Good Morning Jacob

Letter to my Son
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

Good Morning Justin

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 6 July

g o r d o     M a r s

Good Morning Justin…

More than forty years ago, when I felt quite young, I made a mask and called it a self-portrait.  The face had yellow skin, dog ears and a preposterously large grin with teeth missing.  The image was of an irrepressibly gregarious character you’d be confronted with in a bar people would know as The Bacchanal.  Anyone who knew me then would not recognize this person as having anything to do with me.  Some self-portrait.  The image was never intended to portray who it is I am but who it is I most wanted to be.  Maybe I was describing an alter ego – someone I felt existed inside but would never see the light of day – unless, of course, I was at the magical tipping point of being just short of drunk.  We all have the desire at times to take on a role we weren't meant to be.  Halloween is an obvious fantasy.  We don’t need a costume, though, to try out a different role.  We just have to find the right moment.  That’s all it is – a moment.  We can’t make it last.  After all, it’s not who we really are.

Eventually I came to call the mask gordo Mars.  Over the years it has remained one of my favorite works.  On a rare occasion I might still think of a life lived more like gordo.  With such a personality I would have arms wide enough to embrace the world.  I would be shamelessly sensual.  My words would flow free of filters and I would point out something extraordinary I find in you.  It’s not flattery.  I say what I think.  I can be horribly boorish, as well.  You may go out of your way crossing the street to avoid me.  That’s of no use.  I will see you and cross the street myself.  How are you doing?  You can’t know how much I've been hoping to run into you.  Why don’t we stop by the deli for something to eat and take it to the park?  You can tell me what you've been up to.  What a great day this is turning out to be.

Sorry.  That’s just not me – never has been.  Maybe in another life.

c  r  a  n  k

A few days back I updated my portrait of self with a new drawing.  It’s black ink on white Bristol board.  I look rather pinched.  I’m squeezed dry; freed from oily sensuality and cloying empathy.  I’m a constant agitation.  Why are you bothering me?  Isn’t it obvious I’m busy?  Back off!  Take a number and get in line elsewhere.  This window is closed.  Sit still and take a pill.

I like the drawing but hate the portrait.  It shows my heart filled with nettles.  The problem with gordo Mars and this sketch of a samurai spreadsheet is that they are both one dimensional.  They are opposite ends of a sliding scale.  They are contradictions.  They are dispositions I’m known to wear, one more than the other.  Ask your mother as to which suits me best.

People aren't comic strips.  We’re subtle.  We are weighted down with contrary motivations that make us appear complex, mystifying.  We spend most of our lives being somewhere between a smile and a frown.  The images here represent nothing more than a moment’s impression.  I can define them as I choose but hopefully I appreciate these sentiments change with time and circumstance.  One day we brood on some moment of squalor.  Turn the page and there is joy in viewing simple light streaming through a window.  Emotional truth isn’t known for its permanence.  It’s like the weather in Chicago – interesting and consistent in its change.  I've had a sturdy ride.  There wasn’t much pleasure found in the nastiest of storms but I always benefited from the vista that came after.

Love,

          Dad