I got a little ambitious and put together a six color reduction print of a bluebird for my granddaughter. Generally, I am pleased with the bird, but the elderberries he’s standing on are a tangled mess and it’s hard to distinguish between the purple of the berries and the black of the branches. Small spheres are hard! As compensation, I learned a lot about composition and technique. Glad I did it; I should do it again someday and make it better. Edition of 12, approx. 4″ x 4″
These two prints are the results of teaching myself about reduction prints. They are representations of Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Symbols painted on barns in the Pennsylvania Dutch country.
This will open up the medium of relief prints for me a lot. These are not carved on raw lino. As an experiment, these were carved in wood. You begin with the relief carved with all the parts, you print a basic color, carve away the items of that color and print again with a different color and so on. In this case each print has been through the inking/drying process four times. Having finally accomplished the print registration process in this way means I’m promoting myself to sophomore print artist. They are called Faith & Trust [14] on the left and Luck & Abundance [13] on the right. 4″x4″ circle.
I wanted to see what AI could do in terms of writing a song. Here is the prompt and the result. (The first one is AI. The second one is me. It’s probably a tie.)
Prompt: Write a classic rock song about a retiree’s narrow life in a universe that expands infinitely.
Verse 1: Woke up one morning, feeling so darn old Got aches in my bones, my story’s been told Been livin’ life in the slow lane, same old song Watching the world fly by, feels like I don’t belong
Chorus: In a universe that’s ever expanding My life seems so narrow, suffocating Gotta find a way to break free, to fly Before my time’s up and the whole world passes by
Verse 2: I’ve been stuck in this rut for far too long Wasting my days in a routine floatin’ on But the universe out there is vast and grand And life’s too short not to make a stand
Chorus:
Bridge: I may be getting old, but my spirit’s still young With the fire in my soul, I can’t be outdone Gonna take that leap of faith, spread my wings and fly In the face of a universe that refuses to die
Chorus:
Then I watched Monty Python’s video The Galaxy Song and this happened.
Banging and Crunching (Since You’ve Been Gone)
Verse: I’m a 73 year old retiree. I spend my day primarily making tea (and pee) Though there’s no one here with whom I converse, I’m the center of the expanding universe. We’re a hundred miles apart since that day Three years ago when you went away, (far away) Like drinking good cognac,and hiking up a track, Getting gone takes less time than getting back.(that’s a fact)
Bridge: The math is undeniable, Sweetheart. Since you left we’ve drifted far too far apart
Verse: Einstein’s Relativity cleared the path. Hubble marked the signposts in his math. (so much math) It’s not that everything flies away. It’s the space itself expanding every way. From right to left to up to down to back You are speeding out away into the black. From my front to to your front, however, dear, A red shift is apparent, seen from here. (It’s clear.)
Bridge: My only hope is to see the start of the Big Crunch In a 100 million years or so we can shout and wave a bunch
Verse: I’ve done some calculations on the cuff (off the cuff!) To see if this distance is enough At 42 miles a second per megaparsec, And under this much gravity—double check— (what the heck) The father away, the faster you recede The longer gone, the greater is your speed. Like raisins in the rising raisin dough, We’re sitting still all while we’re on the go. (Sooooooooo)
Bridge: I’m rooting for the Big Crunch I’ll wait right here for you And in a billion years or so, you’ll be right here with me too. Until the Big Crunch I’ll wait right here for you And in a billion years or so, you’ll be right here with me too.
I sit with my deep thoughts while I’m drinking. No need for any friends to interrupt. A pop top on a beer can starts me thinking— Like what went down and now what is up?
A beer can change your mind if you let it. Two beers can erase a joyless frown. Three beers can often help forget it. (1) Four can make you howl like a hound. (2) Four makes everything go out of round. (3) Four can make it easy to fall down.
Sometimes I have a beer and sit, just thinking. I often think deeper most the day. I think about life and how I end up blinking At how it all turned out this-a-way.
If you don’t think it through on the first one A second or a third may help a bit By 4 or 5 or 6 you’re having some fun By 7 you’re just a drunken shit.
Refrain
I’ve found there is truth in a beer can But it takes a lot of time to get it out. You can’t chug a thought like a keg stand. You have to sit and struggle with the doubt.
Did I do the things that I shoulda ought to? Or did I just waste a lot of days? If I could get to do all this stuff over Would I just end up old anyway?
Yesterday, I confessed how, in a fantasy, I wished I could go back in time and do whatever was necessary to join Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show. This is my audition tape, based on that famous line of theirs.
You make my pants want to get up and dance, You make my socks rock and roll. You make my shirt want to stand up and blurt How much I love your voice and soul. You make my belt feel all it felt You make my hair fall down You make my face, beam into space And all my other parts run around.
I’ve been feeling down, since you’re not around. No happy smiles are on my lips. I wander through town, wearing a frown. There ain’t no swing in my hips. When you come back home and I’m not alone My heart just beats like a band. I’m not the same when I whisper your name. Honey child, I’m your biggest fan.
You make my pants want to get up and dance, You make my socks rock and roll. You make my shirt want to stand up and blurt How much I love your voice and soul. You make my belt feel all it felt You make my hair fall down You make my face, beam into space And all my other parts run around.
When you wake It is sitting on the edge of your bed, Waiting to be put on Like a new suit of clothes. It is too small. It chafes at your neck And pinches at your waist. It shrink wraps itself To your joints, Stiffening your gate, Chaining your hands and feet, Wrists and ankles Knees and elbows. It has enough electrical charge To freeze an appendage And force the involuntary utterances: Oh, Ow, God damn, for example. It is small like electrons Racing up neural pathways to the brain, Always leaving damage in the synovial joints. It is as wide as the sky Filled with tumbling lightning, Rolling and rolling through tangles of nerves.
It travels with you To the bathroom. Will your knees get you there in time? Will your arms reach yourself In the bath? Will fingers hold out long enough To rinse your hair? To trim your beard? To hold your toothbrush? The warm water helps.
Eventually you must negotiate The cold. You towel off where you can reach, Contort into real world clothes. Begin your day.
But one day you cannot sustain the defenses. You let it pierce you And you cry and stamp your feet Like a six year old Who keeps wetting the bed And who wants his mama To make it stop, Only Mama is dead And the pain doesn’t care. It throbs with your pulse In bones And joints And synovial tissues. It pierces Then overfloods. It seeps out of your bones And it flies in your hair And sets your scalp on fire. Your knees ache But your shoulder pain is sharp. Your elbow locks When raw bones clash Like broken gears in a broken clock. Your hip grates, Grinding something down That bleeds and erodes. And you gnash teeth, Gird loins and you ignore it And ignore it And ignore it.
But eventually you understand: It is not your pain. You do not own it; It owns you. You are its reason for being. It is your possessive lover And it hurts you where no other may touch. It is intimate When it electrifies your nerve gardens. Its fingers pry and dig. It seeps salty vinegar into open wounds.
So you and your lover Face your day with new understandings. It is a jealous lover And you dread meeting new people With firm handshakes. You give up any intimacy with tools. Hammers may as well be cattle prods. Rakes and shovels become abstracts Hanging on your garage wall. Even books are too heavy for your wrists. Instead you begin a new study of drugs. Your days get measured out in pills: The morning pills, not coffee. The afternoon pills, not lunch, Maybe some weed. The evening pills. And you offer more changes for your lover: You drink less Or you drink more, Some drink a lot more. Each day is measured in organ capacity. Will too many pills kill your kidneys? Some days you root for liver failure. You begin to understand the Oxy crisis.
Finally, it is bedtime. Your lover crawls in with you Wrapping you up in Child-sized flannel pajamas On flannel sheets. They grip in your crotch, Pinch in your groin, Squeeze your chest And armpits. Lying still hurts. Turning over hurts. No pillow fits your neck. No quilt lies easy. You curl, feeling close to Heaven, Still outside the gates. You lie there a long time. Eventually gray light seeps through the window. You see the figure on the side of the bed.
The original idea was to carve a relief block to make a print. I had this image of cave art in my head but couldn’t find a way to realize it. I adapted some images into a design for a block for printing. The original plan was to overlay two blocks as though an early cave painter had made one image and the space was subsequently commandeered by another artist. Such things happened in the “way back” times. But no matter what I did the images generated by this block were horrible as prints. The images were too stark. There was little context. I set the project aside until I could figure a different way to do what I was trying to do.
The block sat on my workbench for days…then weeks. But it didn’t go away. And then suddenly, I realized, this was already the project. It is now a painting-slash-sculpture-slash-bas relief. I like it even better than the original idea. I will mount it on a piece of cherry plywood and frame it. Lemons and lemonade. (Carved and painted plywood, 8″x10″)
Before a thing exists, we don’t know it’s a thing. Before radio, we didn’t know what radio was. Before TV, Before atomic bombs, Before rockets, Before me.
After a thing exists we know it’s a thing. We know what made the thing and we can name it: a ram jet makes sonic booms, CO2 makes global warming, my mom + dad makes me (it is an uneven task).
It’s when we keep going backwards, that things get awkward.
What made mom + dad? What made a ram jet? What made CO2? Eventually we must ask: Is there a time before everything? Before steel? Before carbon? Before atoms? Before matter and energy?
Abrahamic religions tell us that nomadic desert dwellers from thousands of years ago had already asked that question. Their answer was: God, YAHWEH. They found a thing called God And they named it: YAHWEH. More precisely, the voice of YAHWEH. The Word. God spoke and it all became.
Before that, Babylonians recorded a tale wherein the great god, Marduk battled the goddess, Tiamat and that struggle created the Earth and its people. Or, specifically, the body of the defeated goddess is used to make the sky and the earth, her tears form the great rivers and her son, (who is also her spouse?) contributes his blood to make people. Of course, the story doesn’t tell us how the warriors and her son, and all the other gods who were watching came to be except they were divided out of other Gods Before them.
It’s always the same: Someone or something has a thought. He or she, but usually He, speaks or fights or commands the Earth, or the land and sky, or the earth and the heavens to come into existence and all that follows is called “after.”
Science tells this story too: In the beginning, The Universe (a far larger story, they say) does not exist. It is “before.” It is before time or space or things. And then something unknown/unknowable happened. It is named The Big Bang. We do not know what caused it, Or what “it” was, Or where “it” was. Or when “it” was: Some scientists say, “13.787±0.020 billion years as interpreted with the Lamda-CDM concordance mode,” and a few others say “A little less according to the background microwave radiation measurements of Plank.”
Howsomever, All these calculations took place “after.” And now there are things, and now there is space, and now there is time. All of that happened in a twinkling of an eye. The story continues today. This is “now” and we don’t know what is “after after.” And we won’t know until…after. Some say BOOM; Some say freezing in the dark, but both leave space and time And matter lingering. …unless the clock can tick backward or runs in circular time. If that is the case we are looking for the beginning of a circle.
Modern atheists (and nihilists), or even ancient ones, as far as I know, made their own sounds against that small voice. “But what of before?” And “What of after?” That voice with that question does not create anything, Or at least it hasn’t yet.
Apparently only mythological gods die; the Earth abides… until it doesn’t.
