Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
–Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth
I had something in mind yesterday that I wanted to write this morning. It was a sort of vent. I won’t even mention the subject of this proposed diatribe but there is enough horrific crap floating around that won’t have to strain your imagination if you guess.
But when I finally plopped in front of my laptop, I had lost the desire to vent. It wasn’t a moment of exhaustion or dejection. I just wanted to sit in peace for a little bit this morning. Wanted to simply take in the quiet of the darkness around me.
Wanted to deepen the present, to steal a phrase from the Thomas Merton quote above. As he implied, you can’t hope or wait for solitude to arrive. It’s here in the present, always near and waiting to embrace you if only you can slow your mind enough to detect it.
That’s seems simplistic and much easier said than done. After all, it’s a hard task to slow the mind given the speed and anxiety of life today. There’s even a little guilt in doing so, especially for a compassionate and caring person. It might feel selfish for some to feel peaceful solitude while others suffer.
But solitude often brings clarity. And clarity of thought often brings decisive action. and that is what is needed in this world right now.
So, for this morning I am guiltlessly seeking the clarity that comes in solitude. I know it’s in here somewhere.
Here’s Across the Universe from the Beatles. It seems right for the moment, with its refrain of Jai Guru Deva Om which literally translates from the Sanskrit as glory to the shining remover of darkness. And looking out my window just now, I see the tall trees as dark bony silhouettes against the emerging light…
The best kept secret in America today is that people would rather work hard for something they believe in than live a life of aimless diversion.
–John W. Gardner, Living, Leading, and the American Dream, 2003
This is another new Little Gem that is now at the West End Gallery for their annual exhibit of small works. This piece really hit me in a visceral way when it was done. It exuded a lot of different things that all hit the mark for me. The color was right on with its mood, tone, and temperature harmonizing perfectly. The shapes and forms felt right in relation to each another and the small figure in the foreground added great depth to the scene.
There was a lot packed into this very small painting. Yet, I struggled with what it was saying to me. The wildfires in LA were burning at the time and I thought that with its extra warm coloration it might be saying something about fleeing the heat and flames.
But that didn’t feel right. The nature of the tiny figure was a nagging question for me. Was it fleeing the city’s hustle and bustle? Or was it returning from the city to its home in a cooler, calmer remote place? I couldn’t answer that definitively, but I loved the ambiguity. It didn’t really matter whether the figure was seeking diversion in the heat of the city or in the cool of the country. The point I saw was that it was seeking something different, if only to provide a contrast to what it experienced every other day.
The daytripper, of course.
I looked for a short quote or passage that somewhat summed up what I was seeing here and came across this short passage from a posthumously published book the late John W. Gardner (1912-2002) who had served as the U.S. Secretary of Heath, Education, and Welfare under LBJ. I wasn’t sure it spoke directly to this painting, but it spoke to something that had been on my mind, something that seemed to manifest itself in recent times.
It was this idea that we have become a country that leans into constant diversion, that we seek easy, instant, and short-lived gratification in lieu of working or sacrificing for something that would more deeply satisfy our needs and desires. Something that would benefit us in a lasting manner. It’s a tendency that has been exploited by the powerful and influential for their own benefit
It is a hard offer to resist. We all want things to come easy., with little thought or effort. on pour part. And after being exposed to easy diversion for so long, we expect and demand it. We no longer value the day trip– we expect it each and every day.
It’s all an illusion. And a dangerous one at that. We have lost that muscle memory of the need for work and sacrifice for something greater, something more lasting. We have exchanged that ability for shiny trinkets.
I know that sounds much like the rants of an old codger at the local diner crowing about how things were so much better back in the day. To be honest, it wasn’t any better. We still wanted everything to be easy and thoughtless. That desire just wasn’t being as fully exploited as it is now.
I’m going to stop now because I can’t fully link that thought to the painting outside of saying that we need diversion and the occasional day trip. But it should remain that– a day trip. Not a life filled with diversion that keeps us from attending to the real needs of ourselves and others. We need to pay attention, to look away from the shiny and easy a little more often.
Divert ourselves not with the meaningless, but with things that feel our souls.
And I think John W. Gardner was correct in believing that most people today would be willing to shuck constant diversion in order to have something worth working or fighting for.
Maybe that tiny figure is turning its back on the diversions presented to it in order to seek its purpose? Or maybe the painting itself is a diversion?
I don’t know.
But like I wrote earlier, this little painting has a lot of things packed into it.
Here’s the song that gave the title to this little guy, Daytripper. I am sharing both the Beatles’ original along with a wonderful version from fingerpicking wiz Tommy Emmanuelle that also includes Lady Madonna from the Beatles. If you like watching a master guitarist play, this is a must see.
A little diversion, yes, but it feeds the soul. Or so I think.
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.
It was that hour that turns seafarers’ longings homeward- the hour that makes their hearts grow tender upon the day they bid sweet friends farewell…
― Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio
Dante had it right– dusk is that hour of recollection, some warm and some less so. As I age, I see this more clearly, most likely as a result of simply having more to look back on than look forward to at this stage in my life.
Don’t jump too hardly on that last line. I feel there is still a tremendous amount of living ahead for me and others my age or older. It’s just math– the ratio of time lived to the expected or hoped for time left in one’s life– says that the greater part of our life is behind us for people of my age and older.
And I believe dusk does often remind us of this fact. It’s a time when we sometimes pause to look back on the day, to reckon what we have done and not done during that time and to measure what lies ahead for the next day.
And sometimes this recollection extends back further than the day that just passed due to the moment in which it takes place. Maybe it’s the warmth and color of the sunset. Maybe it’s the way the landscape around us changes in the setting light, as colors deepen and contrast to the narrowing light. Whatever it might be in that moment, something triggers flashes of distant memories.
Words spoken and unspoken. Maybe just a glance from a face you remember or the most innocuous detail from some moment that didn’t seem important when you saw it so long ago.
Sometimes these moments are full and make sense. Sometimes they are fragments that seem insignificant. Yet they remain in place in our memory.
And as that moment of recollection passes and we move to settling in for the night and looking ahead to the coming day, these recalled moments dissolve, much like the setting sunlight melts into darkness.
There’s a wealth of recollections to pull from as one ages and maybe I see that in the depth and richness of the colors here. Maybe every stroke of color in that sky is a fleeting and flashing moment from my memory. I don’t know.
It makes me think of when my dad was in his final years suffering from dementia. His memory was spotty at best and often large segments of it were absent. I remember one instance when he was disturbed and asked me with great seriousness to tell him who his mother was. I went to a photo of her from her college yearbook (Potsdam 1918!) that was on a bulletin board we had put up in his room. I pointed her out and explained in great detail her history. He listened to me more intently than any other time I can remember in my life, like he needed to know this and wanted to inscribe it deep into memory.
Looking back on that moment now, I can only imagine him as the Red Tree looking back and, instead of the richness of individual colors in that sky of memory, he is seeing a hazy grayness with occasional peeks of color. A recognizable tree or hillside whose color has faded to a duller shade, almost gray. And the distant deeply colored mountain that might have been his mother was not even visible.
Makes me appreciate every moment, every fleck of color, every drop of light, every insignificant recollection that remains with the hope that my dusk never fully dissolves.
This post ran a few years back. I came across the image of the painting at the top, And Dusk Dissolves, and remembered that this painting was still at the West End Gallery. I had forgotten that it was there. It’s a very large piece, 30″ by 48″, so it is often difficult to find space for it on the gallery walls. But it remains a favorite of mine. Seeing it and reading the post reminded me of my parents, who I have been thinking about in recent weeks.
Here’s a song about looking back, a version of a favorite Beatles song, In My Life, from 1965‘s Rubber Soul album. Hard to believe this song is almost 60 years old. This version is from the American recordings of Johnny Cash, done in the final months of his life. n a long and storied career, I’ve always felt it was among his most impactful work. His age and ailments changed his delivery and imbued the songs with real heart-felt emotion and purity. A powerful group of music. This version of the Beatles’ song is not so different stylistically, but it it is filled with his own personal meaning which, n a way, makes it his own.
Say the word and you’ll be free Say the word and be like me Say the word I’m thinking of Have you heard the word is love?
It’s so fine, it’s sunshine It’s the word, love
— The Word, The Beatles
There’s a lot of things I could comment on today. The pandemic is raging with over 200,000 new cases a day the new norm and 3000+ deaths per day in its sights. We have a lame-duck president*** who ignores his responsibilities to whine endlessly and claim without a shred of evidence that he was defrauded in the election even though his attorneys have admitted several times in court that they are not alleging or showing evidence of fraud. Instead of accepting defeat graciously and doing his duty, he cries and blusters about an election in which he was defeated by 4.4% of the vote, a landslide amount in any election.
The current count shows him trailing by about 7,000,000 votes. To put that amount in perspective, it’s the combined number of voters– from both parties– in West Virginia, South Carolina, Kansas, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota. That’s a lot of folks.
But I digress. I don’t want to talk about that. Let’s talk about something more upbeat, say, the fact that the album Rubber Soul from the Beatles was released on this date back in 1965. It was their sixth album and marked the beginning of a remarkable four album arc — Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the White Album— that both ignited and marked a sea change in pop and rock music.
It is a great, great album that still stands up well after 55 years. Every song is a winner. I want to share a song but with every track being so memorable, it’s tough to choose one to highlight. Any one would be a solid choice but I am going with The Word this morning.
Give a listen — say the word and you’ll be free–then have a good day. Be careful out there.
I have heard the big music And I’ll never be the same
*********************
I was looking for a song to play this morning and I thought about a favorite track from an album, A Pagan Place, from back in the 1980’s from the Irish group The Waterboys. I was surprised to discover that in the nearly 12 years I’ve been doing this blog that the song hasn’t somehow surfaced.
The song is The Big Music and it’s about hearing a song or piece of music that just opens you up. Shakes up your whole world and changes how you see everything in it. Maybe even alters your whole life path.
It’s a song that really speaks to me. Growing up in the country at a time before digital broadcasts, satellite television and streaming services, we had two TV channels so reading and listening to music filled the void for a kid who was eager to learn about the world.
We had a big box of singles from the late 50’s and early 60’s that had by a cousin and somehow ended up with us. It had tons of good stuff including early rock from Elvis, lots of surf music from the likes of Jan and Dean and the Surfaris, goofy novelty songs and lots of pop chart hits that feel pretty dated today, such as Heart from Kenny Chandler, a song I listened to hundreds of time back then.
Plus, my sister was an avid music fan so there were always plenty of early Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan singles on the record player. That first ringing chord of A Hard Day’s Night still thrills me in the same visceral way that I remember feeling as a kid.
Through those formative years, there were plenty of songs that hit me hard and opened up the world for me in small ways. Too many to list, actually. But I don’t know that I can mark one song that was that single defining moment. The Big Music for me.
Well, maybe it was from the first time I saw Springsteen back in 1977. The show and sound was unlike any other rock show I had seen up to that point. I wrote about that show in one of my favorite blog entries and mentioned his performance of It’s My Life,a song that was originally recorded by The Animals. That song and performance changed a lot of things with repercussions that echo through my whole life.
When I think about it, I doubt that I would be writing this today without that song at that moment.
So, I guess that would be my Big Music moment. Do you have a Big Music moment or one big song that just does it for you?
Here’s the song, The Big Music, from The Waterboys. Have a good Sunday.
The film Jojo Rabbit premiered on HBO over the weekend, which made me very happy. It hits a lot of sweet spots for me.
A great cast and a script filled with a beguiling mix of dark satire and tragic poignancy. Strong visuals. Big laughs and plenty of tears. Ridiculous (but still scary) Nazis.
Hitler eating a unicorn.
Yeah, you read that right.
There’s even some poetry from Rainer Maria Rilke as the film ends, a snippet from his poem Go to the Limits of Your Longing, which is shown at the top. Words that seem applicable to this time, for sure.
It also uses its soundtrack brilliantly. It begins with the Beatles singing their German version of I Want to Hold Your Hand over archival clips of Hitler’s adoring fans at huge nationalistic rallies that are chilling in their magnitude and fervor. Images from the infamous Nuremberg rally always puts a knot in my stomach. The film ends with the German performance from David Bowie of his always rousing Heroes.
Filmmaker Taika Waititi also makes brilliant use of the song Everybody’s Gotta Live. It’s a song from 1972 from a band of that era, Love, that is very underappreciated. Led by the late Arthur Lee, it was an interesting group, a multiracial group that dabbled in folk rock and psychedelia a la the Byrds. Their 1967 release, Forever Changes, is on the Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Rock Albumsand was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2011.
Even so, I am sure most of us haven’t heard much of their work. But it shines in Jojo Rabbit and is certainly worth examining further.
Here’s a video with the lyrics and images from the film just to give you taste. If you get a chance to see the film, I recommend it highly. But be forewarned, that it is art and, as such, is a subjective thing. What I love may not move you at all.
Take a look and give a listen then have a good day. We all deserve one.
Running late but wanted to share this little bit. On this date, August 5, back in 1966, a favorite album of mine, the groundbreaking Revolver from the Beatles, was released. With its daring technical innovations, it set the tone for pop and rock music then, bringing the psychedelic era to the wider audience of pop music. It was like they kicked their machine into a higher gear that challenged every other musician to follow them.
It’s good stuff.
I have quite a few favorites on this album but the two that jump out at me are Tomorrow Never Knows and Love You To, both heavily influenced by George Harrison‘s affinity for the music and rhythms of India. I’ve never played Love You To here and thought today would be appropriate.
I woke up tired this morning. So tired. Stumbled over here in the already blooming heat which did nothing to revive me. Plunked down in front of my laptop with a cup of coffee and just wanted to close my eyes.
Certainly didn’t want to write this. But I felt a certain obligation to my routine to play a Sunday song here. I could at least say that I did something.
I at first thought that I’m So Tired from the Beatles would fit. It’s from their White Album released in late 1968. That made me think. I wondered what album was sitting at #1 on the charts back on this date in 1969, fifty years in the past. It was such an interesting time, one filled with monumental events and people who shaped the world we live in today.
We were still reeling from the murders of MLK and RFK, Nixon took office in January, the draft was still sending young men into battle in Viet Nam, protests and race riots raged in the streets, our astronauts walked in epic fashion on the moon, and hundreds of thousands of people gathered together on Yasgur’s Farm outside Woodstock for a concert that immediately entered into the mythic realm.
But going back to seeing what the #1 album was on this date in 1969, I found that it wasn’t the White Album. No, it was the self titled second album from Blood Sweat and Tears which knocked the Original Cast Recording of Hair from the top of the chart. Looking further, the chart that year was topped by iconic albums from several genres. The White Album held the top for 8 weeks early in the year. There was a week with a compilation album from a TV special featuring Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Temptations Then Wichita Lineman from Glen Campbell held the top for a month, the Johnny Cash at San Quentin album for another month, Blood Sweat and Tears for 7 weeks, and Hair for 13 weeks. The year finished with 2 weeks from the supergroup Blind Faith, a month of Green River from Creedence, 8 weeks of the Beatles’ Abbey Road until Led Zeppelin IIclosed out the final week.
That is an epic year of music on the charts. Probably at least a hundred songs on those albums alone that most people my age can sing along to. But when you consider that the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, the entire Motown roster and just about every other musical rock, pop and soul god was still alive and at the peak of their creative powers, it only seems fitting. I was just a kid then but I am so grateful to have been influenced by that time and its music.
Don’t feel quite so tired now.
Here’s I Got Life from Hair. That was an album that was ingrained in my mind from an early age and I can still listen to it over and over. I think this song speaks to people in any time. Have a good day.
There are sensory perceptions that we carry throughout our lives. It might be a sound, a smell, an image that once brought to mind brings forth the atmosphere and feeling of the time in which they first entered our consciousness.
The smell of a cooking turkey instantly returns me to my childhood and the farmhouse where we lived. It would be Thanksgiving and I can see Mom’s old formal dining table with the heavy chairs that surrounded it. It’s a long table with all the extending leafs in place and it’s surface is covered with the bounty of Thanksgiving, the mashed potatoes, canned cranberry sauce, stuffing and so on. Just the tiniest whiff of a roasting turkey always — and I mean always–sends me hurtling through time back to that table.
The same is true with certain songs. Take for instance, the song In My Life from the Beatles. Hearing those opening chords always sends me back to same big old farmhouse that played such a big part in my formative years. I can see the old floral wallpaper in the living room and there’s a big console record player with cloth covered speakers on its front and two sliding panels on top that uncover a turntable on one side and the controls for a radio on the other. Those opening chords have me immediately standing in front of that record player with the light from the large windows in that room filtering through Mom’s frilled white cotton curtains. On the wall there was a reproduction of a schlocky painting — I think it was a red covered bridge–printed on thick cardboard that was bought at the Loblaws grocery store.
It’s a good memory. I felt safe in that place, free to imagine places and adventures I hoped for in the future. It was a good place to foster some of the thoughts and observations that direct my paintings to this very day.
That’s my intro for this week’s Sunday morning music. I thought instead of playing the original Beatles version of In My Life which is understandably a favorite of mine, I would opt instead for one from Bette Midler with a beautiful accompaniment on ukelele from uke wizard Jake Shimabukuro. The feeling of his playing on this song works for me as much as the original in bringing back that earlier time and place.
Give a listen, think about some of those sensations that trigger your own memories and have a good Sunday.
Redtree Times 