March 28th, 2010
Sometimes you set out to paint and it happens that you don’t. You may go to your studio, or that corner of the attic, basement or spare room that serves as one (well appointed studios are over rated, as are most well appointed things), lay everything out and stare at the blank or incomplete canvas for hours and do little or nothing; or you may drive forty or fifty miles to some beloved or much anticipated location for which you’ve been longing and find that the spirit seems to have deserted you. I suggest it is more likely that somehow you have deserted the spirit, or that the spirit is calling you to pay attention to something else. I could write more about all of that; for now I will just say that sometimes we are led where we would rather not go.
We made another trip to Frontenac State Park along Lake Pepin today. We were there three weeks ago and I had a productive day painting. I did not paint today although I came fully prepared and with the proper intentions, at least in the forefront of my mind. Okay, it was windier and colder than I expected and I could have worn another layer to help keep me warm; still, I found several sheltered locations that would have served. I brought a long, horizontal panel along for composing the wide compositions this location offers abundantly, and a standard sized 11 x 14 as well, just in case. I was anxious to paint. I walked around looking at one long view of blue ridges and sparkling water after another; distant horizon lines fused in sunny haze beyond the sharp, bare terminal branches of burr oaks and red oaks, hickory and basswood waving in the intervening space in the wind. I wanted another successful day, like the one I had last time. In this sense, I had already deserted the spirit. I was not open to what it was offering me.
I hate to go out with the intention of painting, and not paint. It feels like a great defeat. I walked around muttering. Yes, I really do mutter. It’s not a figure of speech I am using to approximately describe a condition. Ask anyone who knows me. I thought of an expression a friend of mine used to use: “Some days its chicken and some day’s just feathers.” I thought of steely eyed Commander Riker on an old Star Trek: Next Generation episode. When the crew of the Enterprise is outmaneuvered by some creepy Romulans, he stands beside Picard as the Captain gives the order to withdraw and says “Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you.” No chickens or bears here, only my over active imagination, and a little sadness and desperation as the beautiful morning passed away, punctuated by the long, deep diesel growl of a freight train in the valley below. Places to go, places to go.
I was physically tired for various reasons. The kind of tired you feel when you have used up reserves of energy and they have not been replenished. I hesitated to begin something that would take several hours of fairly intense effort, with a kind of emptiness waiting at the very end. I value discipline and it usually carries me through. The spirit is present in discipline and perseverance too - more so, in my opinion, than in inspiration, especially in my middle age. However, my discipline – my discipline, this thing I am proud of – was inadequate. Proper discipline – I call it “proper” for lack of a better term, and contrast it with discipline rooted in pride at what I have done or can do – perseveres in a task until it is finished, for some purpose other than self aggrandizement, because it is the right thing to do, but yields when something of equal or higher value calls for some action on my part. Proud discipline can blind me to whatever that need is.
Where was I being led that I would rather not go? Not to martyrdom, like St. Peter. Only to a very brief tomb: the death of my hopes for that morning. And then a walk with my wife, down a path I had never gone, making observations about what we saw here and there; signs of burning from habitat restoration, including the charred stump of an immense cottonwood and the remains of its great trunk on the ground; a ravine with light and shadow patterns suitable for framing, and the end of the trail at a point overlooking the valley bracketed with bluffs east and west, Frontenac below, a red barn with horses in its yard, and Lake Pepin making its great bend to the southeast, the big sweep and sparkle of a great river under the sun.
Photo by Nora Koch, view of Lake Pepin and Frontenac, March 28, 2010
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