One (Brush) Stroke At A Time

Life....as ART. Life Imitates art...an old (and accurate in my opinion) cliche.

Me...I have actually never really pondered the thought before now, whether it...this LIFE of mine imitates art. I suppose it really matter's not in the realm of everyday reality. Life will go on...until it ends of course...no matter how I define it.

But I like to turn things over in my brain...just because I can. John Lennon jotted a note to his oldest son Julian on a whim that: "Your Mind is a Muscle...it needs exercise to strengthen it".



Hmm...corny, something a Dad would say to an uninterested son but I'll own it. I think about weird, seemingly meaningless stuff just because I can...and my brain, the far too few cells that remain unscathed...needs exercise it can get.

I do look at the entire span of my lifetime...now in it's 51st year...as a gigantic oil painting...an Oil SCROLL if you were. The genre...well it changes depending on the age and mood and circumstance but typically it's Impressionistic. Since I was a wee lad I've always found solace  fascination & TRUTH in Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir and Cezanne. But that is neither here nor there. What I find interesting is that each moment, activity, experience, even thought or idea is a brush stroke on the gigantic, timeless canvas scroll called THOM's LIFE.

And any interesting observation I've made about that particular painting that is ME involves those very brush strokes. The era of ME as a young man, full of life was represented as MASSIVE, VIGOROUS, even TORMENTED brush-strokes...they are vividly colorful...they're huge...quite wide, long and appear to have been done without much thought, just vast, fast strokes of color representing one who very much LIVES for the MOMENT. And they cover vast areas of the canvas and there is definitely a certain "RUSH" when I think of the time so many years after the fact. 

As life moved on....periods of crisis are marked with dark, short, tedious nearly violent strokes...stabs, jabs and slashes across the once wide open space...they appear labored...perhaps tortured is a more accurate description.

Life today however...is a constantly changing combination of the two techniques, still there is no pattern...no rhyme nor reason to it...just thick or thin, bright or dark cut into the Soul....but they have certainly real story to tell...yet they are not talking, at least in a language that's understood. It is a rich, cultural document on  thark, thick, heavy paint laden highways of hope or despair written in blood...er, oil. Then thin almost transparent little lines of light in flight, wisps of oil as wind representing change or success maybe. 

I don't really know and I am not sure if it would be worthwhile to explore this in more detail...but of course I will!  I can't approach it any other way.