scene

Today I saw an image; a scene from a studio I know well in Brooklyn.  The artist is a poet, warrior, friend.  His paintings have a physical presence, like someone standing behind you in a room at that moment before you fully realize it.  They are often dark, rough, imposing things with battled surfaces and gristly edges and yet, as of late, I catch a tenderness in them from time to time; a product of fatherhood no doubt, yet also the light of the soul.

NY is calling my name and has been all summer.  It's been too much of one kind of travel at the expense of the other.  Duties here, social and familial; things I don't mind, but still a part of me is always away.

This thing of going to a space and contending with surface and material and image, one wonders how one finds oneself in such a Way.  To listen to a visual thing, this is a strange and wonderful discipline indeed.  Tired hands and stained skin and then the attempt to wind down and catch up on the sleep that seems to always be two steps ahead of me, eluding me from day to day.

Whiskey stones and laundry are the remnants of this day; another day that did not stop, and finds me exhausted and unable to give in to sleep.

Today I saw a scene from Brooklyn.  A promise of another level, making me bring up my game to the next level, and so it goes and so it goes.  A picture of a studio wall that made me want to paint.  That's honor.  It's a glorious thing really.  So I raise my glass tonight to Brooklyn and all the lights on tonight in rooms with paint on the floors and at least a wall, and canvas and books and music and longing and sweat.