Tell me, muse, of the artist who

The stereo randomly picks from a thousand songs, and is still completely unable to find my mood.

“Daddy can you dry me off?”
“Are you done with your bath?”
“She thinks she saw an ant in there.”
“I did.”
“I looked, it was soap.”
I think about the possibility of black specks of “soap” floating in the tub.

There is this strange feeling in the bottom of my throat. It feels like thirst, but cannot be quenched by a half dozen glasses of water. I take the towel and dry her off.

“Thanks Daddy.”

You know I ever loved but four women in my life, my mother, my sister, my kitty cat, and my wife.

Feelings of inadequacy have no voice.
They are the silent submissions in the dark of my soul.
They are the yearning to sit quietly on crushed velvet and cry.
They are overcome in action.

Long narrow stripes of cobalt blue run down the surface of the canvas.

“I am not fighting with my sister. I was just using her brush.”

The canvas twists and turns beneath the brush, edges that should be smooth are rough. The light is harsh, playing tricks on the senses. Like a siren whose song leads sailors to their death, so the light leads the artist to think first one shade then another will bring revelation till everything is lost in an oblivion of color

Blue is evocative, full of sorrow and sexuality (The blue spot shown down on the burlesque dancer as she silently glided into the most erotic part of her dance.) Rain falls from the blue sky down into the deep blue ocean. All my thoughts are of this blue, and yet, the color is but a mask of somethings deeper. A thought perhaps, still in seed-form, wrapped in a cocoon of emotion, yearning to burst free.

There is no muse of painting. Vermeer thought it was the muse of history, while Hogarth the muse of comedy. The muses, I suppose, can inspire a painter to any of their vocations. Painters partake in the inspiration of all the muses, though they are not the only artists to do so. For while the muses may be associated with poetry or song, they are the goddesses of inspiration the spirits of creation, and thus speak to all.

I got the Blues so bad one day it put my face in a permanent frown, but I’m feeling so much better I’m gonna cake walk in to town.

A single red line is drawn along the edge. It is suffering and it is love. The eye hovers for a moment, then plunges headlong into the abyss.

Hell

“So your wife is born again?”
“Yes” he said smiling, I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“And you don’t go to church?”
“Oh no, no I don’t”
“That must make for some awkward dinner conversation>”
“There's nothing like the kids asking after church ‘is Daddy going to burn for all eternity?’”
“I don’t think the Bible actually mentions a “Hell.””
“I pretty sure it does, “burning in fire and brimstone”, “Gehenna.””
“Yes but GeHenna isn’t the same thing as Hell.” I suddenly felt very uncomfortable.
“A mistranslation then?”
“I suppose so, “ I said, retreating.

In the early nineties I spent a little time studying early Christianity. It was during this time that I learned that GeHenna was literally Ge Hinnom, or the Valley of Hinnom, a burning trash dump where the bodies of deceased convicts we unceremoniously dumped and cremated. Learning this I decided, rather on my own that Hell wasn’t some burning place in the afterlife, it was the death of an individual who had lived the unexamined life. Sort of like Jesus was saying “if you follow me you live forever and if not, you are a smoldering rotten corpse two valleys down.” I think it was very big of me to put these words in Jesus’ mouth.

Talking to my friend I suddenly realized that I had made a lot of assumptions about other peoples religious beliefs in the past, and that I was still carrying around this baggage.

The notion of Hell and damnation was the central preoccupation of my early childhood, and my reinterpretation allowed me to finally shrug off many of these childhood fears. I suppose my new fear is imposing my religious beliefs on others. I wonder, what cockamainie notion of the spirit world I will concoct to deal with it?

Thinking about his I realized that my current belief is that Hell is the world of our own making, living in these preconceived notions that cut us off from the possibility of a connection with the divine, if such a thing is even possible. Anymore I have adopted a more Socratic approach, I know that I don’t know, (but I want to).

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Lessons

“So what’s the deal with you and flying anyway?”
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“Why don’t you like flying? Did you have a traumatic experience when you were a child or something?”
“No” I said taking a sip of my bloody mary “I just don’t like it.”
“When I was a child” he began and finished by sharing a story of his own traumatic experience on a plane when he was seven years old. “That is why, to this day, just before landing I get that little rush of something that leaves me momentarily uneasy. Then when the plane sets down, I feel a rush of relief that leaves me feeling exhilarated.”
“Yeah, see, no, I don’t get that. I just don’t like it.”

From The Explosive Child:

The first is that somewhere along the line, noncompliant children have learned that their tantrums, explosions, swearing, screaming, and destructiveness bring them attention or help them get their way by coercing (or convincing) their parents to “give in.” This belief often gives rise to the notion that explosions are planned, intentional, purposeful, and under the child’s conscious control… a corollary to the belief that such behavior is learned is that the child has been poorly taught or disciplined… Finally if you believe [that] then it follows that it can be unlearned with better and more convincing teaching and discipline.

Finally…

“You’re too easy on them” said the student.
“What?”
“Letting them turn it in a day late, you’re too easy on them.”
I thought about this for a minute. Someone, a fellow classmate of mine once taught me “better a little information on time than all the information too late” something I think he learned in the army. It made sense then, and I have followed that rule through most of my life, but starring out at these students I suddenly wasn’t sure. “I want them to do the assignment. I want them to learn. Failing them now doesn’t accomplish that goal. No one benefits if I am completely inflexible.” He shrugged his shoulders. I knew what he was thinking. Where is that line? What lesson am I here to teach? Do I whip and beat them to type a paper only to have them graduate hating art but able to turn in assignments on time for the rest of their lives?

I am lecturing now, but my mind is on automatic pilot. “The Paleolithic features numerous examples of several art mediums including…” What lessons did I have to learn to be successful? What lessons am I still learning? Would I have learned them faster if some professor had been harder on me one Tuesday afternoon in 1992?

I like to think I learn the lessons that I need in the order that I need them. This kind of thought is a safety net that allows me to accept the seeming randomness of the universe and to make order of all of life’s crazy experiences. My mind it seems keeps better track of these experiences than I do, allowing memories, bits and pieces of the past to float by on occasion and remind me that while yes I have many lessons to learn, they aren’t learned all at once, rather it takes time, it takes patience, and it takes an incredible amount of gentleness with myself if I am to get them at all.

If David Lived Today

Found Here

My Valentine

I suppose everyone who writes on a regular basis has to come to terms with the inevitable feeling that right now I have nothing to say. Actually I find the feeling quite liberating. At the same time, because I am such a know-it-all I suppose, I have this burning feeling that if I don’t say something, anything, I am going to scream. It is not about talking or about saying anything at all. It is about creating.

“A million things to say, and nothing to say” said my wife. Absolutely right!

The new schedule, work, research for school, the extra hours that J. needs for work makes time feel like a jumble of random facts colliding together. Every semester, for the last four years, we have had to reinvent our routine, come up with a new set of compromises to make it all come out. I think we both feel that creativity takes a hit in these periods, as we are forced to focus on what we think we have to do, and art and writing become relegated to the things we want to do. Creativity, thank god, isn’t so easily suppressed for those that know the burning urge to create.

For me creation is a very solitary act, while J. seems to move fluidly between making for herself, and making art with friends, an act that seems to invigorate and inspire the participants to greater depths of friendship even as it often yields the most delightful and spontaneous works of art.

As the urge to create rises up out of me I feel a kind of cocoon forming around my thoughts, a place where they can grow and transform. Sometimes it leaves me feeling very isolated, though this feeling disappears quickly as I invite J. to view the work in its various sages of completion. She is one of the few people that seem to naturally understand that an unfinished work is just that, unfinished, and won’t criticize what isn’t there. It is a rare gift.

“The angel was already in the marble,” said Michelangelo. “All I had to do was remove the bits around her.”

That feels right. Even though I can’t always see the finished product in my minds eye, I know that it is there, the pulsing chrysalis yearning to break free.

Talking to J. yesterday she recounted the craziness of the schedule, of trying to raise four kids, to make ends meet and find time enough to get the things we have to do done. Grateful, she told me of the support network of friends that she has that have given her time and food and a clarity that can only come from the gift of friendship. Grateful I thought about how our relationship has evolved over time, that it is flexible enough to handle the changes of schedule and the demands of life, and at the same time allows for growth and creativity.

memories

The voices are all quiet now; all that remains is the nagging desire to talk, to share.

“You have to admit, you take criticism very personally.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“Well, in the graduate critique, every time a professor said something about your art, you felt the need to respond.”
“I wanted to defend my work.”
“If you are a chef in a restaurant, and every customer comes in and tells you to make a dish differently, do you listen to them all? You are a people pleaser.”
“Yes. But it is both a strength and a weakness.”
“Just remember that in the same way that Art has become a leisure activity for the rich, a plaything to occupy the wealthy, so the graduate art program can be a kind of plaything for the faculty, an intellectual exercise in which they may make suggestions that are not as much about helping you as they are about exercising their own whims.”
“My work is for me.”

The TV is chattering behind me. “…turning precious moments into a lifetime of memories…”

Watching “Lost” last night Sawyer asks Locke why he wouldn’t just seek out his past self and tell him how to avoid all the pain and suffering they have gone through. Locke responds “Because I needed that pain to get me here.”

Life seems full of distractions, sounds surround; suffocate, making it impossible to form coherent thoughts. Lowing my chin to my chest I close my eyes. They feel heavy.

I think about the dangers of spiritual growth. That an obsessive tendency to self analyze can become paralytic: self-improvement becomes self-obsession. Personal history, our own stories and narratives become more important than... I pause. Than what? A larger view of history? I think about this for a moment.

History is about connections, like the myths and stories of the founding of America, the chopping of the cherry tree or the slogans of the patriots “Give me liberty of give me death.” Knowing them we become part of something larger. Is this sacrificed if we replace these stories with the jargon of self-help guru’s, mantras of self-affirmation, slogans designed to lift our spirits? Do we become part of the problem if we fully succumb to the idea of the individual as fully separate and self-contained? I mean… how independent can we really be if we buy our gas from the pump, our groceries from the store, and our clothes off the rack. Still, we don’t replace our connection to history with our own experience, after all, the dangers of self-absorption are only that, dangers. The sign reading “Thin Ice” doesn’t mean I fall though and drown, it only means, I need to watch my step.

Ugh, this cold is making me feel glum. I am not even sure what I am saying here. Another conversation comes to mind. Not fully formed it lingers in the peripheral of my mind.

“G. is really looking forward to going to Houston with you.”
“I think it will be really fun.”
“I hope so. D. often talks about the trips you two used to take together when she was little.”
“When we would drive to Albuquerque together?”
“Yes. She really misses those. I think it will be great for G. to have those experiences too.”
“I hope so.”

It’s funny how memories can come back in a moment, and then sink back into the mire, to be forgotten again and again. I like to think that somewhere in my mind all of my memories are hung on a wall, like a cork board that your parents may have kept with all your awards and ribbons on it, and that that the mind can wander up to this board at any time and pull off the photos, the sounds, and the smells and hold them up for closer examination. But that this doesn’t happen to make me feel better about myself, rather it is because I needed that moment to help get through this one, and that I am really trying to be gentle with myself, even when the memories are hard and unpleasant.

It’s funny I often wonder at the seemingly totally random crap that comes out of my mouth and ends up on my facebook status. Ugh. What is my mind trying to tell me now? Lets check the status. Oh it says I need more coffee cake and coffee. See. Gentle.