Drafting a world where no such road will run From you to me; To watch that world come up like a cold sun, Rewarding others, is my liberty. Not to prevent it is my will’s fulfillment. Willing it, my ailment.
— No Road, Philip Larkin
There’s a lot to do this morning plus my computer is a little glitchy this morning so I won’t say much. I thought I’d pair the small piece above from my current West End Gallery show, In Cool Air, with a reading by Tom O’Bedlam of No Roadfrom poet Philip Larkin. Not sure that they fully mesh in terms of tone and message but I am a sucker for Larkin’s verse with its sometimes cynical and slightly misanthropic viewpoint.
I especially like the final stanza shown above. There’s something to it that I can somewhat equate with what I do.
Or not. Who knows, really?
All I know that on a busy morning, these lines and this small painting felt like a small respite.
I have been super busy lately but when I get a free minute I have been listening to short bits of poetry read online. Most are only a minute or two long which provides a short break in the thought process which I find refreshing. I particularly enjoy works read by narrator Tom O’Bedlam.
Who this Tom O’Bedlam actually is has been a question for some time since he emerged around 2008 as a reader of poetry and garnered a folowing. He is an anonymous reader whose name is based on an equally anonymous 16th century poem, Tom O’Bedlam’s Song, which is considered one of the great anonymous poems in the English language perhaps the greatest of the mad songs, those verses dedicated to the ramblings of the seemingly insane. There is quite a long tradition of mad songs in poetry which makes one wonder about the link between poets and madness.
But the identity of the present day Tom O’Bedlam is still up in the air though his name does link to the website of contemporary poet David J. Bauman. Even so, it is never quite clear that he is the voice of O’Bedlam and his own readings sound much different. It is surmised that he uses an audio program to achieve the timber and tone of O’Bedlam’s distinctly pleasing voice.
I don’t really know and to tell the truth, it doesn’t matter much. I just enjoy the results and the choices of the poems selected for him to read. I particularly enjoy the work of British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) who often has a slightly acerbic, misanthropic skew to his very engaging work. I used one of his poems, High Windows, years ago for the inspiration for a painting.
Here’s a short example of Larkin’s work as read by the aforementioned Tom O’Bedlam. They linked the verse with the stunning painting at the top, Peace; Burial at Sea, from a favorite of mine, the exquisite JMW Turner. Maybe that’s why I chose this one today.
Can’t really say but this is Next, Please. Take a break if you can and give a listen. Maybe it will refresh you, as well. If not, at least it make make you think a bit.
Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
― Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
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A newer painting, this one on paper called The Quarantine House, that is part of my upcoming show, Social Distancing, at the Principle Gallery. The show is tentatively scheduled to open on June 5. There is, of course, uncertainty about how it might proceed given the current circumstances.
Uncertainty is a common companion for most of us these days. In regular times in the past, there were types of uncertainty that I was comfortable with, having developed a tolerance of sorts for them. You know, things like belief systems, confidence in my own abilities and those sorts of things. In fact, preparing for my annual shows was one of the coping mechanisms that built up that tolerance..
It gave me a defined task and a dead focus on that task. Certainty.
It was a certainty that pushed all other uncertainty to the back of my mind, out of sight and rendered harmless.
But now, there is a constant uncertainty that runs through these days. I still have the task but it feels less defined, less certain. And that dead focus that has sustained me in the past now feels like it is being restrained. Or held captive.
Like it is the one being confined to that quarantine house. It knows there is work to be done but the uncertainty has brought it to a standstill in the dragging minutes and hours of its confinement. It looks around for something that will feed it but all it see are the corners of its confined space and out the windows nothing but endless plains and distant horizons.
That dead focus feeds on certainty and it feels a bit starved at the moment.
I know that dead focus will leave the quarantine house eventually, that it will find its way to sustenance of some sort. A small bit of certainty will whet its appetite and soon, it will once again be ravenous for all the time it can consume.
But for now, I just have to wait it out with that uncertainty as a housemate here in the studio.
After working on the large painting whose progress I have been chronicling, I moved back to a few pieces that were incomplete and needed the final touches to come alive. This is one , a fairly large canvas measuring 30″ by 40″, painted in the same obsessionist manner as my recent work. This piece has a lot of things working for it- the way all of the landscape elements converge at the center, the pull of the alternating rows of the field, etc.
But the sky is the obvious star of this painting is the vivid sky. It has a real glow in the studio and my eye is always pulled to it. It is just calling for one’s attention. The sky is intentionally comprised of built up layers of colorful daubs of paint. I wanted the sky to have that appearance of the sky coming apart, separating into individual lights sources. The result is a really active sky, full of movement, that is a dynamic backdrop for the quietness of the landscape below.
As I was finishing it, I began thinking of the colorful daubs of color in the painting as being stained glass windows, kind of suspended in the sky. That reminded me of the poem, High Windows, from the late British poet Philip Larkin. It’s an interesting poem, one that seems full of cynicism at first glance, almost rejoicing in the loss of reverence in the world. But the last few lines have the cynic dissolving into a sort of new awe and reverence for the immense unknown, which are symbolized to him by high windows. That is the same immense unknown I see in the sky of this painting, which is now titled High Windows.
Anyway, here is the poem from Larkin. I’m also enclosing a video that has the voice of Larkin reading his poem. It’s always interesting to hear the author’s reading of the words, his rhythm and cadence. Gives you more of an idea of his aim in writing the piece. Hope it works for you…
High Windows
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives–
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
Redtree Times 