Delta Blues

Reflections of Emptiness in the American Dream

This is like an excerpt from a story that hasn’t been written yet. But it’s a true story, it happened to me. And perhaps it’s the story I am beginning to write.

This is also an example of what I am doing this year. I am communicating more fully and honestly about where my art comes from and how it is created psychologically and emotionally, what it is really about. I am not longer attempting to appeal to or to frame within the appropriate structures of communication what it is to be an artist for me.

I do this because, I want to reach the people I need to reach. And I do this because, I need to create the world that I can live in.

If this is interesting to you, then thank you for continuing to participate in this journey. If it is not, and it is someone else you are looking for, then I bid you a peaceful farewell. I do not intend to demand anyone have interest in what I am doing.

Thank you

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I did not intend to write this, but I began to type and this is what appeared…

When you are not attaching to a fixed position, you can see things as they are. You can understand where people are coming from.

You can see where things are rooted in ignorance and dis-honesty and where things are coming from truth, not just pointing the finger or having a convenient position.

You can include everything in your understanding and see with compassion and choose how to engage. Most important, you can see yourself with compassion, not with excuse, with compassion, which sometimes is very sensitive because we see everything within ourselves.

All the hurt, the limitations, the experiences, and then we can also, through this observation, allow these things to soften and go. We cannot force this, or demand it. We can allow it.

And with this space, we have more genuine capacity for others, but in my experience, one still should be careful, because without protection, the world is very hard, and this capacity can become taxed because it is very difficult to be in the world without becoming attached.

So, the solitary path is very difficult, but there is also much to be learned and awareness can be developed. It is safer in some ways because it is difficult to find or create healthy community. And, it is sometimes necessary to forge a new path that honors what exists but also establishes what does not.

I did not like knowing that it would take this long. It’s been a long time for one life. I wonder if all I have lived is a little bit insane. Perhaps it is. I have tried to see as much as possible, to understand through my own direct experience, the path with the least suffering.

This path was not always kind to me. But I chose to take that pain over what I saw was the greater cost. Whether I measured correctly, I will never know for certain.

This may not make much sense, but as I attempt to be in the world as I am, rather than the appearance that seemed required, it is sometimes difficult to shake the people I have been. I imagine it like being a spy. I was always there, but, I allowed myself to appear as needed a lot of the time. Mostly simply by not confronting people’s natural projections.

Hiding in plain sight. For some reason it seemed very important, until twelve years ago I got the message that it was time to stop. And that began the very difficult and painful work of coming back to myself and remembering everything. Because, I had become attached to the illusion, the dream that reality could be other than it was.

But that was the only way to really know was to actually experience it, mindfully. But then, I had to accept that it would be much, much worse if I did not come back, I had to accept this now, that it was over.

And so I agreed. I agreed to go through the worst pain I can imagine, again, to be free.

Delta Blues - 36x48” lens-based mixed media on canvas

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“All conditioned things are impermanent - when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.”

~ Buddha