BUOYED ON THE DENSE MARINE

anselm kiefer, the red sea

Day 8 of blogathon calls for thinking about a red ocean and thinking about a blue ocean. First thing that came to mind for red ocean was this painting by Anslem Kiefer, which I have laid eyes upon. It is disturbing. It's huge. A bathtub of blood. It takes my mind to writer, Jerzy Kosinski, who sliced his wrists in a bathtub when he felt like he had nothing more to say. As we say round here, More power to ya, feller. This is where an ocean of blood takes my mind. Kiefer's paintings had a great deal to say about post-Nazi Germany with the Nazi period looming enormous in the national consciousness. I see in a sea of blood the earth wounded by international corporate indifferent excess, earth's wrists cut, waiting for spirit to rise and go on. I see what the Reagan revolution did to American democracy. I see red ocean an ending. The ocean fished out by corporate fisheries all around the globe. With sonar as advanced as it is now, the last fish will be found. I see the international economic system indifferent to humanity and all other life forms. They are a bloody danger to us. We sit back in the recliner and watch the water turn red, thinking, Cool. Punctuated by commercials. I see a society so deeply and vigorously dedicated to the false in just about everything, I'm reminded of the 1981 quotation from CIA director Wm Casey, appointed first thing by Reagan, "We'll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American people believe is false." The disinformation campaign was successful. Thirty-two years later, I see an ocean of blood. Y'all hadn't oughta sent me down this path. I can go to some dark places and not bat an eye.

 

 

I have a very powerful feeling I don't talk about, because I can't prove anything. I'm going by feeling, that I went out last time by way of a German concentration camp. First, a psychic told me; second I did a regression on my own and saw it. I suspect it has something to do with why I've spent a large part of my life with a major grudge against Germany, never even wanted to fly over the country. In 1954 I was in the 6th grade when Life magazine published the first photographs of the mounds of skeletal corpses, their lives wrecked and them killed by arrogant Christians. Those Christians were about like what has come forward in USA as Christian in our time. It's the reason church attendance in Europe is down to 10 percent, and in USA is shrinking fast. I have strong feelings about that time, shared by nobody around me, ever, except Jews I've known. In that time when the pictures were coming forward from the concentration camps, I became obsessed with the pictures. I remember a poem by Anthony Hecht, powerful poem, powerful as the bathtub of blood, of people digging their graves and being shot. I read that poem over and over, wallowed in it. I used free time on the destroyer in the Navy to read. I found the series of novels that Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone deBeauvoir wrote, each their own series of several long, intense, novels of the French Resistance during WW2. I was in resistance too, involuntarily incarcerated by a fascist government for being born male. I don't do well with authority. It's called ODD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, a scientific way of saying Taurus. And then to be born and raised up in that very same Christian mind. We become what we hate. I had to experience Christendom from the inside because I hated it so much last time around. Of course I would reject it and run for my life. The red ocean.

 

     

 

Time now to think of a blue ocean. I recall the summer of 1960 with Navy Reserve taking a two week ride on a destroyer with missiles out of San Diego. It was my first time on the ocean. I love riding the ocean. I felt the ocean under me then as I feel the ground under my feet now. I love what Walt Whitman called, the dense marine, and Homer called, the wine dark sea. Seasickness never overtook my belly. In the very worst storms, bad storms, I loved it. I loved it. When belly would start to feel queasy, I'd say to myself, I'd pay for this! I have stood on the top level of the ship where the guys that waved flags operated, hanging onto the rail, watching the front of the ship dive underwater and the whole front end rise up completely out of the water and splash back under, sending a huge wave over the top of the whole ship each time. It gave the sensation the ship went underwater. I held onto that railing taking it in the face like a cowboy in a water rodeo. I loved it. In those two weeks out of San Diego, I saw the Pacific was a gorgeous blue as I would imagine a blue diamond to look. I loved the blue of the Pacific Ocean. I ignored the rules against gawking. Was spoken to a few times about it, but so what. Speaking of blue ocean, I have an unfinished project in the house I've been looking at getting to in the next few days. It is a chunk of cement I picked up at a building site that had somehow fallen to the ground. The print of the grass it landed on is the underside. If its mass were liquid, it might fill two coffee mugs. As it landed it did a slow splash, and folded into itself. I see ocean splashing on a rock. I soaked it in a bucket of aqua blue latex paint, half and half with water, for a week or so. It sits on the square pedestal of half a very old brick so black it looks like it had been in a fire. I'm wanting to take some white oil paint thin on a brush and touch the edges of places that look like spray, give it the suggestion of surf. A still splash.

 

 snoopy and Charlie brown contemplate blue ocean

 

Blue ocean. In those first two weeks on the ocean I was 18. The blue Pacific in my memory has the translucence of wine. Later, I rode the Atlantic, a green ocean. The Pacific Ocean I felt was a majestic unknown. Those first days of my life on the sea, I thought of whalers from before electricity, sailing ships crossing the ocean carrying passengers. pirates. A friend who had some psychic about her told me I was a pirate in the Thirteenth Century along the northern African coast, meaning Mediterranean and open sea. It may have something to do with why I only wanted to dress up as a pirate for Halloween, or an Indian for the same reason. May have had several seafaring lifetimes. I did have a need all through my early years to be on the ocean. I needed to ride the ocean. Not always, at least once. For old times sake. Lord have mercy, it's a sight how I love the ocean. I think of the Pacific and see Gauguin paintings of Tahiti, those beautiful things that look like the light is shining through them from behind. I see Japanese paintings of the Pacific in its beautiful blue. Mount Fuji in the distance. California surfers hanging ten with a great white under them in the wave they're riding. The way I see it, everything in the ocean is looking for something to eat, and my meaty substance amounts to fish bait. I'm a worm with bones instead of a hook. I stay out of the ocean. My mortal frame has evolved for land. When I used to wonder where was my place on earth, I'd start with land. The ocean is so vast, so immensely indifferent to ego. The infinite ocean of love. It's equally immense in its beauty, in its deep translucence. Like in a blue diamond, there is no accounting for where the blue comes from. It's the mysterious blue of distance. Earth, the blue pearl, glows blue seen from out in space. This is our home in the universe, the Blue Pearl.      

the dark spot is the shadow of a moon eclipse

 

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PICTURES OF MY WORLD

vada, 2

Day 7 of the blogathon asks for pictures of one's creative space. My creative space is my head and heart. I'll start with the heart. Above is baby Vada, the child I fell in love with the day she was born. Her mother painted a wall flat black and Vada practices her art there.

vada art, age 2yr 2wk

 





Vada drew this image sitting on the kitchen floor. Her mother asked her to draw a picture of TJ and this is what she did. She concentrated such that she never lifted her mind from the image until it was done. She was drawing from her mind. It makes a perfect mask. I could cut out eye holes and wear it for a mask if it were on thicker paper. But I wouldn't cut holes in it. You can see the eyes, nose, mouth and an ear. She filled in the whole face. It is framed now and hanging on my wall. Willard Gayheart framed it. I was tickled out of my mind to get something by her before she evolved into stick figures.

 

 

found art

 

found art

 

found art

 



Found art is a regular feature of my blog. At top is what was left after a bank changed locations and took down the old sign. They left the fluorescent bulbs turned on at night, making this fabulous piece of Dan Flavin art in Sparta. Sparta doesn't have much public art. So I appreciate it where I find it. In the middle is a huge pile of silage (ground corn stalks) for dairy cows. The mound of silage is covered with white tarp held in place by black circles. I see this once a week and love it every time I see it. At bottom is something found in the basement at Crystal and Justin's. Crystal had been spray painting something. While I was getting some pictures of it, she said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Found art." She said, "Oh my God!" (She said God a few notes higher than Oh my, Southern style.) These are examples of art I see everywhere.

 



steve lewis and josh scott

skeeter and the skidmarks

 

scott freeman

edwin lacy and willard gayheart

 

bobby patterson

the crooked road ramblers at the Jubilee in Sparta

 

Above are my artist friends. These are the artists I spend time with and call my friends. At top is Steve Lewis, Master bluegrass banjo and guitar picker, good story teller, and his step-son Josh Scott, who Steve raised as his own, who became his best friend and his bass player. The painting on the wall behind Steve is my portrait of Willard Gayheart, the guitar player with Skeeter and the Skidmarks. Willard is 81 and has been picking all his life. This means he's good. He plays rhythm so well the musicians of the region love to make music with Willard for his near-perfect rhythm. Willard doesn't strum. He hits an upper string and a lower string, individually, each lick. When he has Orange Blossom Special going on, it works him. The pencil drawings on the walls are his. The venue is his frame shop/gallery. Willard has been singing with a Galax bluegrass band, the Highlanders, over forty years. The ones living are all old guys now. Their fiddler, Buddy Pendleton, is one of the great ones. He's near gone now, I hear. Skeeter and the Skidmarks made two cds on Hay Holler label in the early 90s. Then Edwin Lacy, banjo, had to leave the area for several years, so Scott and Willard started a new band, Alternate Roots, an amazing bluegrass band. Steve Lewis played banjo in the band. They made 4 albums and the bass player had to leave the band. Alternate Roots disbanded, Edwin returned and Skeeter started back up. You can hear them on YouTube. I've made hundreds of music videos that are on YouTube. My name there is hobblealong1. The fiddle is Scott Freeman, who also plays mandolin. He is married to Willard's daughter, Jill, a good bluegrass singer who doesn't like the stage. That's Sandy Mason's head sticking up from behind Willard. She plays bass. Oh they have a good sound. Scott and Edwin composed several of the songs they recorded. The song they open shows with is one of Scott's compositions, Groundhog Shuffle. It is mandolin and banjo mayhem. They're putting together a new "project" now.           I put Bobby Patterson's picture in there because Bobby is important in my life. He has a music store in Woodawn, Virginia, and a recording studio in the basement. Old-Time Herald magazine was begun in his basement in the 1970s. Over the last 40 or more years he has recorded old-time bands of Southwestern Virginia, Heritage Records, and has a catalog that is out of this world for music of the region. He played guitar on the finest old-time album my ears have ever beheld, JUNE APPLE, with Tommy Jarrell on fiddle, Kyle Creed on banjo and Audine Lineberry on bass. Jarrell and Creed have been dead at least thirty years. Both are legends and were legends while they were living. Bobby is one of the Highlanders and also sings with gospel groups. First time I met Bobby, we'd known OF each other for years, I said, "In my way of seeing, you're the most important man in Southwest Virginia." He said, "Thank you." He knew what I was saying. Thanks to Bobby we have a great collection of old-time music of this region on record and he puts together recordings of the Galax fiddlers convention every year. Plus, he's a terrific musician. His dad was a legend fiddler of his generation. Our bond is our dedication to the music.          At bottom is Kilby Spencer on fiddle with his band the Crooked Road Ramblers. Great fiddler, son of a great fiddler, Thornton Spencer, who is in his later years the great old fiddler of his generation. Thornton's wife Emily plays banjo and sings with their band, Whitetop Mountain Band. In my own personal estimation, WMB is the hottest old-time band in the region right now, and has been for years. They are most characterized by their drive and their musicianship. Kilby knows so many songs he's become a living encyclopedia of the music of the Central Blue Ridge. Kilby's aim in life is to be a great fiddler. He is well on his way and has a momentum going that will take him there. His band has good drive too.   

 



medea by tj worthington

on the side of the house approaching from parking space

donkey jack

 

Closer to home now. The painting above, Medea, I did something like 15-20 years ago. It doesn't leave the house. It is on my wall all the time. I don't put it up for sale because I don't want to lose it. Plus, I'm the one it's important to. I see it a stage with Medea in foreground planning what she has to do, pacing, the rock behind her a Greek rock mountain and the Greek archipelago, the night sky howling its horror seeing what Medea has in her mind. Below Medea is the a little sign I put on the house soon after I moved in. The first one rotted away with time. This is the second one. And here comes Donkey Jack. This is one of the first pictures I got of him. That's my friend Jack the saxophone player. I put hee-haw and braying out of my mind and I hear a saxophone. It is the same sound, low range tenor, a note John Coltrane might have found. The donkeys have been a great source of creative inspiration since they've arrived in my life. I thank God every day in my heart I've lived long enough to know donkeys.

 

 

 

found art

 

 

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IT'S SUCH A PERFECT YEAR

found art

Day 6 of blogathon concerns one's idea of a perfect year in art. I don't have a perfect year for art. I am not one for factory production, nor am I one for perfect. "Art" is not a career, a business, something I worry over and push myself to accomplish and keep on accomplishing. I don't put things in shows or competitions--have a little bit in the past, where I learned not to. I don't pursue galleries. In Sparta some artists who have moved here from other places have socialized into an artist co-op. I've been asked to join, but it's $40 a month and I don't have the money. I could volunteer a day a week and do it for $20. I still don't have the money. I don't want to anyway, but don't have the money, so it doesn't matter if I want to or not. Forty dollars was a tank of gas last year. I've been told in a snippy way by Ms Bizzibodi that it would be to my benefit to pay more attention to that bunch. One of those moments when she was talking with somebody in the coffee shop, time to put on her coat and go out the door, on the way it's, Oh, TJ, It would be to your benefit to pay more attention to these people. All I could think was, My? Benefit? Couldn't say anything, it was such an obvious bitch-slap. Satisfied she had her say, she wiggled her tochas out the door. One day I walked into their showroom and was met by another of them that starts with a B, "How long has it been since YOU'VE been in here!" I about turned and walked out the door, but said casually, "About a year." She said, "That's what I thought!" I said, "Then you'd be right." They talk down to me like that because they think I'm stuck up for not wanting to be a part of them. OK. I'm stuck up. I confess. Besides, I'm not necessarily drawn to company that only speaks to me in wisecracks. If I were to talk to them in the tone of voice they use to talk to me, their ass-ends would be hopping up and down like Donkey Jenny's looking for somebody to kick. Stuck up is the least they'd be saying about me. They'd call me stuck up for a compliment.  

 

jeff gordon pit stop

 

Long before these artists showed up from the Flatland suburbs, I'd found my artist friends in musicians. At least my first whole lotta years only a few other visual artists were here. We knew each other. I've found my need for the company of other artists in musicians. I fell into appreciation of mountain musicians for their art. Mountain music is an art form, an art form as pure as Chinese poetry, until recording and money got involved. The people that played the pure art form, fiddler Arnold Spangler, banjo Bertie Dickens, are long dead and gone, and everybody before them. Fiddlers conventions changed the music, recording changed the music, money changed it. I'm not saying it's better or worse now than it was a century ago, only different. The culture has changed. It's automatic that the music changes with the culture. I found in the musicians I became acquainted with some serious artists. Scott Freeman, who is around 40, has composed I can't imagine how many songs in the contemporary style mountain music is played. He's made at least ten cds, every one of them dynamite. His band Alternate Roots played music as art. His other band, Skeeter and the Skidmarks play music as art too. He and his musician friends do not draw attention to themselves, on or off stage. They just make music. Scott is a master mandolin player and fiddler. He's an artist. Back when I had the radio show, I made a cd for a show from every song Scott had recorded to then that he had composed. It had at least 16 songs, just the ones that he had recorded himself. It made a great radio show. I have found mountain music to be an art form I hold as high as any other art form and any other form of music. I have the same artistic respect for fiddler Pop Birchfield as for Jascha Heifitz. There is a kind of joke that goes around, what's the difference between a fiddle and a violin? The answer is, Whoever is playing it. Then I met Tim Smith, who is from this county, bluegrass fiddler with the Bluegrass Cardinals when younger, has played fiddle with several bluegrass bands and has done fiddle tracks on albums by about every bluegrass band recording. Several bluegrass albums of his own. He also plays classical. He teaches classical violin, and he teaches bluegrass fiddle. When Tim plays it, it's both violin and fiddle.

 

bill birchfield, son of pop birchfield

he made the fiddle

it sounds good too

 

Seems to me, this year is as perfect a year for art as I could ask. I mean I'm well into the flow of writing in the blog every day, such that it's become what I do. I usually keep something of visual art going. Have just finished the Sparta courthouse boxes. Have begun a Walt Whitman box. And I have another wooden box with a specific plan. It just needs the doing. It is a square box with a sliding lid. It was made to hold two bottles of George Dickel Tennessee whiskey. I don't know what it is unless it would be bourbon. I can't drink bourbon. Once my palate discovered "mountain spring water," nothing else satisfies. I'm looking at putting a mirror in the bottom of the box so it will be a mirror hanging on the wall, and in the front of the box vertical posts like prison bars. Slide open the lid and there you are behind bars. A surrealist toy. Fun. Today I attempted to paint Donkey Jack in a dark red with blue lines. It was a "sketch" toward something I'm wanting to do next. I'm wanting to find a way to paint Jack and Jenny simply, but it still has to look like them. I'm making pencil sketches of donkeys. The one today showed I'm not there yet. I did it for the experience of it. Next one will be closer to what I'm looking for and the next one closer than that. Donkey proportions are peculiar. Huge head in relation to the body, body like a barrel and thin legs. The big ears are another feature out of proportion. No matter how big I make them, I go back and make them bigger. It is the proportions that are giving me a fit. It doesn't seem like a head that big goes with the body. It is their huge jawbones that make their heads big. I want to make donkey images that are not Hee-Haw humor. An awful lot about donkey falls under slapstick. Might see about bringing out the humor in them, but not the cliché humor associated with donkeys. I want to somehow make them give the appearance of a rubber stamp in bright colors, all colors maybe. Wouldn't a black donkey with white belly and nose be fabulous on a field of just the right green. Blue donkeys, red donkeys, yellow donkeys. That's the direction I'm looking, colorful donkeys suggesting big rubber stamps--if I can get that. It may change before I get there. I'll let it roll and see where it goes. Did you ever see two kittens tear into each other and roll around on the floor like a wobbly bowling ball? Let it roll.

 

dale junior a-runnin his wheels off

 

I like these points in the daily prompts for each day's writing. I chose today not to go there, because it doesn't apply to me. And when I get right down to admitting what I'm seeing, it seems somewhat academic, though not meaning the standard association of the word, the reason I hesitate. The perfect year sounds too much like a church retreat question to answer in a circle of folding chairs. That's kind of vicious, and not how I mean it, but I think what this is getting at is not something that applies to me. If I were in the city and showing at a gallery, getting set for the next show, I'd have to set goals and so forth to keep myself going. At this time in the life, I don't realistically look too far into the future. I can entertain looking a year ahead. I look forward to Jenny's baby donkey a year away. I can look ahead to something like that realistically, but as for watching my baby friend, Vada, grow up, not practical to look forward to it. Don't feel sorry for me. This is the best time of my life. And given the direction our racist government is going, I don't want to live very far into police state with tanks in the city streets and troops everywhere. I cannot ask for better than what I have. Netflix keeps me in international films three and four times a week. For me, that's the same as heaven. If heaven turns out to be a movie theater with all international films, I'll be at home. I've never been one to look to the future. I figure I'll go on like I'm going now, writing daily and painting some. I'm hoping more frequently over the next year. The DCP group is so inspiring to me I'm looking at new things to do, new ways to approach what I do. I look at this coming year being one of figuring out how I want to paint donkeys by trying different approaches. I see what I want, it's just  matter of getting there. Without it being a goal (gaol) I'll let it roll like a ball of two cats on the floor and see where it goes.

    

the eyes of the blogger, by Cheyanne, age 6

(that's some serious eye bags--it's a new day)

 

 

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MAPPING MY STUDIO SPACE

the road to independence

Day 5 of blogathon I squeeze down to one sentence: Bring to life the dynamics of your studio. This is serious mind. A studio is my life. The same chair I read, talk on the phone, listen to music and watch movies in is the chair I sit in while painting. I'll move the footstool and put a portable easel there with the canvas on it. An unfinished one has been on the easel over a year. Tired of that kind of painting--painting inside the lines. I want to approach painting in such a way that I'm not bored out of my mind with it before it's finished. For less articulate painting, I lay a piece of plywood, two by two and a half feet, on the footstool and use it for table top. The desk I write at is behind the chair. The chair is at the left of the desk from where I sit writing. The desk is in a corner with a big painting of a Chinese landscape behind, and in front of where I sit, a big painting of Meher Baba by Phyllis Ott. On the left of it the collection of rock, blues and reggae cds. On the right, the collection of classical, jazz and African cds. On a lower shelf, a bunch of books. Philip Roth's Exit Ghost between George Oppen's Collected Poems and Apollinaire's Alcools. Pictures on the walls all around, some photographs, some paintings, some by me, some by other people, five African masks; one, maybe two of them, "real." Home entertainment center against the wall in front of the chair. Flatscreen on the wall, and above it an oil on canvas portrait of my beloved cat, TarBaby, I will grieve the rest of my life, a dvd player, vcr, sound system with one wire, table loaded with dvds and cds. A couple of colored pencil drawings on the wall by Willard Gayheart. One of them is of me painting a portrait of him, Willard, and the other is Tommy Jarrell playing fiddle with Paul Brown (of NPR Morning Edition news) playing banjo. Paul Brown has recently retired from NPR. He's so great an old-time banjo picker, he's one of the rare people from Flatland who took to mountain music and made music like he was born in the mountains. Alice Gerrard has that quality too, to my limited ear.

the road to independence

Pictures of Meher Baba on the walls and one of Ganesh made in a dye process on cloth, behind glass in a frame. I love it. A friend brought it to me years ago from India, bought it in the Bombay airport from a vendor for next to nothing. It's probably made by somebody who makes the same image multiple times a day in a factory-like setting for a bowl of rice, maybe. I appreciate that about it as much as I appreciate the image itself, esp that it's Ganesh. Below it is my 22"x24" photograph life-size portrait of Meher Baba, head and shoulders, b&w photo hand-tinted in India by a devotee, so subtly it looks natural. It was given to me by Kitty Davy, one of Baba's circle of women devotees who lived on the Center at Myrtle Beach in her old age. It was 1976 that she handed it to me. It's in a gorgeous rosewood frame. She said someone at the Center in India had sent it to her and she didn't know what to do with it. She had no more room for pictures on the walls. She said if I'd like it I could take it with me. I about fell through the floor. Me? I deserve THIS? I'm not anywhere near deserving of anything so fine, so precious. She doesn't know me. This has to be a mistake. She's taken me for somebody else. She knows who she's giving it to. OK. Whatever. I'm certainly grateful to accept. It was like found money, but infinitely better. She said, "One day it will come to life for you." I did not understand what she meant then, and don't understand it now. It is the central image, the central point, the hub in my house. It is the focus point in this room I'm describing as my studio. In that way, it is a living image. Under it is a bookshelf with two rows of art books, mostly 20th Century; Brancusi, Duchamp, Warhol, Rivers, Johns, Rothko, Motherwell, Hockney, Serra, Surrealism, Dada, Minimalism, on and on. That's the nature of the collection. I love the art of the 20th Century.

 

the road to independence

 

I am currently exploring writing in my studio. I sit at a beautiful walnut desk of straight lines with a quarter inch sheet of glass on top. I bought it from an artist friend for so little it was the same as a gift. An HP laptop sits atop it. To the left of the laptop stands a block of wood 3.5 inches square, the cut off end of a 4x4. Around it on the desktop are 7 rounded stones of different colors, origins and sizes, and two such stones on top of it. I stack rocks on the wood block in moments when I'm writing and pause to scratch my head and ponder the next sentence, wait for it. I stack rocks to see how many I can stand. Four is the most I've been able to get. Can't make it with five. One of them is my universe rock, roundish from one way of looking at it, oval from the side. It is black with small whitish specks all over it of different speck sizes, like the night sky. It is smooth as a hen's egg and fits the palm of my hand like it's made for it. I call it the universe rock. I see in it the universe. Found it somewhere on the ground nearby, I have no recollection where, thirty-five-plus years ago. I always know where this rock is. It has spent several years outside living with the weather and the seasons as rocks do. I brought it back inside recently. It ended up on the desk. Then the block of wood came and the rock sat on top of it. I found some other rounded smooth rocks close by and stacked them. It doesn't hurt the glass top when they fall. They make a loud clack sound, though it's a soft landing with no sharp edges, no danger to the glass. How many rocks are on top, and which ones, has evolved into something like the arrangement of the day, since I stack rocks there every day. It took up spontaneously; the parts came together seemingly of their own volition. Now there are three rocks. Beside it, a 2cd case for Derek and the Dominoes Live at the Fillmore, 1970. One of the cds is in the player.  

 

the road to independence

 

The only studio need I can think of that would allow for ecstasy would be a warm floor in the winter. The floor is the same temperature as outside. When it's zero outside, the floor is zero. Waist-high it is 65 in the realm where the heater's air current flows. Cold feet make winter creativity difficult. It takes the zeal out of the will. This year I've bought especially warm socks and some good warm indoor boots. Tired of cold feet in winter. Best to sit with feet up and watch movies. Last night I watched a good documentary of the Persian Empire through existing ruins. It brought forward the realization I know nothing of Persia but Persian miniatures, Rumi, Hafiz, Zoroaster, and none of them very well. The Persian Empire played a role in the fate of the Old Testament Hebrews. And the Babylonian Empire. These are the foundations of the Middle East, like the Roman Empire is the foundation of Western Civ. Knowing nothing about the Babylonians or the Persians, I can't understand anything about the Middle East. The documentary brought it forward that the history of the Middle East is a vast gap in my at least cursory understanding of world history. I carry a great curiosity about origins. My wish list for what I'm exploring in my studio right now is more learning about Persia. It seems like I ought to know at least something about Persia before leaving the body this lifetime. This room I'm calling my studio is the inside of my head. It is where I live all day every day. One door goes to bedroom, another door goes to kitchen and bathroom, another door goes to storage rooms, and one door to outside. Three windows with no blinds or curtains, open to the world outside. It's the human zoo, here, where the critters outside look at the human behind the bars in the windows. As long as they can see the human is in its cage, they feel safe. When the door opens, they go flying in all directions, squirrels run across the road and up the trees. It's mayhem. And here come the donkeys. It's the ice cream man that lives in the human barn. Maybe he has a carrot.     

whitehead primitive baptist church

 

 

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