Between the Sea and the Sun— Now at West End Gallery
The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Too much to do and too much craziness with too little time to comment this morning. So, I am just going to leave this little triad of image, word and song. Hopefully, they blend together well. I have used the short but powerful verse from Walt Whitman (which was also the basis for the great Bette Davis film Now, Voyager) with the song below before.
The song, I’m On My Way, is from a favorite of mine, the extraordinarily talented Rhiannon Giddens. Just plain old good stuff. A solid way to kick off what promises to be an eventful week.
As she sings: I don’t know where I’m going/But I know what to do.
The people have the power The people have the power The power to dream, to rule to wrestle the world from fools it’s decreed the people rule it’s decreed the people rule we have the power People have the power we have the power…
–Patti Smith, People Have the Power (1988)
Crazy week, wasn’t it? Tuesday night’s debate beatdown by Kamala Harris was followed by several days of escalating insanity from the GOP presidential candidate who lashed out in all directions as he tried to cover the abject humiliation of his defeat.
He claimed victory while still claiming he was somehow cheated by moderators who were obviously biased because they fact-checked a handful of his most outrageous and obvious lies. He also claimed that Harris must have been given the questions because she was too good, too smooth, in her answers. As if the average moron couldn’t foresee what type of questions would be asked in a presidential debate. I certainly could and nobody gave me a heads up. Besides, it’s not like they’re asking you specific Jeopardy! questions or asking you to identify a string of images. Something like person/man/woman/camera/TV.
Only a true genius could do that.
That strange and awful character continued through the week building on his insane they’re eating the dogs/they’re eating the cats riff he first unleashed during the debate. Though thoroughly debunked as being utter racist/xenophobic bullshit, he and his fascist wannabe running mate have continue to harp on this theme. It puts not only the Haitian community both in Springfield, Ohio and around the nation at great risk, it serves as platform on which to build other similar attacks on other groups. We’ve seen it in the all too recent past with the Asian and Jewish communities.
If this isn’t stopped in its tracks, it will continue to spread. It’s right out of the authoritarian playbook. It will spread and eventually get around to most everyone in some way or another.
There were other crazy aspects to the appearances of the former president*** this week. I’m not going to go into them all here. But you should be aware of how dangerously detached this person has become. It’s obvious to anyone who watched even a few minutes of his appearances this week.
This creature is not a mere political actor now. This is not about policy differences about taxation, Social Security or anything else that has to do with the average American’s life. He doesn’t give one good goddamn about any of that. This is only about one man’s hunger for the power to elevate himself to a position where he can grind anyone who has ever opposed him in even the most minor way under his heel. Everyone but he himself is disposable in his quest for this power. His family is an afterthought. He has no real friends– only flunkies.
He has begun to take on the identity of a supervillain, one step from retreating to a lair in a hollowed-out volcano from which he will issue video warnings of the havoc he will wreak on the world if we don’t submit to him.
But it’s not too late. He can be stopped. He will be stopped. Kamala Harris made a big step to doing that by looking him in the face and calling him out in front of 67 million people as the weak and disgraceful being he has become. Punching them in the face, thus exposing their weakness, is how you deal with bullies of any sort.
She punched him in the face. Hard. And the world saw it. And he has stumbled, all the time yelling it didn’t hurt, it didn’t hurt.
We are tired of the never-ending chaos and violence that fills the days of their lives, all brought on by this selfish old fool. It’s up to us to finish the job. Knock him off his feet.
We have that power. The forces needed to do this, people from wide and varied groups, are gathering. You can sense the momentum. As much as I am not a fan of those ridiculous truck parades with flags flying, I saw a big one online yesterday from Texas, of all places, with Harris/Walz flags streaming. I have to say, it raised my spirits. Gave me hope that people are finally waking up and coming to the table.
It’s only about 51 days until the election. Seven weeks. If we care enough about this country, about our future and our fellow citizens, especially the most powerless among us, we can do it.
People have the power.
That leads us to this week’s Sunday Morning Music. I wasn’t planning on writing the diatribe above. I was only going to share this song but sometimes the spirit captures you. The song is People Have the Power from Patti Smith. It’s probably her best-known song after Because the Night. I love this performance of this song with Choir!Choir!Choir! with a group of 250 volunteer choir members as well as Stewart Copeland from The Police on percussion. It captures the spirit and energy needed to face down threats to our democracy. Powerful stuff all the way through to the very end.
I have also included an image of a favorite piece from my Multitudes series of several years back. I call this smaller (12×12 on canvas) painting Facing the Crowdand it’s not about the power of the crowd in this painting. It is about the power of that one person on the far left of this piece calmly standing up to the ugliness and anger of that crowd.
One person can do that. Many people standing for others can do much more.
Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.
–Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works
Busy this morning doing what I do. That’s painting for those of you who have just walked in the door.
I am working on a handful of pieces that will be coming with me to the Principle Gallery two weeks from today, Saturday, September 28. I will be giving a Gallery Talk there on that date, beginning at 1 PM. Hope you can make it– it could be fun.
I thought I’d share a post from 2017 that itself was a repost of one from way back in 2009. Reading it fifteen years later, it still held true.
[From2017]
Painting has come to play a big part in my life. I’ve had a couple of different conversations with some folks over the past few weeks where I have tried to explain what painting has meant to me, tried to explain the void that it filled for me and the sense of purpose it brought to my life. I talked about never feeling any sense of destiny or anything like that in becoming a painter. It just seemed to those things I needed.
These conversations brought to mind the blog entry below that I wrote back in early 2009 called The Need to Paintthat I thought I’d share today:
I wrote a few days ago about how I am often mystified by the meanings of my paintings and how I this makes me glad that I still have the need to paint.
The need to paint?
I thought about that after I hit the button to publish that post. I have often heard artists say they had to paint, as though it were some sort of exotic medical quandary.
Paint or die.
It always kind of bothered me when I heard this, as though these people were saying they had some sort of predestined calling. Like they were prophets or shamans that without their visionary paintings the world would spin out of control. I don’t think I ever felt afflicted with this and it always sounded just a little pompous to me.
So when I wrote that I had the need to paint it made me twitch a bit. Maybe I’m the pompous ass here. That certainly is in the realm of possibility.
But I find myself kind of standing behind what I said– I do need to paint.
It’s not some call to destiny. It’s not to transmit some psychic message to the world. It’s more a case of me needing have a voice or form of expression that best suits my mind and abilities. Painting just happens to fill that need. If I could yodel–and thankfully for us all, I cannot– I might be saying that I have the need to yodel.
But I need to paint.
I need to paint to try to express things I certainly can’t put in words, things that awe and mystify me. I need to paint to have a means to a voice to make the universe aware that I exist.
I need to paint just to remind myself that I am alive and still have the ability to feel the excitement and joy from something that I have created. I need to paint to feel the surprise of exceeding what I felt was within me, to go into that realm of personal mystery within and emerge with something new. I need to paint because it has given me the closest thing I know to answers to the questions I have.
I need to paint because it is one of the few things that I’ve done fairly well in my life.
Would I die if I couldn’t paint?
Nah…
I’d adapt and find something new but it would be hard to find something that would suit me as well. So I guess I do need to paint after all. Call me a pompous ass. I don’t give a damn- I’ve got work to do.
People who look for symbolic meaning fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the images.
—Rene Magritte
I absolutely love this painting, The Banquet, from Rene Magritte in 1958. It has the effect where I don’t question anything about it. I just accept it as it is presented. I am not looking for symbolism in it at all, not looking for a reason why the red ball of sun is hovering low in front of the trees. The colors, the contrast, the composition– they create a whole sensation doesn’t need a why or what or how.
As Magritte points out, it contains poetry and mystery.
And that is something to try to understand. I know I often feel the need to try to explain my work, to point out where I find an emotional base in a piece. Sometimes that is easy, almost jumping out at you. But sometimes it is not so obvious and it is simply the mystery of the created feel, a great intangible pulse, that makes a particular painting work.
You see it, feel it, accept its reality yet you don’t fully understand the why and how.
And maybe that is just as it should be. Not all we behold can or should be explained. Sometimes, maybe we simply need to experience poetry and mystery.
I have had this painting from Magritte in my mind in recent days. I thought I should share this older post about a quote from Magritte that speaks to the poetry and mystery in it. I’ve been struggling a bit in recent weeks with my work, trying to recover that sense of poetry and mystery in my own work. It’s been a matter of overthinking when less thought is required, of trusting my instincts and reactions, rather than trying to factor in those of others. About explaining less, if at all, and letting what poetry is there reveal itself.
To try to not solve the apparent mystery of it. To just let it be as it is.
It sometimes seems difficult. But when it eventually happens, you realize how simple it truly is. Hopefully, I am nearing that point.
Something there is that can refresh and revivify older people: joy in the activities of the younger generation—a joy, to be sure, that is clouded by dark forebodings in these unsettled times. And yet, as always, the springtime sun brings forth new life, and we may rejoice because of this new life and contribute to its unfolding; and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender as he always was and always will be. There is, after all, something eternal that lies beyond reach of the hand of fate and of all human delusions. And such eternals lie closer to an older person than to a younger one oscillating between fear and hope. For us, there remains the privilege of experiencing beauty and truth in their purest forms.
–Albert Einstein, in letter, March 1936
This morning, I was looking for some words that spoke to the delusions that people foster. With that in mind, I came across the lovely passage above that Albert Einstein wrote in 1936 to Queen Mother Elizabeth of Belgium who was depressed over the recent death of her husband and daughter-in-law.
My intent had been to write about the way the former president*** was trying to frame his debate debacle as some sort of huge triumph by citing ridiculously skewed online polls from his social media platform as evidence of his victory. His aim is to feed the delusions of his rabid cultists, to divert their attention from his abject failure and defeat in the debate that the rest of the world recognizes.
It reminds me of the old adage: Never play chess with a pigeon. The pigeon just knocks all the pieces over then shits all over the board. Then struts around like it won.
That old loser is definitely that strutting pigeon. Unfortunately, that behavior speaks to his loyal following– the other pigeons, which is exactly what he pegged them as a long time ago.
Pigeons.
That’s the term that the Oxford Dictionary defines as a gullible person, especially someone swindled in gambling or the victim of a confidence trick.
Pigeons who live in a state of delusion, suspending all disbelief to anything their lead pigeon says or does. With a short and faulty memory, they rationalize away the truth of every loss, failure, and rebutted lie. Their pigeon hero might have been checkmated on the chessboard but so long as he knocks everything over then shits and struts on top of it, then his defeat is overlooked and viewed as some sort of victory.
That brings me back to Einstein’s words above. He writes about how, as one ages and moves closer to the end of their time here, one recognizes and sheds certain long-held delusions, then having the privilege of being able to experience beauty and truth in their purest forms. They can then avoid becoming bitter and can then find joy in what the future might bring for the youth of the world, even though they themselves might experience that future.
I think it’s a lovely statement and I hope the Queen Mother found some solace in it. It made me think about my own experience with aging.
It also made me wonder about those aforementioned pigeons. I worry that when one holds so tightly to easily disproved delusions for so long that they will never escape the spiral of bitterness that accompanies believing such falsehoods. Will they never be able to experience the full depth real beauty or wonder at pure truths?
I don’t have an answer for that outside of acknowledging that there is plenty of proof of older folks who hold onto their bitterness and hatred like it was a pot of gold. People who have no concern for how the world will be once they have left it.
I feel a terrible pity for those people who end their lives in such a way, devoid of beauty and truth. And as much as I loathe the strutting and shitting pigeons who frequent the rallies of that former guy, dressed in ridiculous costumes and spewing hateful lies and conspiracies, I also pity them. I feel sorry for how they will experience the future. Short of a personal epiphany, I believe most will go into the end of lives as bitter and angry people.
And that is just so sad. And like so many other things, it doesn’t have to be that way.
As for myself, give me Einstein over a shitting and strutting pigeon any day…
I was going to put this out there without any context. You most likely will not need it if you watched last night’s debate.
Wow.
From the opening seconds when she marched across the stage into trump’s space to shake his hand, Kamala Harris was in control, making the ex-president*** look old, weak, stupid, bitterly angry, rattled, and out of control.
Certainly not presidential.
To me, he seemed more like a speed freak holding court in a bus station. His eyes appeared very dilated and he spoke extremely fast as he rattled off what was often pure nonsense or threats and predictions of doom.
And like those commuters avoiding the speed freak in that station, he wouldn’t making eye contact with Harris at any point.
It was pure weakness.
He also lied incessantly, a mixture of pure falsehoods and absurd and already debunked internet conspiracies. For the debate, the oddsmakers set the over/under for the number of his lies at 19.5, meaning that you could bet that he would either have less or more than that number. According to Daniel Dale, the well-known independent fact-checker, the number was 33 in his preliminary examination of the debate. I was surprised that the number was that low.
Kamala Harris dominated the space, even though trump was allowed to speak five minutes more than her. He spoke for 42 minutes to her 37 minutes. She was well prepared and strong with her responses.
I am not a fan of these debates in the form to which they have now evolved. A candidate can’t come out and simply present their policies and plans for the future, especially when facing a candidate who lacks both and whose whole schtick amounts to outrage, insult, and doomsaying.
I think Kamala Harris appeared strong, intelligent, confident, and on message, providing as many details as one could in such a debate while still serving up healthy doses of the required performative aspects that now make up modern debates.
How anyone could look at the performance of the other guy and still think he should be once again leading this country is mystifying to me. He is totally unfit for the position. No vision. No plan though he claims to finally have concepts of a plan for his long-promised healthcare solution.
Perhaps the time has come for him take a long break to go yell at that dark cloud hanging over Mar-a-Lago. That is one job for which he is fully prepared.
Young people know less than we do, but they understand more; their perception has not yet been blunted by compromise, fatigue, rationalization, and the mistaking of mere respectability for morality.
–Sydney J. Harris, The Best of Sydney J. Harris (1975)
I came across the sentence above from late (1917-1986) Chicago journalist Sydney Harris and it struck a chord with me, crystallizing several things that have been on my mind lately.
The first thing that jumped out at me was his comparison of knowledge versus understanding among young people. I’ve been closely following the current presidential election, much as I have done in other years going back to 1980. Maybe more so this year since the stakes are higher than normal, demanding more attention.
In every election cycle in my lifetime, there has always been the anticipation that in that year the youth vote will finally turn out in full force and make a loud statement as to how our nation will proceed. And each time, they have never come close to expectations, usually turning out in smaller percentages than other age categories.
But in 2020, they turned out in higher numbers than in the past and may have very much been the deciding factor in President Biden’s victory. In subsequent years, their participation and enthusiasm in the political process have only risen. As this has taken place, I have found myself thinking about how the lives of modern kids are so much different than my own at that age. They have been exposed to so much more of the world, both the brighter and darker aspects, than I ever was. They have had to bear the horrible brunt of our worship of the gun, serving as sacrificial offerings on the altar of that insane cult.
When I see these kids in the aftermath of our most recent bi-monthly school shooting, I am astounded and at their composure, how relatively calmly they respond to reporter’s questions. But I am also dismayed because this only indicates the normalization that has taken place.
And it’s anything but normal. But I think these kids today can see that plainly. To Harris’ point, they may not know why or how it came to this being the case. They may not yet have fully experienced compromise, fatigue or rationalizations for themselves, but they understand that the older generations that were supposed to be looking out for them have failed them. These kids can plainly see our generations’ willingness to compromise and rationalize away their safety. And they can see that offering thoughts and prayersare nothing but a play for respectability, a mask worn to cover the lack of morals and courage in those who should take action but are unwilling to do so.
And I believe they see this in other ways. They see the hypocrisy for what it is when people are demonized for their skin color, sexual orientation, place of birth, religion, or social status. These kids have been exposed to a much wider spectrum of the human experience than I did at their age and thus exhibit a far greater level of tolerance and acceptance than most of my generation as a whole ever did.
They might not know the whole story, but they understand in a way we were never able to.
As someone who has felt deep fatigue of this life, who has compromised or ran away when I should have stood firm and then, much to my shame, rationalized away my failure to do so, I hope my perception of today’s kids is correct. I see these kids and am heartened that maybe, now that they see that the older generations are not looking out for their best interests, they understand that it is up to them, the younger generation, to take action.
The future is theirs to take and the path to owning their future is in the voting booth.
I have been wrong about many things in the past but hope I am seeing things clearly this one time and that they own that path to the future. We shall see…
And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.
― Meister Eckhart
The magic of beginnings…
That is such an elegant phrase. Poetic. Leave it to Meister Eckhart, the 13th century German theologian/philosopher/mystic who has appeared here in the past.
The advantage of these using these short maxims is that they can often possess meanings apart from those that were intended by the original speaker. Meister Eckhart was most likely talking about some sort of religious awakening or changing one’s life in a positive manner.
I don’t really know.
But I am pretty sure that the meaning I attach to his adage might divert from his own.
For me, the message in it rings true in regards to going back to look at work from when I was first painting, when I was just gaining a toehold on whatever direction my painting might go or what form it might take. It was a time of finding voice, as I have said many times here.
It was also a time that possessed the magic of beginnings.
It’s that time when there is a blank slate before you and you are standing there with the few tools that you have brought with you– your own experiences, your observations of the world, some desire to create something of your own, an affinity for the visual, and maybe a little time spent doodling in the columns of newspapers and journals.
But beyond these things, you are a clueless, empty vessel. Everything is new. Every day is at least one new lesson learned. Each new piece has some sort of revelation, pointing out those things that resonate and those things that most definitely do not.
Every new stroke or color was an epiphany, like discovering the “open sesame” that unlocked the door that opened to new and wide horizons of possibility.
It truly felt like magic at the time.
Now, it still feels like magic– at times. Sometimes I find myself feeling like the wizened old magician who has pulled his rabbit out of his hat day after day for twenty five years. Yeah, it’s still a great trick for those who haven’t seen it before but it has lost the thrill for the magician, has lost that excitement that came with first learning that trick, on first wanting to display his newfound feats of magic to a crowd.
So, I sometimes go back and look at these old pieces from that time, those pieces that represent the magic of beginnings for me. And I almost always find something that I have lost over time, a small thing that somehow was set aside through a conscious choice or simply forgotten.
And finding these little things reignites that magic that came in the beginning. It changes my perspective, allows me to get out of the ruts of time that have been blocking my vision.
There is inevitably something from these forays into the past that I bring back with me to the present. A reminder to do something a bit different than the way I have fallen into the habit of doing it over a long period of time. Maybe even something as basic as how I start each new painting. These old pieces may not be gems in their own rights but they have raw material whose potential I can use.
But more importantly, they have the magic of beginnings within them.
And that is what I am seeking anew…
I’ve been working on some new things recently and have at moments felt that magic of beginnings that I wrote of a few years back. Thought it was a good morning to revisit that post from early 2021.
“Guitars pine for the fingers of Bill Mize, who makes them weep, sing and roll around like a cat at his feet. Thumpin’ good acoustic majesty.”
– WDVX , Knoxville. TN
This is one of those fortunate and rare Sunday mornings when I get to share some great music that has a little bit of my own work connected with it. The other day I received a box in the mail with a bunch of CDs from guitarist Bill Mize, who had contacted me months ago about the possibility of using one of my paintings for his newest album. It didn’t take long, after listening to his music and seeing all he’s accomplished, for me to agree to his request. I loved his music and was highly impressed by his resume.
Bill is a past winner of the National Fingerstyle Guitar Competition at The Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. Guitar Player Magazine has labeled this event the “U.S. Open of guitar competitions.” Bill received a GRAMMY Award for his collaboration with musician and storyteller David Holt on the recording Stellaluna and has been featured on the popular guitar compilations “Windham Hill Guitar Sampler” by Windham Hill Records and “Masters of the Acoustic Guitar” by NaradaRecords. In 2009, Bill’s music appeared in the Ken Burns documentary “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”Mel Bay Productions transcribed Mize’s second CD, “Tender Explorations,” into a songbook, and his original compositions have been transcribed for Fingerstyle Guitar and Acoustic Guitar magazines.
His new album is titled The Southwindand features a balance of Bill’s own compositions and his arrangements of tunes from others, which is a mix of traditional songs and the work of well-known songwriters. For example, there are Bill’s reworkings of old favorites such as Shenandoah and Lonesome Valley (a favorite of mine) as well as Dolly Parton’s Light of the Clear Blue Morning and Dan Fogelberg’s Old Tennessee.
It’s a really satisfying group of work, showing off Bill’s considerable talents as both a player and composer. Just plain good stuff, which if you read this blog on a regular basis, is the highest praise for me. The album also plays into my own mindset for my work. I painted with it playing yesterday and found that it was the perfect accompaniment. It was like riding on a light breeze. I guess The Southwind is an appropriate title.
I should also note that Beth Bramhall, Bill’s wife, played on this album and arranged the song He’s Gone Away. Beth is a pianist/accordionist and an Emmy Award winning composer. Lots of talent in that family. There’s a good interview with both of them online that gives you a lot more insight.
The painting that was used for the album cover is from 2008 and my Archaeologyseries. It is titled Archaeology: A New Wind. I am really pleased at how it works for the cover.
So, for this week’s Sunday Morning Music here’s a track from the album, written and performed by Bill Mize. This is Advize the Wize.
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
–Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Complacency never really serves us well. It’s not the same as patience, where you bide your time until you take action. It’s more like biding your time with no plan or intention for taking action.
It’s a settling for things as they are, even when the circumstances are not completely to our liking. Staying put when you should be moving on. Or using the Howard Zinn metaphor above, throwing your cards in on every hand without even looking at them, never daring to risk anything. You may not lose much this way, but you will never know if you have thrown in an unbeatable hand.
That certainly is true in art. I often say that my greatest challenge is in creating excitement in myself with my work. But sometimes even though I find a level of excitement in something, I get a nagging feeling that if I pushed myself, dared myself a bit more, that I might attain an even greater level of excitement.
I go through this all the time and beat myself for not taking that next step forward, for not taking action.
And in this season of presidential politics, the same is true for political participation. As a nation, we face the most important and far-reaching election of our lifetimes. Certainly, of mine. We are at a point that determines who and what we are as a nation. We are as close to being an autocracy, oligarchy, kakistocracy, idiocracy, or whatever you want to call the fresh hell being offered by the lying, grifting, criminal ex-president*** who has served as an agent of chaos for much too long now.
It boggles my mind how many of us refuse to make the effort to vote, let alone studying the issues and forming an informed opinion. I can’t fathom not taking an interest in something that could ultimately affect so many aspects of our lives, possibly for generations to come.
Come on, people. Get in the game. If you don’t play, you can’t win– and you still can lose.
Redtree Times 