Category: field notes

Two things happen when you let go of something; you feel the pain of its absence more acutely or you feel the freedom from the weight it once possessed in your life.

From Unclutterer:

Coffee beans you aren’t going to grind and brew within two weeks can be kept in the freezer, but they should not be stored in the refrigerator. Moisture isn’t good for coffee, well, unless you’re actually in the process of brewing. Don’t believe me? Here are a few insights from people much more informed than I…

Link.

And loosely related, from The Point:

…it’s not surprising that studies have shown caffeine is an effective aid…. For caffeine to be most effective, however, regular users need to minimize their caffeine use so that when they need it, caffeine will give them a boost.

Link.

Here’s some overheard conversations from Friday afternoon.

Man talking to another man: “What is real? What is truth? What is this? You know what I’m talking about?”

Waiting at the bus stop.
Man 1: “I’ve been runnin’ all day… getting a beer here… a beer there… s___ I’m tired.”
Man 2: “I hear that.”
Man 1: “Alcohol will make you go places you don’t want to go… killed my brother… I get shakes, you know… s___, my heart stopped in Virginia… ah, hell.”

I posted overheard bus conversations and comments back in June. Here’s some more from the other day:

After mentioning something about the police, a man says into his cellphone: “You can’t just sell something that isn’t yours.”

Man and woman talking across the aisle inside the bus.
Man: “Where you going this early in the morning?”
Woman: “Social Services.”
Man: “What for?”
Woman: “None of your damn business. Where you going?”
Man turns toward the window and looks at his cellphone.

Man at a bus stop mopping his face with a handkerchief after racing up a hill to wait for the bus: “Hot has hell out here … but a lot nicer than Columbus … no drive-by shooting … Asheville’s a nice place … “
Coffeehouse Junkie: “Columbus, Ohio?”
Man lighting a cigarette: “Yeah … had to leave Columbus ’cause all the f__ing Mexicans taking all the jobs … heard ’bout Asheville … sure is damn hot but a whole lot nicer than Columbus.”
Coffeehouse Junkie refrained from saying: Welcome to Asheville amigo.

If you haven’t used the Asheville Transit System (i.e. the bus), you don’t know what you’re missing. Here’s what I overheard today on the bus.

First man: “There’s a Chevrolet truck for sale for five hundred dollars. I told the man I’d give him two hundred dollars cash right there on the spot. He wouldn’t have it.”
Second man: “Damn motherf___er.”

One guy tells another guy: “I left California because there’s too many damn Mexicans.”
(At least a half dozen people of Hispanic descent sit near him.)

One African-American woman trying to get the attention of second African-American woman who is on a cell phone and moves away from the first woman: “I hate blacks trying to act white.”
(This is said in front of me, a person of Dutch/Irish descent, to a third African-American woman.)

One woman says to second woman: “I’m so stressed I smoked two packs today.”

A young woman says into her cell phone: “No, he’s Irish and speaks English.”
(She speaks with a distinct Romanian accent.)
Two African-American women seated next to me on the bus overhear this and speak.
First woman: “Am I like that?”
Second woman: “Nah. You ain’t that loud.”

Imagine what I’ll overhear on the way home tonight.

Each year one of my many annual goals is to paint at least four new paintings (see right side panel for the last two years’ results). Last year my paintings took on a dramatically different direction thanks to my four-year-old son. From what his pediatrician says, his drawings are a bit advanced for his age but by no means does this mean he is a child prodigy.

Still, his drawings of people capture my imaginations. Through his eyes I see that paintings of people don’t need all the details of Rembrandt or Jan Vermeer van Delft to communicate. There’s also innocence with mixing paint directly on the canvas that he really enjoys. Since he lacks complete understanding of Joseph Alber’s interaction of colors, he doesn’t realize that all colors fade to gray if you’re not careful. And yet, gray can be a lovely background.

Happy accidents occurred and enhanced the experience of painting–a child’s approach to painting; having fun. It’s why I pursued the arts in high school and later at the university. Yet, there is a discipline to making art.

The first step to making art is designating time to produce it and committing to the task. Many of my former classmates from the university “played” and are currently busy with life and other matters of consequence. In the small book Art & Fear David Bayles and Ted Orland discuss this topic and offer a lucid observation–many art students pursue art making merely to achieve a degree and hang a senior art exhibit. In a recent essay, David Hollander states the same observation (regarding poets and writers): “The goal is not to get a degree.” The goal of art making is to share your individual vision and that takes a life of discipline.

Last summer I read about some recently uncovered Pollack paintings (“Is This a Real Jackson Pollock?” May 29, 2005, Sunday by Randy Kennedy). I got goose pimples with excitement. Could it be true? Are there really undiscovered Pollock paintings? I was giddy as I read the article in The New York Times.

I wanted to spill paint everywhere. My son thought it was quite an exciting idea too. However, once the paint hit the canvas he had the urge to mix the paint into a gray soup. I compromised and let him work the backgrounds as I handled the main subject; copper creatures of imagination.

Some fathers, I am sure, have other ways of engaging their children in activity like trips to the park, hikes in the mountains or visits to apple festivals. I do all those things as well, but somehow making art with my four-year-old expressionist seems for more fulfilling.

During Colonial America, it is purported that children began practicing the trade of their father around the age of five. Meaning that if the father were a merchant then the son would accompany his father to the shop and be useful for one day he would be in charge of the family business. The son would even wear similar wardrobe of his father (i.e. a blacksmith’s son dressed like his father and a farmer’s son dressed like his father).

So, if you see a father and son with black bandanas wrapped around their skulls, wearing paint splattered jeans, and spilling paint on canvases to loudly played ska tunes–that would be us making art and making memories.

I don’t know if I’ll continue the spill and splatter approach to painting. If I do it will have to be refined quite a bit. My goal is still to produce a minimum of four paintings by the end of the year.

Tags: [artist, painting, painter, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Alber, Pollack, father, son, ska]

The author of A Word In Your Ear caught my attention with iME. It’s basically a link to an article by Andrew Sullivan in The Times titled “Society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld” about the iPod infection.

“I’m one of them. I witnessed the glazed New York looks through my own glazed pupils, my white wires peeping out of my ears. I joined the cult a few years ago: the sect of the little white box worshippers.

Every now and again I go to church — those huge, luminous Apple stores, pews in the rear, the clerics in their monastic uniforms all bustling around or sitting behind the “Genius Bars”, like priests waiting to hear confessions.

Others began, as I did, with a Walkman — and then a kind of clunkier MP3 player. But the sleekness of the iPod won me over. Unlike other models it gave me my entire music collection to rearrange as I saw fit — on the fly, in my pocket.

What was once an occasional musical diversion became a compulsive obsession. Now I have my iTunes in my iMac for my iPod in my iWorld. It’s Narcissus heaven: we’ve finally put the “i” into Me.”

I am not one of the 22 million “little white box worshippers.” Not that I’m opposed to the idea. In many ways it seems practical for those radio surfers that switch to the next FM station when they don’t like a certain song, commercial or idea.

Back in high school I used to dub my own cassette tapes with all my favorite music. I’d have one cassette with mixes of Motley Crue, Whitesnake and Def Leppard. Another cassette might have songs by Paul Simmon, U2 and Michael W. Smith. And yet another would have samplings of The Oak Ridge Boys, The Statler Brothers and Johnny Cash. I had a plastic grocery bag with a half dozen 90 minute dubbed cassettes representing my soundtrack. My music tastes have matured somewhat since those high school days.

As technology advances I can now listen to online radio stations like listener supported Radio Wazee: Modern Alternative Rock or my local favorite 88.7 WNCW where I can hear everything from Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be The Day” to REM’s “Final Straw” to Pete Yorn’s “Just Another” to Townes Van Zandt’s “Black Widow Spider.” The reason why I enjoy iTuning these internet radio stations is because I hear new artists that I normally wouldn’t hear outside my scope of friends and influences.

Andrew Sullivan goes on to write:

“Walk through any airport in the United States these days and you will see person after person gliding through the social ether as if on autopilot… You get your news from your favourite blogs, the ones that won’t challenge your view of the world. You tune into a satellite radio service that also aims directly at a small market — for new age fanatics, liberal talk or Christian rock. Television is all cable. Culture is all subculture… Technology has given us a universe entirely for ourselves — where the serendipity of meeting a new stranger, hearing a piece of music we would never choose for ourselves or an opinion that might force us to change our mind about something are all effectively banished.”

The serendipitous meeting of strangers on the bus fills me with a greater awareness of others around me. I begin to understand the neighborhood. The fact that I am an Anglo, professional, with a young family makes some of my neighbors feel threatened. So, I take the bus and listen to conversations. I learn that I talk funny (according to one of the neighbor boys) and that Usher is not a person who helps you find your seat at theater but is actually a popular musician.

I guess this means I’m one of the uncool Americans who doesn’t have those white pods budding from my earlobes. I’m one of those unhip people who enjoy listening to the bark of the neighbor’s German Shepherd who warns a trespassing squirrel or knowing that it’s 4 P.M. because the bus just passed en route to the transit station. If missing out on iPod, iShuffle or iLife makes me uncool, then I’m okay with that. I’m content to listen and observe the world around me in all its grit and glory.