Why Every Painting is a Prayer

While listening to Pandora you often hear artists make comments before a song actually begins. One day recently while listening to one of my "awesome female folky" vocalist channels - maybe Joni Mitchell, or Judy Collins, or Joan Baez, one of the "flower children" types - I heard her complain about the fact that audiences always wanted to hear their favorites. "Nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Hey! Paint Starry Night again!'"

Well, maybe nobody actually asked Van Gogh, "Hey, paint Starry Night again!" But he did. Most sites quote 21 versions of Starry Night, different weather, times of year, angle of view, but all the same framed patch of sky. And then, of course, there are the sunflowers - 7 to 15 of those depending on the criteria. "OK," you say, "but wasn't Van Gogh painting a lot of those works while a patient in a mental institution?" Yup. But before we write off these multiple versions as fixations of an unbalanced mind, consider this.

Munch painted 4 versions of The Scream, which thieves kept stealing. Rembrandt did some 80 self-portraits - versions of the same subject, not? Even DaVinci did two versions of his Madonna on the Rocks, and, of course, Monet painted some 250 works featuring water lilies. "What," I said to myself, "is going on here?" The answer I came to tends to natter on a bit, so get comfy.

First I need to clarify what I mean by the divine and the function of prayer. The long version of that clarification can be found in my 2008 book, The God Chord: Physics in the Landscape of the Heart, which I just learned can be bought through Amazon/Goodreads for four bucks! But I'll try to save you digging through my search for a "theory of everything," in that book and cut to the chase.

The God Chord rests firmly on string theory. In it most basic iteration string theory persuasively asserts - in my mind, and the minds of others far better versed in theoretical physics - that virtually everything in the universe is made up of incredibly tiny vibrating strings, far too small to be detected by contemporary technology. In The God Chord I assert that the idea that vibrating strings - no matter how tiny - make music. Hence, everything in the universe is made of music.

OK, I realize that may seem a bit of a stretch, but consider the fact that we were largely blind to much of the universe until we invented telescopes that enabled us to see beyond our eyes. It does not seem to me unreasonable to assert that we will remain largely deaf to the vibrations of these tiny strings until such time as we are able to invent the technology that will allow us to sense, if not actually hear, this pervasive music of the spheres.

Furthermore it seems equally plausible that, just as the current tools of cosmology allow us to peruse the cosmic microwave background (CMB) -which is a faint glow of microwave radiation that fills the observable universe and is a remnant of the Big Bang - a bit down the line aways technology could allow us to discern a kind of celestial symphony that would reveal the Central Organizing Harmony of the universe, the COH, or as I more whimsically call it the God Chord.

Alright, if you are with me so far let us take another step down this road. If everything in the universe is made up of these tiny vibrating strings, that means we as well are made of vibrating strings - are made of music. That is one of my favorite suppositions, that we are made of music and hence do, existentially, conform to certain aspects of music theory - we are in harmony with some other individuals [their strings] and may find ourselves discordant with others. But that is an issue for another time that I play with rather extensively in The God Chord.

Right now I want to focus on our relationship with the COH, The God Chord. Think of resonance, of a tuning fork. You hit a tuning fork and rest it agains any surface, a table top, whatever, and that surface resonates with the pitch of the tuning fork. Obviously this works best if you place the tuning fork against the sound board of a musical instrument, a piano, violin, viola, whatever. And then you adjust the strings to cause the instrument to vibrate in concert, in harmony with, the vibrations of the "tuning" fork. Get it? Tuning it!

And now another jump. We are the instrument and the COH, the symphony of the universe is the tuning fork. And it is when we achieve a "state of grace," "nirvana," "inner peace," call it what you will, that we exist in, are at one with, we resonate with The God Chord.

Continuing to jump along. Our lives chronicle our relationship with The God Chord.  Any life, any occupation, either resonates with, or mutes, the influence of the god chord in our existence. This notion could take us down any variety of paths, but for this post I want to focus on the special relationship that "creatives" bring to the process.

"Creatives" seems to be the current term to define folks whose life is devoted to the arts - painters, poets, sculptors, dancers, musicians, photographers, writers - in short anyone who sees the major activities or expressions of their life as "art."

So now, let us jump back up to the title of the post, "Why Every Painting is a Prayer," and consider those multiple, seemingly redundant, images created by those most excellent artists. Why paint, seemingly, the same thing over and over? It is an attempt to get "it" right. And what is "it"? The symphony of the universe.

It is commonly said of creatives that they do not chose their art, rather their art chooses them. Their parents and partners often ask when they will get a "real" job.  And except for a - sure talented, but mostly lucky - few, creatives are not fated for fame and fortune. Consider Van Gogh who is said to have sold one painting in his entire life, and for what would, compared to his current market value, have been less than pocket change. But he kept painting those Sunflowers, and those Starry Nights. Monet kept on painting waterlilies, over, and over, and over, and over. Why?

It is my belief that "creatives" sense the symphony of the universe, The God Chord, more deeply than most. It is through their art that they seek to express, and hence become one with, that symphony. Yet in their minds they often fail to "get it right." So they continue to try again and again, painting after painting, prayer after prayer.

 

Time to Breathe

 It seems to require either exceptional courage or an intense inclination to sadism to attend to the "news" these days. Journalism has always been a slave to a "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality, but the digital nature of today's world allows the industry to rake up any political conflict,  military mayhem, or natural disaster - large or small - from anywhere on the globe with truly depressing immediacy. I don't know if humanity is really striving to descend to new lows, or if our ability to follow the pessimistic storylines just makes it seem so. Either way, I feel a pressing need to take a breath and focus on that which is good and beautiful in the world.

Fortunately, such things still do exist if you seek them out: a walk somewhere green and peaceful, a taste of poetry, or poultry! an art gallery or museum, and, of course, music. And it was in this musical bastion of beauty and tranquility that we most recently sought refuge.

Friends often ask why, upon retirement, we headed north rather than flock with the snowbirds headed south. It seems as though they felt we were going to be running a trap line in the tundra up by Prudhoe Bay. No. We were instead attracted to the restaurants, galleries, museums and concert halls in the little burg a few miles east of here called Chicago. Oh, and my, did it come through for us last weekend.

The event was the season opening of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. We refrained from springing for a couple of tickets in the mid-four figures to attend the Opening Ball at The Four Seasons, but did opt for a couple of less pricey seats for the concert itself. Worth every cent - including car service to and from the venue, for just a bit more than the cost of parking!

Does the name Lang Lang ring a bell? Don't be embarrassed if your guess was one of the pandas at the National Zoo. Classical musicians don't have quite the following of current pop stars. I mean "Langers" just doesn't have the same marketability as "Swifties." Lang Lang simply is, to quote one review, "the best concert pianist alive today." He is a 42-year old Chinese genius who sometimes frustrates purists with his flamboyant style. And he was the guy who opened the Chicago Symphony Orchestra season, and we were among the sold-out audience who sat transfixed by this generational talent.

 I won't try to do a "review" of either the man, his musical ability or charitable activities, you can seek him out online. Although the recorded versions pale in comparison to the live experience. Let it suffice to say he was incredible. Truly a once in a lifetime moment.

But, move north? Oh, yeah.

Holes in the Fabric

It wasn't as though we had known him that long or all that well. Before moving here permanently he was the "unique" neighbor. He always wore shorts, no matter the weather. Seemingly a bit disdainful of the efforts of the grounds crew he fenced off a few square yards of the lawn between our homes and mowed it himself with a little electric lawnmower. He would nod and wave.

After we moved in permanently he quickly became our "go to guy" for the tools and assistance necessary to fine tune our new space. When a bed didn't fit just right, he provided the know-how to get it right. When we wanted to figure out how to put our outdoor lights on a timer, he provided both the timer and the labor to get it installed and working. He seemed a man of indeterminate age and boundless energy.

We swapped stories and emails, joked across the driveways. He became our closest and most constant friend in a neighborhood that seemed rather challenged when it came to neighborliness. And then he was gone. A pretty young woman rang the doorbell and introduced herself. She was his daughter, still of the "smile-wave-nod" variety. Her father, she sadly reported, had had a massive heart attack and died the previous evening.

It did not seem real. His death was so unexpected, it was hard to believe. Sad, of course, but not the profound grief of the death of a family member or a close friend of many years. It is more, I am coming to believe, like a hole appearing in the fabric of our life in a new place. Something warm and inviting had disappeared. Like a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing, what was growing into whole, complete and normal, took a step back.

Now several days later, watching the flurry of activity in what was previously a calm and peaceful place, I have been thinking about that metaphor - death as a hole in the fabric of our life. There are, of course, many different types of tears in the fabric. Some are devastating, leaving deep scars, like wounds stitched up by an incompetent surgeon. They mar the fabric for seemingly forever. We are damaged. Yet in many ways time really does heal all wounds, not with forgetting but with selective recall. Trauma recedes a bit, and the memories of a smile, a voice, a shared song, float to the surface allowing an answering smile. A piece of peace.

Then there are less agonizing holes. Perhaps no less painful in the moment, but with a more gentle aftermath. We had to have a beloved, 14-year old black lab put down. And no, there is nothing trivializing about considering the holes the death of a pet leaves in the fabric of our lives. Consider this; who is more constant, more loving, more forgiving, more comforting in our lives than your pet? The holes they leave are constant, but somehow gentle. The pets still manifest themselves in the corner of our eye, sleeping in a favorite spot, their paws echoing down an empty hallway. A quiet presence.

So what do we do with these holes that death leaves in the fabric of our lives? We restore them, as we would any precious work of art. We were in Italy a few years ago, maybe Venice, but I think Florence - we tend to settle into one of those two cities for the art and the food. Not sure which this was, not important.

What was important was that as we were leaving a museum there was a rather large area, portions of which were brightly lit - spotlights on a huge canvas, and perched on ladders before the artwork were several restorers. In their hands were improbably tiny brushes making what seemed invisible touches on the canvas. Gently, softly, and oh, so quietly, healing the fabric.

And so we must approach the holes that death leaves in the fabric of our lives. What did the departed entity contribute to our lives? Humor? Industry? Compassion? Love? Honesty? Sensitivity? These are the memory brushes we can take to the flaws that death has insinuated into our lives. We apply them "gently, softly, and oh, so quietly" to the holes, to heal the fabric of our life - turning something "holey" into something holy. 

Playing with Poetry

 Walking the Circle Path - 2024

Earliest beyond planning

Almost without awareness

Routes of exploration 

Sights and sounds

Within each precious moment

Until, quietly, sleep intrudes

And then waking sends one

Again to senses newly formed

Somehow down around 

A curve or corner

We discover the first faint

Awareness of a glimpse

Called destination

Perhaps maybe possibly 

Could be should be is

At least for awhile

Until concrete asphalt 

Highways byways

Bridges parking lots

Detours shortcuts

Cloverleafs round-abouts

And occasional dead ends

Guide us through the

May be could be

Might be should be

Would have been

Should not have been

Got right got wrong

Did over walked away

Turned around started again

That is life

When suddenly again

Beyond planning

At the reborn 

Corner of awareness 

The path turns

Soft and sandy

Bordered by nodding blossoms

No doubt once forgotten

Have been there all long

Now reassert their value

Sweetly requiring our

Attention appreciation

Kinship

Stop smell me

Implores a

Forgotten mantra

We would be wise

To listen to step aside

Off the harried highway

And return 

For a tranquil while

To that friendly path 

We traveled long ago.

Mice - 2001

As mice scampering across a moonlit mesa

Thoughts trace frantic paths across my mind.

Do not pounce. They cannot be caught.

Observe them. Allow them this time.

They are but figments destined to fade at dawn.

Who would have known empty

Could tip the scales to such an incline?

Perhaps dark matter does outweigh

All that is observable and light

Does so subtly assert its unimaginable worth.

For clear light does true love reveal,

Fragile and tenuous in its immortality.

While darkness nurtures its false shade,

A fleeting debasement that decays

Beneath its own whining and recrimination.

So seeming endless patience must your

First companion be.

The imagination of the eyes that look

To be the twins of your own comforts, bring 

A feigned indulgence of your heart’s true ease.

But lose not your firm determination 

To wait upon the rising of heart and flesh.

Allow ecstasy its own fair germination

For love delayed is far sweeter than

Affection or remorse draped in love’s disguise.

Pre-dawn showers mist the mesa.

An owl’s shriek steeps low against the mountainside

Sweeping mice to holes and cliffs and gone.

And sun’s first light reveals me still alone,

But softly now, fresh draped in calm repose. 

Here is the original version, but if you are viewing on a small screen, very, very hard to read 🤪

Polished Pearl

 She is done. Poor thing must be exhausted zipping around in cyberspace!

Enjoy,

 

L’Image Aumentare : Pearl No. 160

 OK, it's not really No. 160, it's more like 3 or 4, depending on how you are counting. The 160 refers to the new set of markers I mentioned in a previous post. They arrived, but really didn't live up to my expectations. First, about a third of them were greyscale obviously designed for folks who worked in pencil, a skill I neither have, nor aspire to. But, I did get the set at a half price sale, so still a pretty good deal. However, I realize that I should have paid more attention to myself when I talked about the variability of marker shades.

Let's take a quick look at Pearl as she is today:

It would be nice if I had been able to achieve all those colors with my new markers. Sigh. I discovered that to approach the hues I wanted, I had to haul out my old markers that I had foolishly packed away as "back-ups" and mix them together with the new set. In some cases literally "mix them," do an undercoat of one color and then top it off with another to either "tone down" or "pop up" the shade I was looking for.

So now I have this situation on my "palette table."

 

Certainly gives one a deeper respect for those artists from the old days who ground their own colors and mixed with egg or oil or whatever. So a tip of the hat, or marker, or whatever to them!

Pebbles in The Stream

 I have been reading about a variety of recent anthropological discoveries that have been raising new questions about who we are as a species, and how we fit on the tree of life here on earth. Those discussions, and a few weird dreams featuring people and places long gone by, have got me thinking about "evolution and identity" from a far more specific and focused perspective - mine.

So here is the metaphor I have been playing with: think of yourself as a pebble in a stream - with a tip of the hat to the old TV series, Kung Fu, “Can you catch the pebble, Grasshopper?" We are not isolated in the stream at any point in our lives; rather we get tossed around with, rubbed up against, tumbled over, all the other pebbles around us.

I remember having, maybe when I was 11 or 12, a "rock tumbler kit." It consisted of a round plastic tub, maybe 3 inches around and 4 or 5 inches deep. You took the top off and dumped in some water and the prepackaged rocks and grit. Then you put the tub onto the electric tumbler that "tumbled" the rocks and grit around and around, for as long as you could stand waiting. 

If you managed to just walk away and let it tumble for a few days or a week, when you opened the tub, the rocks had changed; some just smoothed a bit, but others polished - all significantly changed.

Our lives, as pebbles in the stream, are a lot like an existential rock tumbler with all of life's tossing, rubbing and tumbling codifyingp the people, relationships, beliefs and values of our life at any particular time that we pop the top off and take a look around.

Then the seasons change. The rains come and the stream floods, or they don't and the stream slowly swirls us into new eddies, or maybe a dam gets built downstream making our stream into a lake, or merges our stream with others, becoming a river. A shift in schools, a graduation, new relationships, the arrival of children, the departure of same, the death of a parent, all these sweep us along, jostling the other pebbles of our lives, leaving some behind, sweeping new ones into our next eddy, tossing and rubbing.

The point is change. We are often inclined to resist the inevitability of change, my generation more so than my children's or grand grandchildren's. We were taught to think in terms of "my home town," "I work here." "'Til death do us part." All affirmations of a permanent eddy. No more rides in the tumbler. Stasis.

Which is, I guess, why we are still surprised when life proves us wrong and the tumbler jerks like a rusty merry-go-round and commences on yet another jostle toward new eddies. We, as the Brits would say, "move house" for some planned or unanticipated reason. Friends, suddenly grown old, die on us, as do pets whose shadows still lurk, at the corner of our eyes, in their accustomed places.

But other tumblers, dreams, music and sometimes reality, can send us crashing into ripples of forgotten eddies - breathing new life into memory. I encountered the "reality" version a few years ago in "the city," which here in the burbs means downtown Chicago. I may have shared this with you back when it happened, but I am of the age when I do repeat my favorite stories. Anyhow, I was standing on a corner waiting for a walk light, just minding my own business, when I glanced over at the other "standees" and was stunned to see an old high school girlfriend standing a few feet away! Actually, it was my "young" high school girlfriend - looking just like she did when we were 18!

Yeah, I know, that should have tipped me off sooner than it did. But I just kept staring until the light changed and the crowd swirled us apart. I was most of the way across the intersection when I recalled that said "old" girlfriend had a daughter who was attending Northwestern, and had contacted my sister, who worked there for many years, about some Nothwesternish issue. Being aware of the culture frowning on old guys accosting young women on the street, I did not try to catch up to her and ask, "By the way, is your Mother from Springfield, Ohio?" Rather, I choose to believe I had seen the daughter, not some time-traveling apparition of the mother from a distant eddy in the stream.

Dreams and music are eddies of a different flavor. Dreams, at least mine, reflect a kind of "weird" bipolar realty. As I have shared before, I am always the central figure in the dream, but I am quite comfortable interacting with the various supporting actors in my dreams whom I have never met in real life, yet with whom I am apparently well acquainted. We seem to like each other.

The point is that on those rare occasions when people I actually have known in the real world do enter my dreams, they always appear in their "eddy guise," that is to say they look, act, and sound as they did when I knew them, and I, perhaps in an attempt to "catch the pebble, grasshopper" regress similarly. Weird? I'm not sure - perhaps dreams which do seem quite freeform, actually may be somehow linked to some irrefutable aspects of the time-space continuum.

Music is much more straightforward. It does kick us directly into the WayBack machine - and there we are, hands in dishwater, but somehow are 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago with that same tumbling cluster of pebbles we remember - maybe not well, but as we choose to remember them. The internet gives us wonderful control over these visits back up the stream of our lives:

"Let's see, graduated from college in '71, makes high school about '67. So let me type 1967 into Pandora. Oh, yeah! Hi there pebble!

Mom played all those old World War II songs on the piano. I can type in the dates, or just "popular songs for WWII" Whoa, ho! Pebbles from around the piano!"

So music really does time travel us among the eddies in the stream. But very selectively. A pebble from the late 50s. Pat Boone sang a song with the lyric "Twix 12 and 20 are the years you remember." I think the span is significantly wider than that, but not infinitely so. Music does transport us among the eddies, but we don't necessarily always move down along the contemporary musical eddies. 

Before the Internet we depended on CDs, tapes, TV and the radio to give us music, to play the sounds of the eddies of the moment for the pebbles we were tumbling with.The Internet vastly broadens the musical eddies to which we have access, but the pebbles with whom we share our real life still influence the tunes to which we attend and with which we still identify. 

This is unlike the current celebrities, whose names I only vaguely recognize, who have no relevance to "my music." I do realize, and am somewhat fascinated by, the rise of the "Swifties." But must confess I have never heard an entire Taylor Swift song. Tried - just wasn't anything there for me, but obviously is there for the Swifties.

But here let me play this for you, Blackbird, Beatles, 1968

What? Who are The Beatles? Whose child are you?

The Color of Excess

 One of Christine's favorite sayings is "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!" I'm not sure she intended me to follow that line of reasoning as I began to accumulate a store of markers for my images, the current state of which is reflected in the image below.

There is method to the seeming madness. The markers in the jars are the current palette for Pearl. Those are the shades, hues, widths, etc., that I consider before touching marker to the Pearl image. That process is a touch mystical, sort of like dowsing for water. (See note: According to Wikipedia Dowsing is a type of divinationemployed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, A Y-shaped twig or rod, or two L-shaped ones, called dowsing rods or divining rods are normally used, and the motion of these are said to reveal the location of the target material.) So, I run my hand and eye gently over the collected markers and pick up the one "that feels right." The plethora of other markers in the plastic bags are back-up in case the dowsing doesn't choose a color. The dowsing usually does narrow the options - like maybe a red, purple, violet or pink. So I pick up those bags of markers and gaze at them with what I hope passes for insight, and pluck up a marker.

Now let me clarify, lest you think this collection and process exceeds the normal demands of an obsessive artist's palette. Actually the impetus to gather these markers together occurred to me while working on Pearl's hair - an image which I recently shared with you here on the Wall. What happened was one of my markers ran out of ink! Check out the little blank spot between the feather feature and the grid feature off Pearl's shoulder. Empty!

That is more than a little scary for me. Think about it, markers aren't paint brushes, they are reservoirs of color attached to various types of tips that let you apply the ink to the surface you are working with - paper, canvas, cloth, glass - whatever. The problem is no matter what the color of the top of the marker, or the best intentions of the various manufacturers, the color of the ink in each marker can be unique. So when that individual marker runs dry you may never be able to duplicate that precise shade. So naturally, I panicked 😱! 

Visions of a mass "dry off" danced in my head, resulting in no "dowsible" colors for that blank - or other portions of Pearl. There was only one obvious solution - replace the entire palette. Fortunately Michaels was having a 50% off sale on their 160 colors adult artists marker set. I immediately placed my order and am now fretfully awaiting delivery of 160 new glorious markers while attempting to reorganize my limited studio space to accommodate the new arrivals - since naturally I will keep the old ones as backup.

Difficult? Absurdly so, but . . .

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!😜

L’Image Aumentare: Pearl2

 Let there be hair!

L'Image Aumentare: Pearl 1

OK, I'm going to move from prose to images for awhile.

I have always loved Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring, called by some the Mona Lisa of the North. I actually prefer Vermeer's image to DaVinci's. I mean seriously

say you were at what the Brits call a "drinks party," and these two women were there:

Which one would you want to have a glass of bubbly with? Really!

Anyhow the Pearl image has been spoofed a number of times, usually to comic or distorted effect. That is not my intention. Mine is intended as more of an homage. And I thought it moight be fun to let you watch the process as it unfolds:

Here is the first design step, the "cartoon" if you will:

The blank spots at her shoulders will probably come last. It is my intention to fill them with a miniature version of this image, completed of course and rotated:

I'm just not sure how to do it!