Meandering

It was suggested by my friend the writer Beth Blevins that I write about the mundane: the day to day life of the artist---me. Aside from the fact that I am not one to "do small talk" (my friend Mim has been telling me for years, "Chandra, you don't do small talk..."); what I have always done is try my best through art and as a fledgling writer, to tackle the big subjects. There has grown up in me over the years the feeling, since I was a small child, that life is an emergency. Aside from the fact that I was beaten and beaten down again and again as a child, by both parents, I have remained defiant in my belief and practice as a human being, that my truth is important, that I will be vigilant in my expression of that truth, that not only is this toward the greater good of me, but of the world itself. Global warming, nuclear proliferation, robotic warfare, war, child abuse, spousal abuse, rape, and environmental catastrophe affecting this planet and outer space (the moon fired at to find water for human-kind!) are not subjects that go away just because we hide from them. I have not been a little child with my head buried beneath the blankets for many years.
All of that notwithstanding, my friend Beth is a beautiful writer. Any subject in the hands of one whose primary talent is for writing will be profound, poignant, perceptive, insightful, and thought provoking.
That said, Shakespeare's greatest work did not come in the package of a Sonnet comparing his lover (or his agent) to a Summer's day. On the other hand, as we near the end of T.S. Elliot's life we ponder with him over the fate of his rolled trousers, and of course we know it to be great poetry; with him we ponder the Wasteland that every life eventually becomes. In the guise of the day to day life of the poet is embedded our greater questions concerning our mortality. While I love to frolic with Wordsworth in his field of Daffodils, my heart leaps up with his, when I behold a rainbow in the sky; for it is when truth to one's feelings about the larger subjects are tackled, that flight becomes possible.
So for now, I leave the art and writing about a day in the life to Lennon/McCartney, Morandi, Hockney, Dostoevsky, Monet, Whitman, Cassatt, Flaubert, Vermeer, and Blevins, among many others we would all do well to look to.