When I Paint My Masterpiece
Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You can almost think that you’re seein’ double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room
Where I’ve got me a date with Botticelli’s niece
She promised that she’d be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece
Oh, the hours I’ve spent inside the Coliseum
Dodging lions and wastin’ time
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see ’em
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb
Train wheels runnin’ through the back of my memory
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece
Sailin’ round the world in a dirty gondola
Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!
I left Rome and landed in Brussels
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried
Clergymen in uniform and young girls pullin’ muscles
Everyone was there to greet me when I stepped inside
Newspapermen eating candy
Had to be held down by big police
Someday, everything is gonna be diff’rent
When I paint my masterpiece
Bob Dylan, 1971
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| Bob Dylan circa 1963... |
That old Bob Dylan song is one I’ve been hearing much of my life…The Grateful Dead used to play it regularly and that’s version I like most (Bob Weir sings it with such passion) but any version is good if you ask me because it’s one of those tunes that frames something about me, something about my life…it’s a song, like so many others, that I strongly identify with and one that has changed its meaning over the years. It used to be about goals, about where I saw myself in 10, 20 years…when I was 20 years old, it’s the song that I thought described where and what my life will be when I’m 40 years old. I was wrong, life turned out completely different for me. Yet this song remains a rally cry of sorts, something I tell me when the chips are down, when I struggle to win but fail miserably…this song offers hope, redemption for me…someday everything is going to be different, when I paint my masterpiece.
The difference for me now is that I’ve come to realize that my life, perhaps a little like Van Gogh, Poe, Kafka or Thoreau has been spent, for the most part, in relatively obscurity. I am not famous nor do I have oodles of money, I have created hundreds of artistic things over the last 40+ years, alas none of it has amounted to very much. Yet as I pass the halfway mark in my life expectancy, I have a better understanding of what I need to do to obtain happiness and truthfully, it has absolutely nothing to do with painting my masterpiece.
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| My first book...my masterpiece? |
For all I really know perhaps I’ve already created that masterpiece…it could be the music I wrote in the 1980s, maybe some of the wild, infamous events I organized and operated during the 1990s…maybe it was my first novella (“SCHLEP”) or my most recent book (“My BiPolar Reality; How Life Goes On”)…but I suspect my best work is not a work at all, but something I did, something I am still doing…being a great father, a passionate partner, a good son, a decent friend…that is most likely my greatest contribution to humanity. I know and understand that I’ve changed the lives of others, for the better for the most part and even more importantly, I’ve tamed and slayed my own demons which is far more significant than something I created artistically. Perhaps, like those other famous artistic losers, my work will be appreciated when I’m dead but in the meanwhile, I’m not banking on it for my happiness, dig?
In a strange way I hope I die before I know what is my masterpiece…I don’t want to be there when or more likely, IF my work is ever gauged by what is good and what is not and what is masterpiece piece and what is shit…it’s very much all the same to me, in the now, when I’m doing the work it’s simply an expression of what I’m feeling or thinking or imagining…to declare anything better than anything else for me is like saying one emotion is better than the other…while that might seem true too, it’s not.
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| A recent sketch I made...a masterpiece? |
The hate or loss is not as pleasant as love or compassion, but all of those emotions are elements in my landscape, they are all responsible for shaping me and guiding me or blocking, hindering my progress…I don’t know if it’s true for everybody, but for me it is…I need to validate and honor every single of my emotions if I am to truly feel whole; this means the negative, painful stuff and the happy, feeling good stuff, ALL of the emotions count. It can certainly be argued that one particular idea might be executed with a better technique than another, I may write something more clearly than something else, a photo might be less effective than a painting to capture a feelings sometimes…this much is true and I suppose a masterpiece could be gauged in that way too…but for me, as the artist, there’s not much difference because, like I said, it all starts with my heart, the heart of my art is my complex emotional landscape.
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| Sitting in my redesigned office/studio today... |
Lastly, as this dismal month trudges onward we have an out-of-town guest this weekend…my wife’s mother (my favorite mother-in-law) is here in California to help celebrate my wife’s 40th birthday…which is today, the 13th of November…indeed, my wife has now been with me more than half of her life! We are planning a day trip for tomorrow (Saturday), the final destination is still unknown but I think she’s leaning towards a trip to Santa Cruz over a visit to Petaluma…either way, it’s sure to be a splendid time. I am not having an easy time with the production of the audio book, it’s going much slower than I anticipated. Without getting into details, it’s simply been a series of interruptions followed by poorly executed sessions that yield far less results than expected. I have hope next week will be better, now that I’ve redesigned my home office/studio to better encourage creative productivity. Either way I have both motivation and ambition for this project, I’m quite enjoying the recording of spoken words. This work reminds me of the great Ken Nordine and his iconic audio show “Word Jazz” which is fueling my thoughts about producing a podcast program, one that ties into the new book to help promote the title; without giving it away, it’s got a lot to do with music, spirituality and mental illness, it’s a work of fiction and it comes out on 11 August 2016…I can say no more!
In conclusion, dear readers, as this blog series starts to draw to it’s inevitable close, I want to ask you to please subscribe to this blog, my YouTube channel or click here to send an email and join “On The Margin”, a quarterly newsletter from my publisher, The Intrepid Editor Press Ltd.
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| Looking to the future? |
I am not sure what the future holds, but I will be going dark after the new year so that I can finish the book and other projects; when I return to this on-line community (and I always do…so far), I’m not sure what platform I’ll be utilizing (for sure not Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat, probably not G+ or LinkedIn either…so, stay in touch)! In the meanwhile, as the rain continues to fall in the San Joaquin and the air is chilly, cool, damp and winter crisp with steely gray and white clouds glowing in the always setting fat and lazy sun, I wish you each very well, please do take care of you and yours, stay safe and we’ll see you next week!
