I have been reevaluating myself, looking at my life from remote distance, far enough to have an objective perspective so i can notice what i can’t see under my nose, so i came across one of my favorite paintings.
It was hanging on my wall. It is staring at me when i am asleep; following me when i am awake, but i don’t notice it, not often, in reality, very rarely. Reason, I am usually carried away from it, by the controlling regime of the average day. While i am scurrying, doing things that appear “important”, trying to build a life, the picture is patiently waiting for me, silently hanging on the wall, not speaking out loud. Art doesn’t scream, it doesn’t talk at all, it has to communicate to you through some telepathic medium that requires exposure to your deepest self. a fifth dimension of some sort. Nevertheless, the painting is there, ready to be appreciated, ready to give itself to me, like some heroine from Dostoevsky’s novel. It wants me to realize something. It need me to notice it, and then dive in it.Only then can the elixir kick in.
When i look at this painting by Pablo Picasso i sense a range of feelings, seldom concepts and forking conclusions, many of which blow as close to my core as the wind to the naked ear. It is unusual for me to experience such a wide range of emotion when connecting to a paining so isolated and monotone in color composition.It is like turning the lights of and trying to look through the enveloping blanket of dying light. The colors are alive they are there, but you need something beyond sight to see them.
The blues, dark blues and white appear to me as hazy, disguised with melancholy, like listening to slow jazz in a bar, slowly drowning in your seat, sedated by alcohol, not worrying about tomorrow. Never have solitude felt to real, seclusion so strangely appealing as when i look at the old man sitting in the midst of water and wood, clutching his bony fingers on the last piece of matter. What goes through his head? His heart? Has he ever felt fear, love, pain? Has he ever reveled in ecstasy, licked a lollipop? His head bend like an old tree that can’t support its own weight, ready to break, carry on to tree heaven, eyes closed, feet crossed. Is he ready to depart, has the reaper knocked already? He is the Sphinx. I hope he catches his train, the line must be long in the underworld, and no one is allowed to cut. Is it hell or heaven for him, or maybe it is going back to wherever he came from, correcting his previous mistakes, reborn, played again like a worn record. Do they have record players in Purgatory? I really hope they do, or they will lose a valuable customer.
It will be funny if you get to that place that was some vividly described in scriptures and there is nothing there, like a desert. I will surely file a law suit against them.
Like a Indian Guru, i feel an aberrant affinity to the poverty, the loneliness and the peace of the river man. When i look back through the glass ball and review my life i come across lost thoughts, stored and filed in theor proper manila folders, and as i dig deeper i see the great comparison between how i felt about solitude then and how i feel about it now. I grow upward, toward the sky, just like a tree, just like the river man, painted in blue and white, with vivid guitar of contrastive color in his hands, ready to experience something new, an end, maybe a beginning.
Is he hungry? I don’t think that Atkins diet has been a good health choice for him. And his feet are bear. if my mother was there she would tell him to wear some slippers or he might be at risk of catching cold. For some reason she is still supersticious about such things.
Tell me old man, have you lived your life fully? Was your life fulfilling, successful, meaningful? Have you sucked the marrow out of its bones? Or are you simply an old buffoon, abandoned because of your failures, ready to kick the bucket in you hideously furnished home.
Tell me old man the secret to life. I feel like your eyes are hiding something. Have you something to say to me? Will you ever speak?
When i was 500000 songs younger i felt as though the river man represented the sick, pessimistic side of me, the definite conclusion to the short, ugly story. I felt that the old man was nothing but a picture on canvas, a caricature, an artificial component of someone else’s imagination, distorting reality. It took me 30000 songs, 100’s of books + despair, numerous drugs and packs on packs of Ramon noodles to understand that the old man is more than a splash of color on a empty fabric. I can detect peace, a part of me in it, alive, ready to be observed as though in the gallery. Just like the hunched man i need something to keep me on the canvas of life, a blotch of color i have to remain, be it love, music books, just like the old man, i too need a guitar to hold, we all need something to comfort us in the drowning blue colors. To save us from disaster in the background. Because if we are empty handed then there is nothing to hold on to when the blue and white pour in, and you submerge.
Then you awake once again.
