Category Archives: Art

On the Lighter Side

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Since my artistic medium is really light, I suppose if I introduce a new picture then it’s fair to say that “it’s on the lighter side”! So the picture I’ve thrown on here today turned out quite nice, but for me this is more of a doodle – I tend to call them that when they only take an hour or two, instead of 50 or a hundred or more – hope you like it.

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As all my art is done on a screen, it is all done in a process of light moved around on that screen – eventually that is translated into ink on paper or canvas.

When you think about it, all artists are involved in a form of communication in one way or another – a form that involves light. Caravaggio is perhaps know for “his use of light” . . . though it is difficult to say whether this is actually “his” light!

It seems he was a colorful character . . .

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/michelangelo-merisi-da-caravaggio

Sunshine on My Mind

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Lately a little sunshine has come up in discussions with some really bright people.

Over the last number of years I’ve enjoyed times of solitude where I just reflect on life, mostly the non-human varieties. In the last year or so, since immersing myself in social media, every now and then I get involved in online discussions that relate to this issue of the sun. Sometimes this includes discussions with various scientists.

To be sure, I’m an artist at heart, though I’m also well trained in scientific methodology, statistics and so on, but I don’t pretend to be an ‘expert’ in any of it, don’t need to be. Recently a discussion came up from a scientist who has a blog about the role of artists in kind of “feeding” science. The person actually works in this field, some kind of institute that seeks to combine the two endeavors.

On one hand I can appreciate this, but on the other hand, there is an arrogance behind it that is hard to stomach. It’s the arrogance that all life has a scientific basis. This belief seems to be ingrained in so many people at an alarming rate over the last few decades. As a belief it is very much like a religion. Perhaps not so surprising is the negative reaction that such people have when you point this out, and yet it is so very true.

Many artists tend to look at life differently, to observe and come to know certain things without measurements. Scientists seem to think of this as what, romantic? Dreamy? Idealistic? Whatever term is used, the common one would be “inferior”, at least in terms of comparison to the observing through the use of science. At the unavoidable risk of sounding confrontational, I see it as quite the opposite.

So what does this have to do with the sun?

We’ve all been taught that the sun is very far away, but that’s not really true is it? When you think of its light continually blending in with the planet we live on, and how life here couldn’t exist without it, then you can easily appreciate how inseparable we are from the sun…it’s not just ‘out there’, it’s right here.

Think of the stream of light as an indivisible umbilical chord.

As I mentioned in a previous post, time and gravity are inseparable aspects of life on earth. Now when you combine this with the indivisible aspect of the sun, then you can understand that the earth as a mass, with its time and gravity, are indivisibly connected to the sun.

The problem in physics then is the equation ‘energy = mass x the speed of light squared). This equation involves mass (earth), the sun, and time. It’s not really a valid equation once you accept this indivisibility as I’ve described it.

The reason for that can be shown in a simple question, “How you can multiply something when you can’t really divide it?”

I don’t know what all this means, I just know that I need to say it.

The picture at the top is another one of my unfinished works; it began as a photograph of the door know and keyhole of my storage shed. The link below is on the lighter side, and is a great presentation on the creative thinking process. What I really like about it is that it presented by someone like myself in terms of starting out as someone trained in science.

John Cleese on Creativity

And finally, here is such a wonderful example who in her own way seems to “get it” in terms of light.

Madonna – Ray of Light

Bar Reflections, With a Few Friends

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I suppose this might have been inevitable once I began writing more. “This” being the urge to add a post about how that’s progressing, my writing.

I’ve come across so many writers’ blogs recently, so many fine ones, and I don’t mind saying it is a richer experience than my networking places. Perhaps the dialogue isn’t so instant, though It’s all so much more personal isn’t it?

I’ve gotten to know only a handful of people through networking, and I’m very thankful for that, but for me it seems this is in spite of the venue and not because of it. With each of these people it is only through one-on-one and private communication where I really feel like I’m getting to know any one.

By comparison, it’s be like thinking of something like Google + as a busy night club, lots of entertainment, pizzazz (yeah, I know…pizzazz, but what the heck, I am 55), and a lot of fine people trying to impress and get to know some of the ‘each others’. And then you hit it off with some one in particular, and you begin a private correspondence, and it’s like going from a busy and crowded night club to a quiet, more intimate coffee shop. And you get to know one another about as well as one can over long distance telecommunication devices.

Blogging though, is often like skipping the bar scene and heading right to the coffee shop, and it often feels like one that is in a sort of magical book shop, full of surprises.

So I guess I’m old fashioned that way. You don’t have to think too hard to realize that in the real world a person is only physically and mentally capable of developing a handful of relationships that are meaningful at all…what’s the joke at political dinners, “I’d like to thank 500 of my closest friends for joining me tonight.”? Hmmm.

So it doesn’t matter if this place has 1 billion members and that one only 125 million…insane numbers really, especially when it comes down to you and me. Save it for the folks with the big advertising budgets. McDonald’s may have served billions, but how many do you want?

Oh, yeah, a post about my writing…well it’s coming along quite nicely, thank you, a pleasant mystery, twists and turns, a little humor, an almost excruciating amount of teasing of the reader…and soon I might even share a paragraph of two, but which ones?

Typing in the Bars

An Infinite Universe…How Nice

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I’m tired of this endless debate, so many smart people who don’t seem to get it in terms of the simplest truth. The universe is boundless, infinite, end of story.

One thing we all know about walls is that there is always something on the other side. Those who claim that the universe is finite must then claim that the universe has some kind of invisible wall, like a shell of sorts. If so then how thick is the wall, and what’s on the other side?

So either the wall goes on forever or it doesn’t and there is something on the other side…either way it keeps on going…it is infinite, immeasurable.

I’m so tired of any claim else-wise. When you come to understand this boundless aspect, then with  a little thinking you can actually appreciate that in its totality there is a kind a unity. I say this because an infinite universe can neither expand nor contract.

Many people of science get very upset when you can explain this universal truth to them with simple reason, and a little imagination. To these people it seems reputation and the sale of textbooks seem much more important than truth.

Thankfully there are still those who have a passion for truth, and for them it is more important than tradition, more important than egos and more important than reputation, past or present. And thankfully there is no money to made from this simple truth, which speaks volumes when you think about it.

Your comments are welcome, as is freely sharing a little truth…just please don’t ask me what it means! 🙂

A Tender Page of Beige

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A naughty little book

for quiet fireside evenings!

An imagination,

a glass of wine.

and…  thou ? !

Such a poetic note, handwritten, and a rather pleasant surprise, as it was found upon opening the book, on a blank page of paper no less…one with many shades of beige.

I picked up this book at what is now my favorite used book store. It’s full of pleasant surprises and mysteries, some of which are too private for posting. What’s pleasant about this handwritten note above is not only the words but the beautiful calligraphy, almost a work of art in itself as it looks so genuine. And as this wonderful gypsy that sold it to me pointed out, “I wonder who she was?” which were my thoughts exactly, as in, “What was her story?“

As it turns out, the book is a hard cover first edition. It is a book of short stories by an author who’s work I’ve only read once before, about 30 years ago now. It’s called “Little Birds: Erotica by Anais Nin” which was published shortly after her death.

I’ve mentioned a little about erotica in my last few posts, including a discomfort in getting caught up in its current popularity. So I received another surprise in this book, and this occurs before the stories begin, in the preface. I’m including a quote from that preface, as she expresses how I feel about the whole issue of writing of the erotic better than I can…really quite remarkable!

Before adding this quote I should mention that Anais Nin had a soft spot for these writers, ones she knew at the time, who wrote a lot of erotica. She talks sympathetically about how these people were poor and hungry and wrote in this style simply for the money. She then goes on to say:

It is one thing to include eroticism in a novel or a story and quite another to focus one’s whole attention on it. The first is like life itself. It is, I might say, natural, sincere, as in the sensual pages of Zola or of Lawrence. But focusing wholly on the sexual life is not natural. It becomes something like the life of the prostitute, an abnormal activity that ends up turning the prostitute away from the sexual. Writers perhaps know this. That is why they have written only one confession or a few short stories, on the side, to satisfy their honesty about life, as Mark Twain did.

But what happens to a group of writers who need money so badly that they devote themselves entirely to the erotic? How does this affect their lives, their feelings toward the world, their writing? What effect has it on their sexual life?

As I’m typing this quote I keep thinking of it in the context of not so much the writing of the day, but of mass media in general, the eroticism of it all, whether it’s magazines, the internet, music videos or television. The words of Anais Nin become somewhat prophetic in the sense that our culture has somehow lost its way in this assault on our senses…how much candy is too much?

And with that I look forward to finding another book of hers, titled, “The Novel of The Future”.

PS – I didn’t realize it before, but her writing is the epitome of “The Elements of Style”…a wonderful companion!

 

How Can They Be Free?

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When I was a kid, over 40 years ago now, I think I was in grade 7 at the time, Friday night was kind of special. How this became special I cannot remember, nor can I remember how I ever came to be involved in this activity. It seems what was special about this activity was the score, and the coinciding peer pressure. Getting one down the center was the ultimate goal and doing so frequently was some kind of achievement.

I’m not talking about bowling here; that was reserved for Saturday mornings. This was a school-related activity, or at least it happened underground, beneath this one-story elementary school, the one where I spent grade 5. The oddity of this didn’t even hit home until just this very day. You see I was always told that this underground facility was built during the wartime for training purposes. It was a shooting range. There were perhaps 10 or so alleys, the targets seemed much further away than the pins at the bowling alley, and the circles on the paper seemed so very small…and I had great eyesight.

My friends and I thought this was pretty cool. None of us owned the 22-caliber rifles; they stayed with the bunker and we just bought our weekly supply of bullets. There was no time pressure or anything, just the pressure to score highly on a weekly total of 100, kind of like a percentage. So at the end of evening the boys and I would compare our sheets and I was never much better than average, so it wasn’t so much fun. On the other hand, no one beat me at bowling, which was so much more fun.

It seems this was a winter activity and only lasted a few months. When it was over one or two of my friends were awarded pellet guns by their parents. It was springtime by then. In no time at all there must have been about half a dozen of us with these guns. Mine was one of the cheapest as my parents probably had less money than all of the others, so I was kind of envious of some of the others’ units. This too was a competition. Pellets were pretty cheap and the river was very close.

The implication of that was that there was no problem exploring our favorite paths along the river, surrounded by plenty of ample bush and trees, only now we had arms. We usually wondered in pairs, perhaps three if there was an odd number. For practice we would shoot at tin cans and so the competition continued, though it didn’t stay at cans for long. You see there were birds to shoot, and the prowess became the hit rate on sparrows and robins, shot for no other reason.

Thankfully I was not very good at this activity, and regretfully I never thought much of what I was doing. I don’t remember this hobby lasting more than one summer. Neither do I remember when everyone else stopped. However, I do remember as clearly as this evening’s supper how I came to cease and desist. It happened on a very fine day and I was standing on the river bank right next to a big bend in the river. For whatever reason I was all alone. I had my pellet in my gun in case a bird should come along.

Sure enough while looking around this bend I spotted one flying, more like gliding along the path of the water. It wasn’t a sparrow or a robin though. It was a bird like none that I’d seen before, more like a great blue heron. By the time I noticed the beauty of this magnificent bird I already had my gun raised to shoot. And then it happened. I saw this bird for what it was, but more than that it spoke to me in that wonderful silence, as if to say to me in a very gentle voice, “Why do you want to hurt me?” And as I sensed this my arms fell to the side. The question remained unanswered and I’ve never shot a gun of any kind since.

I’ve seldom had such a moment of clarity, and such a calm and peaceful one at that.

So fast forward 30-some years and you will find me in a very confused state. It is in the fall and like so many people, I am immersed in a battle without even knowing it. The tragedy of 9/11 is still very fresh and there is this talk of taking action, a part of the battle of the hearts and minds. My children are with me at this time, they are around 10 and 11 years old and I am driving them to school one day. I don’t know how it came up, but there must have been a question that arose on this issue of war. I hadn’t been able to make any sense of the news, couldn’t understand any of the arguments, but I did mutter something about the need to protect freedom.

Well the discussion pretty much ended in one of those other moments of clarity. It happened very spontaneously in the form of a question that kind of answers itself. So in response to my comment on freedom, one of my children said something that will stick with me as long as I can think. She said, “But daddy how they be free? They carry guns.”

Today when I see the birds there is freedom I see and a togetherness that is so truly inspiring and of course I am a dreamer and I wonder if we will ever be that together. It seems all I can do is hope.

PS – The picture at the top is yet another unpublished work of mine, still in progress, but almost finished.

Body Language, or Parts of It!

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Lately when I go to bed I start writing…fiction writing. Lately when I get up I realize that I’m now writing about something entirely different.

For example, this morning I woke up thinking about nudist colonies of all things. I’ve never been to one, and after this dream I’m sure I never will. Perhaps it’s a little of that Groucho Marx mentality that I’ve had most of my life, “Why would I belong to a club that would have me as a member?”

The dream, if you can call it that, is perhaps only an hour old and already it is hard to remember, especially how I got onto the topic in the first place. So here’s a snippet by recollection, but be warned, my dreams have a tendency to be ‘politically incorrect’.

I think what woke me was a kind of self-censorship as it seems I was already in ‘write-mode’. Should I really say that I feel bad if I don’t find all women adorable in their nudity? There is no need to get into graphical details or numbers of any sort. As for the men, it gets even worse in that department. It reminds me of a study I once read about that found women tend to rate themselves as being much heavier than others would, while men tend to see themselves as being much slimmer than others see them.

As for me, I’m certainly not half the man I used to be…more like one and a half!

I’m not so crazy about looking at myself naked at the best of times, so why would I want to subject others to my stature of exceeded limitations? So there are two basic things that I would worry about. One is that I’m too big, and the other is that I wouldn’t fit in!

Now I’m sure there are the purists out there who will claim it’s all about looking at the inner person and not the body, that you’re there for the intellectual experience. On that level I’d probably kick in with some smart-ass comment about some great thinkers who talk about the ‘mind, body and soul’ and then ask why we should ignore the middle part.

Then there is the whole issue of the narcissism of the whole scenario, perhaps even this dream itself? I just read a blog last night that touched on social networking as being a form of narcissism. There does seem to be something self-indulgent about this strange need to express one’s freedom…for me freedom has become a somewhat funny word, at the very least a very curious one!

It’s almost like making a statement like, “I’m naked, I can talk about anything now, and I’ll just shut off my sexual urges at my command”. (And on top of that, I’ll do my damnedest to hide any revulsion!). And that’s a lot of, ‘my my my’ isn’t it?

So there’s the crux of it, no nudist colony for me, though someday maybe I’ll visit a nude beach, who knows? With my luck I’d probably wind up in lawn chair sitting next to Stephen Hawkings with no visible tan lines…and nothing to say! 🙂

PS – The picture at the top is another of mine, though an unpublished one called “Grand Beach”.

PPS – When I find someone adorable, clothes don’t much matter, definitely much less than she thinks!

Getting From A to B

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Computer networking seems to be quite a popular topic in WordPress, but let me rephrase that…social networking seems to be a very popular topic.

I’ve been very impressed and amused by those who have woke up to what is somehow destined to be a failure in some important respects. I say failure because the long distance exchange of messages done with machines will never be the same as direct, fully human interaction. I would hope that we can all be thankful and appreciative of this truth. And I’m happy for those who have found happiness with others through the use of technology…good for them.

It seems I have a knack for looking at our culture differently than most. Perhaps it is because of the reading I’ve done over the years, but certainly not in totality. I only mention this because of one author and book in particular. The book is Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshal McLuhan. It’s one of those books where every time you read it, or even part of it, you learn something new as well as you can understand the world around you from a different perspective.

A Good Synopsis of “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”

If it were up to me I’d make it required reading at some point, perhaps even in high school, especially when mass media is so dominant in our culture. But then I’d also make the same requirement of the basic principles of logical reasoning. This may seem like an odd statement coming from an artist, but then I’m not really an artist, I’m a person who has a passion for doing art. There is a huge difference between the noun and the verb, between the object and the process.

The process always seems nice than the object, the journey between A and B.

I’ve always admired so much of what Einstein said, so many great quotes, such as, “Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination can take you everywhere.” It seems then, in order to make sense of life in this day and age, a great deal of both is necessary if one is to think and to wonder. I do a lot of both.

I know many will say that that  just living is better than so much thinking, and I can completely relate to that, and so many happy times happened just living. For me this is not that time though. I think a lot about what is natural and about what isn’t and it does seem to come down to machines versus nature, and much of humanity seems stuck in between.

To get back to this issue of computer networking, I’d like to put in the broader context of machines. The mechanization has happened at a very rapid and accelerated pace over the last 100 years or so, and we have collectively made ourselves dependent on machines in so many ways and to such large extents and extensions, the extensions of man.

I could go on at great lengths to explain the implications of this in great detail, but I’d prefer to at least try to make my point with a few statements. For example, now and then the issue of the world being overpopulated comes up. Yet no one ever addresses the issue of the population of machines. The world has gone from about 2 billion to 7 billion people in my lifetime; I don’t have the resources to even begin to calculate what that growth is in terms of machine population. Since many people form emotional attachments to their machines, even love, it is appropriate to use the term population.

Some wars and a great deal of media attention is placed on the issue of energy, mostly oil and gas. And yet not that long ago such reliance wasn’t there. When you think about it though, we don’t need oil and gas. Our machines need it and we now need our machines.

A Great Deal of Food For Thought

In the context of computers and pretty much every mechanical communication medium, including all kinds of presses and our educational system, the reliance on electricity is even greater than that of oil and gas. Yes, electricity is dependent on machines.

And yet we call of this a ‘process of evolution’ and we’re taught about natural selection. However, so much of humanity now seems so very different than anything that I see in nature. There I can see more balance, even kindness, more of what I used to see in people, and I wonder whether we will find a way to return to a more natural life form.

Something is missing and machines won’t help us find it. This is why I’m not surprised at an undercurrent of rebellion and disappointment in what is called social networking. Perhaps a nice first step is to realize that no matter how you brand it, the phone is just a phone.

By the way, in terms of that educational system and required reading, I’d also include something to do with love…I think it might just make a good replacement for much of history.

And so because of the absence of my humor in this blog, I don’t mind borrowing a little bit of nice humor from an old television show, partly to remind you that I don’t think it’s all bad. I’m a firm believer that there is always something good out there, but then what do I know?

I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About

A More Than Golden Silence

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Music and silence…combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

The words above aren’t my words though I recently had the pleasure of sharing them with someone who seemed to need to hear them. Her name is Brenda and I had a conversation with her a few weeks ago, after not being in touch for about 3 months. She was telling me about a presentation she had the next day, part of her training in an MFA program. With her background in marketing I’m sure this would normally be excited about this speaking opportunity, but given her current bout of laryngitis, she was pretty stressed out.

As she’s telling me of her dilemma I sent her this wonderful quote that I’d come across awhile ago. While I knew she would appreciate the beauty of it, I was surprised by how much the words seemed to alleviate her stress.

In my art I often refer to what I describe as a curious blending in nature, and it’s in this context that I think of this remark on silence and music. It is the “silence that is full of music” which is most intriguing, as if at times there is this mysterious child at play…the muse? It feels like this child is very much a part of one of my favorite pictures, Forever Dancing, a spirit that also seems to be forever young.

There must be something of love in it all too. It reminds me of a very special picture called Muse-ic by a kind artist named Pat Erickson. In the way she describes it, I know what she calls a picture is very much an outcome of love. So here is the picture, including such gentle notes…Muse-ic

So thank you Pat for saying so much in silence, and for putting it to music.

This quote also reminds of a rather unusual and wonderful evening of music performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. What made it unusual was that there was a silent movie playing at the same time, on a screen at the back of the stage. The movie was Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times which was done in 1936, some nine years after sound had come to the cinema. Apparently he resisted the use of human voices all this time. This film was to be his last screen appearance. The concert was held in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the day of his birth. I didn’t know until that night that Chaplin also wrote music!

So there you have it, more music in silence, so to speak.

Finally, I like to add a little humor or music to my blogs, but usually at the end. So if you think of my blog as a meal, then you can think of these additions as your dessert…Dinner Roles

Oh, and I almost forgot to reference the quote from the beginning of this blog. It comes from a man many of us are very familiar with though have never heard from…his name is Marcel Marceau.