t quite understand. Where there was one moon and recognizable constellations by which we could set a course, we find ourselves under a starless sky with six moons, some rising, some falling, some moving sideways.
And a familiar shoreline is nowhere to be found. And the only map we have is like the Bellman’s map in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark— a blank sheet of paper!
Lost sailors on strange seas with the only things we have at hand are ourselves, our imagination, a bit of courage, and the willpower to survive.
A dire situation, indeed. But we are still afloat and our sails intact. That is job one. We can do this.
Now that is my reading of this piece this morning at this particular moment in history. I have looked at this piece many times since I completed it a few weeks ago and saw it in more whimsical terms. Less ominous and less fraught with peril. But either way, as a frightening allegory or as a flight of fancy, it satisfies me greatly. And that’s all I can ask of my work.
This piece is 8″ by 8′ on panel and is now at the West End Gallery in Corning. It will be included in their 31st annual Little Gems exhibit that opens February 7. The show is going up on the walls beginning today if you would like to stop in for a preview.
Here’s a song that leans heavily to the whimsical interpretation of this painting. It’s a version of a favorite Little Feat song, Sailin’ Shoes, performed by mandolinist Sam Bush, who is a big kahuna in the world of progressive bluegrass. Always good stuff and a good take on this song.
Now, to which moon do I set my course? There’s a snark out there somewhere to be found, for sure.
“In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”
Came out the door this morning and was met with -7°. Everything creaks differently at those temperatures, me included. I think part of my brain froze on the walk over to the studio so, instead of fumbling with that, I thought I’d share a post from 2019 that has been getting a lot of views here recently. The poem from Milosz is powerful and seems timely, especially that third stanza.
Struggle echoes and history rhymes…
I also added a song at the bottom, It Makes No Difference, from the Band. Their last living member, Garth Hudson, died yesterday at age 87. Hard to believe they are all gone.
But on the day the world ends their music will no doubt play on.
[From 2019]
I found that these intriguing words from the late Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz that came from his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. But while researching this quote, I came across this poem that really spoke to me. I thought I would share this as well. It was written in Warsaw, Poland in 1944 in the midst of the Nazi’s destruction of that city.
Basically, he is saying that though the world might seem to be in chaotic and deadly turmoil, that some will see that the world as they knew it is obviously ending, there are those who will not notice. The sun is shining as it always does and the moon will rise soon after as it, too, always does. Birds sing and fish swim as they always do. People go about their days, working and playing, as they always do.
How can this be the end of the world if such things go on unaffected? How can atrocity exist side-by-side with the mundane?
But the end he may be describing may not be the actual end of the world, though for some it surely does. The world is always changing sometimes in small ways and sometimes in large swipes. Every change means the end of one world and the beginning of another. Perhaps, while he is surely pointing to an actual ending of worlds for his neighbors in WW II Warsaw, he is also referencing a symbolic ending to worlds of innocence, of worlds of gentleness, replaced with worlds of violence and treachery.
I don’t know for sure but that is how I am reading it. Take a look and decide for yourself.
**************************
A Song on the End of the World
On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net. Happy porpoises jump in the sea, By the rainspout young sparrows are playing And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas, A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn, Vegetable peddlers shout in the street And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island, The voice of a violin lasts in the air And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder Are disappointed. And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps Do not believe it is happening now. As long as the sun and the moon are above, As long as the bumblebee visits a rose, As long as rosy infants are born No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be.
The first vows exchanged by two beings of flesh and blood was at the foot of a rock that was crumbling into dust; they took as witness for their constancy a sky that is not the same for a single instant; everything changed in them and around them, and they believed their hearts free of vicissitudes. O children! always children!
–Denis Diderot, Jacques le Fataliste (1796)
This is a new piece from a group of small paintings that are headed to the West End Gallery for its annual Little Gems exhibit of small works. It was one of the first pieces I worked on for this new group. I wanted to play with color and form and silhouette.
I add silhouette because it is a big part of perception. That really becomes apparent the longer I live in the woods. Looking through the trees of the forest, especially this time of the year (winter– -4° this morning!) when the underbrush has died back, the fallen trees create strange dark silhouettes that sometimes make me stop in my tracks. There is a kind of primal response as, for a few moments, my imagination sees them as lurking dark creatures.
But all the time my brain is weighing out things and I quickly deduce from gained knowledge the reality of what I am seeing. It is too big or small or the line that would be the creature’s back is somehow not right. The primal response retreats and I am left to relish that momentary burst of imagined perception. It also makes me wonder how many reports of Bigfoots (or is it Bigfeet?) and other strange creatures have been of something far different than what those witnesses have claimed they were.
As I say, our response to silhouette is an important aspect of how we interpret things. I think that’s why I am drawn to the silhouettes of city skylines. They tell a story of growth and change. Or during wartime, of destruction and change.
We often see skylines as constants, being able to identify cities by landmark buildings. But around these few identifiable silhouettes, it is anything but constant. It is always changing as new building arise and old one come down. For example, the skylines of NYC from 1985, 2005, and 2025 are not the same.
Change is the only constancy.
That can be said for almost everything, not just skylines. The rates of change may vary but everything changes over time. Some things evolve for the better and we want them to be eternally that way. Some devolve for the worse and we can’t wait for even more change to come soon. Either way, it is our responsibility to adapt to these changes, good or bad, as they come.
Because changes will keep coming.
Like the old Sonny & Cher song from 1967 says, the beat goes on. That’s where I got the title for this Little Gem. There was also something both warm and cool in the colors that reminded me of the song’s famous bassline, suggested and played brilliantly by Carol Kaye. She was part of the famed Wrecking Crew, a group of L.A. session musicians who played on many of the hits of the 1960’s. Leon Russell and Glen Campbell, among many others, were alumni of the Wrecking Crew.
It is reported that Carol Kaye has played bass on an estimated 10,000 recordings in a career that spanned 65 years. I find that incredible. The beat truly does go on.
There’s more I could write about this Little Gem. But I am just going to leave it here with the Sonny & Cher tune.
Night Runner— At Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA
What we have in life that we can count on is who we are and where we come from… For better or worse, that is what we have to sustain us in our endeavors, to buttress us in our darker moments, and to remind us of our identity. Without those things, we are adrift.
–Terry Brook, A Knight of the Word
Feeling adrift this morning, like I’ve lost sight of land and can’t exactly find my bearings. I am hoping that today doesn’t begin a long period of such a feeling for others in this country. Like forty years of drifting on empty seas or wandering aimlessly in the desert.
But as the fantasy writer Terry Brook points out above, when one is adrift in those darker moments all we can count on is who we are and all that this knowledge entails. Who we are is our strength and that must sustain us when we find ourselves adrift.
The question is: Who are we? Or should it be: Who am I?
I can’t say who we are anymore. I thought I knew but the fact remain that I don’t know.
Maybe I never did.
But I do know who I am.
I know what I value, what I respect, what I cherish. I know my strengths and weaknesses, what I am and what I am not. And that can’t be changed because it remains the only compass bearing that I know for certain is true, the only one I trust to guide me when I am adrift.
And this morning, I feel far removed from my homeland. Adrift and in the dark with only who I am to guide me home.
Here’s a favorite song on that theme from Blind Faith with Steve Winwood‘s iconic vocals.
The whole blear world of smoke and twisted steel around my head in a railroad car, and my mind wandering past the rust into futurity: I saw the sun go down in a carnal and primeval world, leaving darkness to cover my railroad train because the other side of the world was waiting for dawn.
—Sunset, Allen Ginsberg, 1949
I have a lot to do this morning as I prep new work for the February Little Gems show at the West End Gallery so I am simply sharing a triad of image, word, and song with a train theme.
I went with a Thomas Hart Benton painting, an Allen Ginsberg poem, and a song from the great Sister Rosetta Tharpe who was a gospel giant and is also considered the godmother of rock and roll.
The Benton painting exudes the power and danger of a runaway train which seems fitting for today. A lot can change here in the next few days as we face a governmental upheaval that comes in with a bitter cold snap that will bring frigid temperatures to much of the country. Seems somewhat symbolic.
The Ginsberg verse has an ominous tone as well, evoking perhaps a trainwreck. Again, symbolism.
And The Sister Rosetta Tharpe song, This Train, offers a bit of redemption in the symbolic form of a train to glory.
There you have it on a cold and gray Sunday morning– fear and loathing along with a just a bit of hope that the train stays on the tracks.
I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
–Zhuang Zhou
I love this famous anecdote above from the great Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zhou, who was born sometime in the 4th century BCE. Like most things worth thinking about, it has no answers for us, only questions. In this case, the question being how we discern what is reality and what is a dream.
I am not going to get into a philosophical argument here this morning on that question. I only mention it because it reminded me of the painting above and the feeling I take away from it.
It is an early piece of mine from thirty years ago, back in 1995, that I call Summerdream. I’ve been looking at it a lot recently as I prep it to be part of the upcoming annual Little Gemsshow at the West End Gallery.
It’s a small piece that has always resonated with me. I love its forms and simplicity. But more than that, it has a sense of solidity in the way it is painted with deep saturated watercolor while still giving me a dreamy, ethereal sense of floating. I like this dichotomy, its appearance of earthly solidity alongside a diaphanous airiness in its felt atmosphere.
Like Zhuang Zhou, I find myself asking which is real and which is the dream here.
I don’t know for sure. Perhaps I am actually a butterfly dreaming that I am a man wondering such a thing? Or maybe both I and my butterfly alter ego are just a tiny part of a dream dreamt by a tiny being that dwells forty dimensions of time and space from where I sit?
Maybe or maybe not. We will most likely never know and that, in itself, might be the only correct answer. We deal with the reality in which we find ourselves at any given moment.
Right now, I am a guy sitting in the dark of a winter morning. That’s my reality right now. But later, I might look at this painting and find myself as a floating butterfly.
And that will be an acceptable reality then.
Here’s a well-worn song, from the Cranberries and the late Dolores O’Riordan, Dreams.
Summer dream is a 5″ by 7″ watercolor on paper, framed at 11″ by 14″. It will be available at the West End Gallery as part of their annual Little Gems show, which opens February 7. This painting and a group of new small paintings will arrive at the gallery later this week. The gallery is currently on a short winter break and will reopen this coming Tuesday, January 21.
And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more drive, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or creativity. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
–C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943)
When I first read this paragraph from C.S. Lewis, I actually felt better that the lack of courage, selflessness, honor, honesty, and self-sacrifice that is openly on display among our leaders was not a new phenomenon, that even in the midst of WW II there were many weak and dishonest leaders. Maybe not so many as our current batch but they were still there.
But then I felt far worse for the same reason. It is disheartening, to say the least, that we always seem to get far less than we expect from the people we choose as our leaders.
But maybe what we end up getting is a more accurate reflection of ourselves.
We say we want to be led by people with those virtues– courage, selflessness, honor, honesty, and self-sacrifice– but when such a person is put before us, we reject them out of hand. We refuse to accept their virtue as real.
Instead, we opt for those who exude dishonesty and selfish corruption, who unendingly spew lies and false accusations that benefit only themselves. People who take credit when none is due and place blame on others when the responsibility is theirs alone. People so weak that they attack the defenseless and wither before those who they see as powerful.
We see these less than honorable people as being more real than those who display virtue.
More like us.
We understand lying. We understand selfishness. We understand evading responsibility. We understand cowardice. We understand cheating and deception.
It’s more real to us.
It’s who we are.
I know that seems like a searing indictment of us as a whole. And maybe it is. But I have to add that there are many, many people of great virtue among us, selfless and fully realized humans who lead courageous and compassionate lives that benefit their families, friends, and their communities. They hold this country together. Unfortunately, they would most likely be destroyed by the toxicity of the money-driven political machine if they ever attempted to extend their sense of virtue to a wider audience.
Which is the point of Lewis’ passage at the top. We expect the best but refuse to accept it and end up with the dregs.
And that is where we are as we head into the last weekend before a new and potentially much darker era begins on Monday. I know it sounds cynical and maybe it is rightfully so. I have been dreading this as inevitable for about 45 years when I first began to witness the inexorable march that brought us to this point. I have never wanted to be more wrong on anything. But I fear I am not.
This is going to be the last diatribe I share on this subject. I will still pay attention and do what I can but want to focus on things that give meaning and hope to people, myself included, here on the blog.
Of course, that could be a lie. That is who we are, after all. And that being the case, maybe we’re getting what we deserve.
Here’s a song from Leonard Cohen, one of his last efforts before his death. I first played it here four years ago but it seems destined for this moment. This is You Want It Darker.
I wrote this about the song before the 2020 election. It applies even more today:
With its ominous bass line and its focus on our mortality mixed with Old Testament imagery, it seems fitting for these times.
One of the words used in the chorus of the song is Hineni, the Hebrew word meaning Here I am. It was the response from Moses to God speaking to him through the burning bush. It was the answer from Abraham to the voice of God who then instructed him to slay his son. And it was the response from Isaiah when he hears the voice of God ask, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” It is generally an indication of faith and total commitment without question while awaiting one’s appointed task.
Here, Cohen seems to be questioning God. He’s not asking the listener if they want it darker. Seeing the way the world has descended into darkness, he is grilling God, almost questioning whether this deepening darkness is somehow the desire of God. There’s an edge of anger when he asks and replies: You want it darker/ We kill the flame.
It’s a powerful song, one that haunted me this past week. It reminds me that we are in for some trying times in the months ahead and that we need to be fully prepared to endure whatever is thrown our way.
Ready to say, with total commitment, Hineni— Here I am.
With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child, he walked along, peacefully, quietly. He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace.
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Welcome back. It’s been about ten or eleven days since I last welcomed you here. Good to be here and good to have you back. I don’t know that I needed a break from this part of what I do but I needed a little extra time to get back in the swing of things on the bigger part of what I do, which is painting.
Did I get back into the swing of things, find a groove?
Hard to say. But I was very productive. More than expected, to be honest. That’s the advantage of getting to work on the small pieces for the Little Gems as a reentry point. Smaller work obviously takes less time to complete than much larger works so rhythm builds quickly as I move from one piece to the next. There’s little time between them to lose the new spark or the new thought. Momentum is easily maintained.
This allows me to examine new spaces as well as new or enhanced takes on the normal themes of my work. Some work takes me forward and some is a reexamination of the past.
Some will surprise you. Hopefully in a good way but maybe not. I might like it but it might not be your cup of tea. And that’s okay. Nobody is required to like anything I do here, though I guess one might wonder why you’re here if that is the case.
Will this momentum or new ideas be carried into the following several months of work? I can’t tell at this point but generally the answer leans toward yes based on past decades of going through this. My own first reaction on this work is strong, creating the excitement that I was seeking so I am hoping it does take hold for me.
That being said, I will be showing this new work in the coming weeks leading up to the February 7th opening of the Little Gems show at the West End Gallery.
The first piece I am showing is an 8″ by 6″ canvas piece titled Completeness. It was one of the first pieces I worked on and, while I am not sure it breaks new ground within the body of my work, it really provided a big jolt of energy for me, doing just what I hoped it might which was to set a pretty high bar for where the work that followed in its wake might go.
I also thought this was good piece to show first since it represented a central theme in my work, which is finding a sense of wholeness within myself. This painting felt whole, as though the broken shards of the sky had been finally reassembled to reflect down on the fully formed and complete Red Tree.
It just felt right.
Here’s a song that kind of goes with this piece. It’s Love You To from the Beatles classic Revolver album. George’s sitar playing links well with the passage from Siddhartha and I could imagine the lyrics resonating with the Red Tree here:
Each day just goes so fast I turn around, it’s passed You don’t get time to hang a sign on me
Love me while you can Before I’m a dead old man
A lifetime is so short A new one can’t be bought But what you’ve got means such a lot to me
Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don’t believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity.
–Anna Quindlen, Loud and Clear
As I hinted yesterday, I am going on a short hiatus from the blog. I don’t know how long it will last, maybe a week or so. Whenever I have taken a break here in the past it usually ends up shorted that I initially intended so I imagine this will be the same.
This isn’t really going to be downtime in the way Anna Quindlen describes above. I have already had an ample amount of downtime but it wasn’t the kind that refreshes. The emphasis recently was more on the down part of downtime.
No, this hiatus is more about reestablishing the better parts of my work habit and getting back into a creative groove, the kind that becomes a motor that propels everything forward.
Besides, I build downtime into my day as a rule. It’s time to idle and think, time to look up things that pique my interest, time spent listening to music or reading, or time just looking out the window or laying on the floor with the cats.
No, this hiatus is not downtime. It’s a return to dedicated work because work is the answer to what ails me. It is the answer to all my questions. And the question to all my answers. It is the alpha and the omega, a beginning and an end.
I always go to a piece of advice that the late artist Chuck Close gave in an interview as advice to young artists:
The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the… work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.
That pretty much describes the motor that work provides for me. Work begets work.
And I am ready to get back to work.
For this Sunday Morning Music, here’s a song that I’ve played here before, Work Song. It was written by the brother of jazz great Cannonball Adderley, who originally performed the song as an upbeat jazz piece. But it has been interpreted by a number of artists over the years, including great performances from Nina Simone and Tennessee Ernie Ford, whose version I played here only six months ago. I don’t like to replay a song so quickly but this version from a little know group called The Big Beats has its own funky feel that separates it a bit, give it a whole different flavor. The singer here is Arlin Harmon. I don’t have a lot of info on either him or the Big Beats though from what I can glean Harmon was a highly regarded performer out in the Northwest in the early 1960’s. This is a solid rocking performance of a great song.
Gets my motor running. And that’s just what the doctor ordered.
I’ll be back in a week or so. Hope you will be back, as well.
Our minds must have relaxation: rested, they will rise up better and keener. Just as we must not force fertile fields (for uninterrupted production will quickly exhaust them), so continual labor will break the power of our minds. They will recover their strength, however, after they have had a little freedom and relaxation.
–Seneca the Younger, On Tranquility of the Mind
Just a reminder that today is the last day to visit the West End Gallery in Corning, NY before they go on a short winter break from January 5 through January 20.
Everyone needs a little break, as Seneca pointed out in the passage above from about two thousand years ago, in order to recharge one’s batteries and regain some vigor. I have kind of been on a hiatus myself for the last couple of months, barely lifting a brush during that time. I had been feeling a bit beaten down and had lost a bit of pep in my step.
Just a feeling of blah. I don’t know if blah itself is a real thing but if you’ve felt it, you know what I mean.
But I believe I am emerging slowly from it. I have just finished some of a group of small pieces for the upcoming Little Gems show that opens on February 7 at the West End Gallery. It was awkward at first, but momentum grew with each small painting. The urge to pick up the brushes and see paint on a surface has returned and seems to grow with each passing day.
It has been very beneficial to me that the Little Gems show has always fallen at this time of the year when I am ebbing low. The small scale of the paintings allows me to work on things that I might otherwise put off, to explore new themes and possibilities. To learn and attempt new things. To sometimes fail then take the lesson learned from failing and make something better.
Though it is work, it is most invigorating, not depleting at all. Like priming a pump.
Or fertilizing a field– maybe that’s the more apt description?
I don’t know about that, but it feels good to feel the giddiness of creating something new again, to feel that there is something ready to come out once again. It has been absent for the last month or two and has been sorely missed. From going through this cycle many times before, I knew it would come eventually. It seemed to take a little longer this year and the wait became excruciating.
But it is close to being back in full and I am excited.
I may be taking a short break here on the blog for the next couple of weeks to more deeply reengage with this newly recovered rhythm. While I was on my short hiatus from painting my work here on the blog continued and it might be that I need a break. Might need to fertilize the field?
Maybe. We’ll see how it goes.
If you get a chance today, stop into the West End Gallery before they go on break. Hope they can fully recharge their batteries.
Here’s an absolute favorite Beatles song. I don’t know when I last shared it but it feels like it needs to go with this post. This is Tomorrow Never Knows.
Redtree Times 