Politic Awareness
In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political
Marwan Makhoul (trans. Zeina Hashem Beck)
I must listen to the birds
& in order to hear the birds
the airplane must be silent
Gaza Poets Society
I am fortunate to live in a time and place that, for me and my station in life, is in relative peace but it is not without being aware of the state of the world - from the localized environs to the bigger sways of peoples and governments.
Emily Dickinson
even if i can’t change the world
- Dickinson Season 3 Episode 10
i’m still going to write
and even if no one ever cares
even if it makes absolutely no difference
that there was a person
named emily dickinson
who sat in this little room
day after day
and wrote things down
just because she felt them
Available on Apple TV+
That part, at the end of the 3 season series of Apple TV's show Dickinson, struck me because that is, to the artist, the primary thing and it summed it up so beautifully and succinctly. We are just there, day after day, writing or painting or making music - doing our arts - because we feel them. I look around at my studio, lovely space that it is, where I return to every day. My easel and the door to the garden, the computer and phone offering windows to the world at large. So I return every day and paint and, really, that's the whole goal - to make the art of what it feels like, for me, right now in this now.
A Day for Love
Some say that Valentine's Day is just a made-up a holiday but the truth is: they're all made up holidays. Christmas, New Year's, Halloween... And don't get me started on all of the other made up stuff - dollar bills, national borders, and so on.
So if we are going to have a made-up day - and especially one for the Northern Hemisphere in the dreary days of February - that short month that always stays too long - then a day that reminds us to love isn't so bad.
Some Thoughts on My Art in Relation to AI
People who have said to me, "Michael, you REALLY need to check out AI. You could use it for painting ideas!"
Here's the thing: if you've known me and my art for a while (or even not for a while) then you've gotten the sense that the paintings from from my impressions of the world. I'm constantly taking it in, assimilating it, using it as part of my own personal journey and process, etc. And by 'the world' I mean all of it - from the big picture politics to the fine facets of my own interpersonal relationships, from those awesome James Webb Telescope pictures to the flowers outside in the garden and the birds that flit from branch to branch.