Taste of Creation

There is something magical that begins with a blank canvas. An idea comes. For me, it lately tends to involve beaches and palm trees primarily. A sketch alters the whiteness, guiding lines for the finished product. I often stop there. For long periods of time. I put the sketch aside lazy about pulling out the art box, and setting things up for what is always something rather messy, the way I do it. I have to be in the mood.

And then, one weekend or holiday afternoon, as this one in progress, I am in the mood.

I love the feel of oil and the look of the blending colors. At first, as I apply the paint, I am not certain I am going to like what I see, no, it is something else. What I think I am going to do is not what actually, happens. There is a little otherworldliness to it. My hand. My brush stroke. But it is as if something appears that was meant to appear, whether or not that is ultimately pleasing to every eye that comes across it.

I am reminded of Michaelangelo's description of sculpting marble. The figure was within the block and all he did was to reveal it. Of course, what is revealed by my hand is not necessarily a masterpiece as it was with him or any number of artists. Not only perhaps is the picture revealed but something of my being. I have been surprised, for example, by the fact that my paintings tend to be very colorful. Bright. One might opine from this that I am a happy character all the time. And yet, inside, there is more gray than bright color. Or gray with splashes of color, to be more accurate.

And then, it is done. A completed covered canvas. In an odd way, it almost seems as if I did not do it, and I see things in the finished product that I did not necessarily intend to be there, but which please me. A surprising shadow that makes the painted cloud truly seem to move. A perfectly poised leaf on a tree. I did not make it so. But yet it is so. Out of nothing, something wonderful, new and part of the world.

Split Second Intimation

Veteran's Day. I woke up late, delighted at not having to go to work. Getting dressed for a rare Daily Mass I watched the story of a "revert" to Catholicism on EWTN. It occurred to me that at her worst she was more faithful than I have ever been and then I was off for the Grace of the Eucharist.

After Mass I went to the Grove for a couple of slices reading The National Catholic Register after the TV Guide. Then I made my second visit to Dad in the month at Holy Cross. I was chatting my fragmented thoughts to him when I suddenly saw the reflection of another visitor around the corner; embarrassed I quieted. Luckily I had ventured no untold secrets in that one sided conversation.

On the way home, I stopped at a favorite, Target, to get combined items, food and clothes and a DVD and thus avoid regular grocery shopping. As my wagon and me trekked back to my car, I took in that amazing scent of cooking candy from See's just down the block. I breathed deeply the chocolate tinged air looking slightly up as a bird, probably a pigeon, but with his wings spread surprisingly majestic swooped just above me. And for what could have been no more than a split second, I felt absolutely at peace. Pure contentment that seemed an intimation or paradise. No want. No ego. No need. Just safe stillness. God maybe? I don't know but I craved it as it slipped away. I opened my bottled coke and drove back home to write about an ordinary day.

Bee Gees: Tapestry of the 70s.

I ran across a biography of the Bee Gees tonight. I was back in the Bronx, a senior in college. The Bee Gees had been hit makers of the sixties and then they had faded away. One night I was watching a show, after Saturday Night Live (still in its early-ish days), called "The Midnight Special" and there they were in entertainment reincarnation. The performance, cuts from their then new album "Main Course" was electrifying, same falsetto voices, but with an edge that they had never possessed in the Aquarius heydey.

I was a late bloomer. (Heck, still am!) So, I was still living at home, a college commuter. Dad must not have been home cause I had the volume way up on the Sony Trinitron. And I was dancing around the room and oddly feeling pride at the comeback of the threesome.

It was only a year or two later that I heard the soundtrack of a new movie that launched disco, "Saturday Night Fever" and I raced out and got that record (prehistoric times that they were) which I brought to a New Year's Eve party at Glenn's (I was now in my first year of law school and no longer up to New Year's Eve party throwing) feeling like I had some obligation to promote the next big thing. I had no idea how "next big thing" it would be.

And so, watching the biography, with interview cuts of Barry and Robin together and separate ones of Maurice, I was smiling nostalgically and then I remembered.. They haven't been three Brothers Gibb for how long? I couldn't remember. Which brother had passed? Of course, it was the solitary interviewee. Maurice. The two remaining brothers sat at the end of the story, just two, singing "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart", the always thin Robin looking thinner and the formerly buff Barry bloated and his old mane of hair scarce and gray, and it was wonderful and sad, because I could hear how missing was the missing voice.