Inspiration (to Rafael Navarro)

July 7, 2019
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2019 0707 rafa

My super-talented sculptor friend Rafael Navarro just had a birthday. “Happy Birthday, you talented fellow!” I wrote on his Facebook timeline. Afterwards, realized: about a year ago I asked Rafa for permission to do a blog entry on him and his work. He answered some questions about his career. One of the things that came up was his trip to the famous marble quarry at Carrara, where Michelangelo got HIS marble. Rafael was granted permission to quarry and take away all the marble that he could carry at a single go. Marble is heavy, Friends, and it’s a good thing the talented Mr. Navarro didn’t take away a hernia to go with his marble.

My blog post never got written. In early August my younger brother Brian died, and things turned sideways for awhile. The three-week vacation I had started was cut short, and my aunt Diane, with my clumsy assistance, attended to the many details subsequent to the death of a loved one. And things like planned blog posts fell by the wayside.

Aside from the Carrara anecdote, I remember almost nothing of my chat with Rafa. I see his work when he or another art friend posts it on Facebook, and it’s uniformly both magical and professional. Interested parties may feast their eyes on his image-laden website, https://www.rafaelnavarroartes.com/ — and I hope that they (you) do so.

After I did my Index Card of the Day today, I had both urge and creative juice left over, so I started skating a white pastel pencil on the surface of a sheet from my Canson BLACK DRAWING/DESSIN NOIR/DIBUJO NEGRO 7×10 pad. A bird emerged. Then a young man, arms spread imitatively. Damn if he didn’t look a little bit like my friend Rafa. So I tried to make him look a bit more like him, and then I realized that I was finally doing the blog post I’d committed to do.

ICAD xxxvii: It s’Complicated

July 7, 2019
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2019 0707 IT sComplicated

This complicated mess started out with a simple idea: let the poem and image demonstrate Complexity. It took about two hours to make. Along the journey issues of motif and loss of resolution due to smearing and overwriting came up. “Don’t worry,” Inner Voice assured, “It will all come out. And what doesn’t can be dismissed with yet another ‘It’s Complicated.'”

If you spent as much time looking at this thing as I spend making it, you will certainly see a determined-looking, perhaps nude young woman at left. you will probably see a cat. you may see two or three faces and/or necks and/or upper torsos. You will see the tip of a spear, and if you follow the spear shaft you will see someone wielding it and holding up a shield. But what I really hope you will see are two obvious rhythms and one subtler one. No matter how Complicated something is, a pattern may be discerned.

It’s Complicated

Invading realms marked Tricky Dick’s
Investment bankers Sic sic Sic
In f l i g h t s of impresario
Inventiveness sounds Gong & Om
Intending-harmers draw a map
Ingesting H A T R E D ‘ S plate of scrapple

Then R E A S O N faits her accompli
Threads denimmed Platinum très chic
Theatrics stemmed, the brouhaha
Thence T E A P O T S, D O M E S & apparat
The threnody will S W E L L then fade
Thus tying off a Celtic braid

icad xxxv: aloe vera ness/Steve Allen

July 5, 2019
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2019 0705 steve allen

Steve Allen invented the television talk show, says a capsule biography I just watched. He was also a songwriter, an actor, a father, and the author of 44 books.

This card is a sort of Allenesque variety show. It includes an encrypted quote from Descartes that is familiar to most philosophy students.

As for Aloe Vera, Friends–it’s good for what ails ya.

 

ICAD xxxii: Space Brace

July 2, 2019
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2019 0702 space brace

“Space is curved,” they tell us in school. Forgive a bad pun, but it’s hard to wrap your mind around that. Space is a shifty word. It’s the Final Frontier. It’s a place to do your thing, as in Art Space. It’s spooky woo-woo, as in Space Case.

Words don’t come anywhere near Reality, but they’re what we have to approximate it. The specific definition for the space that is curved is approximately “everything and all the nothing in between and beyond.” Really hard to get down to brass tacks, isn’t it?

But if we start simple, imagining a Universe with only two chrome spheres in it, fifty feet apart, motionless relative to each other, each with a mass of one kilogram, we can get a glimmer. They instantly cease being fifty feet apart. They move toward each other. As they get closer the attraction increases. Soon they make contact.

Add more objects and the Universe gets more interesting. The more massive an object, the more attractive it is. (Except for bachelors like me.)

Space Brace

Sustenance IS the J*O*B
Paparazzo IS a star
Andalucia and a pea
Craft a plotted story arc
Excellence is never free

There’s a lot more to say, especially to make the poem more comprehensible, but a) Mystery makes Life delightful b) I am on a bus and soon to get off. Two lines should strike a good balance. “Paparazxo” IS a star.” Paparazzo is Observer. If not for Observers, the Universe would not be self-aware, and would effectively cease to exist. “Andalucia and a pea/Craft a plotted story arc.” Though one is large, the other small, they still interact; they attract each other. That’s how it works, my friends.

Dog gie

June 30, 2019
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2019 0630 dog gie

I have done more than a dozen portraits of my co-workers at Matt’s Big Breakfast. A couple of weeks ago I approached yet another. She declined, but offered to send me a photo of her beloved and now deceased dog instead. I would rather have done hers, but I do love dogs, so I told her to go ahead.

“Gie” is a genuine word. It is Scottish dialect for Give. The poet Robert Burns famously coupleted

“O wad the power the giftie gie us
Tae see oursels as others see us.”

Burns also famously coupled, fathering many children out of wedlock, but that is another story.

Dog gie. “O wad the power a guid dog gie us/Tae help us truly, truly BE us.” I was best friends with such a dog. His revered name was William Doglas Bowers, known colloquially as Bill. We lost him ten years ago. A thought of him draws an eagle’s feather over my heart now and then.

dog gie

dalmation shepherd boxer pug
domestic bliss requires no drug.

old english sheepdog shih tzu corgi
of grins and snuggles is an orgi.

great dane alsatian malamute
Got Ugly? even so, Got Cute.

 

ICAD xxx: SUB DIV IDE

June 30, 2019
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20190630_104935

My faulty memory tells me the story of the Tower of Babel went like this: Once upon a time many people got together to construct a tower that would go all the way to Heaven. This cooperative effort went swimmingly until God took notice and was displeased. God foiled the effort by turning one language into many, amongst the workers; unable to communicate with each other, they quickly abandoned their efforts.

I just don’t think anything like the Tower of Babel story happened in real life. Construction workers the world over helped build New York City, and many of them never learned English nor any other language but their own. You don’t need much language to wield a hammer or install a window.  I would think the Babel crew would have been frustrated with the weird new situation but would have found comfort in continuing the construction, and meanwhile they would learn the languages of their friends.

But the story has a point: it is hard to unite people if they all have different agendas.

What I have done with this index card is confound simple English by subdividing words into phonetically similar, smaller words. The words (and one crucial phrase) I did this with, and their equivalents, top to bottom and left to right, are

Sacrilege (sack real edge)

Energetic (N urge eh tick)

Sacrosanct (sac rose ankh’d)

Due Process (dupe raw cess)

Malachi (Ma lack ai)

Underplay (un derp lei)

Invested (inn fest Ed)

Bivalve (buy valve)

On the surface this may seem an arbitrary thing to do. But before we hear words we hear syllables; then we unite them into words; then we unite the words with the next words spoken and synthesize meaning by processing all those syllables.

Consider the market names of such drugs as Wellbutrin, Celebrex, Alleve, Claratin. Not hard to see that the drug-makers want you to think that use of the drug will help you get Well, let you Celebrate being alive, with your symptoms Alleviated and your breathing more Clear. (In the case of Wellbutrin, the name proved disastrously wrong.) Why do the drug-makers make up these names? Because it works; people buy into it.

“Words are not magic,” said an English professor of mine, long ago. “They are but crude approximations of Reality.”

But Reality for individuals is whatever they Think it is.