HEY JOE

     that's joe on the left

Went by the coffee shop today at lunch time for some Ethiopian coffee and a homemade scone, made by Selma. Joe was in there talking with somebody I'd never seen before. The other guy left and Joe came over and we started talking. I like to visit with Joe. He has a refreshing mind. He doesn't gripe all the time, and when he does gripe, it's in uncertainty. He's not somebody to tell you it is this way or that, no three ways about it, and isn't concerned that you necessarily agree with him. He's a mature individual who realizes we all have different experiences. He even understands that he and I, facing each other talking, we are each having a different experience. Even though we talked together, what he remembers from our conversation I'm sure is very different from what I remember. For one thing, I remember seeing Joe, and he remembers seeing me. That's a radical difference right there. I don't mean that we're radically different in matters of race, nationality, language and gender. We have similar education level, we both read books, and we both think our own thoughts. I say radical, because I see radical differences between any two individuals. This has to do with why we have such a hard time getting along with other people. By hard time, I mean really not understanding each other. In my generation a lot of young girls, 18-21, would feel suicidal because nobody understood them. I had a couple of friends who talked like that, and one made half-hearted attempts. I'd think, but not say, Get used to it; nobody is ever going to understand you.

I'm attempting to give you something of Joe's character that I could describe, but it's all so freely flowing like spirit, one aspect of him blending into another aspect, shifting in and out of memory, a full human being, which I cannot begin to comprehend. This has been my problem all my life, feeling awed by the fullness of anyone I'm around at the moment, the fullness of spirit in them, a mind that works very differently from mine, like as if from another country, another culture, another language. Always uncertainty in attempting to guess someone's thinking, attitude, beliefs. Earlier in my life I thought I understood other people, knew some people. Later, that fell away when I realized I don't know anybody, not even myself. I don't even know Caterpillar, the cat I've lived with 15 years. I know her habits, her characteristics, but I don't know her as another cat knows her and I don't know her as she knows herself. She's a gray long-haired cat very easy to get along with and a loving friend. By now, I don't try to know anybody. I let the spirit flow and see how we interact. I like my interactions with others best when I don't concern myself with preconceptions. I like receiving people I'm around as they want to be received, simply by paying attention when they talk. That's how I think I know people around me best is by allowing them who they are. How else can I get to know them? I can't get to know somebody by thinking, What tacky taste!

Looking at Joe in my mind and looking for a way to describe him accurately that he and ones who knew him well would find acceptable characterization of who he is, I draw a blank. All I see is spirit. I see spirit in my memory before I see his face. I talk with the spirit of the other, not the face or name. I see Joe someone who knows the tree by its fruits instead of judging when it comes to knowing others. He has enough understanding to know judging doesn't get it, but we also have our life in this world that really has a hard time giving up judging. Let's just say he's not judgmental. When I'm talking with Joe I don't feel like he's sizing me up, assessing me in relation to himself and finding me not looking too good by comparison. I don't feel like judging is going on with Joe. I don't dare say he doesn't judge, because we all do, but it is weak in him, not strong. Weak because he understands. Joe came up West Virginia fundamentalist like I came up Kansas fundamentalist; we have that bridge of understanding between us that is automatic like birds of a feather. When I first met Joe I thought of the state of Mississippi. When I lived in South Carolina, people said of SC where poverty was concerned, "Thank God for Mississippi." Now in North Carolina, people say of NC where poverty is concerned, "Thank God for West Virginia." I couldn't introduce myself saying, "You remind me of a joke." Joe is not a West Virginia cliche. I doubt he even watches Moonshiners on the History channel. I can just about say I'm certain he does not. But I don't know for sure. He might be a hillbilly wannabe and never quite had what it took. I doubt it.

When Joe's spirit and my spirit are interacting vocally I feel a real exchange of thoughts or ideas, what have you, passing between us like two colors of water blending together when they meet. It's not many people I feel so free with conversationally. Free in that it doesn't matter if we disagree. It matters not to me, matters not to Joe. We explore the differences in how we see things. We both understand no two people think alike or see from the same perspective. Therefore, we can laugh at our different ways of seeing whatever the theme. Joe's spirit is not confrontational. That's what I think I like best about Joe conversationally. Not confrontational. I've never been comfortable with people who are always wanting to stir something with some kind of in-yer-face confrontational remarks. When that starts, I'm gone. I've never found confrontational talk entertaining, certainly never interesting, and all I see is ego spouting like a lawn sprinkler in all directions. Not so with Joe. The line of thinking his childhood religious experience led him into was an interest in theological writings, looking to get a better understanding of scripture than what you can get from a harping preacher. What it did to me was spit me out, made me abandon Christendom, in other words, religion. Both Joe and I understand religion is another matter of the few controlling the many, a control device, free money.

I think maybe Joe would define himself a skeptic who allows. He may be skeptical of something somebody believes, but doesn't concern himself with converting the other to his way of seeing. He allows the other their own point of view. He'll freely allow himself to ask you what you mean when you're not being clear. That's a good thing. I like that we can talk about anything too. No restrictions due to belief systems either way. I've an idea if each one of us laid out what we believe about God, the Christ, salvation, they would be very different. Joe might look at it and say we are very far apart. I'd look at it and see we're the same. I'm not sure if he's seen beyond Christendom enough yet to see that all the religions are based in the same core. I short-change Joe to assume he might not see that. I don't mean to do that. What I'm getting at is his spiritual education by reading and experience has been largely in Christendom. I've found all the religions so much the same, I could flow from one to the other; all I'd have to learn would be the culture around each one. I could become a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist easily. They're the same to me. The very same. They just grew up in different cultures. Like people growing up in different cultures, the religions would be that kind of different. I'm not sure if Joe sees Christendom as a pearl on a string of pearls. Joe doesn't seem to be as alarmed as I am at how dreadfully far Christians have twisted the words of Jesus from their obvious meanings. Again, I short-change him assuming that. Like I say, I really don't know him well enough to answer any questions for him. But I do enjoy throwing thoughts around in the air like boomerangs with Joe.


*   

I NEVER DREAMED I WOULD

air bellows outdoor art museum

Had to go to town today to get a prescription filled. Of course, it had to be faxed about and no return fax had yet come after an hour. I hear that so frequently it's hard to keep a straight face when told. Just another weird aspect of living in this world. We learn when we're children not to get mad or worked up over such. It's like shooting the ocean. I just work here. Management works for the corporate boss. Corporation headquarters are in Milwaukee. You're welcome to call. Like all such inconveniences in our everyday lives, we pass them off as nothing. Just another learning experience: don't expect, ever. Now I have to drive to town tomorrow, after calling first to see if the fax came back. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. You can't do this without doing this other thing first, but before you do that, there is this over here that you have to sign and send off and wait for the return at the whim of people that don't care. We're living Kafka at the same time we're living Orwell. We're playing The Trial and The Castle in Animal Farm. All pigs are created equal. The first 42 years of my life, 1984 was in the future. Now it's 28 years in the past. It's curious to see a date so distant in the past that was unimaginably far away in the future when I was 7. I remember in the 6th grade finding it unimaginable I'd live to see the year 2000. That year too has passed through the present in the hourglass between the future and the past.

Waiting for the prescription, between turning in the canisters and picking up the new ones, I went to the coffee shop to see who was there and to swill down some warm brew. Looking forward to one of Selma's scones was my motivation to make the trip to town less utilitarian. The Cubans coming to this county are offering us some wonderful food in nice restaurants that are affordable. A lot of people are snooty toward the Cubans coming to the county, but I'm reminded of that quotation I see on facebook sometimes about disliking something you don't know anything about being a good example of ignorance. That's not near the exact words; it's memory of my interpretation of its meaning. I can't turn my back on good people just because their family heritage is a Spanish speaking country. Lord have mercy. My heritage is exiled English Quaker, a man of constant sorrow, and hillbillies from there on. A couple of generations in the city didn't eliminate any of the hillbilly, and that's a good thing. When I discovered mountain culture, I discovered the home of my soul. So somebody else is a kid growing up, suddenly you have to leave with mommy and go to America where they talk another language and you're a stranger, don't know any English, you're supposed to be in school and you don't know what any of it is about. You do the best you can, the momentum makes you conscientious, you do well and people accuse you of living on drug money when what you're doing is getting out of south Florida for a better place to live.

I never dreamed I would become somebody who frequents a coffee shop. I'm reminded of my grandfather in Kansas City going to Tony's bar, showing off his four year old grandson sitting on a stool at the bar next to grandpa. Tony's was grandpa's hangout. I have that experience now in a coffee shop. I go in, sit down, whoever is there is whoever is there. I never imagine who might be there. I like to go in and see who's there. It's always friendly company. I've seen a few that were not, but only in subtle ways they didn't think showed. A cluster of four, Joe, Tim, Bob and Guy were actively engaged in conversation. I gave them the nod of recognition, sat down and told Selma I need a scone. I never dreamed I would one day walk into a coffee shop and need a scone. The deal is, I never had such high hopes for myself. It had never occurred to me before Selma's coffee shop that I could enjoy having my fill of Kenyan coffee and a freshly in-house made scone with people I enjoy talking with. I did like a kid skipping rope with a kid at each end twirling two ropes at once, listening to what they were talking about, subjects we often talk about in new forms, feeling the rhythm of the 4-way active conversation, eventually fell into the rhythm and jumped in with whatever I felt worth saying. Every one of these guys I enjoy listening to and talking with, individually and in group. They're good people and I don't mean pious good. Selma is a good one to jump in and join the conversation. It's lively. I never dreamed I would see a scene such as this could take place in Sparta. It's like something out of a foreign movie. And sometimes I need subtitles.

I never get to spend enough time talking with Joe until today. I like hearing what he has to say on whatever the subject of the moment may be. We tend to survey what we gather from our various news sources and attempt to find a balanced way of seeing whatever it is. I suspect that's the thread that runs through all of us, looking for a balanced point of view. When Bob brought up republicans in Congress, like what's behind what they're doing, I said racism and he said no. We didn't argue. I'm saying when we have black this and that on television and gay this and that on television, all of it sympathetic, it doesn't mean the people not watching those particular shows, the majority, are over racism. Half our white population is racist. It wasn't long ago it was all racist. This is, after all, the South. Racism is not specific to the South. In the western states they hate the Native Americans, their version of the N word. It's only about having an other to hate. It's about egoism, me first, everybody else last. Unfortunately, that's what American individualism has come to in the post-1980 age of Narcissus. I don't think this means it has changed. It's always been like this. Denial is not as easy as it used to be. Television keeps us thinking everybody is prosperous and happy with an explosion on every corner and law enforcement keeping us safe from fill-in-the-blank. This was not what we talked about in the coffee shop today. It's my own digression. Though this is the sort of thing we talk about.

We all wound down at the same time, it seemed like, and all of us went out the door at the same time. It was at least an hour in good company. It is refreshing to be with people who are paying attention to the context of their lives, attempting to understand that which cannot be understood. It doesn't matter if it's about the Marx Brothers or Tibetan Shamanism, I enjoy good conversation between people who can listen as well as talk. This bunch today was a good balance of listeners and talkers. Everyone was heard and everyone felt free to speak. Bob had to go off on a cell phone journey to a corner to talk, the only cell phone interruption. And we didn't even talk about him while he was gone. By this time in my life I have found a good balance of people I know. About half my associations are with mountain people and about half with people here, like me, from other places. I like that I am comfortable flowing freely from one culture to the other. It is two different cultures. The early at least 20 years, maybe 25, I felt like I was on a bridge between the culture I came from and the culture I'm in here in the mountains. I remember a time ten or more years ago when I felt like I'd set foot on land on the mountain side of the bridge. Since then I'm of the culture in my heart as much as anyone born here. Now, it's not a pull this way and that, wavering between the two cultures. Now that I'm in one and committed to it, I find associations with people from off the mountain easier than ever.

air bellows outdoor art museum

 

 

 

*

@ SELMA'S COFFEE SHOP SPARTA

          franz kline



This morning I was getting ready to drive to town. It started raining. Then it rained harder, and harder. Kept it up. I started getting restless like waiting for water to boil. I said: This is the day I get wet. And walked to the car, soaked from the knees down by the time I reached it. Naturally, a leaf stem fixed itself under the wiper on the driver side, right in the middle where it leaves the curve streak across the glass exactly in my field of vision. Like with the wet, just another inconvenience, no big deal on a day of inconveniences. In town, cars, pickups and trucks lined all the way to the other end of town out of sight both directions. Cars parked in every parking spot in Sparta. This is what happens when it rains. It's like everybody goes to Sparta. Oh boy, it's raining, let's go to Sparta. It's like the harder it rains the more cars are in town. I found a place to park and went into the coffee shop. The rain stopped. Had a cup of Zambian coffee.


Friday when I was in there late in the day, Johnny Violin and his wife Lisa deMilo came in. They are here from Miami. I think he is Czech and she is Cuban. Retired stage people. He had an orchestra of violins in Miami, cotillion dance music. They have opened for all the big names like Sinatra, Tony Bennett and the whole list. They are in their 80s and exhibit the freedoms of 80 year olds. They got into a back and forth comedy routine, just talking, but having fun at it. I was hearing Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. I mentioned the likeness. They broke out laughing. Both said, He got it! It's like one of those things they put on facebook that you click like and share if you recognize it, something from the 50s like a clothespin. I hesitated a split-second before I said it, not certain how she would she would take to the Imogene Coca likeness. Lisa took it as I meant it, a great comedienne. I've been interested to watch her when she's in a big crowd of people, like a wine-tasting at the coffee shop on a Friday night. When Lisa wants everybody's attention, she has it right now. She has that kind of a command of the people around her. You might say she's aware of her context.


The new coffee shop, two doors up the street from the original, is much bigger, but does not feel less cozy. It's just bigger. Same good feeling. It's an intimate feeling. At the same time, a group of people can be sitting around a table talking and no one anywhere else will hear them. Conversations around the place will be more private in that there is more space. I can't say it feels better than the other place, because it feels the same. Just bigger.

DUCHAMP AND ME

marcel duchamp, mile of string, 1942

The night before an opening of a modern art show in New York, 1942, Marcel Duchamp and Andre Breton went in and strung the place with a mile of string. Duchamp was more an artist of the mind than one to make things. His activity was playing chess. At the time of the end of WW1, he put aside what he called "easel paintings," using brush or pen to make a likeness. He started finding what he called "ready mades" like a bottle drying rack, a bicycle wheel, a snow shovel. A porcelain urinal was one of his most famous ready-mades. He entered it into a show of modernists knowing if he put his name on it, it would be accepted into the show automatically. He wrote a name R Mutt on it and it was rejected. Now the urinal with the name R Mutt and the story is the work of art. Mornings, he would stand on a short stool, hold a meter length of rope, drop it, and the shape it made on the floor was his work of art for the day.

I have forced myself to contradict myself in order

to avoid conforming to my own tastes.

--Marcel Duchamp

For artists that follow, Duchamp opened the door to seeing art more for the essence of what art is than for making things. At the same time he freed the artists of the world he also presented an advanced challenge to see art in a whole new way. He seems to me like a soul sent to earth to give the artists a new way of seeing, non-retinal, as Duchamp called his way of making art. It's tempting to say his art is an idea more than an object, but when he presents an object, the object itself is the idea. He came to New York to get away from the German invasion of France, where he stayed the rest of his life. The generation of American artists following the abstract expressionists, like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and others, found him and spent time with him, learned from his presence what they could. Anyone who played chess was welcome.

let's play chess



In my own art form, I make art the "easel" way. I've been maligned for it by artist friends all the way along. "That's not mainstream." My answer to that is once a thing is mainstream it's over. What we call modern art has changed fairly rapidly as it has progressed from Impressionism to Conceptualism and the Post-Modern. I've been told by a guy who painted colors that idiots paint realism. Other friends tell me abstraction is where it's at. I like abstraction a lot. It really is my favorite form of painting. I like realism too. I like everything in between and beyond. I happen to like painting realism. The part of the world I live in, the mountains, realism is what they appreciate. That's ok by me. If I lived in an urban pit I'd probably paint abstraction. I think of abstraction as urban painting. I live in the country and I want to paint by a country aesthetic. I'm not interested in having shows in California or anyplace. That part of art making doesn't enchant me. I don't like being the artist at the opening, sucking up to the rich, talking about myself like I'm something besides a Joe living in semi-poverty in the mountains.

I don't want to climb the ladder of gallery shows, sales, and all that. I want my painting to matter where I live. Beyond where I live, I don't care. I have a natural talent for portraits, so I'm painting portraits of musicians of this part of the mountains. It's my way of pointing the finger at them, saying they're worth hearing. They are artists who make their art relevant to home, to where they live. I want my art relevant to home. Like a mountain musician, I figured out my art form instead of learning it from teachers. I reckon I'm what's called an "untrained" artist, a folk artist. Maybe so. That's as good a thing to be called as any. Until the time I started painting mountain musicians I felt like I was practicing, teaching myself by doing. Now I want to make my paintings a community service somehow. Not for the money. I want them to stay in the county as much as possible. I feel like I'm honoring the musicians and the tradition, saying these people rate notice. At least that.

I just now went off into a reverie of explaining how I arrived at painting the lower part of the background of the Ralph Stanley picture a soft yellow. I remembered talking with Elizabeth Davis, an artist I knew would understand a visual subtlety. The white between the white hats was a darker shade of white than the white between the black suits. She knew exactly what I meant. It was refreshing to be able to talk about something like that with somebody who gets it. I try explaining the same thing to somebody else and their eyes glaze over and they're sawing Zs within. Remembering how refreshing it was to be talking with Elizabeth I'd been wondering if we'd ever meet. I've been waiting for years to tell her I love her abstractions. Finally got it said. She is quite a respectable artist. I look forward to seeing her again at Selma's. It's a curious thing about Selma's, the people drawn to the place, it's like something in a European city. In Sparta. It flows perfectly with Sparta. Enough people are here now who like to sit and talk with others about whatever comes up and sip good coffee in a happy place. 

*  

NEWS OF THE DAY

lisa lozano, you are here

All day yesterday the news went back and forth, the rebels are taking control, no Khadafi's supporters are taking charge, no, the rebels.... This morning rebels broke into Khadafi's compound and tore it up. No Khadafi. They don't know where he is. He may turn up in Venezuela. Who knows? Who cares? Now, a revolution that started because it started, a popular revolt without leaders that set a momentum going and stayed with it, assisted by Europe's military, and prevailed. Evidently the revolt was spontaneous and no one was seeking power. It will be interesting now to see what comes up as a new governing body there. With the "help" of European and American power telling them what to do. It's a very delicate time there. Circling buzzards in the air, power plays on the ground. I don't know what it is about this Lybia ordeal that makes it feel so internationally important.



Heard some good news yesterday. In Afghanistan a couple of Taliban guys with guns took a man age 60 for a collaborator. He said he was applying for medical attention. The shot and killed him. The man's son and some others beat the Taliban guys to death with rocks. It put me in mind of the movie Legend Of The Fall I saw Sunday after the race. Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt. Father and son, another son and 2 ranch hands in Montana had taken all they cared about taking from county law enforcement. They shot them down to the ground, buried them in a secluded place and got away with it. They had good reason, like the guys in Afghanistan had good reason.



In today's mail was a movie from netflix, a documentary of Brazilian artist Vik Muniz working on a project involving the "pickers" at the Rio de Janerio dump, the people who go through the trash picking up recyclables. It's a good paying job. He made portraits of several of the workers using objects found in the dump, like bottle caps, every kind of thing. They made beautiful portraits. He made 4'x6' photographs of them and sold the photographs for $250 thousand, the money went to the pickers in Brazil. Vik Muniz hoped his project would improve the lives of the pickers, giving them a boost. With that and some other money from surprise sources involving the pictures, the boosted self-esteem of the people concerned, they turned the job of picking up recyclables from the trash into something organized and respectable. The film is a tear-jerker from joy.



In Selma's coffee shop today talking with Selma and a few others. Artist Elizabeth Davis came in. I'd never met her, but have known her paintings for several years. I've seen a show by her at the library and several things at the art shop in town, something here, something there. We had a few moments of good conversation. I like her abstractions quite a lot. She largely uses the colors of autumn; browns, yellows, reds. To my eye, her painting has an Eastern European feel about it. At Selma's I have had conversations with people that make it hard for me to believe we're in Sparta. That's what I and the others like about the place. It's a happy, feel-good kind of place. Hard feelings belong outside the door. I find I think in terms of "we" about Selma's coffee shop. We who go there regularly, everyone who stops in there. It's an atmosphere of people together, enjoying conversation and good coffee. And the best part about the place: the right people don't go there. I'd never go there if they did.



Driving home from town I heard about the Virginia earthquake pulling into Food Lion parking lot. When I emerged from the car I saw Liz Dalton and she mentioned it. In the store I heard people talking about it. Driving home, it's all they were talking about on NPR radio until I turned it off. Grew very weary of NPR people talking with the fake excitement of Fox News and the British tabloid press, on and on about something very few people noticed. The ones that did notice were carried away with excitement and drama. It grew so tiresome listening to the exaggerated efforts to make something big of it, something that happened for about half a minute, if it lasted that long. The way they talk about weather now, like 2" of snow is a blizzard everybody will be snowed in indefinitely is part of a new take on the news to tell it with drama. Be afraid, it's telling us, be very afraid. You're so much easier to control when you 're afraid.  



*

AFTER VUILLARD

vuillard

Skeeter and the Skidmarks played at Woodlawn tonight, but I stayed home. I didn't feel like spending $15 for gas. I don't mind the length of the ride, and hour each way, because the music at the other end is worth the drive. This most recent surge of inflation following the lead of the oil corporations has stripped me bare. I hear people from all around me talking about this surge taking them under. This is where the trouble starts. What our republican representatives don't seem to get is putting people into poverty creates crime. Of course, they don't mind, because prison construction stocks continue to rise. All the more justification for police state, which the republicans step-by-step have taken us into, with intent. Police state isn't because of terrorism. Terrorism was the justification, not the reason.



I stayed home this Friday night for free, though talked on long-distance phone for probably what it would have cost to drive to Woodlawn. Earlier, I painted khaki long-sleeved shirt and khaki pants on Cleve Andrews playing a fiddle. Maybe about half way into the khaki part. Khaki is a very odd color. Mine is not exactly khaki, but khaki comes in about 30 shades, at least, so I made one of those shades, maybe. Doesn't matter. It looks like khaki and that's all I care about. I'm thinking of this painting as my Vuillard. The background color suggests Vuillard to me, makes me want to make a wall paper with a repeating pattern like Vuillard and use his approach to the clothes. I like Vuillard's painting an awful lot. They're easy to overlook, but they reward a good look. Working on Cleve's shirt and pants, something about the way I was making folds felt like Vuillard.



Here comes Caterpillar. When I'm sitting still watching a movie or talking on the phone, she is off in her sleeping place. When I sit at the computer, here she comes, wants to be on my lap, wants both hands on her, one on her head, one on the back of her neck. She likes me to hold her face in the palm of my hand with my fingers over her head like holding a baseball with ears. She only likes it for a certain amount of time. Beyond a certain moment it goes from comfort to threat. The first slight move indicating she's ready for me to let go is when I take my hand away. If I continue to hold, she'll get anxious. Here she is now, tugging at the leg of my pants with one claw, the doorbell. Let me in. She's appealing to me with big eyes, "hold me," and I appeal to her to let me be, both hands are busy. She tugs again. I reach down and rub the top of her head with 2 fingers for a moment. She has become jealous of my time at the computer. I can watch a movie all day and she'll never offer to get on my lap. Sit at the computer and here she comes. I pick her up. She doesn't ask a lot.



Earlier in the day, I was sitting watching a movie and a big jet, sounded like F15 or F16, flew over so close to the ridges that if I'd been outside I could have seen the pilot. It was loud like a clap of thunder close by. Caterpillar was on my lap, her head jerked up and eyes got big. She has known the sound all her life, but we don't usually hear them this close to the ground, so loud. I'll never forget the time at the Circle L having lunch with Jim Winfield. A jet flew over, I said, "The sound of freedom." He barked fast as a knee jerk, "No it's not!" I confess I love it when a jet like that flies over. It's thrilling. A thing that can fly that fast I can't help but be in awe of. And the pilot I'm in awe of. The people designing it, the people that made the parts, the people that put the parts together. These jets are awe-inspiring machines. I'm glad I don't have to jump into a hole in the ground when I hear one.



Consistently, I'm meeting people at Selma's I like. A couple days ago I enjoyed getting to know Edita of Gdansk, Poland. She's been in this country long enough to know her way around, raise some kids, know the language well. We talked at length about the comfortable air in Selma's coffee shop, agreeing it was Selma, herself, who generated the atmosphere that filled the place such that I feel it walking through the doorway. It's like outside the door I'm in the world of hard edges. When I go through the door into Selma's, I'm passing into a world of soft edges. The people on the inside are friendly, which is not necessarily the case outside the door. The air inside is welcoming. Anyone who wants to come in is welcome. I'm seeing a variety of people gather there. One thing I see that runs through about all the ones I know that go there, a certain degree of mindfulness, people largely self-aware. I'm not saying everyone is any one thing or way of being. Each one is uniquely who that individual is. The atmosphere in the place allows expression of who you really are. They all strike me as good people. We of the county are fortunate to have Selma among us.



*

SHOWING WILLARD'S PORTRAIT

caterpillar

Big thunderstorm a while ago lasted a long time, poured the rain, sky banging and rumbling for something like an hour. Caterpillar hid in her most secure hiding place. During a quiet time she came out of her cubbyhole behind the tub. I was sitting, looking at a Harper's magazine. Didn't want to use the computer or the jukebox or watch a movie. Nothing electronic. Caterpillar sat on the local newspaper lying on the floor beside my chair. I picked her up, turned the light out, held her in a cradling way she likes and sang her song to her. Right away she started purring and the eyes were closed. The next round of thunder kept her anxious, but I sang to her in a whispering tone that held her attention better than a loud voice. I held her for quite awhile in the semi-dark until the storm passed. She got up on her feet and jumped to the floor. I think she went to her present sleeping place in a box.



Saw Duke Bledsoe at Selma's coffee shop yesterday. It's always a treat to see Duke. He told me several stories from the past sitting at the bar with a moca before hitting the road to Woodlawn for the show. He kept me entertained for a half hour with rattlesnake experience stories, like the time he and somebody else were out in wilderness somewhere, and the other old boy was petrified of snakes. They came up on a rattlesnake and killed it. Then a couple hundred little ones went squirming about. He said the other fellow went into a stomping fit, Duke too, and thought they got them all. Another time, Duke lifted a rock and a rattlesnake under it coiled up. He let the rock back down without incident. He picked one up in an old-timey hay rake once that was striking at him on the tractor, but couldn't reach him. When he saw what was happening, he loosened the pressure of the hay on the rake and the snake wiggled out and went on its way, most likely with some broken ribs. Or maybe not. Duke is not one to be afraid of snakes. He's respectful, but they don't scare him, that is, past the initial moment of seeing it when a shiver runs up your spine.



Have finished the painting of Willard Gayheart up to a touch here, touch there, and signing it. After I sign it I don't ever touch paint to it again. As it is when it's signed is as it is. I'm happy with it. Of course, when I look at it I tend to see what it is not instead of what it is. I focus on the zones where I had a difficult time and am not completely satisfied with, but I can't get it any closer without making it worse. As with everything in art, there is no finishing it, only abandoning it when it has enough balance to stand on its own. It feels like I reached my goal the best I was able. I set out to make it look like you are looking at Willard, not just facial features, but the essence, the feeling of actually seeing Willard eyeball to eyeball. No matter the details I'm not satisfied with, the most important part I am fully satisfied with. The eyes look like they can see. When I paint eyes, I fuss over them and fuss over them and then it happens, they can see. I don't touch them again.



Painting the face was the same. While I'm filling in the features, the roundness in a cheek, the lines that run up the sides of the nose, the shadow under the chin, the shadow under the lower lip, the glasses where I don't paint the glass but it looks like you're seeing through glass, I am projecting feeling into the shapes, shades and lines to feel like seeing Willard when you know him. I want to paint who his, not just what he looks like. Of course, I can only paint the Willard I know. I paint Willard the musician. I do this to celebrate Willard as an important musician in the music of the Central Blue Ridge. I don't mean important like self-important, but one active in music with 3 superlative bluegrass/old-time bands along the way and several excellent recordings by each of them, Willard playing solid rhythm guitar and singing good old songs like Take Me Back To Tulsa. Yellow Rose of Texas he made his own on the Skeeter and the Skidmarks project. He sang several songs he wrote with Alternate Roots, like Robin D, a river boat in Charleston, West Virginia. Willard's music with his son-in-law Scott Freeman is music that won't be appreciated until off in the future when people will say he was among us and we didn't even notice.



I was taking the painting to Woodlawn to let Willard see it as soon as it was done. I wanted to bring it back home for a week to finish it and sign it and put the hanging wire on the back. I took it into the coffee shop to show it to Selma, propped it on a chair and left it there while I sat at the bar. Duke Bledsoe walked in. I said to Duke, 'I just finished this picture of you.' On sight I saw Willard. Duke has a moustache similar to Willard's, white, and his facial structure is similar, wearing glasses and in a ballcap. He couldn't believe the likeness. He asked how I did it. Did I use a photograph? When did I get a picture of him? It was like a practical joke that didn't work. I had to confess it really was not him, but Willard Gayheart of Woodlawn. He knew Willard's pencil drawings, but didn't know he was a musician. From there we sat at the bar and he entertained me with poisonous snake stories. The joy of the coffee shop is that I never know who I'll see there and it always turns out to be a good time.



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UNREPENTANT NERD

that's dudley in the middle


A few minutes ago I was explaining to a friend the nature of my present flow. It's not something I look at much, so it became something interesting to explore. With Social Security I'm able to do nothing when I feel like it, take naps when the need arises, and do what I want to do that doesn't pay anything. Everything I want to do doesn't pay at all. In a time of perpetual war, I have nothing to offer. All I have to offer goes with peace, which is why I am looking more forward to the thousand years of peace, a time when I'll be able to actively contribute in a world that values what I have to offer. So will an awful lot of other people. Now that I don't need a job, I can do things I believe are important instead of keeping at somebody else's business open.



Recalling back when I was new in the mountains, looking back at what I was leaving behind, what it added up to was a life of uncertainty about everything. The city was all about mind. I was wanting to develop heart, so I tried life in the country, the ultimate country, the mountains. It's been here that my heart has grown in influence on my behavior and attitude toward life. It's hard to look at how I've changed as a result of the development of heart. By heart I also mean emotion. I am more able now to give my emotions the right to express. I know I've become tender hearted, because an awful lot can bring tears that I allow to flow. I'm too old to worry about how it looks. I'm just a sappy old curmudgeon turd. I figure half the people I know are ok with it and half are not.



Had a funny moment at the coffee shop yesterday, which amounts to seeing Dudley Carpenter. I've known Dudley probably 8 years. He taught me how to be a dj for the radio show. He did it well. I did with the learning from him the way an artist of any sort must do after learning about one's art form in school and what is right and what is wrong, unlearn everything, start over on your own. Dudley taught me to do a professional hour with perfect timing for commercials, the half hour and the hour, when at WCOK that stuff was nothing but casual. I wanted to do it live, spontaneously with very little planned. I didn't do what he taught me, but used what I learned to inform a more spontaneous way.



Dudley has an attitude toward life that is refreshing. His varieties of art forms that he likes are very, very different from mine. He likes Broadway musical type music, though not exclusively by any means, and choral music. I like mountain music, some rock, reggae, classical, jazz, and so forth. Our circles might intersect at classical music and jazz, which would be about the only place. It's like that with a lot of our likes and tastes, they intersect at one point or two. I think it's sense of humor that bonds us. We are continually cutting up verbally. It's a fun way to talk. We kind of take each other all over the place conceptually. Beats the hell out of bitching and complaining that Sparta isn't what we want it to be. Dudley is an unrepentant nerd, as am I. It's like cousins who haven't been around each other since childhood.



The picture above looks like it could be at a neighborhood bar in some city called Tony's. It's coffee in place of beer at Selma's coffee shop. She took the picture. I asked her to get a picture because my friends are complaining to me about my pictures, Don't you ever smile? After living so long in the mountains among country people, where people who smile all the time look like they're selling something, I too have become suspicious of big smiles. I call it advertisements for self. I'm pleasant, I'm easy to get along with, I'm really nice. Like children in a Chinese children's market, kids eyeballing people with "buy me" eyes. It's like the smiles are announcing, I have a price. Inquire within. I'm not for sale and don't feel a need to advertise myself with blinking lights or sparkling teeth. That's for other people. Anyway, I do have to concede to the culture I live in, at least some of the time. So I asked Selma to get some pictures of me smiling so I could put a smiling picture on facebook. Selma's is where I smile best. This picture of me looks like Lon Chaney as Quasimodo.



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