Since the word ‘wordless’ is itself a word, the only way to describe Silence is with something other than words. You may use all the words you wish to describe the description, though.
Or you may conclude that it would be best not to.
Here are three sketches I did today. The top one seems to include someone who looks like a friend of mine, and I have sent him a text asking if it’s just my imagination, but have not heard back. The other two are typical castings-about for concepts to flesh out. Note that the middle image includes someone who is about to cast with a rod and reel. If I’d put a red dot on the figure’s forehead, and a cast on one of the arms, and a cast in one of the eyes, the weather forecast would be Overcast(e), because my cast would then include a member of a caste in India, arm in a cast, cast in an eye, casting a fishing line, fantasy sequence not furnished by Carlos Castaneda. Perhaps the tackle box includes a set of castanets.
Perhaps I’ll shut up before someone casts aspersions on my mental state. Aloha, Friends!!
Ocelot Dreams
On the plain & off the grid
Creep & pounce or reconsider
Endgames of the vole & grebe
Indefensible arriba
On the go big cats will scram
Theory blesses–practice damns
L’envoi
Bullies preen & boss a lot
Till they meet an Ocelot.
Done Thursday, August 15, 2019. Wite Conté crayon on black paper. 9″ x 12″.
“How you doon?”
“Good. –And/or Awful.”
So began this Triple Acrostic.
good &or offl
guardrails, s&y beaches, woo
oslo, fl&ers, bern aloof
ontologic bl& reproof
duck or goose? fORget it, fool
mallet • palate
mordioux no a&p • and some “leaders” copped a plea • let us face it we’re in hell • left bereft no wares to sell • a euphemistic take’s a trait • that fair ignores the teeth that grate
About the open-mouthed fellow on the right: about forty years ago there was an album by King Crimson called IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING, and though I haven’t seen the album in many years, I would bet that my drawing is at least a secong cousin to the fellow on that cover.
I have been advised by several of my friends that my facial hair imparts a sinister quality to my face. Consequently I shave every workday, and often on my days off. But I envy people for whom facial hair is a good enhancement.
Razor Sharp
Rumpled, stilled skin–let it pass
A clear-cut Face is full of flash
ZAP goes the Beard Burn; time 4 mash–a
Once-a-Lifetime thunderclap, or
RIGHT that Wrong–should be a snap
Note that there is a seeming irony in that this image/poem/page is not “razor sharp” at all. It is crude and slapdash. It could be that my creativity “razor blade” needs sharpening, or changing.
But no apologies nor apologia, Friends. I won’t lay the “I meant to do it that way” line on you, because I didn’t; it just came out that way. Time will tell if it’s worthy of doing a remake, with photorealistic illustration and crisp calligraphy. Intuition says it would have to wait in line behind hundreds of other images I wish I’d done more finessedly.
This Sunday morning, August 11, 2019, I am the houseguest of my aunt Diane Norrbom and her roommate Priscilla. Another resident is their cockatiel Bunny.
Bunny and I have been whistle-talking to each other through the cage bars. Sometimes Bunny likes what I say and comes closer. Other times Bunny scuttles away, using talons and beak to grapple along the inside of the cage the way Tom Cruise geckoed on the outside glass of that Dubai skyscraper in one of the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies.
And once Bunny responded to my whistle with his plumage rising and falling like a bellows, or gills, then unloaded some digestive endproduct onto the newspaper below. Translation: STFU. So I stopped whistling and started drawing.
cockatiel
crank your plumage mon petit
own your cage of staid ennui
cackle grandly make a sale
knowing that you cannot fail
thought balloon
theory leads from a to b
hurricanes from gulf to sea
observations dig a well
ugliness has tales to tell
greek to us as tau or rho
halting notion sis boom bro
then comes fine Concepción
Speaking of Greek, the word Logos is alternately translated as “word” or “idea” according to something I read once. And Idea is a subset of Thought.
And Conception may mean both the starting of a Child or the starting of an Idea.
Just a thought, Friends. 🙂
At long last “magnetic resonance imaging” is at that stage of completion where any further work on it would be as likely to do harm as good.
I am proud to have seen this tricky, demanding image/poem to its appropriate destination, but not so proud as to ignore its defects. It doesn’t have the visual impact that it could, if I’d done it in a larger scale than 7 inches by 10. (Would the two weeks or so be worth the finer polish I could put to it if I redid it at 20 inches by 30? Undoubtedly. Would I be willing to do it? Not for its own sake. I could make at least 10 new images in the same amount of time, and use the Idea part of my brain and not the Reporter part of my brain. I vastly prefer using the latter. But if I had a guaranteed sale at $2 per square inch, which is what my friend Vivian Andersen was charging when we were gallery-space partners, that would be $1200 US gross, and good practice to boot. So, yes, if I were incentivized by a sure sale, I would get right to it, and it would be a bargain for the buyer at twice the price, because this is one of the more important image/ideas within my capability. (Friends, I am high now, not on drugs nor alcohol, but on having finished this ungainly thing, so forgive, please, my delusion of grandeur.)
Defective or not, delusion of grandeur or not, this acrostic image is a success. I fit an array of meaningful words into the straitjacket I’d built in its early stage, and it is definitely about both the Brain and the Soul, and for a bonus, its parsing and slicing is superbly analogous to Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Please see my previous work-in-progress post for notes on the first four lines. As for the last four, three elements might need clarification, but I will point rather than blather on and on. “Dendritic” refers to Dendrites, and there is an excellent discussion of their form and function in Wikipedia. “Electrochemic nets” capture our thoughts and memories, per our current understanding of brainwork. And “bands for Gideon” refers (metaphorically) to Gideon’s Band, loyal stalwarts that may be found in the Bible. Many hotel rooms have had Bibles placed in them by a group of proselytizers known as…the Gideons.
Finally, the last three panels at lower right were done without looking at the MRI photo sources, but rather relying on my memory of them. When I reviewed the images, I saw that with a little exaggeration, a top-down view of the centermost cross-section of the brain could be made to resemble the stylized heart shape we use to symbolize Love. I also remembered that one of the “with contrast” images had flared contrast-wings remindful of a butterfly. Brain, Butterfly, Heart: that is the best of us.
magnetic resonance imaging
mazes, spark plugs, forests, thruways make us cognoscenti
an arabesque or two or four comprise an idiom
gendarmic membranes won’t enshroud nor would they be placenta
nor would they glad participate in telepathic gleaning
eloquences wax dendritic make a foe effendi
then electrochemic nets bind bands for gideon
it’s all subject to indecency like stroke-lost meaning
confectionary at its best, though–to Divine we’re leaning
