Michelangelo's Playlist

If the question is "What was on Michelangelo's playlist?" the answer is obvious: nothing. He didn't have a playlist. Or at least not a digital one he could take with him as he clambered up the scaffolds to lie on his back while he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. For hours everyday. For four years.

Back when I was teaching various creative media courses I would caution my students to avoid comparing their efforts to those of the G.O.A.T.s - contemporary or long past. It could, I opined, stifle their own efforts: "Oh! I could never paint, sing, dance, take photos, make movies, act, etc., . . like whoever!"

I sometimes fail to follow my own advice. I am fascinated by the lives and practices of those Greatest Of All Times. Particularly in the areas in which I dabble or have dabbled - acting, singing, painting, writing, sculpture - artsy stuff. Most of the time I am content to ascribe the vastly elevated nature of their accomplishments to the simple acknowledgment that their abilities far outstripped mine. But there are some things that I simply cannot comprehend. For example, set aside Mike's crazy genius skill level. Forget his youth. How did he lie on his back for countless hours for four years without music!?

Even before personal portable players - remember the Walkman, auto-reverse and mix-tapes? - I have no memory of engaging in any personal creative endeavor without music. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, some of that music was "self-produced." Humming or "whisper-singing" under my breath. But four years for the Sistine Chapel, more than that for The Last Judgment? Whew.

For me music is an integral part of the enjoyment I derive from my art. An alternate title for this post was "I Saw A Shadow Touch A Shadow's Hand." That's a line from the 1964 song Bleeker Street, by Simon and Garfunkel. For me the idea was - is - that when music combines with other art forms - drawing and painting for me these days - the activity becomes transcendent. Takes me to other places and other times, where I walk among shadows that no longer surround me, but obtain an almost tangible nature - hands I can almost touch.

It is an experience over which I have some varying degree of control. Pat Boone [No relation to Daniel for those of you for whom Pat is a historical figure.] had a 1959 hit song titled Twixt 12 and 20 [that he later turned into a book with the same title - no marketing newbie he] that asserts that those "years to remember" are exceptionally formative, and, I would go on to assert, fill that musical part of our brain with links to shadows that we carry around for the rest of our lives. And, I would further venture, there is really nothing entirely unique about that decade. Rather, it seems that all the various stages of our lives come with a soundtrack. All include songs we remember, and the shadows that live therein.

And it is that enduring link between our lives and our music that gives us some control over the shadows that inhabit our artistic-musical synthesis. I choose the soundtrack that I draw to, and hence the shadows I invite to join me. Pick a decade, or a world, grade school, high school, college, first love, favorite place, favorite person, whatever you like, and craft a unique playlist for that place, person or time. All today's digital music worlds - Pandora, Spotify, whatever, let you do this.

Then fire it up, turn up the volume, open the door and let the shadows in. Watch "a shadow touch a shadow's hand."

Which is why I am completely dumbfounded by the idea that Michelangelo had no playlist. Nor did Vermeer, or Titian, or Lebrun. Did they paint without music? Inconceivable! Perhaps it was all internal music?

That's a lot of humming.

Old Hickory

[With apologies to President Andrew Jackson.]

Wall posts get their beginnings from a variety of places; things I see, things I am reading, media intrusions. But strangest of all are posts whose origin is a mystery to me. They just seem to spring up out of some restless fold in the gray matter. Maybe a random crossing of neurons that sparks. I dunno. Anyhow this post began that way; a simile that was suddenly just there in my brain: "It's like trying to carve hickory with a butter knife."

"Of course it is," I thought. "Now what 'it" am I thinking about?"

So I decided to sort of parse the simile. See if the individual pieces might point me to what the mystery neurons were thinking about.

OK. Hickory. "Carving hickory." Don't think I have ever carved hickory, or any kind of wood for that matter. Sculpting is a close as I have ever come to carving, and that was coaxing shapes out of clay. Some use of tools, but gentle shaping as opposed to carving. So consider just "hickory" by itself, no carving. A little more play here. Back when I lived in Albuquerque, we had a wood burning stove, and I occasionally had to split some wood to make kindling. I remembered that hickory was particularly problematic. Very hard, twisty.  My faith in memory has decreased so I researched "characteristics of hickory wood."

Bingo!

Hickory workability: Difficult to machine due to its hardness, often dulling tools and causing tear-out.

So "hickory" would be a lousy choice for carving. Hence, perhaps something difficult, resistant to whatever shape you had in mind.

No research was necessary to determine that a butter knife would be a bad choice of tools to carve any wood, let alone hickory.  So what were my crossed neurons trying to tell me?  The "it" in question had to be something "hard - hickory" to "achieve - carve" with an inefficient tool "butter knife." Think, think, think.

OK, I thought, what tool do I regularly contact that seems to be unsuited to the task at hand? Oh, I thought. The internet. Let me explain. As any of you who read the Wall have undoubtedly discerned my mantra: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, Oppose Harm, does echo back across the centuries to my father's Mennonite roots and the family's more recent association with the AFSC - American Friends Service Committee - the Quakers.  A gentle, pacifistic heritage. 

Somehow the Internet knows that about me and I get 40 or 50 texts or emails a day from political candidates, environmental organizations, and opportunities to adopt children or foster puppies, asking me to contribute to their causes lest the world as we know it vanish in a puff of autocratic demagoguery. I have very occasionally responded - which undoubtedly increases the digital solicitations.

And yet the next morning brings more news of riots in Iran, continued war in the Ukraine, lethal ICE invasions in democratic cities here at home, "Donroe doctrine" claims to acquire any number of countries or resource caches, and continuing contentious clashes in Gaza. So I'm thinking my brain is telling me that my avalanche of humanely inclined digital solicitations is the butter knife and the hickory is the seemingly increasing autocratic intrusions here at home and around the world.

So, I ask myself, why does the butter knife seem so impotent against the hickory? I think to a significant degree the problem is that the butter knife doesn't understand the hickory. The butter knife frames its arguments in compassionate reason and logic, backed with science-based knowledge. The flaw here is a failure to realize that the hickory is knowledge-phobic.

Autocrats, in The White House, in Iran, in Russia, in Myanmar, in Sudan, wherever, are opposed to any research that uncovers new knowledge in any form. And to whatever extent possible the autocrat creates barriers to the exploration of new knowledge. They fear the uncertainty that new knowledge brings. Instead they mandate policy and actions based on "Private Knowledge" - i.e. "that which they chose to believe is true." 

So here at home wide-ranging policies touching areas from childhood vaccinations, to vaccinations in general, to "bad people weaponizing their cars," to "blue cities" being confronted with federal militant forces, to certain terms being banned in academic research, get implemented. Abroad policies evolve with Iranians being asked to endure a fragmenting economy, to Palestinians being removed from their former lands, to Ukrainians being asked to cede portions of the homeland to Russia, to Venezuelans being told the US now "runs their country",  and on and on. All these stem from an autocratic figure declaring that some version of "their truth" legitimizes their actions. 

Ah, ha! So my brain seems to be telling me that "it" is the attempts to open these autocratic minds to new knowledge that is "like trying to carve hickory with a butter knife." Hmm. Now having tracked my spontaneous simile to its potential insight, what is the answer?

Initially, I don't really have much insight into carving international stands of hickory. They are beyond my ken. Here at home, the digital butter knife may actually be the best option.  Trump can continue to wield an autocracy as long as he is in office and the Congress seems impotent, or at least unwilling to reign in his excesses. So putting opposition candidates in positions of power to curb the autocracy and re-empower democracy is the still preferred framework we put in place some 250 years ago. Although I do take just a smidgen of heart on the recent Congressional action pushing back on Trump's move against the fed. Maybe they will actually find their backbones.

And, come to think of it, that same butter knife driven process might well address some of the international excesses of autocracy. If, by voting out the "Donroe doctrine" advocates, the US may re-establish itself as a global moral compass and not an autocratic international police force, and hence the would-be dictators and autocrats around the world might find themselves in a far lonelier position.

At least I think that is what my brain was trying to tell me.

 

It Only Works When It Wants To

It has always been one of the most difficult of challenges for parents, grandparents, step- or biological. For any caregiver, really, who takes on the mind-bending, heart-twisting, daunting task of easing children into the future: "Sharing some truths, some beliefs, they can lean on as they move through life."

As I begin to wander through my 78th year on this big blue marble - surrounded by the lunacy, greed, arrogance, and naked aggression that still seems to swirl unabated - I continue to cling to my personal mantra: "Foster harmony, Enable beauty, Distill complexity and Oppose harm." And I suppose folks with more than a few decades in the rearview mirror might buy into that worldview. But trot it out for whatever youngsters on the shallow side of thirty are calling themselves these day - maybe "the whatever generation" - and their eyes will roll back under their eyebrows as they respond "whatever. . ." And probably rightfully so, since except for those delightful exceptions, older than their years, my mantra may seem more parental patter without relevance in their everyday life.

So let's go there for a bit - into the lives of the "whatever generation," and increasingly into mine. Into the world of screens, technology and the internet. The world that was my academic speciality for half a century until its nebulous ambiguity helped drive me into the seemingly saner space of retirement and art. But, I suppose, not surprisingly, this new version of my former ivory tower has become infected with those same digital devices that swaddle the "whatever generation." Life "off the grid" is a fiction - even to those seeking a separatist world back in some rural redoubt. They too need space-based technology, if only to keep track of what the world from which they are hiding is up to.

At the moment my advice to the "whatever generation" is to remember that when it comes to the technology on their screens or in their ears, in their pockets, in their cars, on their wrists, and in their glasses only works when it wants to. It isn't that their devices just decide to stop working, it is that the incredibly complex systems of hardware and software aren't always compatible, especially when one underlying system, say Mac, "updates" their operating system without being really really sure that their various partners, say hospitals or air traffic control systems, will be able to adjust to the new operating system.

Those scenarios, along with the nefarious global hacks so popular in techno-thriller videos, are, of course, the extremes. But what about the very real, everyday glitches that make life in the 2020s more complicated instead of easier. [As I type this a little notice has appeared in the upper right corner of my screen telling me that "macOS Sequoia 15.7.3 is available and will be installed later tonight." Doesn't ask. Tells me. And my techie friends tell me I should always update to the latest OS version or bad things may happen! Anyhow, I digress as usual.]

OK, everyday glitches. I'm a Mac guy. Have been since 1990, when I was writing Taming the Wild Tube: A Family's Guide to Television and Video, in Wordstar, [You may need to slip into the WayBack machine for that one. 1979 - 1992.] and Mac came out with a better word processor. And the university finally allowed computers other than UNIX boxes onto the university system. Anyhow, my everyday glitches are usually the result of one Apple product talking to another, or not. I have four. 2 Powerbook laptops, an iPad and an iPhone - one up and running, a new 17 in a box waiting the attention of our Mac midwife.

Most irritating for me is what some system update or another has done with positioning various apps on the iPad screen. It seems to take some sort of perverse pleasure in sticking various apps off to the side of the screen, so you know they are there, but you cannot get to them. Then, occasionally, they let you grab a corner and pull them to the center of the screen - but not full screen. Sort of a 3/4 bubble, which sometimes you can grab a corner of and make full screen. Of course, other times, and with other apps the device works just as it did in the "olden days."

Second is "Car Play" when the phone talks to the GPS screen in the car and also plays music. Most of the time. Except when it choses not to, and then you have to go through 5 steps to "reconnect" the phone to Car Play. Which is a minor thing, except when you are driving. You know you should either continue to your destination - say the grocery store - without music, or pull over and reconnect to Car Play, but you are tempted to wing it while driving - endangering yourself and others. Still, it does charge the phone.

I could go on, but why bother. You all have your own list of irritating glitches, or suggestions as to how I can correct mine - "You just put two fingers on the upper left-hand corner of the screen and then double click while reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb . . . " But that is not the point. The point is to tell the "whatever generation" that technology is transitory. The newest and greatest will be "same-old, same-old" tomorrow. And it may not work the way you are used to. It may not work at all. So what?

I'm thinking there must be camps that teach kids how to acquire "old skills." Things like writing a letter on paper, putting it in to an envelop, writing an address and a return address. Putting on a stamp. Putting it in a mailbox. Or like reading a paper map, using it to drive to the next town, or the movie theater, or to the grandparents house. Or using and balancing a paper checkbook. Listening to music on a record player - vinyl is coming back! Using their phone to make a voice call. Talk to a friend. More difficult, but perhaps possible at their school or a local art center - learn how to shoot, develop and print pictures from film.

I know it sounds kind of silly. And for the foreseeable future it seems that technology will continue to meet many of these needs, hopefully with increasing reliability. But there are some truths, some experiences I think are worth passing along. I find myself going back to the third part of my mantra - Distill complexity. There is, I believe, value in getting back to basics. I remember changing the oil in my car. Filling notebook after notebook with these ramblings that now live on various digital devices that may soon become obsolete. Lying on my dorm room floor, my head between the two speakers listening to those two new guys with the weird names; Simon and Garfunkel. Cutting and gluing film for my senior project called Scratches on my Favorite Phonograph Records. Sculpting with my hands covered in streaks of terra cotta or porcelain. Touching real stuff, real people.

No batteries required.

Filling Up Sleepy Hollow

Being a card-carrying member of, if not one of the founders of, Insomniacs United I wanted to share a couple of thoughts with you.

First, one of the best ways to reach the state of sleep is to do an Internet search on "sleep" or "insomnia." Read all the articles. Take copious notes. You will soon lose consciousness.

However, one night while chipping around the edges of that massive compendium I came across an interesting little tidbit. The article - the references for which are long since buried in the twists and turns of my grey matter, apologies to the authors - asserted that "going to sleep" as an intentional act, is a myth. Rather, we "fall asleep" when the brain gets tired of being conscious and "falls asleep." Naturally, I lay awake for an hour or two wondering "to where?" Falling implies that one goes from one place to another. So where and what is this place called "sleep" to which we fall? Hmmmm.

Again, the extant literature provides a tsunami of opinions, most of which address the physical state of the brain at particular points in the "sleep cycle." e.g. This from the Cleveland Sleep Clinic: "Sleeping doesn’t mean your brain is totally inactive. While you’re less aware of the world around you, you still have plenty of detectable brain activity. That brain activity has predictable patterns. Experts organized those patterns into stages. The stages fall broadly into two categories: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep." 

These kinds of definitions do address whether or not we tend to dream during the various sleep stages. But leave ambiguous the question of the origin of these nocturnal dramas that seem as real as waking life, if not more so.

It is the nebulous nature of conclusions drawn from the disciplines of neurology and psychology that leave me to still assert that dreams arise in part, from that place, or places, to which we fall, when falling asleep. Hence, where is this land of dreams? A few personal suppositions about that place:

Dreamland (DL) is unique to each dreamer. While we may encounter, while dreaming "real life" people and locations that we recognize, they do not overlap with those same locations or relationships in "wide-awake-land" (WAL).  i.e. Dreaming that you reconcile with an old antagonist has no effect of your WAL relationship with that individual. Or falling in love with an unattainable other in DL, sadly leaves that relationship unaffected in WAL.

Strangers are more common in DL than people we know in WAL. This may be unique to my DL, but in my DL, I encounter people I know in WAL very, very rarely.  And then often only after waking do I realize "That was so-and-so!" And often I am not certain . . . "Or maybe so-and-so. . . ."

DL seems to be in higher definition than WAL. Again, this may be unique to my DL. But for me, colors are more intense in DL. Visual elements, people and places, are in sharper focus. This may be personal dreaming compensation for the fact that I have worn corrective lenses of one generation or another for as long as I can remember. Who knows?

But, yes, I realize.  These suppositions still only describe the characteristics of Dreamland. They leave unaddressed the central question of where is DL? Where on the cosmic, existential globe of "me" is the continent of Dreamland? Can I plot a course to it? Can I find my way there? Or is it only a place to which sleep allows me to fall, once I cut the cords that bind me to the shores of "Wide-Awake-Land?" Again some personal suppositions:

Dreamland may lie amidst the "many worlds" proposed by quantum mechanics. Google's AI provides a fairly clean definition: "The 'many worlds notion' suggests that every possible outcome of a quantum measurement is physically realized in a different, non-interacting 'world'. This process is often called branching."

Or, as I think about it - every time we select a significant path in our life, the "paths not taken" in our WAL are actually "taken" in one of quantum mechanics' other "many worlds." An alternate WAL.  Hence some other version of our self moves ahead with that life in that world. And while quantum mechanics goes on to assert that "the mechanism of decoherence explains why we only perceive one outcome. When a quantum system interacts with its environment, its different possibilities become entangled and "separate" into independent branches that can no longer interfere with one another."  Or, more plainly, quantum mechanics tells us that the path we choose for our primary WAL must remain separate from all the other "paths not taken."  Maybe. Maybe not.

It behooves us to remember that the "many worlds" aspect of quantum mechanics is but an enchanting notion within an equally fascinating theory. Like the religious, or philosophical notion of some sort of "life after death" we have no data (despite Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's belief to the contrary) that these many worlds exist in a form we can visit or perceive. So it comes down to belief:

I chose to believe that:

First: These many worlds do actually reside somewhere on an existential plane.

Second: While, as stated in quantum mechanics, these worlds are primarily "separate," leakage between the worlds can occur, and,

Third: It is this leakage that seeps into our awareness, influencing - but not totally dominating - the narratives of our unique Dreamland.

So, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

Not Crazy After All These Years

There were two possible titles for this post. The one up there and the other which was exactly the same, except that "Still" would replace "Not." Hence, Still Crazy After All These Years. Choosing "Not" was the result of an experiment that was part of our recent 3 day getaway at The Drake hotel in downtown Chicago. The city is particularly lovely this time of year - lots of holiday lights, a Christmas Market we had explored with my father and daughters many years ago, lovely decorations in the restaurants and hotel lobbies. But my experiment had nothing to do with that.

First we need to explore what it means to be crazy. It can be a tendency to believe you are better than everyone else - narcissism, megalomania. Or that you can make something be true simply by saying it is so - delusional disorder. Forgetting what you just said or where you put something, or a host of other "Damn, what did I . . . ?" issues - dementia. But let's forget politics for the moment - I'm talking real "insanity."

A relatively common definition of insanity - which may or may not have been coined by Einstein; who remembers, right? - is that insanity can be defined as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." I was worried.

You see, whenever we go on a trip - big, little, local, domestic, international, doesn't really matter - I always pack my drawing stuff fully intending to "do some drawing." Alas, I never do, never had done.

When I create some foreign scene like Grand Canal:

Or Gondolas:

While there is drawing there, they were both based on photographs I shot on a trip to Venice. But the actual drawing - marker to paper - wasn't done until I got home.

So as we prepared for a little 3 day R&R sojourn to The Drake hotel downtown, I, once again, packed up my drawing materials planning on "doing a little drawing" on the trip. And, amazingly, did so, producing this image:

Counselor 

Now, this is really just a first step - producing a differing result from a previously repeated but never actualized, set of behaviors. Ta Da! I'm not insane! Well, at least not according to this little experiment.

However some clarification is needed:

First, I call this image The Counselor because it reminds me of a non-gender specific entity from the movie The Planet of the Apes.

Second, I don't like it very much and don't know when, or even if, I will spend time adding color. 

But either way, I achieved a differing result from an oft repeated set of behaviors! The notion of liking the result isn't really there in the definition , so "Hooray! For Sane Me!"

Now if I could only remember to address those pesky memory issues!

Curb Thy Tongue, Knave!

Scholars are still fighting over how many unique words can be attributed to Shakespeare. 1700? 1500? And did he make them up or "merely" popularize them? Hmm.

Think about this. His last solely authored work was The Tempest, written around 1611. That was some 415 years ago, and we are still thinking about his use of words. And they are surely worthy of our reflection. I was in The Tempest, as a college freshman - the equivalent of a chorus member in a Greek tragedy. But I loved the words spoken by Prospero - Jim Donaldson, a senior? But I digress, again. Still, you can see why the words echo over 415 years: Miranda - "Oh, brave new world, that has such creatures in it." Huxley was listening.

And don't forget the sonnets. 116 is perhaps the pinnacle of the form:

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

 I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

Compare that to the lyrics of the current top forty. Really!

But then we must remember that Shakespeare also penned these memorable slurs:

"Thou art like a toad; ugly and venomous.” – As You Like It

“I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed.” – Much Ado About Nothing

Which brings me to the theme of this post: "There is nothing more powerful than a deep and wide-ranging vocabulary. But how you use it determines how honorable a "vocabulist" you may be. [A vocabulist is one who uses their vocabulary to achieve social objectives. ed. - and yeah, I just made that up.🙂 Shakespeare would approve.] However, it is imperative to remember that a well-honed vocabulary is a weapon that can cut quite as easily as it can court.

So what might be the rules of behavior that separate a courtly vocabulist from a cad, a knave if you will? Here are some possibilities:

Moderation. When he was Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt said "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." The courtly vocabulist manages the two simultaneously realizing that his/her big stick is their vocabulary, so s/he quietly utilizes their vocabulary to gently, perhaps softly, but firmly, articulate the preferred path to their social objective.

Do no harm. This physician's canon fits a touch awkwardly into the world of the courtly vocabulist. The idea is to obtain a social goal, so the vocabulist is tasked with subverting those concepts that stand in opposition to that goal. In this context the courtly vocabulist confronts the opposing concepts, not the individuals who espouse those alternative. Folks who study this stuff call personal attacks ad hominem attacks, rants that attack their opponent rather than the issue. "He's a bad man!" "They are garbage!" The courtly vocabulist fights fair, avoiding ad hominem attacks. This is a difficult balancing act, and one currently absent in American, and sadly global, political discourse.

The courtly vocabulist realizes the fact that much of contemporary interaction occurs onscreen. That is fine with me. I once played the Clarence Darrow character in the play Inherit the Wind [a fictionalized version of the 1925 Scopes monkey trial regarding the teaching Darwin and evolution in school. Darwin lost - denying any teaching about gender differences. Oops! That's today. Digression again.] The Scopes decision prohibited the teaching of evolution. Anyhow, with a script I was OK with face-to-face debating. It is that way with any scripted drama. "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue." - Hamlet. The outcome is predetermined. But these days I prefer the online interactions. They can be more thoughtful and actually more refined. No, seriously they can be. Except, it seems, if you have your own online streaming platform. However, the online environment asks the courtly vocabulist to accept additional guidelines:

First, revise and edit, then revise and edit again. First drafts are rarely the best articulation of one's position or a refutation of another's perspective. 

Second. resist the "Oh, yeah? How about this!? Take that - Send!" inclination. This obviously goes hand-in-hand with the first guideline.  Ideally, the courtly vocabulist waits at least 24 hours between the "final draft" and hitting "send."

Both those guidelines should remind us that the Internet is forever. The "delete" key functions only if the message has not yet been sent. There is no "taking it back." on the Internet. You can say you are sorry, that you misspoke, even that you were wrong; but that for which you are apologizing is still out there in cyberspace subject to forwarding, reposting, reformatting, "deep faking," whatever. So read your final draft as if you were the recipient of the post, not its author. Then wait 24 hours. OK, now send.

These guidelines have evolved, sadly, from mistakes I have made. I like to write, and when I find myself in disagreement with a position, policy, person or politician I often find myself going with the cataclysmic compositional flow, forgetting Sonnet 116, getting presidential and straying into the "Thou art like a toad" waters.

Sigh. I know better.

Calling Citizen Artists

Seems like there are "citizen" everythings these days. Citizen ornithologists count birds, citizen herpetologists count snakes, citizen anthropologists track our ancient ancestors, citizen archeologists seek departed dinos. Hopefully citizen architects and engineers are not designing our high rise apartment buildings. 😟 

I'm just after your eyes.  Yes, I am still working on the 4' x 5' drawing I have decided to call Carriage Ride. And while the delightful 1977 children's book by Nancy Willard and illustrated by Tomie dePaola that I used to read to my daughters exhorted the notion that "simple pictures are best" I have been unable to follow it in Carriage Ride.

You may remember this version of it:

Well the blank spaces at the "top" and the "bottom" were destined to have some sort of botanical treatments in them.  The bottom one looked like this:

With the "bottom" now on the left.

Here is the issue I wish you to consider. Here is a closer look at the botanical treatment that is now finished:

And here is the cartoon for the opposite side - bottom or whatever:

It was my initial idea to fill that cartoon with Fall colors; orange, red, russet,  - stuff like that. However it now strikes me that given the abstract structure of the "leaves" in the cartoon that the completed treatment would not read as autumn leaves, but more like a forest fire.

So that's it my citizen artists. What's your take? Feel free to copy that last image and color it with "fall-ish" colors and see how it looks. 

Take your time. I've been working on this drawing since way before Thanksgiving. By now Christmas seems an optimistic target! 😅

On Mortality

I received an interesting request the other day from one of you out there on The Wall. They wanted to know what I thought about Mortality. But something "more complete than what usually appears on The Wall." Hmm.

I do need to clarify about The Wall. It stands in for two “real life” situations. One no longer occurs, the other rarely. The first would occur when lecturing in class and I would go “off script” as sometimes related thoughts would spring to mind and demand inclusion - and as many of you may recall from your own days in a classroom, students rarely would walk out when the professor started to "wing it." [Something I chose to believe even when teaching via online videos.] The second would be conversations with people you care about regarding issues of real concern. These days politics, the kids or grandkids, movies, sports or online events tend to dominate, so meaningful conversations simply fall away. So I write The Wall.

But to mortality. To put it simply, but seriously, I don’t believe in it. I believe we are immortal. Not that I think we end up walking and talking around in other worlds - except of course in those quantum alternate existences of which I am so fond. :-)

Rather I believe that in our current lives the existential spark which most traditional faiths call the soul transcends our current physical demise (aka death) and continues to evolve, learn and develop. Now, admittedly, the nature of those subsequent existences does remain a mystery.

My oldest and dearest friend, who was born on the other half of our duplex six days after me, interestingly has occasionally asserted that he shares, at least portions of, this rather strange belief system. Among the interesting discussions we have had is the question of whether there comes a time in the maturation of the soul when we become aware of the existences that preceded the current one. And do we retain relationships or shared experiences from previous existences?

We have not come to any firm conclusions regarding those issues. ;-) However we do agree that the process is never ending - hence our immortality. We do not stop at some point and stroll about in Elysian Fields, we just, as was often said back in the 60s when he and I were college roommates, “keep on keepin’ on!”

But to clarify a bit on mortality, i.e. - "being subject to death." It obviously plays a role in our current existence. It can affect our behavior. I am a touch acrophobic - I don't like high places. I am aware that falling from said high place will result in my being "subject to death." Seeing videos of those [in my mind lunatic] people climbing sheer rock faces in Yellowstone results in a quick channel change. I stay away from high places. Additionally, my recurrent claustrophobia prevents me from venturing into small spaces in which I might be "subject to death." Sadly then I will never see the magnificent cave paintings around the world.

Mortality can, however, also serve as a motivator. Rembrandt said "A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished." Leonardo Da Vinci is said to have carried the Mona Lisa with him all his life. Perhaps hoping to, in his mind, finish it before he died. On a far smaller scale I have been working on a drawing for a couple of months now. It keeps insisting on compositional additions. When tired, the thought crosses my mind - "I hope I finish this thing before I die." So I lie down on the floor again and take up my pens and markers.

And then there are those brushes with immortality that we can experience without the necessity of dying. Some commonly shared experiences probably check this box: The birth of a child, falling in love, a medal performance in some competition. I am no doubt biased in thinking of artists in this realm. A genius performer lost in the magic of a musical composition, an artist losing conscious control of his/her medium as the work take shape beneath their hands, a poet fascinated by the words seeming to simply appear beneath their pen or on the screen. Immortality slipping through the existential curtain to add a touch of the divine to our everyday.

Then again, sometimes the immortal appears less obviously. Feeling well after a sickness. A sunset or sunrise of unusual beauty. Being buried by a mass of puppies. A certain smile. You choose. Sometimes we realize the moment, hold our breath and hang on for as long as possible. Other times the moment slips away and we realize it was there only after it fades. Immortality is fickle.

There is Time, and Then There is Time

 I learned today that The National Institute of Standards and Technology has announced the new "most accurate clock in the world. The clock is based on a “fountain” design that represents the gold standard of accuracy in timekeeping. The NIST-F4 ticks at such a steady rate that if it had started running 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed, it would be off by less than a second today.

Whew. While that brings no retroactive relief to the now vanished dinos, it did make me think about the vagaries of time - the primary thought was wondering why tracking time with such mind boggling accuracy was important enough to have a National Institute. And if said institute was among those shuttered during the government shutdown - was there an impact on time, current or Paleolithic? But I digress.

I'm more concerned about the impact of everyday ordinary time in my life. And it does shift. For example, I have designated the hours between 6 and 9 AM as PST - Prime Sleeping Time, the hours during which I get my best sleep. 2 PM is nap time, which is however often sacrificed to MBT - Most Boring Time, when I wait in the waiting room of some healthcare office to be seen for some malady which is directly linked to SDA - Sole Driver Activity. But I digress, yet again.

My real interest is in how time affects the creative process - primarily painting. As I have mentioned before Rembrandt asserted that "a painting is finished when the artist says it is finished." Which, problematically, leaves open the possibility of a painting never being finished. You know, if the artist never says "There. It is finished!" 

And that brings us to Leonardo d'Vinci, and his reputation for leaving a variety of projects unfinished when he was seduced away by the challenge of another "more interesting" opportunity. His famous notebooks are ample evidence of a mind never at rest. And might shed light on this polymath artist who carried the Mona Lisa with him all his life. Perhaps he never thought it was finished.

In light of full disclosure, much of this reflection on time comes from my discovery - from browsing through my picture gallery - that I have been working on the current "carriages and greenery and circles" kind of image for almost three months. It doesn't seem that long, just lying on the floor drawing on a big picture.

But that might be because when I submerge myself into this environment: 

time really does not exist. 

Well, the NIST-F4 is still tick-tocking away, but it has no relevance in my life. I think I quoted an anonymous source recently that asserted that: "When I am using my hands I do not have to think." That is not exactly what I mean when I say time does not exist when I am painting. I always listen to music while drawing and the genre of music influences where my thoughts drift. Years, places and people, crowd the edges of my drawings. And it is in that revery that time does not intrude. 

However, when the rough edges of time from the dinosaurs intrude - dinner gatherings, appointments, the doorbell, security camera - the drawing suffers. Bits and pieces fall outside the lines, and I have to stop. Often "tyrannosaurus-NISTus" distractions haul me away for hours at a time. Gulp, even days. But even though it takes awhile, eventually I can take up bit of color again and banish time.

A Quick Halloween Treat

Well, I'm not sure how much of a treat it is - but at least it's not fattening!😁 

Having spent the morning quickly clicking by my various news sources that are all stunningly depressing I thought I would remind you that I would encourage you to forward The Wall to any of your friends, family, or acquaintances who might enjoy "something completely different" to quote Monty Python. And if they would like to be on The Wall themselves, they can drop me a note at robert.schrag@gmail.com and I will be glad to put them on the distribution lists.

Anyhow, here the details in case they inquire:

The Wall is sent out via "blind copies" so that no person on The Wall has access to anyone else on The Wall.

There is no "publication schedule" for the Wall. I just post when something moves me, or a drawing is ready to discuss or share.

I have no way of knowing who opens the post. Just numbers of how many "hits" there are on the post.

Anyone on The Wall can comment on a post by emailing me, but there is no public site for posts, altho' "comments" made directly on the post will be seen - I think - to anyone accessing the post.

So have a good Halloween 👻💀! Pretend you bought all that candy for the kids!

Ode to a Fading Gentleman

I don't have a specific gentleman in mind - rather the idea of a gentle man; a man who is gentle. The Brits still cling to a sort of system, harking back to "the days of old, when knights were bold." At the top of the heap you had the nobility, those folks who can trace their linage to the royal family. Those who, given opportunities presented by death, war, sickness or assassination, might actually become Queen or King. A group not renowned for their gentleness. Nor were their hired head breakers - the knights, Lancelot and that crowd.

But there was another level of society, those at the back of the book in Burke's Peerage - the gentry. While not pretenders to the throne, they were thought to be models of gentility. Sort of nobility without the carnage. They were supposed to be polite, well-spoken, gentle, kind, brave, clean and reverent. No wait, those last three were from the Scout Law. But you get the idea. Gentlemen were supposed to be gentle, as were gentlewomen when given the opportunity.

I seem to seek in vain for contemporary remnants of these progenitors of human gentleness, of loving kindness. The liturgies of most organized religions do assert them - and elements of some do actually manifest those behaviors. Yet, sadly, as we examine the hot, or even the merely smoldering, spots of conflict around the world, we often discover that the conflict revolves around a disagreement as to whose god is the right god.

But I can't personally pour any oil on those troubled global waters, I'll leave that to the petrochemical companies - sorry, couldn't resist. What I mean is I can't really champion gentleness on a global scale - a task that objectively seems beyond the pontifications of the White House and other self-serving global figures who talk peace while simultaneously threatening, preparing for, or engaging in, greater armed conflict. But maybe we can each individually "play gentleness forward."

It's not really that hard. Do little things. First off - don't yell. It is a natural inclination, even to ourselves: you stub your toe, drop a glass, get cut off by a rude driver. Yelling seems natural, but fight the inclination. Try not to yell, swear, make rude gestures. It's tough sometimes, but your cardiovascular system will thank you. Keep that blood pressure just rolling along - Old Man River it.

Best place to practice this primary manifestation of gentleness is at home. Here are some phrases guaranteed to make your home a more gentle, yell-free, calmer place: Thank you. Please. You're welcome. Let me help you with that. No, you go first. I'm sorry. Is there something wrong? Want to talk about it? You look nice today. I love you.

Go ahead, add some more examples of your own. Things you'd like to say or hear in the house. We all know them. We just seem to forget to trot them out when they would do the most good. Practice. Now, once you get used to using them at home, try taking them out for a spin. While driving. When you are shopping.  Eating at a restaurant.  At work. Anywhere you rub elbows with your fellow citizens: "No, you go ahead." "Take that spot. I'll drive around.""I'm going to go grab a coffee, fruit juice, snack, apple, orangutan. Can I get you one?"

These are terribly simple things we can all do, many of them come right out of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten  by Robert Fulghum. But the problem is that these behaviors are not seen as pathways to success in American culture.

Our local heroes more often leap aggressively from our various videos, sporting events, music, politics. Slam, bam! Good guys take down the bad guys in a plethora of streaming thriller videos. (Yeah. One of my guilty pleasures. I'm trying to cut back.) Sports gives us: Defense! Hit that line! Crash the boards! (Another of my trials - football for schools where I taught. I, at least, think about CTE, and don't cheer at hard hits.) Politics leads with: Liar! Fake News! Bad man! She Belongs in Jail! The City is a disaster! Send in the National Guard! Join ICE help root out the baddest of the bad! And today there are reports of 10K American troops standing off the coast of Venezuela.

But it could be worse. A dose of schadenfreude reveals these tidbits from today's international news:

"Rapid Support Forces kills 460 patients at a hospital in el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur." And "Brazilian police raid on a drug gang in Rio de Janeiro Tuesday kills at least 119 people—the city's deadliest raid on record."

It all sure adds a sour note to the morning coffee, not?  Why do we act this way? What forces the notion of gentleness back into hazy visions of romantic pasts that might never have really been? I do not know. I don't buy the notion that we are still chained to the violent inclinations of our atavistic prehistory. But I have a suggestion for at least claiming the feeling that one is injecting a touch of gentleness into a frighteningly hostile world:

As much as possible lead a personally gentle life. I'm not suggesting a kind of life of pure behavioral pacifism where you seek out a monastic retreat and spend your days in solitary prayer. Nah, nothing that extreme.  Just start by using some of that gentle vocabulary we constructed above. Then once you can "talk the talk," move into "walking the walk." Be gentle with yourself and with those who touch your life.

Suggestions that, of course, allow me to trot out my old mantra for trying to live a "good life": Foster Harmony (aka gentleness), Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.

Drawing Thoughts

It's kind of a zen thing that folks who actually took art classes probably learned in "drawing day two," just after "securing the paper and selecting the medium." But those of us who took the "self-taught" route never got that memo - especially "mature" doodlers like myself who are peeking a couple of weeks ahead to the big double 7.

I realize I had read about something similar to this notion in the "spy-thriller" novels I favor. It is the ritual the sniper goes through before shooting the mafia kingpin meeting with a group of fellow wiseguys on the patio of a restaurant a few thousand yards away. He does some breathing exercises to reach "stage zero" where no internal quiver will disrupt the trigger pull or the bullet's trajectory. Bam. There goes the bad guy! It's sort of like that, but not really.

A little background. My hands shake. Not a function of my upcoming 77th birthday - been that way all my life. As a young theater-type in high school and college, I usually made sure I had something to lean against or hold onto when on stage to anchor the shakes. But interestingly, these days they don't shake when I am drawing. Except when; well, as you have seen I often draw myself into the proverbial corner of tiny little spaces. For example, take a look at Grand Canal image.

Those little colored pieces of sky and water are maybe a half inch by 1/8 inch. The rocks at the base of the buildings are even smaller. It is when coloring little spaces like that when the shakes threaten to re-emerge.

OK, take a quick look at the current project, Carriage Ride with Flowers, or something like that. Haven't really decided on a title yet:

The triangle is eight inches on the long base, and is there to give you an idea of scale. The "learning moment" occurred when trying to decide what kind of design should fill the empty spaces along each edge of the drawing. I wanted something botanical, but was hesitant to put pen to paper until I was more certain what that would like. So I decided to do a preliminary sketch that I could position around on the big drawing to see how it would look.

So I did one, then went a little OCD and cut it out so it wouldn't block any of the big drawing as I tested placement. Here is where I am on that:

OK. The cut out image is 12 x 7 inches. So those spaces inside the leaves get kinda tiny. And it was while creating them that the shakes began to raise their trembling head. I paused. And that is when I discovered - pure serendipity, no explanation - that if I drew the tiny little spaces by pulling the marker towards me while slowly exhaling there were no shakes.

And that's it: To cure the shakes take a breath, position the drawing implement so as to draw it towards you, and draw slowly as you exhale. It is OK to pause mid-stroke, just take another gentle breath, and then continue as you softly exhale.

I don't know if this insight warranted a Wall at all, let alone one this long, but it seemed cool to me! 😁

 

Peace, not pieces.

Alfred Nobel established five categories for the Nobel Prizes which were first awarded in 1901, the fifth anniversary of Nobel's death. The five original categories were Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. The prize for  Economics was added in 1968.

Nobel, who made a significant fortune largely based on weapons and munitions - the most remembered being dynamite - seems to have turned the other cheek late in life by endowing the now world-renowned prizes to be conveyed to individuals who contributed the "greatest benefit to mankind" in those specific fields.

The awards in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature are duly noted by the media. Especially when recipients are themselves media figures, as when Bob Dylan won the Prize for Literature in 2016 "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." Despite being a Dylan fan I shook my head at that selection until I read his acceptance lecture which ended thus:

"Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They're meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare's plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, 'Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story."  Hmm. Hope the "songwriters" of today are listening. We can always use well sung stories.

But the Dylan prize is only one of several that might make us stop and think. For example:

The 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Fritz Haber. A bit strange, not because it was awarded for his work in the mass production of ammonia, but because Haber had overseen Germany's chemical weapons program during World War I.

And then in 1949: Antonio Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist and brain surgeon was awarded the prize in medicine for devising the lobotomy, a practice that is, well, no longer in practice.

Still, what can we really expect from a series of prizes awarded by a committee, any committee!

However, it is the Peace prize that generates the most coverage and controversy. And there have been many controversial winners among those individuals and organizations receiving the award in the 124 years of its existence. And, realistically, one would be hard pressed to find a singular example of an individual or organization who have contributed the "greatest benefit to mankind" by making the world a more peaceful place. There are undoubtedly many worthy individuals and organizations laboring unseen "to benefit mankind" in the trenches and byways of this troubled world trying to bring peace. Few will win the Nobel Prize for Peace, and perhaps that is because they do not "campaign" for it. Instead they focus on their task as peacemakers.

The same cannot be said of Donald Trump, who has claimed in a New York Times article regarding the Nobel Peace Prize: "I deserve it, but they will never give it to me." Well, I hope this is one statement by President Trump that actually proves true - well, not the deserving part, which is a reflection of the fact that he really does not understand what it takes to deserve the prize.

Much of Trump's claim for the prize rests on his claim to "have ended eight wars!" Most prominent at the moment is his claim to have ended the war between Israel and Hamas. That claim seems to be very much up in the air as claims and counterclaims continue among the participants. One can certainly be thankful for the lives repatriated on both sides, but I'm going to wait a few months before checking this one off the list of Trump Victories.

More germane perhaps is the war that Trump declared he would end on his first day in office - the war between Ukraine and Russia. Well, as of today Trump announce 100% tariffs on Russian oil because his one time "good friend" Putin won't follow Trump's playbook. Just another example of a frightening litany of reversals of policy and alliances that have marked his brief tenure in office.

A review of the claims of ending the other six "war ending interventions" seem to reveal Trump lending some impetus to ongoing negotiations where others did the major heavy lifting; sometimes successful, other times not. Not a stunning argument for being the one person in all the world who providing "the greatest benefit to mankind." And then of course his claim to "have never started a war!" Let's keep our eye on Venezuela, or maybe Columbia.

But most damning in my mind is the farce this would be Nobel prize winner is perpetrating on his own country. Using his party's shut down of the government to throw thousands out of work, or to force a reduction in health benefits for millions. Attempting to force universities to kowtow to his ideas of who should be admitted and what should be taught. Using the Department of Justice to attack anyone who might ever have attempted to contradict his beliefs. Loosing ICE agents into cities to arrest anyone whose accent or skin color or former country of residence he finds offensive. And sending armed National Guard troops into "blue cities," aka cities with democratic mayors or voting histories.

This man who covets the Nobel Prize for Peace seems quite content to tear his own country to pieces.

But that is not what frightens me most. These grievous acts against our country are not, in my mind, the acts of an evil person. They are instead the acts of a man in a fairly advanced state of dementia. His inability to construct meaningful sentences. His forgetting of his own previous statements. The implementation of projects he has previously disowned, like the destruction of portions of the White House. His dizzying 'on again - off again' relationships with other countries and world leaders. These are all examples of behavior that, if we observed them in parents or friends of his age [79 - 80 in June], we would be concerned.

"Sure, Dad. Sure, Aunt Martha. Sure, cousin Jo. Sure, dear. You deserve the Nobel Peace Prize."