i can feel this painting. i recognize it. i have anxiously waited, looking out the window, babycat in lap, dogdog by my feet. leaning forward, i have peered outside…waiting for someone to arrive, waiting for the mail, waiting for the sun to come up, waiting for my mind to rest.
we are in a time…you can feel the nerve endings jittering. it is not a time of rest, nor is it a time of peace and unity. we lean forward, looking out the window at moments passing, hoping to catch a glimpse of tomorrow and see a calmer day, a day where we might find a spirit of cohesion, a respite from the storm of divisiveness.
THEY WAIT…a beautifully poignant painting honoring the ever-faithful companions by our side, quietly and patiently waiting. with no idea of why, with no questions asked, they steadfastly stay with us.
in the bins in the basement (and scattered in places around the house) are child-drawings and paintings, ornaments made of paper and glue and sparkly glitter, painted rocks of various sizes, necklaces of beads and shells, framed little scraps of paper with things like “goodnight mom” written in pencil and surrounded by hearts. The Girl and The Boy have marked time through their artwork (and also through their writings) and i cherish each saved piece. this morsel – the field in early october – makes me think of such pieces.
in the corner of a new piece on david’s easel i found this morsel. extracted from the painting it is so childlike in feel. such simplicity and innocence. it immediately brought me to open fields we have walked…where sunflowers gaze for just a bit longer and grass is still verdant and lush and there are wild red berries on the bushes along the trail. the sun is in our eyes and everything takes on a muted hue. i can smell the leaves burning from the farmer’s field far off to our west.
what is more heavenly than remembering an early october day from a reality-fantasy visual perspective? what is more treasured than the artwork of a child? what a delicious combination. just ask picasso.
a few years ago, after my tealight-vessel-throwing-on-the-wheel experience, i felt like i still needed to express myself in another medium (other than music). as much as i adored the idea of throwing pots, the cost of the clay and studio time was not in direct proportion to my level of ability; it was time to put that aside till the budget was flush and i could return to the pottery studio without counting pennies. a tealight vessel (ok, there were a couple tealight vessels if you must know) and one lonely bowl were a total joy but it was clearly going to take some good-long-time to get better on that wheel. demi moore (in ghost) made it look easy. it is not.
and so i went to the art supply store and bought a huge canvas. the biggest one they had in stock. the kind with a deep side (1.5″). i brought it downstairs to the workroom and searched around for paint. since i am not well-versed in this area (to say the least) i selected a can of black paint and a can of white paint. both household paints. latex. semi-gloss. i searched around for one of the old brushes i had been using to paint furniture and i set up my “studio”.
day after day i would go downstairs to look at this spot in the basement. i could feel my excitement gathering. i had no idea what i was going to do with this canvas, but it was ready for me. until one day, indeed, i was ready.
i stood before the canvas and began to paint. i brushed on paint. i threw paint. i spattered paint. i painted over paint. time fell away and i kept painting. i’d walk away and let it dry and then return (this doesn’t take very long with household latex…long enough to pour another cup of coffee or glass of wine) and i’d paint some more. i’d stand back and i could see what it needed (at least what my eye said it needed.)
and then, i knew. it was time to stop. i didn’t know where it was going, but i did know when it was time to stop.
now, i can’t say if the cost of the canvas and studio time were in direct proportion to my level of ability, but i can say they were way less than what my heart felt. these moments, gathered together, a storm of inspiration, fed me.
this painting hangs in the hall in our house. when i sent a photo of it to a friend of mine right after i was done, scordskiii wrote back to ask whose work it was. i told him it was mine, laughing and apologizing for it. he was appalled by my apology and made me promise not to apologize again. so now there are a few more in the living room. arriving after these paintings all had their dedicated spots on the walls of what-is-now-our-home, david, the real painter in our house, said he loves them. i’m always invested in real art made by real people, regardless of the genre, so i love them too. not necessarily because of what they look like. but because of what they made (and make) me feel.
i can feel the sun over my shoulder, low to the horizon, warming the back of my head. in front of me the field of cut-grain takes on the color of the sunset and the sky darkens in answer to the summoning of nightfall. the color is intense; the darkness is perforated by the suggestion of clouds, maybe stars…maybe it’s too early for that, i wonder. i want to walk up the hill to see what color might lay there, what color might be beyond that which i can see right now. but i stay still. and listen to the crickets in the grass, the cicadas in the small stand of trees behind me, the sigh of day’s end.
i’ve never bungee-jumped or parachuted out of an airplane or ziplined across a gulch or dropped on a snowboard off the side of a mountain. but i understand how inspiration can make you do crazy things.
i remember my first album, 23 years ago now, felt like a crazy thing. it was scary stuff, putting my own music ‘out there’; it was scary standing on stage telling the stories that went along with those pieces and playing my first full-length concert. i imagine the adrenalin i had standing in the wings of the stage before the lights dimmed was much like that of stepping off the platform in a body harness ready to fly. now, the scary stuff would be not doing that which i know so well.
so many people who have stepped out – trusting their instincts, trusting their training, trusting their beliefs and values, trusting their resilience. following a path that might look unlikely. following inspiration. seemingly crazy stuff all of it. stuff that opens them to a wide spectrum of possible results, from wild success to something that looks like failure.
all inspired. all crazy. all learnings. all life. it may not all be safe, it may make you feel vulnerable; it may even invoke fear, but it sure is interesting.
the little mermaid music swirls in my head, “under the sea, under the sea…” i can’t help it. the gorgeous brushstrokes of blues and greens and deep reds inspire thoughts of beautiful oceans full of color and hues that are untouchable by dictionaries far and wide. this morsel, from the painting EARTH INTERRUPTED VII, i titled AQUA AGUA MIT ROUGE, a name derived from several languages (english, spanish, german, french), a nod to the inability of words to describe it.
this morsel is somewhere underneath this beautiful painting – within the depths of EARTH INTERRUPTED VII – not visible, but part of the underpainting, a layer of, well, the earth. how much more perfect could that be?
i drove back and forth and back and forth to nashville when i recorded this album, each time returning with a cd of the work we had done on the album. i’d play it numerous times, taking notes to share with my producer, re-writing, practicing, sometimes sharing the songs-where-they-were-at-the-time with others.
joan was the one who told me i needed a “strong woman” song included on this album. so i walked across the street home, directly into my studio and wrote one.
now, this isn’t my favorite song – it’s a little kitschy if you ask me – but i have had many tell me how much they like it and one of my favorite performances of it was when beth’s students sang it. (i was long-term-subbing for her. she’s a dear friend and an amazing choir teacher in a middle school in our district.) those kids really rose to the occasion and kitschy fell by the wayside in favor of strength and power and belief in themselves.
recently d and i listened to some of my first recordings. they were from 1979-80 and recorded in a studio in a town called port washington on the north shore of long island. i had found a cassette (now isn’t that retro word dating me!) and we have a boombox (another retro word) that plays cassettes so we settled in to listen to the three songs on what would now be called an EP.
one of the songs is called leaving and is a song i wrote for my parents as they retired and moved from our long island home to florida. i remembered that song well.
the other two? well, it’s funny. i could sing every word, but i didn’t remember the intense emotion behind them. THESE were my #metoo songs, i discovered (rediscovered?) as i listened. one of these days i might share these songs, not because they are great songs but because they are truth and every artist has songs that are life-defining. not the ones necessarily that chart (although those are lovely, indeed!) but the ones that speak from deep inside, with lyrics or music that must be spoken. these two songs were written by a vulnerable (and pretty angry) young woman who wanted to unleash the power of her crayon and live out loud, who definitely wanted to live without fear, who tried hard to break away from an experience i still would rather forget and who prayed – alone at the time – beseeching words. all this is what i wrote about in this week’s melange.
my heart goes out to all those women who are also card-carrying #metoo survivors. the out-loud ones and the silent ones. my wish for each of you: unleash your crayon, live without fear, break away, pray with another, count on you.
from this song of today’s melange post COUNT ON YOU, which may be more #metoo and less kitschy than i thought, “just move forward and then believe – you gotta trust…in you.”
the first time i joined hands with david and prayed, i cried. truth be told, we both cried. it was a powerful moment…one i will never forget. there is something deeply grounding about prayer with another person. it is forging, like iron in a hot smelter, clay in a kiln…seeking the solid base, making something stronger.
this painting, prayer of opposites, reminds me of that gift – the exchange, the sharing of peace and words of comfort, words of gratitude, beseeching words – with another. the passing of that spiritual energy one to another.
were we to pray with opposites, would we not ultimately be drawn closer?
on my piano in my studio is a teeny sign with a big message. it reads, “if you asked me what i came into this world to do, i will tell you i came to live out loud.” (emile zola) it’s a reminder – a reason for being. true for each of us, it’s unleashing the metaphoric crayon of our creativity, our thoughts, our knowledge, our gifts, our voices.
there is an extraordinary amount of power in those crayons..the place in the middle that we open…the heart from where our concentric circles start rippling out…where the crayon meets the page, the song is composed, the painter paints, the activist writes. “loud” (for the sheer sake of being loud) and “out loud” (simply having a voice) are two vastly different things. and, if you are paying even the least bit of attention at all to world events, we are privy to both in our lives these days.
after living all this life so far, i hope now that the crayons i pick will help to ripple out things that are good, things that consider others, things that are not hurtful, things that are fair, things that are kind. the power of a crayon unleashed that is “out loud” not “loud.”
reverse threading 