In the Eye of the Storm
I sit, removed and bemused, in the eye of the storm: searching for patterns in the chaos; trying to
discern melody in the cacophony; and passing a confused but benign judgment on all I survey.
I notice:
Every soldier on the parade ground has a unique uniform and is spontaneously composing his own march. Ethel Merman is belting out lullabies. Claudine Longet is breathlessly whispering rugby anthems. Somewhere among them my grandfather is savoring his rum toddy before he launches himself into oblivion, where he will join his wife. All is as it should be chez moi.
It occurs to me:
God is a great role model. In the Old Testament he clearly has control issues: nobody could do anything without raising his dander, wrath, righteous outrage. By the New Testament he has come to terms with free will. In fact, he pretty much lets us do what we want. He has come to the realization that we’re going to do it anyway, so why not let us learn by our own mistakes? And so what if we don’t learn from them? That’s Entertainment.
As a consequence:
I feel obliged to unceasingly squint at my life and try to get the joke. It’s my nod to the Master Comedian. My paintings are snapshots from the semi-logical context of dream narratives, striving to capture the incidental nature of my perceptions and absurdity of my fears. Often, they conceal multiple layers of an animated and evolving story. The top layer is simply the most recent freeze-frame of the story. Each underlying painting has informed the one that followed, and imbued it with an intrinsic, totally subjective truth. I know that, if I ever totally awake from my dream, things will make less sense.
I conclude:
If I am going to look for the meaning of life I should at least be paying attention. I’d hate to miss my own epiphany. A photographic memory just makes pictures more important. And this child of orphans is pretty well an orphan himself.