"Senator let's be Sincere as much as We Can."--T. Amos

*****

Today I read the article about the Colombian Botero's war paintings
in the New York Times. It was odd to see Botero's
usually fat&happy people in poses of anguish.
Riddled with bullets, on bent knees, holding crosses above their heads.
Picasso's Guernica was mentioned in the article.
Guernica failed to stop the Spanish Civil War.

Yet, in yesterday's Women in Love, Glenda the Good Witch managed to
entrance the snorting bulls with her dancing, as if she were
charming snakes or subduing lions. They were ready to charge
and she mesmerized them--she put them under her spell.
They were hypnotized. Confused. Then she scared them away.
Nasty bulls with sharp, piercing horns that gore men in bull-rings.
And she scared them away wearing only a white see-thru nightgown.
She was very determined and she never said a word.

Is that the power of art or the power of Woman?

Georgia O'Keeffe believed that she had tapped into the same
spiritual/transformative/therapeutic energy that
Kandinsky, Van Gogh, and Gauguin discovered.

Whether O'Keeffe found the energy due to the place
or because she was terribly observant
of her own mind, I don't know.
It seems she had the ability to remember
a state of being that fostered healing
and return to that state through painting.
Or through art.

I also saw today Thom Yorke in the Arts section of the Times
and a guy from the Pixies. They described the show in California as
baleful.

I don't feel bad about not making a bold statement about the war.
I believe in the gentleness and non-aggression of my art.
I don't think Mary Cassatt ever did pictures of war and we still talk about her.
We put her paintings on our stamps.

*****

Yesterday I Saw a Tree


Yesterday I saw a tree and gave him
angel wings, a trunk (straight as an arrow...)
I saw an overcast sky, sun peeking out
(like a turtle;) I never lie...