In Praise of Gentleness

Fight fiercely Harvard!

Fight, fight, fight.

Impress them with our prowess, do.

Fight Fiercely Harvard, Tom Lehrer, 1960

It is, I admit, a strange way to start a post on the virtue of gentleness. But my inclination to rise to the defense of gentility beats most strongly when the world is least gentle. Starting this post, as I am, moments after President Biden has declared his intention not to pursue a second term, I decided to search for examples of quotes from individuals with legitimate intellectual credentials that echoed Trump, the Republican nominee’s simplistic exhortation "Fight, fight, fight!"

It was a difficult search once I eliminated the ritualistic chats of fans at athletic venues - never widely cited for thoughtful commentary. Equally problematic was finding specific references to, or with whom, Trump was encouraging this confrontational conflict. While references to various perceived miscreants abounded, it pretty much came down to anyone who didn't follow Trump's wide-ranging litany of evildoers who stole the last election from him.

Finally I stumbled upon Tom Lehrer, a Harvard educated mathematican, who taught math and theater at the University of California at Santa Cruz in the 60s and 70s, and penned the delightful Fight, Fiercely, Harvard. My fear is that if heard by Trump supporters with band-aids on their ears, they would fail to realize that Lehrer was best know for satire. . .

Several days have now passed and Kamala Harris appears to be the presumptive Democratic nominee. I see that as good news as she certainly aligns comfortably with my view of the world and advocates policies that would move the nation in that direction. So I will pull the lever, well, actually fill in the circle, for her come November. The bad news is that various voices within the party champion her by hailing her as a "warrior."

So there you have it, a Republican nominee whose sweeping view of the complex issues facing the nation and the world can be condensed in his mantra, "Fight! Fight! Fight!", opposed by the Democratic nominee some in the party would seek to paint as a "worthy combatant" - a "Warrior." Certainly I cannot be alone in finding this antagonistic, aggressive framing of our national political environment depressing.

Which brings me, albeit tardily, to the intended focus of this post: praising gentleness. There is a relatively simple reason why such a seemingly praiseworthy notion as gentleness needs championing. And that is because its far more common antagonists; anger, hostility, confrontation and violence, are so much easier. Ask any parent whose three-year old decided to see if the cell phone could "swim" in the toilet, or maybe see if you could flush it like they had learned "big boys and girls" did. See how easy anger is? 

And taking the easy route with anger, hostility, confrontation and violence seems to be an affliction that humanity just cannot shake. It follows us from swimming cell phones to playground squabbles to "Harvard fighting fiercely" to first-person-shooter video games to drone "warfare-at-a-distance" to old-fashioned bloodshed in the streets. All because it is easier than gentleness.

And we know it is wrong. If you read any of the foundational texts of the world's great religions and philosophical tomes, you will discover that all but a distorted few argue eloquently for gentleness, compassion, and loving kindness. Unfortunately, that has not prevented a seemingly endless parade of "pious souls" from using those same texts to make the streets run red with blood in the name of some deity, demigod, king or emperor. All because shedding blood in anger or fervor is easier than pursuing the gentleness advocated in a more compassionate reading of those saints, prophets and philosophers.

Gentleness is difficult, but is actually capable of existing beyond the covers of the writings of those prophets and philosophers inclined to friendly persuasion. I am a product of my time and culture so when I consider real-life individuals who have been able to manifest gentleness in a predominantly violent world my list (in no particular order) reflects that upbringing: Dr. King, Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela - and in a very personal cluster - my mother and older brother Jim, both sadly deceased these many years, but neither of whom can I now recall ever having raised their voice, let alone an implement, in anger toward another individual. Those other, more well-known, names belonged to people who met all the indignity and anger the world could hurl at them and turned it away with a gentle, forgiving, humanity seemingly passing all understanding.

So there are real-life models for gentleness. Your particular cluster of such individuals may overlap with parts of mine, but will no doubt extend to other worthy souls of whom I am ignorant. We need to pay attention to those models. Learn from those examples. That exercise can, in itself, be difficult and frustrating as we often run into aspects of ourselves it has been easier to ignore. Anger has been a particular bete noire for me, I still struggle with it. And occasionally I also fail to fully appreciate the unintended hurt caused by my words or actions. But as a wise person (the source and precise citation escape me at the moment) once said, "Knowing you have a problem is the first step in solving it."

So I meditate, listen to gentle music from pleasant times, draw and - I tell myself - keep taking baby steps to a more gentle me.

---

In a lovely bit of serendipity, shortly after finishing this post I came across this article in New Scientist. The title is self-explanatory.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25233625-000-survival-of-the-friendliest-why-homo-sapiens-outlived-other-humans/

We Are Such Stuff

 We are such stuff as dreams are made on,

And our little life is rounded

With a sleep.

The Tempest, William Shakespeare.

Being of an age when sleep is an erratic visitor, I tend to focus more on the dreams than the actual sleeping part. And they are strange critters, aren’t they? These dreams of ours.

If popular music is any indication, dreams are the inevitable partner of romance - of love requited and un. “When I want you, all I have to do is dream.” “When I close my eyes, I dream. And when I dream, all I ever dream about is you.” “Dream lover, until then, I go to sleep and dream again, Until all my lovers dreams come true.” Etc, etc, etc, etc. Add your favorites, :-)!

Ah, well, no offense to any of my romantic interests, from the little black-haired Irish girl who lived across the street from Jefferson Elementary, she of my earliest classroom memories, to my dear better half here with me in Burr Ridge to, as Julio and Willie put it, “all the girls I’ve loved before,” I don’t have those dreams.

Let me clarify - I think my dreams are as thematically diverse as anyone’s. The very strange thing is that when I dream - and on those rare fleeting occasions when I can remember any of the details of the dream - I dream in the presence of strangers. Although able to interact with, and converse with, the other actors in these insubstantial dramas, I am the only identifiable entity in my dreams. Upon waking, in those, fleeting recollected moments when I can recall anything about the dream, ain’t nobody I know there, ‘cept me.

I realize that this is somewhat unusual. My wife can recall, and retell, her dreams - cast and plotline - with the length and clarity of War and Peace. And the players are all real people who share her live in some way. Not I. I hang out with strangers.

One episode of an favorite old TV show, Nothern Exposure, (which I recently binge viewed in it's entirety) proposed a possible explanation. In the episode Chris and Bernard - a bi-racial pair of brothers - discover that they are having each other's dreams. Interesting notion, especially in light of my fondness for the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. Maybe I am dreaming of the lives I am living in those other existences? How about that Professor Freud? Huh? Wadda ya think!? Stranger things have happened, right? Although none spring to mind at the moment. . 

Yet, I am pulled back, at least partially, into more realistic realms by the fact that I can recall a couple of specific dream types:

Type one: Where Is the Room?

This dream is obviously drawn from my academic life. The setting is a large convention venue. Lots of hallways, elevators, meeting rooms, sociality suites. I am supposed to be presenting a paper but cannot find the room. I am late. I am lost. I rush frantically about until rescued by the relative sanity bestowed by the breaking of the rosy fingered dawn - as some poem we had to translate in Classical Greek 101 at Kalamazoo College put it, and I awake.

Type two: Doesn't the Addams Family Live Here?

This type is similar to, but still different from, type one. I am trapped in a large spooky, gothic kind of mansion. It isn't a frightening environment as much as it is a frustrating one. I need to do something, but I don't know what or where. So I rush about never discovering what it is I seek nor where it might be located until, again, I am rescued by the rosy fingered dawn.

In both types of dreams I encounter the usual cast of familiar strangers who offer well-intentioned, but meaningless advice. My first non-dream response upon waking from either a type one or a type two dream is: "Whoa! That was weird!" And then the dream disappears.

Naturally, shortly after writing this post, the black swan that proves the exception came winging her way into my dreamscape:

My best and oldest friend accompanied me throughout the dream. We are playing golf at night on a lighted par three course, similar to, but eventually different from, one we frequented while attending high school in Springfield, Ohio.

The round started normally enough. My friend hit a lovely drive off into the lights, perhaps even onto the green. Things then got a bit strange when I attempted to tee off. The tee box turned to sand. Not golf course sand - beach sand, deep fluffy sand which would not hold a tee. Every time I placed the ball upon the tee and stood up to tee off the tee would disappear into the sand and the ball would roll away.

We finished the hole. I do not recall how. But we set off to find the second tee. Signs led us to the door of a large decrepit old mansion. We entered and found ourselves in the throes of a type two dream - hauling our golf clubs around while wandering fruitlessly about seeking the second tee. Cue the rosy fingered dawn. "Whoa! That was weird!"

Weird on several levels. First, there was a person from real life in the dream. Previously, at most, as the dream faded I might think, "Hey, that might have been .  .  ." Usually someone from at least long ago and perhaps far away.

Second, the whole athletic thing - golf and the semi-sentient golf course winding its way through some Addam's Family Mansion.

Third, and strangest of all, I remember it - at least all the salient parts.

However, given the strangeness and weirdness of my night time dreaming, I should point out that that particular cloud does have an afternoon delight silver lining: naps! I take them most days - and when I do, I do not dream. Or if I do I am blissfully unaware of the phenomenon, and awake not weird.

Well, the clock has crept past midnight and the tornado warnings have been recalled. Time to wrap this one up!

Sweet dreams!

L’Image Aumentare: Memories of Irises

 An interesting part of the conceit of this image can be found in the checkerboard patterned pieces. The idea was to not allow a colored square to touch another colored square - side-to-side or at the corners. The idea came to me after I had made some headway on the section at the upper left, so there are some exceptions there. The other two should follow the conceit, so see if you can find any flaws..

Otherwise, the image is a traditional L’Image Aumentare based on a cluster of irises photographed on a morning walk through the neighborhood.

Here is the original image:

And the initial cartoon:

And the final L’Image Aumentare 

 

Fleeting Serenity

Chaos seems to be the order of the day this 4th of July, here in the USA. Wildfires out west, Torrential rains along the Gulf coast and Florida, flooded fields in the heartland, and the far more mild irritation of “not-since-1803!” dual cicada emergence here in greater Chicagoland. Sweltering everywhere else putting psyches on edge. Politics past understanding. The new normal? I dunno. Hope not.

It all does argue for grabbing a bit of serenity wherever you can find it, right?  

Try this. Wait until dusk. Find a swath of greenery somewhere. Backyards, parks, gardens, golf courses. All good. Trees, bushes, also a plus. Now, take a seat, chair, blanket, top of a cooler - doesn’t matter. 

The idea next is to sort of “unfocus.” Look all around you, but don’t really look directly at anything - kind of a zenlike awareness. Patience, grasshopper. Waiting is. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. . .

Then ZAP! There it is! Or was it over there? Zoom! Again! Another one - but fading now. 

Fireflies. Lightening bugs. Call them what you will. 

Silent and magic, they claim the evening like tiny fairies fleeting hither and yon with blinking green and golden satchels, almost neon. They are there, then not. Gone again, only to reappear over there, or maybe there. 

For the barefoot young they invite chase. Mad flip-flop scampers over wet grass, hands swiping, or softly extended, seeking to quietly intercept the illusive prey. Then, POP! Into the Mason jar. Screw down the lid. Punch some holes in the top. Add some well-intended - but meaningless - blades of grass for seeming sustenance. Tiny romances interrupted, destined for a darkened summer bedroom to cast their fanciful, frustrated, glimmers of soft summer lights against a midnight wall.

For those of us in long pants, sleeves, socks and shoes - sporting the slightly sweet scent of Deep Woods Off - the soothing pulses stir different responses. It touches on the transcendent, linking memory, tonight, and the still masked tomorrows in a serene patchwork of the present moment.

The object of many meditative practices is to calm the mind, to step outside the hurly-burly drumbeat of contemporary life. To slow the heartbeat. To find the soothing waters of tranquility. Somehow these miniature, rhythmic, wing-borne silent pulses illuminate summer’s path to that sacred spot.

The Divinity Would Not Mind

 I find it quite depressing to read the daily death figures from the Muslim religious observance of the hajj in Saudi Arabia. The numbers vary widely, some focusing purely on restricted groups reporting only in double digits, but now major news outlets are projecting a death total exceeding a thousand souls perishing in temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a card-carrying Compassionate Agnostic, (a CA for short -  I need to remember to have those cards printed) I occasionally feel compelled to speak out on behalf of the Divinity:

It is not pleased. Come on now, here we have almost two million devout believers - many of them elderly, a demographic in which I am reluctantly included - trudging across a desert in triple digit heat to demonstrate their devotion to the Divinity.

The Divinity gratefully acknowledges the devotion, but proposes a tad more ”calendarical” flexibility for the event - especially considering global warming. (For which the Divinity is withholding judgment. All tied up with the free will choices of humanity, you know.) So moving the hajj to a less virulent time of year - like December? - would be fine with the Big D.

However, the Divinity is not holding its breath. And can we blame it? Consider our time on earth for Divinity’s sake. Seemingly, the planet has run red with “holy blood” ever since we first figured how to carves clubs and knap flint into knives, hatchets and spear points. The Divinity is quite displeased with the rampant bloodletting done in its name. It is not amused. Not at all. 

It is bad enough when, as parodied in Dr. Seuss’s delightful Butter Battle Book, two sets of contrary “believers”, bloody each other. From ancient sacrifices to crusades to pogroms to holocausts to modern armed conflicts, the Divinity is chagrined. But even more, when we visit unnecessary mayhem upon our fellow travelers, within our particular the family of belief, as it were, well, again the Divinity is not amused. 

The Divinity would far prefer that we learn to be gentle with each other, and certainly be compassionate in performing those rituals intended to show our fealty to the Divinity’s core of lovingkindness.

* What is a “compassionate agnostic?” Glad you asked, particularly since I have encountered folks who think “agnostic” and “atheist” mean the same thing. Not at all. 

To use an example from my old home, The Old North State, aka North Carolina: Folks in other parts of the country often confuse the Wolfpack of North Carolina State University, where I spent 40 some years teaching, with the Tarheels of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from which my daughters secured various degrees. The two institutions share portions of their names, but there the similarities end. The same is true with agnostic and atheist. 

To clarify:

An atheist - a-theist - denies the existence of a supreme being, a god.

An agnostic - as I use it, acknowledges the existence of a transcendent force that guides, but does not control, the nature and evolution of the cosmos.

A compassionate agnostic (CA) - again in my usage - believes that that transcendent force is compassionate, and that we, in our own little diorama of existence here on the third rock from the sun, should seek to manifest that compassion in our own lives. I have discussed elsewhere in these pages - I know, I know, sometimes at tedious length - Distilled Harmony, my own attempt to carve a path towards compassion. We CAs can natter on as we try to clarify that path. 🤪

Cloning Lilies

It had been a long time since I had done any digital manipulation with L'Image Aumentare, other than simply creating the basic "cartoon" within which I created the designs, like this, which you have already seen.

And then I colored the blanks in which gave me this image, again, which you have already seen:

But then I took the image to Staples and had them run it through their large scanner which gave me a digital version that I could manipulate in Photoshop. There I aded an addition layer, and painted a small sunset which I put behind the original Indian Lily and did a bit of cleaning on the original layer which gave me this image

Anyhow I am going to play with another type of L'Image Aumentare which entails leaving the background intact. I did a version of my Grandfather's car using that process. This time I'm going to play with a flower.  Like this:

I'll start with this picture from a nearby park:

And then remove the main flower, creating some spaces for designs.

Like this:

I'll let you know how it turns out!

Beyond the Reach of Forgiveness

Alexander Pope told us “to err is human, to forgive divine.” 

It is a comforting platitude that looks great on coffee mugs and T-shirts. Yet, I have always felt that a touch of clarification was needed: To err is easy, to forgive often seems impossible. 

One need only glimpse at the daily headlines to confirm my admittedly dour addition. Israel seemingly cannot forgive Hamas’ recent addition to the unceasing attacks of its neighbors, while Hamas and its allies are equally unforgiving of Israel’s decisive response. Ukraine is reluctant to forgive Putin’s unprovoked attack, while Putin remains unforgiving of western support of Ukraine’s surprisingly adamant resistance.

While these two international conflicts dominate our media, a deeper dive into the state of the world reveals a depressing number of “pools of intractable differences” separating “us” and “them,” supporting Kipling’s lament; “East is east, and West is west, and never the twain shall meet,” without divine intervention. Assuming, that is, that we were to agree on whose divinity takes precedence. A detente history tells us is unlikely.

Would that we were able to take comfort by focusing our attention closer to home. But we can’t. Our government is more reminiscent of scuffles on an elementary school playground than a forum for reasoned debate designed to succor the needs of “we the people” -  “Yeah, our team has only 3 felony convictions. Your guy has 34 and counting!” How about “You will both stay after school and write ‘I will play nice with others’ one hundred times on the blackboard and then clean the erasers.” Jeeez.

While the big picture would suffice to drive us to drink, the smaller image is no guarantee of inner peace. I heard a couple of years ago of someone somewhere in the various webs of extended families in which I am embedded had actually created a list of people forbidden to attend their funeral! True story, the details of which I have thankfully repressed, but talk about “beyond the reach of forgiveness!”

I came to my personal mantra of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm,  partly in the hope that it would minimize discord in my life. And to a certain extent it has. But there is a potential fly in the ointment - oppose harm. 

In every conflict I have enumerated in this post - international to interpersonal - the bugaboo of “us versus them” raises its ugly head. The “other” becomes the party whose harm we must oppose, and that opposition - depending upon degree - often places them “beyond the reach of forgiveness.” 

In family court they call those “irreconcilable differences.” And while the precise percentage of marriages that end “beyond the reach of forgiveness” is debated, it is a number that every couple tends to ignore when headed for the alter. Less visible, but equally distressing are relationships within families and among friends that end in fractures where opposing some perceived harm prevents the fostering of harmony. These situations often evolve when an individual either sees themselves as harmed by another, or wishes to protect another individual from harm, and so must place the “source of harm” at least “beyond the reach of forgiveness” and perhaps beyond anything. The internet calls one form of this negative cycle “ghosting.” You simply make the harmful other “disappear” - a rather totalitarian solution.

“Well, Schrag, thanks for ruining my day!”  I know, I know, and I am truly sorry. But I do have some positive suggestions.

First, both Pope and Kipling lay this conundrum on the shoulders of divine intervention, and if you have influence in that arena, please feel free to utilize it. However, here are some more secular suggestions as to how we might deal with instances in our lives that may have somehow crept “beyond the reach of forgiveness.”

While Google has removed its classic mantra “Don’t Be Evil” from its corporate code it seems a good idea for us to revive it in ours. And couple it with this: Don’t Escalate. Bite back the “deserved” response. Or to steal a phrase from the medical community: primum non nocere, or “first, do no harm.” More simply, chill.

Next let me steal my email signature which you usually see when The Wall is sent to you:

“Who we are is a quality of the moment. What we have done in the past cannot be undone, and what we have promised for the future remains but a promise. So live each moment in the awareness that it defines you.”

To condense that for this particular post: Let bygones be bygones. Don’t dwell on the past, live face to the future.

Internationally, those issues are pretty much beyond our control except as we seek to influence those who do have an impact. For us here in the USA, that remains a question for the ballot box and your checkbook. In those instances, I do come back to Distilled Harmony, and seek, to vote for and support, to what extent possible, candidates who advocate inclusiveness and loving kindness and eschew conflict and denigration. 

Sometimes a tough task. And tho’ a true child of the sixties who has carried my share of signs in the streets, I have lost touch with the more overt manifestations of discord on college campuses where I spent most of my life. The intent always seems to rail against those one has declared to be “beyond the reach of forgiveness.” A strategy based in intimidation and conflict - signposts on the very road to a world “beyond the reach of forgiveness.”

Interpersonally, I, to re-emphasize, will revert again to my email signature, and while not denying my past, occasionally spectacular, stumbles, will seek to do better in the all important, and uniquely controllable, present.

L'Image Aumentare: Indian Lily Final

 This is one of those images when asked "How long did it take you to do that?" I simply point out that it took Klimt three years to complete the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. This image did not take that long.

The title of this work stems from the fact that the original photo was of a flower in the calla lily family called Indian Shot. In most email apps if you click on the image it pulls it out in a separate window.  The painted image is 14 x 19 inches.

Indian Lily

The Lesson of the Cicadas

 Those of us who live around northern Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin are being visited by these red-eyed critters. They are “Brood XIII of 17-year cicadas.” Brood XIX of 13-year cicadas” are popping up south and east of us. The first dual emergence of two broods since 1803!! So, wow! I thought there must be some deep Gia eco-planet lesson to be learned from such a rare event.

So what should we know about cicadas? OK. The cicadas that are camping out and making such a racket in the trees around here, mate and the females lay eggs in grooves they make in the bark of the trees. The eggs hatch as nymphs who drop to the ground and burrow down to hang out for 13 or 17 years, when they surface again. To wit:

These are the holes in the dirt you see around the trees where the nymphs emerge.

Then the nymphs climb up the tree. 

 

Where they molt their nymph identity and emerge as adults.

Then both male and female adults die off in a few weeks. Then, as stated above, nymphs hatch from the eggs and drop to the ground, where they tunnel down for the 13 or 17 year hiatus, surface again, molt out of their nymph shells, and climb up the trees to start all over again. Deep huh? 

Is that all there is? I mean aren’t we missing something here? 13 or 17 years underground - just sucking on tree roots? There has to be more to it than that. I’m thinking nymph drive-ins, cafes, elementary schools, car pools. We’re talking bazillions of cicada teenagers who all decide to pop up at the same time, have cicada orgies, and then commit mass suicide. 

How do they decide on that? Yeah, I know, I know, teenagers assert their individuality by all doing the same things, clothes, music, slang, at the same time. But mass migration, cicada raves, and suicide? A bit much don’t you think?

But then I think maybe I’m pushing the secret lives of cicadas theme a bit too far. Maybe there is no deeper message here. Eat, sleep for a really long time, procreate and die. That’s all she wrote for cicadas. 

They are, after all, just teenagers with, as far as we know, very little brain - sort of like human teenagers, who, however, have the advantage of growing in to fully functioning adults who can live for decades - sometimes behaving rationally.

But there is a legitimate gripe for both cicada and human teens: can’t y’all do whatever you are going to do a bit more quietly?

 

Leaving Paris

My answer to the question “What do you teach?” shifted over my four decades in college classrooms. Back in the 70s it was “radio-tv-film.” The 80s brought “mass communication.” And then in my last couple of decades it became “communication media and technology.” You know, everything digital, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook and all their progeny.

I’m not sure what moniker the discipline shelters under these days, but, as in days gone by, it will rub up against its kissing cousin - journalism. And while journalism has undergone some painful metamorphosis of its own in the digital age one of its underlying principles remains unchanged: If it bleeds, it leads. (IIBIL).

I currently have at least four major “news” sites on my iPad: The New York Times, something called 1440, which bills itself as an “unbiased news source”, The Guardian, a British site, and New Scientist, for all things science. With the exception of New Scientist, they all cling to the IIBIL mantra, which, in our digital age allows them to dredge up mankind’s inhumanity to humanity from anywhere on the globe. 

Sliding smoothly into second place is reportage dealing with political attacks threatening either violence at the polls, leaving democracy as we know it lying in the battered halls of Congress, or implying further worldwide boycotts, embargoes, ecological disasters or bloodletting. 1440 does have a section called “Humankindness” but you have to scroll down past all the IIBIL mayhem to get to it. Still better than nothing, I guess.

I started writing this on Mother’s Day, and as mine used to say, “The world is too much with us.” Amen, to that. I have grown weary with the existential coarsening of this globe we all must share. Which brings me to Cezanne.

Paul Cezanne was a French artist who worked from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. He started hanging out, and hanging his art up, with the Impressionists, Monet, Renoir and that crowd in Paris. But he never did get in with the in-crowd. The big city critics were particularly vicious and derisive. Which caused Cezanne to take himself off to the less judgmental bucolic countryside of his youth in Aix-en-Provence saying:  “The world doesn’t understand me, and I don’t understand it, which is why I have retreated from it.” And it was there, far from the madding crowd, that he did his best work.

So, I say to myself, “Self, can you follow Cezanne’s example, and retreat from the world?”  “Hmmm,” I replied. “Let me think about that.”

OK. The following suggests itself:

Cezanne left Paris to escape the negative environment created by the critics and various naysayers. The negative environment I find most worrisome is the one created by the IIBIL bias in the major news sources clamoring for space on my screen. So it seems best for my psyche to shun their digital version of Paris.  Banish The New York Times, The Guardian, 1440, etc. from my morning screen, keeping only The Art Newspaper, The New Scientist and The National Geographic. That won’t totally eliminate IIBIL, which is almost impossible to avoid, but it will greatly reduce the vitriol and gore.

No, I hear you. Doesn’t that make me a cultural slacker? Voluntarily uninformed? At fault for the ills of the world by not seeking to understand and correct them? Well, yes and no. Should Cezanne have stayed in Paris? Trying to convince those who had repeatedly refused him entry to the best shows and galleries? Or was it wiser to escape to the countryside and do the work that later inspired Picasso, Braque, Mondrian and others? If I have to choose, I’m coming down for country.

Leaving the IIBILs folk behind might well elevate my own moods and emotions, leaving me free to better pursue my L’Image Aumentare work which feels like my most mature and satisfying work to date. However, that does lead to a bit of a conundrum - the idea of sharing your best work.

My most convenient avenue for sharing my work is the one before you on the screen - The Wall.  A couple of problems there. First, unless you are a confirmed techie with a huge hi-rez monitor, you see a terribly compromised version of my art. I took a few images into my doctor at my last physical. He is a bit unique. Named among the ten best doctors in the greater Chicago area for the last several years, he also writes and publishes children’s books and messes around with stained glass. He was nonplussed with the difference between L’Image Aumentare in real life and the images on the screen. Real is far better than digital.

So that brings me to the second “sharing” issue. As Cezanne discovered, the best way to fully share your work is to have it on display either in a public show or through a gallery. I did have a show a couple decades ago back in Raleigh. Good feedback, but nothing was for sale. I have sold some pieces privately, but that was uncomfortable - and this points clearly to my second issue. Let’s say I find a gallery up here in Chicagoland willing to represent L’Image Aumentare. Cool. But if you show in a gallery you are supposed to sell your work. And give a more than generous slice of the price to the gallery. That is what a gallery is for, to make money. But, there is - in my mind - a more pressing concern: if you sell your work, you have to give the piece to the buyer. I don’t want to do that. I want to keep them all. A lot of hours, tired hands and eye strain go into each piece. Like I said, I want to keep them. Obviously a paradox with which I will have to deal.

The other major issue I need to consider as I pack my existential bags in preparation to depart Paris is leaving the cafe society, the street scene. Cezanne never became part of cafe society in Paris. I equate that with my profound ennui regarding the IIBIL mentality of contemporary media. Hence, leaving Paris and heading down the digital road to country. However, I do enjoy discussing the issues related to Distilled Harmony [Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.] that I often explore here on The Wall.

But fortunately, it is The Wall that is my cafe society. Let me side track for a brief history of The Wall. You need a break right? OK, The Wall began back in 1990 when I finished my book, Taming The Wild Tube with the University of North Carolina Press.  When the writing stopped the thinking went on. I would print out the little thought pieces and tape them on the wall behind my computer - hence - drum roll - The Wall, or sometimes Schrag Wall.

Then in April of 1993 the internet went pubic, and I took the paper version of The Wall onto the internet by posting those little thought pieces on a blog - the one you are reading now. [To clarify, you get The Wall as a blind copy so no one on The Wall knows who else is on the Wall unless you share that information with each other.] The Wall obviously started going out to folks I saw as possibly interested, and with whom I emailed; so friends, family, former students, etc. The list has ballooned to maybe 85 names - some of whom have shuffled off this mortal coil and I need to remove them. Others have turned their attention elsewhere and either block or quickly delete The Wall.  However, the blogger app tells me, some 30 or 40 of you do open the posts, and I assume that some subset of y’all actually work your way with me as I natter on about this or that. I know some of you do since you respond - and that is the only way I know who you are, since the app only tells me how many folks open the post, not who you are.

But that is fine. You see, embedded in the list of 80, and - I choose to believe - represented in those 30 or 40 who open the posts, is everyone that I really care about. There is no need to table hop, trying to touch base with the people who are important in my life because you are all here. Oh, you may drift off a bit if the main course is too salty or spicy or bland for your taste. You may sneak out before dessert. No problem. You’ll still get gladly served the next time The Wall pops out of the oven!

And I’m taking you all with me as I put Paris in the rearview window.

Introducing L’Image Aumentare

Whenever I share my art with folks two issues are bound to arise. First is the comment - “Wow, you really like color, don’t you?” Yes. Color makes me happy, and you can never have too much happiness. The second comment often takes a little longer to arrive, but eventually shows up - “What do you call these . . . pictures?”

That one is a little harder to answer. I have always doodled. I remember, probably around preschool age, using the little pencils on the back of the church pews to draw lines between the letters in the Sunday morning programs - trying to get a line from the top of the pages to the bottom, keeping the line as straight as I could while dodging the letters. Then, starting in junior high when you had your own notebook, all the way through graduate school my notes from lectures were always interspersed with doodles.

Have you seen images of DaVinci’s notebooks? Well, mine looked nothing like those. You see, I cannot draw. I mean representational, “looks like that,” kind of drawing. Faces, hands, bodies, dogs, flowers, cicadas, all that stuff. Just could never do it. My parents did get a tutor to give me drawing lessons when we lived in Europe. She was sweet, I remained incompetent. I have had friends who are quite skilled in this area - I mean professional artists whose work is sold in real galleries in big cities. I have sold my art, but not representational stuff. More like doodles on steroids. Again, fun, colorful, happy, stuff. 

The question then occasionally expands to “Well, who influenced your work?”  Nobody. I really love the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and that crowd. Of course, Andrew Wyeth, and the old masters. But since I can’t draw, they don’t “influence” me in the sense of trying to emulate their style - worlds beyond my skill set.

However, I have also always loved, and taught, visual composition in both still photography and video. Hence, it is not surprising that I have finally arrived at an artistic style that I have decided to call L’Image Aumentare. (OK, in ordinary English - augmented images. Yech. Smacks of plastic surgery.) It sounds sooo much more artsy in Italian. (You can Google “How do you say augment in Italian?” for the “proper” pronunciation.) Go ahead. Give it a try in your best faux Italian accent. French works too. Cool, eh? So what are pictures done in the L’Image Aumentare style? Let me explain.

I’m going to use illustrations from a piece I am working on now. It is not completed, so it is too soon to say whether I like it or not, but I have all the steps in easy reach so I’ll go with it.

As the name implies each work in L’Image Aumentare begins with an image. In this case the picture is of an Indian Shot, a member of the calla lily family. I took the photo in the garden of a restaurant in White Pigeon, Michigan, close to Klinger Lake. I sometimes take a photo with an eye towards turning it into an image aumentare, other times I just scroll through my photos files and pull out one that catches my eye. I have a lot of flower pix and this one caught my eye - I think it was the “redness” of it.

Anyhow, step one is to load the image into photoshop, add a layer, and outline the pertinent portions in black. Then you delete the layer that has the actual photo, leaving you with this black and white “cartoon” of the original image, like this:

Next, I take a copy of the cartoon over to Staples and have them print out a copy in the size I want for the final image. In this case 16x20 inches. So I have a big version of the cartoon pictured above.

The next step is to draw designs in black in the “empty” spaces in the cartoon. These just sort of suggest themselves. It is important to make the lines of the designs as clear as possible, and to let them dry - at least a few hours, preferably overnight. This lets the black ink soak into the paper and, in essence, create little dams around each part of the design that will prevent the colors - which is drawn in next - from bleeding into neighboring portions of the design.

And that, of course, is the final step in an l’image aumentare, adding the colors which makes the image pop. I’m going to include a couple shots of the current “in progress” image here, and then close this post with a few finished images to give you a better idea of the result of the process.

This is a detail of the image that shows part of the image with the design/dams and the colors which have been added within the dams. The smaller design elements are about a quarter of an inch across. I don’t know why I do that to myself. 5X reading glasses help. I know when to stop for the day, when I start to cross the lines!

This a quick shot of the current state of the image. I try not to think about how much more there is to do. Just take it an inch at a time. Listen to my music. Some 50s stuff. Maybe a touch of Big Band, the Andrew’s Sisters,  a little Nora Jones . . .

 

And to close some finished pieces:

The top image started as a photo of my grandfather’s car which had found its final resting place in a field somewhere between Marion and Freeman, South Dakota where he spent most of his life. 

The middle image is a sign above a restaurant in Venice, Italy where Christine and I liked to grab a local beverage and rest up mid-afternoon.

The bottom image swings back to South Dakota where cousin Dean has preserved some of the classic farm implements our fathers used when they were growing up on “the home place.”

I’m going to attempt to close with one of my favorite l’image aumentare examples from the Grand Canal in Venice. Hope I can find it. Soooo many images: