Did you know that I was only (7) years old when AC/DC
released Highway to Hell? Me either.
I guess I always knew it was earlier than my memory of it but have never
put those two facts together until tonight aimlessly rifling through liner
notes. Today, I heard Shot Down In Flames
on the poorly conceived and executed excuse for a radio station I listen to at
work. (Yes, I still listen to an actual radio
in my office: No, I do not have a plausible excuse for why.) I was as far from AC/DC in 1979 as is humanly
possible. Eddie Rabbit was my favorite
“artist” then (I know, right?). At some
point I became aware and all of the crappy music I had in my mind was replaced
with a desire to find the next amazing thing.
It only strikes me as something
now because I would have assumed, outside looking in, that “it” was always
there but “it” wasn’t. I came to be me
on my own terms. What exactly that means
is debatable and certainly isn’t encapsulated in any music, but it’s a part – a
big part actually. There was a moment,
I’m sure, when it all clicked.
But I don’t remember when and that’s what’s troubling.
I recently completed my yearly November sojourn to Mississippi for turkey
and family and whatnot. I have an odd
affection for that place that I can’t deny.
It’s where I grew up. I lament
and relish that fact in equal measure. I
can’t imagine the cataclysmic event that would put me back in residence, but at
the same time I can’t imagine not going back there occasionally. There are good people in that state but they
get drowned in the secessionist and racist bullshit that makes it to the
national media. It’s a shame really,
because I have known some peace there – and still do from time to time. The sad truth is though that I hesitate to be
honest when someone asks me where I’m from.
I don’t lie, but I don’t offer the truth readily either. The going and coming from Mississippi has taught me more than the living
there ever did for damn sure. You can’t
really see a thing until you are no longer in the thing and you can’t even see
that until you go back. Again, there was
a moment when that realization hit me, but I don’t recall when it was.
At some point on said journey, and I don’t remember whether
I was coming or going, I realized this
thing. I was about that many miles west
of somewhere that only exists in someone else’s memory when I became acutely
conscious of this fact. I had these (3)
perfect things in no particular order – open
Road, Black Sabbath and two sleeping dogs.
End of list. It was a perfect moment. I’m going there or I’m going here or whatever
or wherever. It’s comical now that these
three disparate truths crystallized for me that which I have never been aware
of before: being aware is all that
really matters.
I recognized a moment.
That moment was my awareness of what was that Friday’s perfect (3) that
made that Friday a perfect day. That’s a
powerful thing, right? I’ve spent a
lifetime trying to identify and capture it on a canvas but never really comprehended
what the “it” was I was after. That
specific moment, that “it” was simply about understanding why I was
smiling. There is always a moment when
I’m painting that I see an "it", and as quickly as it appears it’s
gone. That might seem discouraging but I
find it to be an invigorating, perpetuating fact. If I’m never able to capture “the moment” in
acrylics at least I will know that I waged a noble war, at least I will know
what I was trying to find. There is
always a piece in every piece that is near perfect – that does in fact,
illustrate the idea I’m attempting to illuminate. There is always a “moment” in every painting
that is close, but I haven’t been able to make the whole piece be the whole
idea yet. So I will keep trying. When the whole of the painting represents the
whole of my thought then I will be an artist.
If that’s not art imitating life imitating art, I don’t know what is.
It’s not the destination but the journey that gives you
wisdom. It’s that you are going that
matters, not that you are getting there.
