Redtree Times

The Regeneration— At West End Gallery

My hand does the work and I don’t have to think; in fact, were I to think, it would stop the flow. It’s like a dam in the brain that bursts.

—Edna O’Brien, The New York Times (1984)

Still suffering the combined effects of the covid/cancer tag team, especially the fatigue. Not looking forward to the radiation beginning in the next couple of weeks that will no doubt increase it. Work is going slow as a result. Getting some done but at a snail’s pace or so it seems. Too slow for me to find my flow. When it’s there it is much like author Edna O’Brien describes above– a dam bursting and running wild without thought and finding its own direction in the flow.

I have been trying to rediscover that flow in a number of ways. Mainly music in different genres and forms. Stuff out of my range. This brought me recently to the Wales-born artist Ren. He’s been on my radar for several years, often showing up on my feed. I never clicked on any of his videos nor tried to listen to it, writing him off as just another rapper. Not that that is a bad thing in itself. There are a lot of rap artists that produce great music. Just not my bag.

I finally decided to give his work a chance, even if it turned out to be one listen or view. At least I could say I knew his work a bit.

I found myself wandering in a deep and twisting rabbit hole.  It moves in all directions, up and down and forward and backward. It is sometimes raw and rough and sometimes smooth and graceful. There is raw emotion, extreme musicality, lyrics that display a deep and agile mind, impeccable instincts in the musical and visual decisions he makes, and a world view with an emphasis on love, hope, and empathy. He has a geniality that feels always authentic and infectious.

I keep waiting to be disappointed with every new video, song, or performance I come across. Or at least to be able to pin him down and attach a label, as much as I hate to do that with anyone. But I have yet to be disappointed in anything to which he attaches himself, from his street busking days with his Brighton-based band, The Big Push, to his more recent videos that are nothing short of brilliant in their storytelling, cinematography, messaging, and artistry.

As a whole, it feels like a pure expression of art to me. And that’s a rare and wonderful thing to find in anyone’s work. Part of that comes from the fact that he is totally independent with his work, eschewing the restrictions of record companies that would seek to narrow his scope and put a label on him.

And that would be great shame. A loss. There is no one label to attach to his work or his vision. It just flows, no matter where he finds himself musically. And that is what drives my current obsession with his work. I am always seeking for a hint of where the limits of his mind might end or even begin. Or to phrase that differently, what drives his thought process.

What feeds his flow? That is the question that looms large in my mind right now. It’s like searching his work for some sort of key that will unlock my own doors, one that will break my dam open and let my own mind flow free.

And it does feel like it is guiding me to that key in some way. Unexpectedly.

And that’s the way in inspiration usually appears. You know something is missing and you search for it in all the places where you have found it in the past. And it’s not in those places. Then just when you’re frustrated and sick of looking for it, you open a drawer where you are sure it will not be and, lo and behold, it is there.

I don’t usually gush about my favorites here and there is a lot more to say about his background, which informs his messaging to a large degree. But I am going to leave it here and simply share a video of his for this Sunday Morning Music that demonstrates some of his unpredictable range and his performance skills. It is a cover of a dance music hit from the group Jungle, Back on 74, combined with Message in a Bottle from The Police. His covers always feel reinterpreted and enhanced in a very special way. This is a one-take performance, something for which he is known.

I picked this song not because it is representative of his body of work. It is not. I chose it mainly because I have been waking up with this song in my head recently. Sometimes that can be irritating. This has not been.

Pretty chill way to wake up in pretty unchill times.

George Grosz- Explosion, 1917

“Ya know, Edith Evans—great actress, great brain—said something once that just blew the top of my head off: She said that harmony—something I was searching for—was the natural state of things. Harmony is the norm, you see, and we fuck it up. We get scared or competitive or jealous, and we just get all this drama and conflict. So I just relax and know that harmony is the natural state. I get up early, when the harmony is the thickest, before too many people have messed it up, and then I don’t mess it up, and then there’s harmony.”

—Ruth Gordon/Interview with James Grissom

I get up early, when the harmony is the thickest…

Loved Ruth Gordon since I first knew who she was. She was smart, tough, and funny– my favorite combo. Her acting, writing, and personality all reflected these qualities. I think her words here pretty much sum up the reason I get up so damn early every morning– to get up to soak in the harmony while it is still thick and undisturbed.

Before too many people have messed it up.

Got up this morning, even earlier than my abnormal only to find I had missed that window of opportunity to bask in harmony like I was soaking quietly in a warm bath.

Somebody had already destroyed any chance of harmony for this morning and probably much longer. As predicted, the US and Israel had started bombing Iran. I am not going to go into an invective this morning, weighing the rightness or wrongness of this action. Though there is a debatable element of rightness in taking action against an Iranian regime that doesn’t fully represent the will of most of its people while openly oppressing them– sound familiar? — there is a boatload of wrongness when viewing this against a backdrop where this action serves as distracting cover for other even more disturbing revelations and actions.

If we laser focus on this or other foreign conflicts, we take our eyes off the fact that this administration is threatening to use emergency powers to seize control of all elections and that the Department of Defense is seeking to remove all safeguards in the use of AI to surveil American citizens, and more chillingly, allow the use of AI-powered fully autonomous lethal weaponry that can target or kill without a human in the decision loop. Or that DHS spent more than $140 billion in 2025 for ICE and CBP weaponry, creating a domestic force with more firepower than the entire defense departments of most foreign nations. Not to mention the huge proliferation of huge private prisons that, to call a spade a spade, are profit-making concentration camps.

There is so much more, and I could go on and on this morning on the many atrocious, authoritarian/dystopian elements for which this new aggression serves as a distraction.

But I won’t. I will however urge you to stay vigilant and to not take the bait of distraction.

Myself, in the short term I am going to try to find some small hidden pocket of that natural harmony that may have somehow evaded being messed up by some stupid bastard this morning.

If so, I am going to soak in it for a while. Though the world is being kept from settling into its natural state of harmony, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to settle into my own.

At least until some other moron barges in and tips over the tub.

It won’t be long now.

Here’s what I will be listening to until that harmony is broken. Maybe this will extend that time a bit. It’s a favorite Philip Glass piece, Mad Rush, that I have shared here in the past. There is a deeply meditative quality to it for me, as though it is the sound of the world finding equilibrium and settling into its natural state of harmony. It may not come soon but it will find it one day. Maybe not in my lifetime or yours or even your kids or grandkids or many more generations beyond.

But the world bides its time, knowing that it exists outside of time and that it will settle into its harmony eventually. With or without us.

Final Offer— Coming to West End Gallery

How can one bargain for anything that is worth while? And what else is worth bargaining for?

–Charles Williams, War in Heaven (1930)

The Bargaining

The painting at the top is a new piece that I call Final Offer. It is a semi-companion piece to another recent painting, The Bargaining, which is in the current Little Gems show at the West End Gallery. I see both pieces as being about the futility of bargaining, pleading, or praying for that which is non-negotiable.

One can’t negotiate away the inevitabilities of this life. In matters of life and death, there are no better deals to be cut when that which you see as your trading partner is nothing more than a cool and timeless eye that sees all and acknowledges none.

The only settlement that comes in this negotiation is in the compromise one comes to with oneself.  And that compromise is that while what will be will be, you are imbued with the strength to come to an understanding and acceptance of it.

That strength is the final offer.

On its face it doesn’t seem like a great deal, does it? One doesn’t get all they desire, isn’t given immunity from suffering, grief, and loss.

But it is the only deal on the table. And it is fair in that it offers no favoritism, no back door deals with anyone no matter how rich or connected they might be. The guy on the garbage truck gets the same deal as the guy in the State House. And the strength we are given is a grand concession by that distant eye.

Nothing to sneeze at, my friends.

That seems like a lot of intent for two small, simple paintings in bits of black and white and red. You might see them as being just some crazy person yelling at the sky. And maybe that is what it all is.

Who knows? Not me, that’s for damn sure.

A little extra info on the short quote at the top from British author Charles Williams, who dies in 1945 at the age of 58. He was an Oxford professor who was part of the Inklings, the informal literary group of Oxford profs led by C.S. Lewis that also included J.R.R. Tolkien. The first incarnations of Lord of the Rings were read by Tolkien at the group’s get-togethers, as were many other works-in-progress from other authors. I really don’t know much about Williams or his published work, some of which appear to be in the same realm of fantasy based on theology and myth as the well-known works of Tolkien and Lewis.

However, one interesting tidbit about Williams that jumped out at me was about his book which was the first major English-language edition of the works of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. That in itself doesn’t seem too interesting. However, this work was part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1924 Summer Olympics.

Art competition at the Olympics?  What? I have been a big Olympics fan for all my life–how had I missed that?

It seems that from 1912 until 1948 here were Olympic medals awarded for artistic achievement in Literature, Architecture, Music, Painting, and Sculpture. It was coined the Pentathlon of the Muses. One competitor, American Walter Winans, won gold in sculpture in 1912 after having won a gold medal for shooting in 1908.

It came to an end in 1948 when it became obvious that the subjective nature of art and the rules requiring amateur status made the competition untenable. It’s an interesting chapter in Olympic history of which I was totally unaware. Have to do some more research on this one.

In the meantime, here’s a song that deals with a type of bargaining. This is Devil’s Backbone from The Civil Wars.  Might not take a medal at the Olympics, but it’s good stuff, nonetheless.

This seems like a lot this morning, doesn’t it? Probably more than you bargained for, right?

As I said above, some things are non-negotiable.

Take it or leave it. Final offer…

The Call of Wonder– At West End Gallery

To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.

–Novalis. as quoted in Bildung in Early German Romanticism by Frederick C. Beiser

There are two ways of looking at my paintings for me. During the process, I often view it as an assemblage of parts, a series of decisions to be made and obstacles to overcome. It feels very much like it is part of me at that point, like I hold all the cards and determine where it will go and what it will inevitably be. I feel a bit like a mechanic or a surgeon in that time.

But there is a point just after it reaches completion where the piece stumbles to its feet and moves away from on its own volition. It has its own power, its own forward-moving force and I am left powerless to influence it at that point. I no longer see it as parts or pieces to be adjusted.

It is whole and seems to only be mine in only a familiar way. It might be like a parent looking at their child and seeing the resemblance but not understanding how and why the child does what it does as it grows away from them.

I don’t mean that in a negative way though I guess it could be taken that way. I was thinking of a sort of gratification in seeing their child do and say things they never imagined being possible for themselves. And doing it with a grace and beauty that they don’t recognize in themself.

It is a moment that is both prideful and somewhat sad when they realize that they have created something that they will never be themself, something that exceeds their whole.

I thought of this the other morning while doing my daily workout with a number of newly framed paintings within my sight. Only days before some of them had still been just parts and pieces, still problematic and with little life. They were still toddlers, dependent on me.

Yet now I was looking at them, and they felt whole and away from me. I recognized them as mine in that moment, could see the familial resemblance. But I could also see that they had their own things to say, their own feelings to express. Things out of my control. A transformation had taken place hey were grown now, no longer babes.

It was a moment that caught me off guard. I have spoken of the work taking on its own life many times before but, in that instant, this feeling seemed much more palpable and concrete.

It created a sense of wonder in me.

And when that happens, that is a good day…

A little short on time today. I have some things that need to be done health-wise early this morning so I am sharing the post above from back in 2016. It’s been edited a bit with a recent favorite painting and the passage from Novalis added. The song below, A Sense of Wonder from Van Morrison was part of the original post. I think it all comes together pretty well. One man’s opinion…

Boxed In, 2019

You cannot fight unreason, and as these dead multitudes will tell you — are telling you right now — certitude is the enemy.

–Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters (2006)

I wasn’t going to write anything this morning. Hadn’t planned to comment on the insanity of last night’s state of the union from our mad king. I couldn’t watch it. Thankfully, I was asleep before the madness began.

Then this morning I came across this short passage from a book in The Malazan Book of the Fallen, the ten-book epic fantasy series from Steven Erikson. I haven’t read the series nor was I even aware of it but the sentiment contains what I consider to be a universal truth, that certitude is our real enemy and that you cannot argue with the unreason in people brought on by such certainty.

I am not going to go on a long spiel here. I have discussed certainty and uncertainty here before, pointing out that seeing absolute certainty in anyone, even myself, instantly raises the suspicion that it might only serve as a cover for the instability of the argument on which that certainty is based.

I am never more doubtful of myself than when I am certain I am right.

That line could send us down a long and twisting rabbit hole but let’s stay focused on whatever the hell I think I am trying to say here this morning. And that is, based on what I have read about and seen from last night’s address is that we are dealing with a governing party that is absolute in the certainty of their fealty to the mad king and are unwilling to compromise or listen to reason of any sort.

In fact, at this point, I don’t think they have a mission statement for their governance that would be any way in the best interest for a majority of this country’s citizens. I get the feeling that their mission is to get to a point where they can incarcerate, expel, or kill anyone who opposes them with total impunity.

They no longer feel the need to find common ground, no longer see their opposition as even being American.

No, the see the majority of the citizenry as being the Other. They will not accept coexistence with this Other, only as someone to be dominated and subjugated.

That is the certitude which they embrace without rhyme or reason.

That is my personal view on this. I would never want to say I am certain of this belief. In fact, I keep trying to find evidence of the flaw in my thinking on this. And every day provides even less proof than the day before that this is not their ultimate goal.

It just seems that it has come down to, like the title of the old Pink Floyd song, Us and Them. Unless we conform to their will and ways, we will always remain the Them to their Us, never the We that encompasses us all.

Okay, I had my say. Sorry, but it had to be said, if only for my own well-being. I am literally sick and tired this morning. And frustrated. Writing this relieves some of that frustration. It’s much more productive manner than punching the wall. I learned that painful lesson long ago though sometimes I forget.

You better get out of here. I might start swinging any time now.

Here’s Pink Floyd and Us and Them from their landmark album Dark Side of the Moon.

I am the bond I weave with others.

— Albert Jacquard (1925-2013)

I received a small package yesterday postmarked from Italy. Castel Gandolfo, specifically which is, according to Wikipedia, a scenic town and municipality in Italy’s Alban Hills, located about 25 km southeast of Rome, best known as the historic summer residence of the Pope. Situated overlooking Lake Albano, the town features the 17th-century Apostolic Palace, the Barberini Gardens, and the Vatican Observatory.

It is also home to the Apostoline Sisters, an order of nuns whose specific mission is in helping young people find a path in this world through spiritual and vocational training, with the idea that every life is unique and every vocation important because, according to their website, Every vocation is never for oneself, it is always a task, a mission for the good of all.

That’s a thought I have always held in my mind, that there is dignity and purpose to be found in everyone and every job. So, when the Sisters reached out to me this past year to ask for permission to use two of my paintings for their annual desk calendar that they sell, along with other items, in order to raise funds for their mission which includes a vocational school there in Castel Gandolfo, I was honored and pleased to give my permission.

It’s a great little desk calendar whose overall theme is asked in a question gracing its cover: Under these skies, where are you? Each month’s image accompanied by an appropriate quote and a list of the feast days for that month. The first of my paintings chosen is for this month, February, and carries the title Creo Legami which translates to I create connections.

I like that.

It also includes the quote above that supplied the calendar page’s title from the late French geneticist/essayist Albert Jacquard. I love the quote they chose not only because it refers to the Baucis & Philemon painting accompanying it but because it also beautifully sums up how I viewed much of my work from the past year, especially those with the tangles that formed their skies.

I wasn’t aware of Jacquard but I can see why his words were chosen. He was a leader in genetic research which sounds ominous in itself. However, he devoted himself as a humanist to the betterment of the human condition through his advocacy for the homeless and illegal immigrants of France. He had an interesting quote about his research which resonated with me as someone who asks a lot of questions but offers few, if any, answers:

I have no solution: I don’t intend to build the society of tomorrow. I just want to show that it must not resemble the society of today.

I can certainly relate to that. I can’t say what our future holds or even what it should be. That is well beyond my limited abilities and understanding. But I do know what it should not and cannot be.

Here’s an absolute favorite song that I haven’t shared here in a while that echoes in these last few paragraphs. This is A Change is Gonna Come from the immortal Sam Cooke, a song that was written by Cooke at the height of the civil rights struggle in response to his arrest in Louisiana after protesting a Holiday Inn refusing to honor his reservations at that hotel.

And to think that there are some who would have us return to that time. That is a future we cannot accept.

Io sono legami che intreccio con gli altri…

PS: I also have another painting in this calendar for the month of October. I will share it at that time.

In Voyages Past (2006) — Coming to West End Gallery

When my life is over, my time has run out
My friends and my loved ones, I’ll leave them no doubt (leave them no doubt)
But one thing’s for certain when it comes my time
I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind

—Satisfied Mind, Red Hayes &  Jack Rhodes (1954)

We’ve talked about artistic satisfaction, or should I say dissatisfaction, in recent days. I am ending this week with a song for this Sunday Morning Music that is about a different sort of satisfaction– the satisfied mind. To my way of thinking, the artist can view their work with dissatisfaction but can still find and maintain a satisfied mind.

That seems contradictory, doesn’t it?

Maybe it is. But I believe not finding that ultimate and elusive satisfaction in your work doesn’t preclude the artist from finding satisfaction in their life and in their mind. After all, just being able to seek that artistic satisfaction, as maddening as the search sometimes seems, is a great privilege that most folks don’t experience in their life.

But it is an internal search. So long as the artist finds deeper levels of love and understanding, both in the giving and receiving of both, in their outer world, satisfaction is indeed within reach. It is possible.

I have often struggled with that inner artistic satisfaction and probably even more in finding a place where my mind feels satisfied. But as the years have passed, I am finding myself with that satisfied mind more and more often. It often comes in simply stopping and looking at the sky. In running my hand down the back of one of the cats. As I look out the window now, simply watching the snow fall brings a great sense of satisfaction.

I am alive. I have love. I have friendship. What more do I need to feel satisfied?

This week’s song is Satisfied Mind performed by the great Mavis Staples from her most recent album. She is the latest in a long, long line of artists who have recorded this song since it was written in 1954. It is considered a country music song and was written by Joe “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes. Hayes explained the origin of the song in an interview: “The song came from my mother. Everything in the song are things I heard her say over the years. I put a lot of thought into the song before I came up with the title. One day my father-in-law asked me who I thought the richest man in the world was, and I mentioned some names. He said, ‘You’re wrong; it is the man with a satisfied mind.'”

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?

The painting shown here is a bit of an anomaly. It was painted as one of the pieces in my Outlaws series from 2006, but I never felt that this character truly fit outlaw as I was defining it with my work.  I am always intrigued by this piece. He has always been a bit of an enigma to me, as though he is carrying untold secrets from a distant past within, yet finding his way to some degree of satisfaction in the present.

Isn’t that how most of us live? Maybe he’s not as much of an enigma as I thought. I am trying to get this piece, called In Voyages Past, ready to go the West End Gallery as part of a small supplemental group for their Little Gems show. It’s been slow going since both Cheri and I now still are feeling the effects of covid.

Even so, my mind is satisfied this morning. And that’s all I can ask.

Beguiled– At West End Gallery

The greatest things she ever said to me was in 1943 after the opening of Oklahoma!, when I had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fair, after years of neglect for work that I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha. I remember the conversation well. It was in a Schrafft’s restaurant over a soda. I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be.

Martha said to me, very quietly: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have so far used about one-third of your talent.”

“But,” I said, “when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied.”

“No artist is pleased.”

“But then there is no satisfaction?”

“No satisfaction whatever at any time,” she cried out passionately. “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

— Agnes de Mille in her book Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991)

This is a kind of a follow-up to yesterday’s post, albeit a shorter one. Well, I hope it’s shorter. I love the passage above the 1943 conversation between the legendary choreographers Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille and felt that it needed to be attached to yesterday’s post and to the Look Back post earlier this work featuring an early painting that greatly frustrated me when it was painted.

I admittedly know diddlysquat about dance but am always entranced by Graham’s musings on art. Like most of her writings and quoted words, this particular tidbit seemed filled with both wisdom and insight that applies to artists in any field. And I would think that the feelings of uncertainty and frustration with her work that de Mille expresses will ring true for most artists as well. I know them all too well.

Graham’s admonition to de Mille that she should not expect to find satisfaction, only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others might seem deflating at first blush. However, for someone who keeps expecting to find satisfaction only to find it absolutely elusive, the truth in this statement rings clear and loud.

I know that queer divine dissatisfaction and blessed unrest of which Graham speaks. It has been a constant marching partner for me for decades now. It is to the point that when I feel any satisfaction, I begin to get antsy with suspicions that I had hoodwinked myself into believing satisfaction is achievable or even desirable as an artist.

Oh, I use the term satisfaction every so often for some of my work when a piece has achieved all the potential it has within it. But that satisfaction is mighty limited to that piece and its moment. In fact, that satisfaction it offers only serves to increase my own overall dissatisfaction. When I see that a piece has reached its potential I begin to wonder why I had set limits on it in the first place.

Shouldn’t it have been meant to be more, to be better than it is?

Of course, I don’t know that I would be able to recognize if a piece exceeded that initial satisfaction, which I have now come to view as Fool’s Gold. Don’t know if could tell a gold nugget from a mere rock.

It’s a weird but wonderful way to live, looking for something you hope you never find. Paradoxically, there is something quite satisfying in it once you have come to terms with all the uncertainty and dissatisfaction that is all part of the package.

So, this morning, like most mornings, I find myself deeply dissatisfied which carries its own distinct and unusual satisfaction.

Does this make sense? Does it sound maddening?

It should. That’s the horror and glory of art.

Thanks for letting me blather a bit, to blurt out whatever comes to mind every morning. Without it, I might begin to feel a little too satisfied.

And we can’t have that, can we?

Okay, here’s the inevitable song for this morning. It can only be the rock classic I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction) from the Rolling Stones, right? Well, you’re half right. It may seem sacrilege for some to play a cover of that song, but I sometimes like to share covers of well-known songs, especially those covers that offer a distinct alternate take on the original. This acoustic version from South African singer/songwriter Alice Phoebe Lou is one of those unique alternate takes. The idea of this song without its signature and universally recognized guitar riff seems unthinkable but she somehow makes it work.

I am almost satisfied…

Pondering Blue- At West End Gallery

How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.

–William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)

I think it’s been about three months since I missed a day with this blog thing. Even on the days when I share an older post, I usually spend too much time in editing the old post, correcting the sometimes many missed grammatical and punctuation errors in the original and adding or subtracting content.

It verges on compulsion at this point.

And this compulsion appears to be in hyper-drive in recent months. Not only am I posting more, but they seem to be much longer, I didn’t really notice at first, but it recently became more obvious, even to my often-oblivious self, that there seems to be a progression in the length and frequency of the posts.

I had to ask myself if this was just a reaction to the recognition of my own mortality. Was my own endpoint appearing much closer on the horizon now? Was this making me furiously produce something– words, images, thoughts, songs, whatever– that would mark and, in some way, extend my time here, like a pine tree under stress producing more pinecones?

I have probably written some of this here before. I tend to overwrite, overtalk, over explain when I am in a state of anxiety so there’s a good chance that some of this has come up over the nearly 18 years I have been doing this blog.

When I think about how long I have been doing this blog and how it feels like its volume has increased in recent times, I have to ask myself: Does it have any meaning or serve any real purpose outside of temporarily quelling my anxieties?

Does it authentically express anything or is it merely empty words, images, and sounds pointlessly filling a void?

I probably shouldn’t use the word authentically. Few, if any, of my thoughts and ideas and even my work are totally original. They are all built on a foundation created by those thinkers and artists and writers who came before me. I am just a regurgitator, a synthesizer, who absorbs as much as will fit in the much too limited space of my mind then tries to put it into some order that makes sense to me, outwardly re-expressing it in my work and words.

My only authenticity comes the voice with which I express this synthesization.

And even that may have traces of mimicry in it to some.

The only c0nsolation I take from this is that this holds true for all artists, but for those rare geniuses who change our way of seeing, hearing, and thinking in ways that border on the unearthly.

I knew from an early age that I was not among that group. I knew that the best I could do was find a vehicle for expression. Even then, though I felt a compulsion to have my say and make my voice be heard, I wasn’t certain of what I wanted or needed to say.

And that made me ask myself yet another question: Is expression without meaning even expression at all? Without meaning, is it not just pointless sound that fills the void of time and keeps us from recognizing both the true sounds we are meant to hear and the necessary silences?

Of course, I don’t know answers to any of these questions. Do I ever? Hell, I don’t even know why I am writing this this morning, outside of the fact that I truly felt a need to say this at this moment.

I want to believe there is meaning and purpose in this or in my work, but I cannot do with any degree of certainty. It might just be another mass of pinecones being produced as the result a stressful winter, hoping that one will find fertile ground to perpetuate my life and line.

Or this might be just the moan of this pine tree in the winds of time.

Amen.

Here’s a song that I have shared here before. See? Never original and usually repetitive. Just kidding. Here’s  the jazz standard Born to Be Blue, written by Mel Torme in 1946. It’s been performed by scores of singers over the years but it became a signature piece for the late Chet Baker. The version I am sharing below highlights his vocals rather than his horn work and features great piano playing from Bobby Scott. Good stuff to hear on a rainy, dark morning.

Before I push you out the door and lock it behind you, let me point out that even though I am featuring a blue painting, a blue song, and a rather introspective (probably too much so) post, I am not actually blue myself right now.

More gray/green, I think.

Sometimes you just wonder about things, don’t you?