We went hobnobing this weekend

The last time I wore a tux (or a dinner jacket for those who've read Paul Fussel's book on class and are keeping score at home) was 20 years ago and I weighed 60 lbs less than I do today. Look at Jami - she's gorgeous in that little red dress. The occasion was the Founder's Dinner at Duke (where they surprisingly didn't serve flounder: I thought "come for the founder stay for the flounder" but Jami didn't feel that was a good slogan for the evening) where, since Jami raises money, she was invited and I got to tag along. We spent a fun evening talking about baseball and living in Atlanta with the rich and powerful.
The weekend together was glorious and we both talked about how living apart is not the most fun thing in the world. In fact it stinks. I miss her terribly. I hope that I can find a call in Durham or the Triangle area soon.
Anyway, I don't look bad in a tux. I thought: wouldn't it be great to get one of these things to paint in. I could be the next PBS painting icon - me in my tux and holding a Grey Goose martini in my left hand as I deftly paint virgins and the flight into Egypt with my right: a one-two punch. I would market myself as a straight talking artist for those who want to learn to paint, painting with paint, and loving paint; who don't want formulas and tricks and patterns and tricks and little things that are "neat" - I will not use the word neat on my show, except to describe how I like my scotch. I will invite people to join me on my quest for the American Sublime. I will encourage people to paint with the top of their heads in a rainstorm while bad 60s rock plays on the stereo. I will engage people into the carnivalesque. I will introduce them to Dada and MoMa. We will exegete parables into paint and translate painting into gospel. And every show will feature a beer tasting. Or perhaps a steak.

Cleo

The sleek black cat prowls around the house, investigating each corner, parading an air of certainty, aloof to necessity, desiring only to eat ocean fish and, if possible, be let outside, where she can chew grass under the thorny rosebush. Cleo has lost so much weight she really is this transparent. This is not a blurry photograph. As depicted in an earlier photo in this blog, Cleo is a dadaist cat, she is the anti-cat, the anti-expression of catness: and therefore, she is the echt cat. She stares into space with the intent of conforming reality to her will. Fortunately for humanity and the other cats, she has a short attention span and is easily distracted. Plus she's susceptible to being picked up and carried around the house. Connoisseurs of photography may notice that this photo has things in common with photos of Patti Hearst in her symbionese liberation army get up: seemingly blurry, muted color. This photo is also similar to Gerhard Richter's paintings of the Bader-Meinhof gang. In many ways Cleo shares some similarities with this gang. She's single mindedly devoted to the over throw of the capitalist corporatist state - with this difference: frequent naps. In this Cleo is far ahead of most revolutionary thinkers: think how different the French, the 1917, the Chinese, the Cultural, the American, the Glorious [British] revolutions would have been if the directorie-communtard-brainthrust had begun a vigorous program of naps. What if someone barged into a bank and demanded that everyone lie down on the floor and cover their eyes, getting into a nice place, a safe place, and take a break? After pondering the great issues of the day, I don't think that a national day of prayer is needed so much as a national nap time. This is the lesson Cleo has for us. A revolution. A revolution we can confidently sleep through.

What has become of the Endowment?

It is now Hercules at the cross roads of vice and virtue, recast in a Brechtian setting.

Every year we go to Chicago

Jami and her mother shop, her step-father hob nobs with toy soldier enthusiasts and I go I the Art Institute. Every one is happy. The Art Institute lets you photograph almost the entire collection. Here I have taken two photos of Pinkham Ryder's Essex Canal. Ryder is a pivotal artist for modern American painting. Pollack said that Ryder was the first American painter. Seemingly effusive praise, but accurate. Accurate in that I've felt, and I've gotten this feeling from my teachers and classmates, that Ryder's mindset, his ever straining attempt at the sublime, is where our painting should be. If I err in applying generous layers of paint and going at the same canvas again and again, it is because I believe in Ryder's project and his promise. I believe that painting should land right in the middle of the heart. It should grab a person by the guts. Painting should shake the spirit. In between these two reproductions is the actual color balance of the work. It is a rich seemingly simple landscape that is over painted but still lively. I can feel the wind blow in this painting. I can hear the absent water.
For a modern referent look at some of the later work of Howard Hodgkin.

kitten vs human

Who will win? Which will is stronger? Which is more determined? My wife, Jami, a Ph.D. trained academician in English literature, who brings in the big bucks for major educational institutions, rubbing elbows with movers and shakers, or this 7 lb kitten, (named Cleocatra by a woman who mocks my puns) who thinks only of escaping into the yard to chew on the grass underneath the rose bush and incessantly demands Ocean Fish. Who will win indeed.

Laughter

I love nothing better than to make Jami laugh. Look at that beautiful face, that beautiful smile. That's the woman I love. Thankfully I'm a master at crafting jokes, puns, anecdotes. In fact I am inspired right now. Reading Bakhtin's book on Rabelais I'm finally through the introduction and beginning his history of laughter. I'm very excited. Already in the introduction Bakhtin considers laughter, when combined with the grotesque (where he means with those elements that are earthy, natural, of the folk), regenerative. Laughter is regenerative.
He considers the laughter we have now, ironic, bitter, sarcastic, used like a whip, to lack that regenerative power: in fact satiric laughter "as the bourgeoise like" he considers not to be laughter but rhetoric. To appreciate the sense of regenerative laughter I think of what a belly laugh is. It feels good: it's the laugh I need when I'm feeling down. His examples are Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Cervantes - for their common folk elements, elements which he ties to the grotesque and to carnival. The Grotesque needs laughter to achieve the regeneration of the old into the new (in this way Bakhtin echoes Jung's thoughts on Alchemy, where old dominants lose energy and give way to the birth of new ones: the archetypes of the old man and the child).
Laughter is regenerative - think about that. In particular the laughter that comes from common folk: groundling humor, fart jokes; such that monsters are defeated by laughter. The dance of death, a grotesque figure on the surface, achieves a comic effect, a carnivalistic effect when we think of the bishop, the king, the peasant, the nun, the queen, the fishwife, the knight: all being lead by death in a line dance. This was the way the great plague of the 1300s was absorbed, was dented in its blow: by laughter, laughing at their situation, cavorting and dancing.
I was reading Lewis's Discarded Image tonight and was reminded that the medieval person did not think of space as cold, empty and vast, but as large (though limited), filled with beings, and festive, filled with light, that all the heavenly host were engaged in a dance.
Laughter and the grotesque level humanity, but they also reflect and offer a way of participating in the heavenly dance. We take what we are, made grotesque by sin, and imitate the dance of the heavenly host; the grace of such a thing, that not only are we allowed to, but encouraged to, fills us with joy, what Bakhtin calls "gay laughter."
Which brings me to something that occurred to me this evening, as I was in the trauma bay (what a curious phrase, Trauma Bay - who'd go there?), and I thought, what if a cargo ship carrying German cars were in a terrific storm, and in order to stave off capsizing they Jetta-soned some cargo. Now it's true, in the 1960s, VWs would float some.
See that's gold.

I'm reading Bakhtin

It's amazing what this beleaguered Soviet thinker endured. Like Akhmatova his brilliance and originality upset the very system that should have embraced him: seeing that his writing on Rabelais ramified the from-the-ground-up process of revolution. Or perhaps that's the reason why he worked in, not just obscurity, but enforced obscurity, an exile imposed by spite from academic gate keepers. His work on Rabelais and carnival is an enlightening read. I'm seeing the gospel and much else in a very interesting light. Not that it's the only way to read things: but imagine, as you read say Matthew 12 - 14 Jesus walking through a countryside peopled with lepers, outcasts, widows, dull disciples, feeding thousands, and giving anxiety to a somewhat henpecked ruler - that's carnivalesque! I'm reminded of paintings by Breugel (his battle of canival and lent); Bosch (Christ carrying his cross; man of sorrows); and Ensor (Christ entering Brussels). Chuck and Stan taught a class on carnival two years ago or so, but we didn't touch on Bakhtin this way (or if we did I didn't get it then). I think we needed more pertinent examples: Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare - which are Bakhtin's; instead we focused on modern phenomina - which Bakhtin ways are watered down from the ancient and medieval predecessors. Ancient carnival combined the grotesque with the comic in a folk celebration: laughter is the key. What if today we found a way to laugh at the face of terror: terror from our government as well as the purported terror from them "over there." We should be prepared to fight authoritarianism on all fronts: not just fleeing behind the power of establishment authoritarianism in the face of terrorist authoritarianism.
Does all this talk of carnival figure in the hospital? Probably, but it is a place that strains our capacity for laughter, my capacity at least, even in the face of no lack of the grotesque. In the hospital it can be asked "what can happen to the human body?" and an answer is at the ready. Laughter though is supposed to be the best medicine; according to Ecclesiastes it strengthens the heart. Much was made in ancient commentaries that Jesus isn't recorded as laughing. But I think the one verse "Jesus wept" proves the opposite, in that the one time Jesus isn't laughing, it gets recorded. Paul now, may not have laughed.
What do y'all think?

How green the hills are

This is a photo I took last year from Panola Mountain. In the distance, faintly, you can make out the shape of Stone Mountain, a pluton of magma that millions of years ago was thousands of feet below the surface. This same rock stretches all across northern Georgia. It's particularly noticeable in Rockdale and Walton counties, where lichen covered granite sprouts out of the pastureland.
I have been writing a verbatim about a death last night until 4:30 this morning. I'm finally going to bed. I must awake at 8. Wish me luck.

an annunciation

It seems a lifetime ago that I painted this in the CTS bookstore. Actually I began it in the summer of 2006, left if for months, and finished it up early this last June. In this photo the thermostat on Gabriel's chest is all too apparent.

Back to the beach

Just a month ago Jami and I were at the beach with her sister, Jennifer, Grace, our niece (and Jennifer's daughter) and Gaby (mom, grand mother and mother-in-law). What a relaxing time. When Jesus talks about becoming like a child, we puzzle over that - commentators have for a long time. Like many sayings of Jesus people will will say them, nod seriously, and then go on acting as they did before. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, early on says "we were gentle as children among you" which is quite a thing to say, but the word "gentle", if a letter is added ( as in a number of well attested manuscripts) becomes "infant." Incredible as it may seem, Paul is claiming that he and the apostles have become like infants among them. Infants is a difficult reading, but the change from "infants" to "gentle" is more likely to have occurred: gentle sounds more adult; it's easier to imagine come copyist taking away the "n" of nhepion (infant) in order to make 'epion (gentle). I think for Jesus and Paul, this use of childhood metaphor is intended not as an edict: how does one become like a little child or like an infant? The metaphor is meant to drive us into contemplation and memory - what was it like to be a child? what is it like to realize one's helplessness, one's dependence? what is it like to be at the beginning? what is it like to not know everything? what is it like to create without pretense (for children create, until an adult teaches them otherwise, blissfully unaware of what the "correct" manner of application is? A child has not adopted those codes of conduct, fear of authority and self limitation, adults use to navigate society: they don't know when to shut up; they don't know they're foolish; they don't know they're an embarrassment. They shine, naively creating wonderful works, imagining the world as a magical place. But children have their failings too: they need protection; they become angry too easily; they can be impatient; they don't now how to value things or understand delayed gratification. Could Paul and Jesus be referring to how uncomplicated love and trust are to them. In the Jungian sense the child has not developed the Persona, the mask, and so a child Is without pretense. A child is honest, particularly about herself. In Ephesians (or it could be the parallel in Colossians) where the apostle says "quit lying to each other" the injunction seems curious because lying seems to have been mentioned twice (do not practice falsehood but tell the truth to one another) [a comparison of the two passages eph 4:17 - 5:1 and col 3:1-17 places the practice of truthtelling under the rubric of being clothed with a new self - and yet the passages for their similarity do not quit say the same thing] but I think what is being asked for here is that we stop pretending to be what we aren't: and that is very childlike: a child just is (except when pretending to be a turtle or invisible - but even then, such a pretense is an exercise in humor and not intended as a life definition). I think that Kierkegaard is driving close to this when he says that we can only be ethical for ourselves, that is, that there is no ethics in general we can use as a tool to cloak ourselves in - we can judge only ourselves. We can not say with authority "I think that you are like ...."; we can only say "I am this way about that, about you, etc."
Certainly I've heard this passage about becoming as a child and in my satirical mind have imagined a Lord of the Flies scenario. Certainly Jesus and Paul were familiar with the terrible twos. But I think they chanced it to bring home this point of living without pretense, living in a way honest about ourselves.

I am slow out of the gate

I believe that every day I should read some, write some, and draw some - perhaps painting. Every day should evidence some creative effort on my part. Some days words come flowing. I use my time well; my mind is not distracted. Tomorrow I work till 11 pm. It's an odd time to be in the hospital: most patients have eaten and been visited by their doctors; a new shift of nurses and staff are around. The mood seems subdued. At least it did last week: there was rain and the only trauma occurred right at 10 pm. Tomorrow night could be different.
I did want to comment on something I saw at the airport the other day. Jami and I were walking out and we passed a sign that read "oversized baggage inspection." The curious thing, as I remarked to Jami, was that the oversized baggage inspection was the same size as the regular baggage inspection. She seemed to agree with me that this was so. And we speculated on what undersize baggage inspection would look like. Image the tiny bags, perhaps so small as not to be noticed by the human eye. An undersize airport with undersize planes (each flown by kittens). Anyway, this is how comedy is mined; how comedic gold is discovered: just noticing the curious things about life and extrapolating through the imagination what a fuller description of life would be like. In our hugger mugger world the existence of oversize baggage vying with undersize baggage for airspace and inspection (notice that word "inspection" has as its root "spec" the latin word for mirror; an inspection is a mirroring into, an interpretation into, the, in this case, baggage of people's lives: what do their baggage contents tell us about their lives: how are their friendships formed, what are their loyalties, their hopes, their regrets? We can inspect in an oversized way, in general, and dismiss the contents of what people are carrying through the air port, or we can inspect in an undersized way, a way where we glance into and pry apart atomizing and erecting theses and syntheses, a dialectic of baggage and life. We can posit the question "when and in what manner are you your baggage?" and perhaps help them escape their baggage. Is that what people come to airports for? We are checked but decide to carry on.) might cause us some concern, especially when we think of the little planes with the tiny kitten pilots carrying the tiny bags. But I suspect that there might be no limit to undersize baggage - and hence why I didn't see the signs for it. The signs for undersize baggage might be so small that a human eye could not see them. Such signs would be more allusive: a plant out of place, a bit of fuzz, a misplaced book in the news stand - all are signs of undersize baggage.

pommes frites

Jami came home to Decatur for the Labor Day weekend. We had a lot of fun. And somehow I have not posted anything since Thursday. I began something yesterday about the photographer Eadweard Muybridge and capturing the motion of the human figure, but I don't want to finish it right now. Instead I want to think about a time, earlier today before Jami went back to Durham, where we sat outside of the Crescent Moon and ate sweet potato fries - or sweet potato pommes frites. What a beautiful lunch it was, with just a touch of Autumn in the air. I sat and talked with the most beautiful woman in the world: terrible puns and the arcane activities of the human mind and heart. She'll be back in town for my examination on the floor of Presbytery Sept 15th. Only 12 days away. This is what my teachers at seminary called living in liminal space - or what my counselor calls, living outside of my comfort zone. It should build strong bones and healthy teeth - it's like eating carrots, like eating beets, like driving the speed limit, like doing homework before dinner, like exercising 45 minutes a day and raising my heart rate for 20 minutes.
After I dropped Jami off at the air port, I went back home, and then on to my studio. I looked at this painting that started out as a painting of the endowment but now it's probably Hercules at the crossroads of folly and virtue: the lobster, the playing card, the watermelon - all gone. Jami likes it better this way. Maybe some other day, I 'll get a lobster into a painting. I didn't stay at the studio long before I called Bob to see what he was up to. He let me invite myself over to his house to aid him in erecting this IKEA loft bed. Being with another human being was good. It was good to talk about the Braves abysmal chances. I find a great deal of comfort in their mediocrity this season: they're underachieving at a high level. Earlier this season Jami and I went to a ball game where Mark Redman gave up five runs in the very first inning. Jami saw a man searching for his dignity. Now even though he's gone, the Braves have plenty of other pitchers looking for their dignity. If the Mets were to play 500 baseball the rest of the season, the Braves would have to go 20-4. Back in the 1990s they might go 20-4 for a month; all the Mets would have to do is play one game over 500, and even that effort is rendered moot. Fortunately there is Kierkegaard. The solace of life is to be an existing individual. Kierkegaard says that such a life is an art. Dear Lord give us peace in our soul, encircle us with your love, let your spirit rest in our hearts and comfort us: that all will be well, that beyond our efforts and beyond our strength, the love that created the universe and holds all things together, sustains us; and that nothing can separate us from your love. Amen