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Nothing Left to Lose…

August 16, 2025 by redtreetimes

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…

— Me and Bobby McGee, Kris Kristofferson

That line from Me and Bobby McGee has echoed in my head for almost 55 years. One Christmas back then, Santa left me a new cassette player/recorder. It was a cheap plastic one, a Ross if my sometime spotty memory is correct. But more importantly, he also left me a Janis Joplin tape.

It was her album, Pearl. I played the hell out of that tape for years. Songs like Cry Baby, Get It While You Can, Mercedes Benz and the others left a deep impression on my 12-year-old mind, but none more than this song and that line. 

A few years later one of my English teachers asked the class the question, “What is freedom?“

I answered, ” Just another word for nothing left to lose.” I then had to duck as one of his Clark Wallabee shoes soared past my head.

As I said, it made an impression.

Even though I didn’t have enough world experience to understand it at the time, maybe it was the fact that those words held a kernel of a universal truth that made it such a potent line.

A little over a decade later, I learned that truth for myself. I found myself bankrupted and broke, my home foreclosed on, I had just endured a mental health crisis, and I was scrambling to find some sort of job to make a few dollars for food and gas.

It felt like I was at rock bottom. It would be hard to go much deeper. The only direction to go was up.

It was a nerve-wracking time, to say the least. But, oddly enough, it was also an exhilarating time. In many ways, I never felt freer. I was only constrained by my lack of education, opportunity, and money.

But I firmly believed that these shortcomings could be overcome with a little energy, imagination, and creativity. I had a lot of energy then and enough imagination to be creative.

I might have been in a deep dark hole at that time but there was bright light coming from above.

I only had to figure out how to climb out of that hole so that I might stand in the light and grow like a plant nourished by the sun.

With nothing left to lose, I was absolutely free. I was living that line from Me and Bobby McGee.

Long story made short, I got out of that pit and into the light. 

I feel less free these days.

While I still have some imagination and creativity, I don’t have the same levels of energy or stamina as I did 30 years ago.  As a result, I worry more about things and money and how to endure old age If I make it to there. All that kind of stuff. 

I am not saying that I want to return to that earlier state of freedom but, having experienced it once before, I can better appreciate it for what it was. I now know that should push come to shove and I am somehow toppled back into that deep hole, I will still be able to figure a way out.

And, with nothing left to lose, be free once more.

Unfortunately, I fear that many more of us here in this country will find themselves with that same nothing-left-to-lose freedom in the coming years. The powerful people responsible for this should be forewarned that that a population with the freedom brought about by having nothing left to lose is an unstoppable force. 

This was not the post I meant to write today. Certainly not one so personally revealing. I was going to write about our president’s reprisal of his role as The Gimp from Pulp Fiction during his obsequious meeting with the war criminal president of Russia yesterday as well as his striving to become king of this nation. I was going to remind you to revisit the grievances our Founding Fathers laid out against King George III in the Declaration of Independence.  I think most of you will see many immediate parallels between the actions of George that they so protested to those of our wannabe king. 

We know what happened in the first case with George III when he ran up against citizens who felt they had nothing left to lose. We’ll soon find out what happens in the present time.

Here’s that song from Janis.

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I Am/ John Clare

August 15, 2025 by redtreetimes

Placidarium (2017)

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

–I Am, John Clare, ca 1845

I came across the post below from several years ago and was reminded of the painting shown above, Placidarium. It was painted in 2017 and instantly became a favorite of mine. The title was a conjured word that described a self-contained environment much like a terrarium or aquarium. I saw this as a self-contained ecosystem of tranquility. Over the years this painting has traveled far and wide in attempt to find a home that needs a placidarium of its own. And time and again, it has always returned to me like a boomerang.

Though I was pleased to have it with me once more, it was always a little disappointing when it would come back. Was there something in it that only I could see, a voice that only I could hear? That was certainly a possibility. Some work speaks so loudly to me that it feels like it must be audible to many others and sometimes that’s just not the case.

Some voices speak to only one person. Kind of like the many voices in my head that tell me to do terrible things. I am just kidding, of course– there’s not many voices, just one.

All kidding aside, the fact that this painting’s voice seemed to go unheard and the tranquil world it portrayed reminded me of this poem and the life experience of poet John Clare. I could see him lying untroubled as he slept among the flowers under this sky.

Sounds pretty damn good to me, as well.

[From 2021]

John Clare was an interesting case. He led a troubled existence for much of his 70 years on this planet. Born in Northampton in England to a family of rural farm laborers, Clare bounced from job to job and place to place, living a life of poverty. In an attempt to raise money to prevent his parent’s eviction from their home, Clare, through a local bookseller, submitted his poetry to the publisher who had published the works of John Keats. His book of verse, as well as a second soon after, was published and praised.

But even then, recognized as he was as a poetic genius in farmer’s garb, he struggled with his own mental demons. Much of the rest of his life was spent in English asylums. His most famous poem, I Am, whose final verse is shown above, was written in one such asylum, Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, around 1844 or 1845.

His work was somewhat overlooked after his death in 1864 at the Northampton Asylum, where he had spent his final 23 years. But in the 20th century his worked received new attention and Clare’s work was elevated and he has been deemed a major poet of the 19th century.

It’s a sad life, indeed. It reminds me of those times when I have been going through genealogy records, following an ancestor’s life as it progresses, and come upon a record from some sort of institution. It might be an almshouse– a poorhouse– or a county home, a place where they gathered the paupers, the handicapped and those with mental problems so that they would be out of sight.

Coming across these records always makes me very sad. I can imagine myself in these ancestors’ places, the feelings that I would no doubt be experiencing– the loss, the alienation, the confusion that must have plagued their minds.

But even more than that, my sadness comes from knowing that their voices were no doubt unheard by the time these records were registered. They had, by that time, become problems to be swept aside.

And they, no doubt, wanted little more than the peace of mind that Clare describes in that final verse– the untroubled sleep of a child in the grass beneath a high, clear sky.

I find my own desires for this life dwindling down to those same simple wants. And in this, I find a bond with these poor, troubled relations. And with Clare in that English asylum.

And that in turn makes me grateful for the small graces that allow me to live the life I live and to find expression for my own small I Am.

Sigh.

Here’s a fine reading of I Am from Tom O’Bedlam:

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Stop Thinking!

August 13, 2025 by redtreetimes

kandinsky

Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and… stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

–Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911)

I am running late this morning but came across this short post concerning a favorite artist, Wassily Kandinsky, whose work and words always inspire me. I like this because his advice to stop thinking is much the same thought that I often share in gallery talks. I say that my best work comes when I stop thinking and react instinctively. Too much thought moves the work towards stilted contrivance and an unnatural stiffness while work that comes intuitively tends more toward an organic feeling with rhythm and harmony.

A case of intuition over intellect or as I often put it in these talks, we’re just not that smart.

Some days the brain just gets in the way.

Several years ago in a short post here, I shared the quote above and a great little film from Alfred Imageworks that features an animation of the elements from some of Kandinsky’s great paintings as well a film from 1926 of Kandinsky creating a drawing with these same elements.

These always seem to help me in some way that I can’t quantify. Maybe I should take Kandinsky’s advice and stop thinking on this.

Anyway, thought they’d be worth revisiting today before I get down to real work.

Take a look if you are so inclined and then have yourself a good day, again, if you are so inclined.

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Happiness or happiness?

August 12, 2025 by redtreetimes

In the Free World— At Principle Gallery, Alexandria

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

–George Orwell, Critical Essays  (1946)

I wonder how our perception of the word happiness has changed over the ages, from the 4th century BC when Aristotle first described it as an activity of the soul that expresses virtue to the time of the American Revolution when the phrase Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was forever enshrined in the Declaration of Independence until now.

Is the definition of happiness from our Declaration stating that citizens should be free to live a life without oppression that would lead them to some sort of fulfillment the same as it is today?  Is the fulfillment that brought happiness to the ordinary citizen then the same as today?

I don’t know.

It seems like the word happiness has become somewhat trivial these days, that it is happiness with a lower-case h rather than the capitalized Happiness.

Maybe there is a difference in  those two, happiness and Happiness. Maybe the happiness we feel laughing at a joke with friends or playing with a pet is vastly different than the Happiness of going to bed without worries or fears?

I don’t know.

I do know that we are living in a time when moments of lower-case happiness are easier to find than that larger feeling of upper-case Happiness we are supposedly free to pursue. With American troops prowling the streets of American cities under false pretenses and growing legions of masked government agents on our streets who are free to whisk anyone away without due process or accountability, with a kakistocracy in place led by a maniacal billionaire that seeks to severely punish political opponents and strip away many of the rights we have come to expect, it is hard to see how anyone could find true Happiness at the present.

Maybe for now, we have to lean on that lower-case happiness to get us through to the time when Happiness can again be freely pursued by all.

Hoping you find some bits of happiness today. Here’s a song that always makes me happy. It’s Oh Happy Day from the Edwin Hawkins Singers from back in 1969. The fact that it is basically a religious song and I am not a religious person does lessen my happiness in hearing this song. Maybe that is because this is a song about Happiness and not happiness?

I don’t know…

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Choices and Decisive Moments

August 11, 2025 by redtreetimes

The Choice— GC Myers 2017

There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.

–Cardinal de Retz  (1613-1679)

Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson , a favorite of mine, took that phrase from the quote above and used it to describe that moment in searching for an image when the photographer makes the creative decision to snap the photo. But I see the term at play in everything we do, everything we are. Who, what, and where we are is all the result of random moments of decision. Every day offers us new choices for moving ahead and very seldom do we ponder where these often simple and mundane decisions might ultimately lead our lives.

I think about this all the time when I consider the course my life and career has taken. Several of the galleries in which I show came about as the result of a series of random decisions– and a few moments of serendipity!– and if any of those choices leading up to the final result had differed in any way, my life as it is now might be completely different.

Even the beginning of my painting career might not have occurred if I had decided that working off a ladder on that September day twenty years ago was not a great idea. I would not have fallen and would not have found the time or inspiration to begin painting. Maybe it would have come anyway at some other point but who knows? And would that decision to follow painting at that later date yield the same results?

I see it in genealogy as well. When I look at the charts that show one’s whole ancestry laid out in an ever-widening mesh of connections all I can think is how we are all built on a huge set of random choices and pure chance. If any single one of those many thousands of connections had not been made the whole mesh that brought us here would fall away and our very existence would most likely not have occurred.

Our existence relies on so many ifs: If one ancestor had not returned from the many wars, if one ancestor had not been the lucky child that survived the many diseases that took so many children from most families in the earlier days of our country, if one ancestor had turned left instead of right and not met that person who became their other half.

It’s a delicate dance of decisive moments that leads us all to the here and now.

We can try to consider what each conscious decision we make might someday yield but there are so many decisions made on a daily that seem so inconsequential that they easily escape our notice. We often don’t realize the magnitude of a decision until much later and are either enjoying or suffering the result of a decision from our past.

Only then do we recognize it as the decisive moment.

I guess the best we can do is to use our best judgement in those decisions we truly consider and hope that who we are at our core allows us to make wise choices on those that we fail to consider fully.

I am reworking an old blog post from about 12 years ago to highlight the painting at the top from 2017, The Choice. It’s one of those pieces that jumped at me when I painted it, becoming an instant favorite of mine, but never clicked for anyone else. Over the years, as much as I liked it from the start, my appreciation for it has only grown. Maybe it’s because I see it as a representation of the choices and decisive moments that brought me to this here and now.

Or maybe not. I can’t decide…

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Bulb or Light?

August 10, 2025 by redtreetimes

Quiet Revelation-Now at Principle Gallery

The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to lose it, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. And when you can do that, and this is something learned from my myths, What am I?  of which the bulb is a vehicle?

One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment.

~Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

That is a great question: Are we the bulb that carries the light, or are we the light?

While I believe there may be an absolute answer that is deeply etched in whatever makes up and energizes the universe, the answer for our time here in this small world is determined by each of us.

We can see ourselves as being only a physical being. A body with a brain that is simply another part of it. And maybe that is all the brain is, a control module that exists to help the body maneuver and survive this world, with very little to do with our actual consciousness– that light, that lifeforce, that we carry and emit.

Or we can see ourselves as that light that is something apart from and only temporarily contained by our physical vessels. That we are that lifeforce that exists beyond our time here in this plane.

In our youth, we tend to see only the physical nature of our being- strength and beauty and the quickness of the mind. I thought that way for a while. But over the years, witnessing others struggle with disease and death while experiencing my own aging with the dings, dents, and slipping gears that accompany it, to continue the old car metaphor Campbell employed above, I definitely see things more in the latter mode, that we are the light, the consciousness, that is carried by the bulb that is our body. And someday, sooner or later, when our engine is blown and our fenders rotted off as the tow truck comes to haul us to the junkyard, our consciousness will go on. 

Cosciousness shall rejoin the greater consciousness. Our light will rejoin the greater light.

Just a thought, my own viewpoint as an old Subaru, this morning. I could go on, of course, and maybe I am remiss in not doing so. But I think I’ve said enough this morning and I’ll let you fill in the blanks like it’s some sort of philosophical Mad-Libs.

Besides, I want to get to the Sunday Morning Music for this week.

Here’s a great version of This Little Light of Mine from bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley. I had the great pleasure of seeing him perform a number of years back at Radio City Music Hall as part of the Down From the Mountain tour which featured the many singers and musicians– Alison Krauss & Union Station, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Patty Loveless, and Stanley— whose music played a large role in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? Stanley’s performance of O Death was perhaps the most powerful moment from a memorable show.

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“If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?”

August 9, 2025 by redtreetimes

In the Rhythm of the World– At West End Gallery

I recently came across a book of graduation speeches given by Kurt Vonnegut over the years. The speeches are witty, insightful, and bitingly to the point, much like his writing. I thought I would share one of these commencement speeches, one that includes the story behind the title of his book of speeches, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? 

This speech from 1999 was given at Agnes Scott College, a private women’s liberal arts college in Decatur, Georgia. 26 years later, Vonnegut’s words ring true as we see ourselves vying to survive in a world that proclaims that we should adhere to Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount while simultaneously prodding us to follow the Code of Hammurabi.  

Below is that speech. It’s worth a few minutes of your time. It covers a lot of ground in a short time.

Kurt Vonnegut Commencement Speech, Agnes Scott College, 1999–

I am so smart I know what is wrong with the world. Everybody asks during and after our wars, and the continuing terrorist attacks all over the globe, “What’s gone wrong?” What has gone wrong is that too many people, including high school kids and heads of state, are obeying the Code of Hammurabi, a King of Babylonia who lived nearly four thousand years ago. And you can find his code echoed in the Old Testament, too. Are you ready for this?

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

A categorical imperative for all who live in obedience to the Code of Hammurabi, which includes heroes of every cowboy show and gangster show you ever saw, is this: Every injury, real or imagined, shall be avenged. Somebody’s going to be really sorry.

When Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross, he said, “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.” What kind of a man was that? Any real man, obeying the Code of Hammurabi, would have said, “Kill them, Dad, and all their friends and relatives, and make their deaths slow and painful.”

His greatest legacy to us, in my humble opinion, consists of only twelve words. They are the antidote to the poison of the Code of Hammurabi, a formula almost as compact as Albert Einstein’s “E = mc2.

I am a Humanist, or Freethinker, as were my parents and grandparents and great grandparents — and so not a Christian. By being a Humanist, I am honoring my mother and father, which the Bible tells us is a good thing to do.

But I say with all my American ancestors, “If what Jesus said was good, and so much of it was absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?”

If Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being.

I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.

Revenge provokes revenge which provokes revenge which provokes revenge — forming an unbroken chain of death and destruction linking nations of today to barbarous tribes of thousands and thousands of years ago.

We may never dissuade leaders of our nation or any other nation from responding vengefully, violently, to every insult or injury. In this, the Age of Television, they will continue to find irresistible the temptation to become entertainers, to compete with movies by blowing up bridges and police stations and factories and so on…

But in our personal lives, our inner lives, at least, we can learn to live without the sick excitement, without the kick of having scores to settle with this particular person, or that bunch of people, or that particular institution or race or nation. And we can then reasonably ask forgiveness for our trespasses, since we forgive those who trespass against us. And we can teach our children and then our grandchildren to do the same — so that they, too, can never be a threat to anyone.

A woman’s reach should exceed her grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

You should know that when a husband and wife fight, it may seem to be about money or sex or power.

But what they’re really yelling at each other about is loneliness. What they’re really saying is, “You’re not enough people.”

If you determine that that really is what they’ve been yelling at each other about, tell them to become more people for each other by joining a synthetic extended family — like the Hell’s Angels, perhaps, or the American Humanist Association, with headquarters in Amherst, New York — or the nearest church.

Computers are no more your friends, and no more increasers of your brainpower, than slot machines…

Only well-informed, warm-hearted people can teach others things they’ll always remember and love. Computers and TV don’t do that.

A computer teaches a child what a computer can become.

An educated human being teaches a child what a child can become. Bad men just want your bodies. TVs and computers want your money, which is even more disgusting. It’s so much more dehumanizing!

By working so hard at becoming wise and reasonable and well-informed, you have made our little planet, our precious little moist, blue-green ball, a saner place than it was before you got here.

Most of you are preparing to enter fields unattractive to greedy persons, such as education and the healing arts. Teaching, may I say, is the noblest profession of all in a democracy.

One of the things [Uncle Alex] found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

That’s one favor I’ve asked of you. Now I ask for another one. I ask it not only of the graduates, but of everyone here, parents and teachers as well. I’ll want a show of hands after I ask this question.

How many of you have had a teacher at any level of your education who made you more excited to be alive, prouder to be alive, than you had previously believed possible?

Hold up your hands, please.

Now take down your hands and say the name of that teacher to someone else and tell them what that teacher did for you.

All done?

If this isn’t nice, what is?

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Guiding Light/ Upcoming

August 8, 2025 by redtreetimes

First Peace

Well, the night is still
And I have not yet lost my will
Oh and I will keep on moving ’till
‘Till I find my way home

When I need to get home
You’re my guiding light
You’re my guiding light

—Guiding Light, Foy Vance

I am still building up strength and energy after being sick. I feel like I am running at about 70% or so, still getting really fatigued after much exertion or just a busy day in the studio. But my work continues, and I feel like it’s building in a way that will be at full capacity for my autumn schedule, which this year features a solo show and two Gallery Talks.

Fortunately, we switched my annual solo show at West End Gallery from July to October this year. In the shape I was in at the time, there would have been no way in which I could have mounted a July show. But we did switch and I am looking forward to that show at a different time with the added time to prepare. I especially need that additional time as my strength rebuilds.

My solo show at the West End Gallery opens Friday, October 17 and runs to November 13. This year’s show is titled Guiding Light. I was recently mulling over what to call the show and a song came on the channel I often listen to early in the morning and the song struck a chord. And its title, Guiding Light, instantly felt right. That song, which is shared below, was from singer/songwriter Foy Vance, who hails from Northern Ireland-– or Norn Iron as my good friend from Portadown, Tom, would say.

I will write more about the title and theme of the show in the coming month or so.

There will also be a Gallery Talk in the weeks following the opening. A date has not been nailed down, but it will most likely be on one of the Saturdays after the opening, either October 25, November 1 or the 8th. I am leaning toward October 25 myself, but we want to make sure it’s a clear date before announcing it. I will let you know when we make that final decision.

Before that, on Saturday, September 27, I will be returning to Alexandria to give my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery. The talk begins at 1 PM. It is usually a pretty good time and I have no doubt that this year’s edition will not be as well.

And to spice things up, I will be doing the whole talk while standing on my hands.

Well, we’ll see about that. But if anyone in attendance feels like doing handstand while we have our Gallery Talk, I will not discourage it.

That is this fall’s schedule thus far. Hope to see you somewhere down the road.

Here’s that Foy Vance song, Guiding Light. This is from a live performance in 2023 from Belfast accompanied by the Ulster Orchestra. It makes for a great way to end his show, if you watch through the end.

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The Mirror of Our Nature

August 7, 2025 by redtreetimes

The Omnipresence— At West End Gallery

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.

—Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers), The Power of Myth (1988)

I love the passage above that Joseph Campbell spoke during his conversation with Bill Moyers for the PBS series The Power of Myth. I feel that it describes beautifully the connection between the individual and mythology and art, at least in my view. I believe that we truly connect with myth and art when we see it as personal to ourselves, as being somehow symbolic of our own experience and being.  

Our emotions and reactions.

Of course, some myths and much in art may not speak to us on this personal level. There is plenty of art out there that doesn’t speak to me. That is not to say that it is not good work. Some is masterfully crafted and has an undeniable surface. It is not a judgement of quality.  just doesn’t speak to me personally and doesn’t reflect my own experience or worldview.

And I certainly don’t expect my work to speak to everyone no matter how much I may wish that it could. 

It simply cannot be a reflection for everyone.

My work, after all, is a reflection of my life’s journey. My experiences, knowledge, understanding, and being are mine, complete with flaws and limitations. Yours is completely different, as it should be. Try as we might, no two people can have an identical existence. I believe (without evidence, of course) that even conjoined twins must have differing views and feelings of their shared experiences.

But occasionally, there is a moment of overlap, when the work reflects a truth– perhaps a personal truth or one that is universal– that speaks to another and that other person recognizes something of themself and their own world in my representation of my inner world.

That is a magical and most gratifying moment for me. The fact that someone might see a reflection of their own life and experience of the world in my representation of my own that makes me feel connected to the mythic and the universal.

For that moment, I feel that there is a meaning beyond the mere surface imagery of my work. And I think that sense of meaning is something we all crave, regardless of the field in which we toil.

Here is a song I’ve shared a couple of times over the years. It may or may not have anything to do with this post. I just felt like hearing it this morning. This is Marmalade with the very 60’s sound of their Reflections of My Life.

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The Weight of Dreams…

August 6, 2025 by redtreetimes

Night’s Dream— At Principle Gallery

“As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.”

—W.B. Yeats, Rosa Alchemica (1896)

It seems like each new day sees us bearing witness to yet another outrage, often greater than that of the day before which was greater than the day before it. This downward and backward spiral goes on and on to a point not so long ago when those with darkest and most amoral souls were vilified and ostracized, not idolized and elevated before the public in the way we are currently experiencing.

Those days, though not so long ago, seem like ancient history now as the behavior of the worst of us grows at an alarming geometric pace. To those of us who wish to lead a simple, quiet, and peaceful life that sees us doing no harm to others and others doing no harm to us, these days feel like we are being beaten down with a bag of oranges, each blow hurting a bit more until we are in a state of numb submission.

The dreams and aspirations of so many that once seemed to be within reach now feel even further removed, distant like the stars in the sky. It is a time when dreams fall by the wayside. It begs the question that the poet Langston Hughes asked in his poem Harlem:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

What will happen with the dreams of so many being not only deferred, but destroyed?

I don’t know. It certainly feels that is must be sagging like heavy load for many folks at this point. Or like they are furiously treading water just trying to stay afloat.

The question remains: How does one keep their dreams alive in times such as these?

Maybe that is one purpose of the spiritual element of art in all its many forms–to lift our vision and our spirit, to inspire creative thought and action that will transcend the horror that stalks the present moment. To stave off the drying up, the festering, the stinking rot, and crusting over so that dreams may be kept alive. 

Maybe.

And if it explodes? Maybe art then provides guidance and unity through the explosion as well as a reminder of who we are and the values we hold dear.  And in the aftermath of the explosion it may serve as a template to follow in our rebuilding so that the errors that brought us to this point are not repeated. 

Well, until time and a new darkness clouds our memories once more and we begin a similar downward spiral.

My dream is that we don’t forget, that we are lifted up and dreams continue to be both dreamed and realized by many folks, not just those privileged few who dream of hoarding everything for themselves.

Here’s a little-known song from Bruce Springsteen that I am pretty sure has not been shared here before. It’s called Dream Baby Dream. I saw him perform this once during a solo show in 2005 that featured only him and his guitar, his piano, and for this song, a pump organ. It is a spare, simple song and its sound mounted throughout so that it became almost mantra.

Very powerful. A mantra for our times, perhaps.

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