1905:CUBISM:The Id:E=MC2

400 BC: Socrates invents a cave of chains.   1905: Pablo, Albert & Sigmund hand us our passports. Cave.... what cave?  

God is lonely. God dreams. A mirror.  My finish carpenter buddy Jesus polishes the surface of the lotus pond 2012 springs ago. The 3 wise men Abe, Ziggy, & Pab  lift up the mirror. 

The mirror shatters. 

I want a steering wheel, a road, a fine fast car. CUBISM says: no car, no road, no steering wheel, no driver.

The pieces of the puzzle... loose in the frame. The parts are more than the whole. 

The divine self seeps out between the cracks in the quick silver. You are who you have always been.

RED GUITAR: one piece of the puzzle. Notice it. Lift it up. Admire it. Put it down. Go on with your day. NAMASTE. 

RED GUITAR

Won’t you help me string the strings

That grace the neck of my red guitar

The silence opened near and far

It gives my voice its deathless wings

Ruby on the crown of a fallen queen

Magnolia seduces the colibri

The blush of a lover, the flush of a foe

At Winter’s end the funeral rose

The open mouth of Vesuvius

WInd-fall apple on the autumn grass

Tongue of the grey hound racing in dust

The peppers of fire, the berries of lust

Won’t you help me string the strings

That grace the neck of my red guitar

The silence opened near and far

It gives my voice its deathless wings

The ember bed at the jamboree

A mosquito's belly full of me

The pope is dead, the cardinals meet

The rust of the freighter caught on the reef

Summer sun on the North Sea fog

Tomato paste on the pasta sauce

In her Daddy’s car a kiss, a kiss

The parted lips... the lips I miss

Won’t you help me string the strings

That grace the neck of my red guitar

The silence opened near and far

It gives my voice its deathless wings

MEDUSA'S HAIR

A beautiful woman once told me that the only way to love a woman is to worship her like your Goddess. Try it men... it opens the gates of love. The Goddess takes many forms... not all of them are pretty. Poor old Perseus could not look into the eyes of his Goddess lest he be turned to stone... so he looked into the mirror of his shield and cut off the head of his true love and turned his love to stone. Or you could be Paris and choose between the Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, Hera, Goddess of the Hearth, or Aphrodite, Goddess of Beauty. Young men choose Aphrodite, middle-aged men choose Hera, great men choose Athena. The irony is they are one and the same and found in each and every woman we truly love. My love Katmandu has amazing hair... dreadlocks in a Minoan crown.I gave my Goddess Medusa’s hair but she has the vision of wisdom and the soft bosom of solace. 

A TALE OF TWO CITIES (with a nod to Leonardo)

Where are you from? Can you tell your story just with reference to the city of your birth... the city of your death? My cities: Montreal, Minneapolis, Calgary.... now Saskatoon. My towns... St Donat, Inuvik, Crowsnest Pass, Pincher Creek, Lethbridge, Placencia, High River. Write now... sit me down... I will tell you the story of each of these places. They are as much a part of me as my shoulders, my kneecaps, my ear lobes. Katmandu, my traveling companion, the love of my life.... my Goddess comes from Toronto and lives in Saskatoon. Hence the two cities in my painting. An allusion to the cities as if they were dream cities not the real YONGE and BLOOR or SPADINA CRESCENT. My challenge in this work.... create aerial perspective... the great lesson my Italian Godfather Leonardo taught me. The colour of a landscape adopts the colour of the sky as it disappears into the distance. Life is short. “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” to quote my born-to-be-wild friend Paul Gauguin adrift in Tahiti after Paris and a season with my sad brother Vincent in Arles. Read “Invisible Cities” by that other Italian... Italo Calvino. Then you will know exactly what it means to come from a city.

SHAPE SHIFTERS

Who are we really? Are we the selves we see in the mirror in the morning as we shave the stubble from our cheeks and chins? Are we the masks of beauty we apply with the mascara brush and lipstick to our aging faces? Are we the strands of DNA that coil like prism snakes in the centers of our cells?Are we the prisoners of our own minds? Are we the memories in the vaults of our temporal lobes? Are we the citizens of a city that cites us in its censuses? Are we the brothers and sisters and sons and daughters and mothers and fathers of all those nuclear families? Am I my driver’s license photograph? Am I the Viking warrior I saw in the flames of the campfire under the Aurora Borealis? Are you the flower girl at the coronation of the Babylonian queen that you saw in the Forget-Me-Nots under the sunflowers that afternoon in late July? We have been here and elsewhere in many universes in many eternities many times before...... Battista Sforza, the duchess of Montefeltro from the castle in Urbino in the hill country of Rimini. Kathryn my wife. See one. See the other. And who is the Kathryn that shines beyond them all? That is the Goddess I wish to paint. We shift shapes, we shape shifters like the sky changes from dawn to dusk. It is very beautiful. It glows with possibility. Yes!

GODDESS

I’m the type of girl who butters toast from edge to edge.

No moth balls in my fur-lined cedar chest.

 I’ m a contradiction... simple as a caress. 

 I’m complicated as a hissy fit... “wanna see me jealous?”

 Dread-lock gypsy queen with Bach embedded in my bones.

 Make-believe .... a miscarriage or a poem.

I‘m the blue jean Venus at the Rodeo Dance. 

It ain’t easy being a goddess in a frozen land.

One part snow and one part mall, lake trout in a pan. 

I’m the gothic girl with a nose ring in Matane.

The grande dame at the opera in Chicoutmi.

I know the Micmac & the Cree for “just bite me!”

Medusa or Madonna, It’s Kali or the Queen of Spades

Aphrodite or the Sphinx you  gotta choose the only one &

If you look me in the eye, gonna stone you green as Jade

So, Bring me all your honey and i ‘ll shine you like the sun

So, Bring me all your honey and i ‘ll shine you like the sun

Get on your knees, do not beg, you needy man.

A little groveling never hurt ...you better make me laugh.

So, bring me a Chardonnay &  draw me a bath.

State your name and reason why, but never turn your back.

I’m a sweat suit  Nana with a Louis Vuitton bag.

3 dozen pink and one red rose I command... I command!!!!

Medusa or Madonna, It’s Kali or the Queen of Spades

Aphrodite or the Sphinx you  gotta choose the only one &

If you look me in the eye, gonna stone you green as Jade

So, Bring me all your honey and i ‘ll shine you like the sun

So, Bring me all your honey and i ‘ll shine you like the sun

EDGAR ALLAN CROW - words for a song

                 

When I was a young man I caught me a crow

He only had one wing, the other broke

He dragged it behind him & could not fly

I named him for that Raven guy

I found him in the coulee, below the willow

& I built him a cage to fit my window

& I was a pirate of the prairie snow

His burning eyes, his coat of brilliant coal

Backed into the corner, my red hot cage

Bit my finger with a twisting rage

Never took my offered love or my table scraps

He tore to shreds my precious treasure maps

                    Crows know what crows know

                    & Edgar he said no & no & no

                    He watched out the window

                    Looking for his woman crow

                    Calling calling always calling

                    Looking for his woman crow

He escaped my prison & I let him go

Dragging his busted wing and crowing so

Maybe the coyotes got him, maybe the snow

Oh nevermore, nevermore; my one wing crow

Edgar Allen Nevermore in the knotted pine

He never was... no, he never was mine

                    Crows know what crows know

                    & Edgar he said no & no & no

                    He watched out the window

                    Looking for his woman crow

                    Calling calling always calling

                    Looking for his woman crow