Redtree Times

Not every action or emotion however admits of the observance of a due mean. Indeed the very names of some directly imply evil, for instance malice, shamelessness, envy, and, of actions, adultery, theft, murder. All these and similar actions and feelings are blamed as being bad in themselves; it is not the excess or deficiency of them that we blame. It is impossible therefore ever to go right in regard to them – one must always be wrong.

–Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

I heard the protesters loudly chanting “Shame, Shame” yesterday during the disgraceful session yesterday in Tennessee that saw two young black state representatives expelled from the legislature for their participation in a protest against gun violence in the wake of the recent school shooting there. During the protest in question, according to law enforcement, there were no arrests, no violence, no property damage.

The two expelled representatives were Justin Jones and Justin Pearson. Remember those names. They spoke with great passion and eloquence. Both were impressive and are destined to leave their mark on this country. A third participating representative, Gloria Johnson, who was equally impressive, survived the expulsion vote. This was due no doubt, as Johnson pointed out, to the color of her skin. She is a white woman.

I think that says everything that needs to be said about the purpose of this proceeding.

The protesters’ chant was very powerful. The crowd was predominately young and to hear them berate the Republicans of the state house in such a way was effective and moving.

Or it should have been.

But I immediately remembered that we now live in a time and a country where shame has lost all its power to affect behavior.

And we are seeing firsthand evidence in states like Tennessee, Florida and others that the shameless abuse of power is not to be taken lightly. It is not just bad judgement. It is something more than that. It is a political/cultural mania that is paving the way for even more shameless political extremism.

And that leads to places where we should not be willing to venture.

Word of caution: Pay attention. We are on an edge and the shameless have no concern about pulling us all down that slippery slope.

I repeat that I take no pleasure in writing these types of posts. But there are times and occurrences that demand all our eyes and ears. Full participation.

Here’s Bob Marley and his song Caution. Take it from Bob. He warns us that the road we’re on is slippery and we’re in danger of tumbling down.

eden ahbez with Cowboy Jack Patton, circa 1949

There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise was he
And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoken of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in returm
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return

—Nature Boy, eden ahbez

Sometimes when you look behind something that’s been in front of you for years you find out things you would have never imagined otherwise. Such was the case with the song, Nature Boy. From the lyrics above, it seems like such a simple song but there is much more to it beneath the surface–as it often is with many simple things.

Nature Boy, as recorded by the great Nat King Cole, has long been one of my favorite songs. It has a wonderful haunting melody and tells the story of a “strange enchanted boy” and his search to find love. It had a sort of mystical feel to me when I first heard it as kid in the 60’s. It still does. That feel made the song an oddity in the world of popular music in 1948 when Nat King Cole recorded it and had a huge hit with it, staying at #1 on the charts for eight weeks.

I was going to just have a short post and put up a YouTube video of Cole’s version but in doing so I saw the name of the songwriter, eden ahbez, and was intrigued, perhaps by the lack of capitalization in his name. Doing a little research, I came across some photos of him such as the one at the top, from the late 40’s sitting with Cowboy Jack Patton (who wrote the song Ghost Riders in the Sky) and a spaniel of some sort. I’ll let you figure out who is who in the photo. The long hair and attire of ahbez seemed really out of place for me in thinking of 1948 so I read on.

eden ahbez was a real one-of-a-kind character in the world of music and in general. You could probably guess that from the name which he adopted and wrote only in lower case letters. He adopted the name later in life and said that he chose to use only lower case letters for his name because only the words God and Infinity deserved  capitalization.

Born in Brooklyn in 1908, he was orphaned and was placed as a child on one of the Orphan Trains of that era, a program that took orphans from the crowded eastern cities to foster homes in the Midwest. He ended up in Kansas and was raised there, later becoming a pianist and band leader in Kansas City before heading to the Los Angeles area n 1941. It was there that he became involved with the health food movement of that time and let his hair grow.

He is regarded as the first hippie by many, a long-haired and bearded wanderer who crisscrossed the country on foot, wearing robes and sandals, maintained a vegetarian lifestyle and slept out under the stars. In fact, when Nature Boy hit the charts he and his wife were living under the first L on the Hollywood sign, which stoked a bit of a media frenzy around ahbez. He worked in and frequented a vegetarian restaurant (that’s where he met Cowboy Jack Patton, another interesting character) in 1940’s Los Angeles whose German owners preached the gospel of natural and raw foods. Their followers became known as the Nature Boys.

Not really what I was expecting from a pop songwriter in 1940’s LA. ahbez died in 1995 from injuries sustained in an auto accident. He was 87. His was a truly unique life, just waiting for a biographer to tell the story, and reading the little I discovered makes me find the song even more interesting. Hope you’ll do the same now that you know a bit more about eden ahbez…

I first posted the article above back in 2009. I’ve ran it a couple of times since, adding versions of Nature Boy from a variety of artists. I came across a version I hadn’t heard before and thought it might be worth sharing along with eden ahbez’s original take on the song. The newer version is from the Swedish a cappella group, The Real Group.

It’s a lovely version of a lovely and elegantly simple song–and a fine way to start the day.

Monde Parfait— Now at Principle Gallery

Clap along if you believe that happiness is the truth…

—Happy, Pharell Williams

This is not meant to be commentary on the happenings of the past day.

Okay, maybe it is.

Actually, I wasn’t going to post anything today. I’ve posted something every day here for at least a couple of months and figured that skipping a day wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

But I came across the video below from Postmodern Jukebox of an alternate version of Happy, the Pharrell Williams mega-hit, performed by Swedish jazz musician/multi-instrumentalist/dancer Gunhild Carling. I have shared a different video of her performing once before and had seen this video before but seeing it this morning made me smile.

Made me happy. And it’s a good day to be at least a little happy.

Besides, who doesn’t want to see Gunhild play three trumpets at one time, tap-dance and move seamlessly from instrument to instrument during the song? 10 different instruments in all, including the bagpipes. I’ve been reading a bit about vaudeville lately and this would no doubt have been a big hit back in the day.

See for yourself. Hope it makes you at least a little happy.

The Welcome Tree— Coming to Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA

No farther will I travel: once again
My brethren I will see, and that fair plain
Where I and song were born. There fresh-voiced youth
Will pour my strains with all the early truth
Which now abides not in my voice and hands,
But only in the soul, the will that stands
Helpless to move. My tribe remembering Will cry,
“‘Tis he!” and run to greet me, welcoming.

–George Eliot,  The Legend of Jubal (1869)

The new painting at the top is part of my annual June show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. This year’s show is called Passages which refers to both the actual movement into the painting as well as the phases of our lives through which we all pass. This painting, titled The Welcome Tree, falls neatly into those categories.

For me, it represents the idealized memory of home we sometimes carry with us, the thought that somewhere there is a place where you belong. A place with people who instantly recognize and welcome you as one of their own.

Much like the lines above from the epic poem from George Eliot, The Legend of Jubal. It is her version of the story of Jubal, a minor biblical figure who is only mentioned once, who is considered by some to be the inventor of music. Jubal, a descendent of the murderer Cain, is portrayed in Eliot’s long poem as a roaming artist who invents music then sets out to explore the world for inspiration for new songs. In the process, he spreads music and melody wherever he travels. Years pass and as his renown grows, Jubal dreams of a homecoming, as the lines above indicate.

This painting might well represent that imagined and hoped for reunification with his early home and family.

In Eliot’s poem, Jubal returns home to find that he is now revered and worshipped as a god there for his gift of music. Unfortunately, he is now old and nobody recognizes him. He is seen as a sacrilegious imposter and beaten to death by those he once thought would be embracing him.

Of course, I am not representing this part of Jubal’s tale in my painting. But maybe that’s the danger that comes in dwelling in idealized memories. Perhaps Jubal’s fate is one of the reasons that many folks through the years have said that you can’t go home again.

But that doesn’t keep us from keeping those fantasies of coming home and being embraced in our minds. There might be some comfort in that even though the rationalizing part of our mind tells us it cannot ever happen.

I chose the title The Welcome Tree because I have come to see the Red Tree that marks so many of my paintings as a symbol of welcoming. It is often the first thing that the viewer latches onto and serves as a kind of welcome mat into the painting. Often, though the painting might seem to be about the Red Tree itself, the real meaning is contained in the other parts of the piece– the color, the textures, the composition, etc. All the things that create mood and carry feeling.

I think that’s the case here though I like to think of it as a personal tip of the hat in recognition of the importance the Red Tree has had in my work over the past quarter century, It has been a boon companion.

Here’s a song on the subject of going home from the late, who I believe was underappreciated in his lifetime, singer/songwriter Jimmy LaFave. Here’s his song Going Home.

Vincent Van Gogh- Wheat Field in the Rain,1889

If you work diligently… without saying to yourself beforehand, ‘I want to make this or that,’ if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before.

-Vincent Van Gogh

I really just wanted to show these two Van Gogh paintings that feature the falling rain as part of the overall composition. I recently have been particularly interested in seeking out lesser known Van Gogh paintings. There is something quite exciting about these more obscure pieces, something that fills in the blanks between the better-known work.

But beyond that, the sentiment above from Van Gogh really resonates with me. Sometimes it seems as though those paintings which you aim at with all your greatest effort fall flat while on those days when you have little idea of where the work will go, something special emerges quite unexpectedly.

It is those days and those paintings that you crave as an artist. Oh, it is gratifying to create work that you feel is well within your body of work. That is to say, work which follows a path you have trod upon many times before. These paths are well trod because they offer the artist the fastest route to their artistic voice. And it is in that voice that originality resides. As writer Vladimir Nabokov pointed out: Artistic originality has only its own self to copy.

But to have those days where the work created takes you to new places that surprise you– well, that is beyond gratification. It has an almost religious aspect, like a confirmation of one’s belief in something greater.

But those days are often rare and come without a hint of what might emerge. Sitting here now, I don’t know if today will be one of those days. But just knowing that it is in the realm of possibility makes me anxious to get at it.

Enjoy the Van Goghs. I am going to move into my day and work with the diligence of which Van Gogh wrote.

[This is an edited and updated version of a blog post that ran in 2015. I have added a video of Van Gogh’s lesser known works. I think there is something to be gained in examining the entirety of an artist’s works, not just the highlights. It allows you to see how their style and vision forms, how they pick and choose those techniques and subjects that become a bigger part of their voice. And the one’s they discard. Always interesting to see.]

Vincent Van Gogh- Landscape at Auvers in the Rain

Reaching Out– At the Principle Gallery

Let’s get my incantation right:
“I wish I may, I wish I might”
Give earth another satellite.

— Robert Frost, A-Wishing Well, 1959

Hadn’t come across this poem before this morning. Frost’s cranky lobbying for another moon (or many more moons) in the sky made me chuckle which is always a good thing on an early Sunday morning. Plus, it was somewhat in line with the song I wanted to play this morning. I am not going to put up the whole poem here but its ends with this reassurance (?):

I am assured at any rate
Man’s practically inexterminate.
Someday I must go into that.
There’s always been an Ararat
Where someone, someone else begat
To start the world all over at.

The poem was written as a Christmas greeting in 1959. You can see and read the poem in its original form by clicking here.

That brings us to this Sunday’s morning music. It’s an old Lou Reed song covered by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain who have appeared here a few times over the years. I always enjoy their takes on certain songs. This is their version of Satellite of Love.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

– Mark Twain

Wish I had something pithy to say here or some goofy word prank to pull on you. However, I don’t.

Never been big on April Fools antics. Kind of like the alcoholic who doesn’t drink on New Year’s Eve.

Like Mr. Twain says, there is ample proof of my being a fool over the other 364 days of the year.

On a day that demands it, not being a fool appeals to my contrarian nature which is, in itself, foolish.

Just can’t get away from it, I guess.

Here’s a classic from Aretha that speaks to the day. Pay attention to the lyrics. They remind me of the ardent followers (another way of saying cult members) of a certain someone in the news. Hopefully that chain is being broken and they can return to being fools in other ways.

Like the rest of us.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

–Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, 1955

I am not going to make any comments this morning on the happenings of yesterday except to say that we live in a world that is forever seeking equilibrium.

It seeks balance against the weight of imbalance.

Order against the chaos of disorder.

Rhythm against the uncertainty of arrhythmia.

Harmony against the violence of disharmony.

Justice against the malignancy of injustice.

Yesterday may have just been the first movement of a world moving towards being back in balance. And if it can find that equilibrium, as Merton wrote, then I will express my happiness.

Until here’s a favorite song from the late great Harry Nilsson, I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City. You can take its implied meaning any way you want…

Passages: Beyond the Trees– Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2023

Curiosity is natural to the soul of man and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections. Let these influencing powers actuate, by the permission or disposal of Providence, from selfish or social views, yet in time the mysterious will of Heaven is unfolded, and we behold our conduct, from whatever motives excited, operating to answer the important designs of heaven.

–Daniel Boone

Never imagined I’d be using a Daniel Boone quote to open one of these morning essays. But while looking for something that would pair up with the new painting above, I came across a quote from the mythic frontiersman that was used to open the chapter titled “The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon; containing a Narrative of the Wars of Kentucke” in a 1784 book by John Filson on the discovery and settelment of Kentucky.

Can’t say that the Daniel Boone that lives in my mind, the one portrayed by Fess Parker on the old TV show, would utter such words. Fess’ Boone was a bit woodsier and more plainspoken. But the sentiment behind me was in line with the search that this piece and much of my work portrays.

Boone states that we are, by nature, curious creatures and that we are often driven by selfish greed or a genuine need to expand ever outward. But in the process of satisfying those external desires, we often find answers and designs whose scope is far beyond those things we originally were seeking. Answers having to do with the purpose and meaning of our lives.

That is pretty much what I have written innumerable times here about what I see beneath that which is represented on the surface of most of my paintings, though I don’t attribute it to any deity as does Boone. While often simple landscapes, for me they often represent the search for answers to existential questions that goes well beyond what is seen on the surface.

The painting serves as a passage, a portal, to those questions and answers.

That’s very much what I feel about this new painting. Titled Passages: Beyond the Trees, it is a 12″ by 24″ canvas that will be part of this year’s edition, Passages, of my annual solo show at the Principle Gallery, which opens June 9, 2023. It is very much about seeking something beyond what we know and what we can see.

About leaving our comfort zone of thought and belief to venture a bit further.

Are there answers out there beyond the trees?

I can’t say for you, and I don’t know that we can ever fully know the answers to the questions we ask. The answers we find might be to questions we never thought to ask. Or were afraid to ask because we didn’t want to accept the answers.

You might not see this in this painting. It might simply be a colorful landscape that you like. Or don’t like. Either way, that’s fine.

As a note, there’s another Boone quote from the Filson book that also rings true with something I often note here and often see in my work. maybe even this painting as well. He states:

Situated, many hundred miles from our families in the howling wilderness, I believe few would have equally enjoyed the happiness we experienced. I often observed to my brother, You see now how little nature requires to be satisfied. Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; And I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatsoever state he is. This consists in a full resignation to the will of Providence; and a resigned soul finds pleasure in a path strewed with briars and thorns.

There are some eternal truths in this short paragraph: Happiness and contentment are to be found within ourselves and not in material possessions; Anyone anywhere with the ability to think can discover their own sense of contentment and happiness; There is pleasure to be found in life’s journey, even in the inevitable hardship it offers.

It seems Old Dan’l was more of a philosopher than he is given credit for.

Let’s wrap this up for the day with a nice acoustic version of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For from U2.

Silent Dusk– At the West End Gallery

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

–Wallace Stevens, Letter, December 19, 1935

It is a complicated world, isn’t it?

I thought about what the poet Wallace Stevens wrote above, and it struck me that if life were without complexity, there would be no need for much of the art or literature that civilization has produced through the centuries.

Art and literature is a way of dealing with the innate hardship of life, of trying to simplify and make sense of the mystery that life presents to us each day.

If this life were sensible and simple, without mystery or complications, what would there be to simplify? Would there be a need for art?

Oh, I think art of some form would exist just for the sensory pleasure it provides. But it would be all surface. The meaning and depth would most likely be missing.

This tradeoff of meaningful art for a simplified and uncomplicated existence might be acceptable for most folks. There are plenty of days when I would take that trade.

But we all know that this proposition is just a pipedream. Despite our wishes and best efforts, life is seldom simple. Art still serves a purpose in helping us face the complexity of this life. To show us the meaning held in those inevitable darker moments that we all must face at some point in our existence. To attempt to make sense of the mystery we all must face.

On most days, I am thankful there is art to lean on. Not just because I attempt to create it. No, much more than that, art allows me to see that the feelings and emotions I experience in meeting these complications are universally felt, that I am not alone in my experience.

That is the comfort of art for me. And that’s not a small thing.

Here’s a favorite Springsteen song, Thunder Road, that is performed by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (Will Oldham) and Tortoise. Though the song in its original form had unmistakable meaning of its own, they transform it, making it into something different, but no less meaningful.