Sunday, 27 July
 |
| Brodskaya |
Good Morning
Jacob…
Words have
such a limited vocabulary when it comes time to express how we feel. Unless you are a poet gifted in uttering the
strange tongue of speaking between words and their meaning then it is best to
express how you feel using the map of your face or the spontaneous brush of
your touch. Maybe you can hold, even
seduce, the thoughts of another through the careful measurement of sound that
we call music. It is one of the
arts. What is art if it does not leave
us open to suggestion? In this regard is
it not just a bit like hypnosis? We are
suddenly focused in a manner outside our normal experience. We see beneath the familiar and find
something anew. We are enticed to
consider alternative possibilities – not through the logic of rational
discourse but by way of the allure found beneath common human experience. The ultimate language of art is
intuition. It reveals a truth that has
always existed from within us yet it has often gone unrecognized. There were simply no words to suggest its
validation. It’s not math. The sum of its impressions never delivers the
identical response in any two individuals.
In fact, the response varies within the same individual from day to day,
moment to moment – from one event to another.
Art is a mercurial truth and cannot be held to a precise quality. It provides an objective truth because its
essence is universally perceived and yet it is subjective because it is
meaningless without a human emotional response.
Art is a communication not beholden to words. In fact, unless you are the poet or a bard
whose product requires painting with words, then words themselves only
diminish your message.
A painter is
wise to leave their message entrapped in oil.
Verbal explanation distracts the viewer from the art work’s impact,
diffusing the painting’s energy. Words
corrupt. They are the tools of a rational
medium that often as not dissembles and distorts a meaning best left unspoken.
 |
| de Kooning |
What is the
meaning of “yama dama ding dong”? How
about “Papa-ooma-mow-mow”? How much time are you willing to invest to
try to translate these sound-words into a literal meaning? Don’t bother.
Once you speak these sounds aloud with feeling you will capture their
meaning. There are some experiences in
life we just aren't meant to cogitate over.
We absorb a pure expression in oils.
We don’t puzzle through it as though we were plotting the artist’s moves
in a challenge comparable to a game of chess – not if we want to be enriched by
its sensual nature. Sure, an academician
may write a thesis on de Kooning’s disassembling of women as an act of love on
canvas… and it would probably be interesting.
However that isn’t the experience de Kooning felt in the rapture of the
moment when he put brush to canvas.
I’m tempted
now to dwell a moment on that word rapture.
I don’t think it’s a simple, pure
feeling when held in the human heart. Neither,
for that matter, are the emotions associated with the act of making love. There is mystifying complexity involved in
these feelings. If you are searching for
nirvana then maybe you should take up spiritual yoga or the like. Human passion is discordant, loaded with conflict. It can be a vibrant, delicately balanced
mesmeric suspension. It can be an
electrical storm, traumatic – a feverish surge.
Attempt to contain it and it explodes.
Wondrous life.
 |
| Egyptian |
Those are
the words. Leave them for the letters
you write when you can’t be with the one you love. Otherwise, hold her tight and do something
for her that is beyond the mere making of words.
Love,
Dad
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