painting in a minor key

this whole rather stream-of-con- sciousness meandered from one inspiration to another (i'll get to that), and since much of this travel was through the nabis' neighborhood, i tried to find that tune in my head. forgive my synaesthesia, but i realised that the only way i could describe it was through sound.

this adventure began when i when i saw the elmes poster at the (below right). i knew it reminded me of something,
and it was clearly indebted to nabi music.
(see more at this amazing blog!)

i looked through my nabi books, and i think that this vallotton (above left) comes the closest, and that perhaps the ones i was seeing in my mind's eye were conflations of a few of the other ones.

the next two are just echos, the synapses skipping.

while bernard was the only one of these two who were part of the pont-aven crowd, you can surely see the route. but all this made me want to grasp what message i was getting from their work.

and i found that for me, it is non-verbal. it like the minor- key in the key- strokes of symphony, like a rotation that leaves every- thing rotated, not quite in

free-fall...........

three of these bottom images are from another won- derful site, i added the fourth, from ernest batch- elder, but its original artist is not attributed. personally, i think the bonnard more matches the batchelder.

there is something terribly attractive about that skewing, that minor key; it can be almost unbearable to come right-side up again. yes, the artists were heavily influenced by japanese prints, their flatness, their blocks of color, and their their knowledge of the importance of the non-linear line, and symbolism, and a response to the impressionists. but i believe that the goal, probably unconscious, was to play by the music that they heard, not anyone elses.

which is like so many of us today.

released

RELEASE

With rod and tackle box,
I'm slogging through soft sand,

a red sun going down in the surf,
swag-belly clouds drifting in

with Ray, only two months dead,
going on about girls that summer

we studied French in Québec and
guzzled Labatts at the Chien d'Or,

about how he'll marry again, keep
at it until he gets it right—
Pas vrai?

Above the tide wrack, a woman
in a two-piece with half my years

kneels struggling in the sand
with a pillow of feathers,

one wing flapping—a pelican
tangled in fish line, treble hook

in the bill pouch,
the other in its wing.
Ray says, Ask her out for a drink

but she says,
Could you give me a hand?
I drop the tackle and secure the wing

while she croons to calm him and
with one free hand
untangles the line.

With pliers from the tackle box,
I expose the barbs and carefully clip,

a total of six loud snaps.
Then I hold
the bird while she frees
the last tangle

and we step back,
join the onlookers,
a father explaining care to his kids.

The pelican now tests his wings, rowing
in place. He looks around and seems

to enjoy the attention, just as Ray did
in bars, buying drinks and telling jokes.

But this college boy with a can of Bud
is no joke and says they watched it flap

all afternoon
from that deck on the dune.
His buddy agrees with a belch

that buys a round
of frat boy laughter.
Ray tells me the kid needs his clock cleaned

just when the pelican waddles up
and puts his soft webbed foot on mine.

He tilts his head to
catch my look, then
flapping runs into the air,
tucks his feet,

and climbs, turning over our small circle,
before heading west. Dazzled and dumb,

I'm faintly aware of the woman,
then gone,
weightless and soaring over water, looking

down on myself slogging through sand,
certain that I'm being watched,


if only by another self
who will have to tell how it happened.

Peter Makuck

From Long Lens by Peter Makuck. Copyright © 2010 by Peter Makuck.

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