Fall (down) again.

 

Watercolor leaf, Renilde De Peuter.

Dear Today,

A few days into Fall, now, and here is that old feeling.  The summer this year was hot, relentless, bleak (although everything is relative, and no summer yet has been as bleak as the smoky-hot summer of 2021).  Fall makes me see that my Romantic proclivities are partly, maybe increasingly, Melancholic.  

The years I spent in graduate study on the Palouse painting and reading difficult post-modern texts could have been subtitled: Discourses on Melancholia, The Sublime, and The Void.  Those were the things to grapple with, vis a vis meaning in art and existence in general.  It isn't really important now, except as a signpost of where I found that to recall is to experience melancholia, and Fall, ooh Fall was made for melancholy!  It is delicious, actually, if you can keep in mind that sadness is sometimes a choice.

So, the sun lessens, the days slow down, growing things are disintegrating, with only a few stubborn ones continuing to bloom; the longer darkness gives us time to reflect, and boom!  You have your melancholy!  Add a cherry and whipped cream, while it is still hot, because soon it will be too cold for even these cold and benumbing thoughts, and you will have to focus on the turn, the solstice and the starting up of the signs of spring.  It happens very fast here; it has barely become that lovely complicated gray tan, and then boom! again, you have green fuddling up the subtle winter colors. But that is later, for now, baby, let me follow you down into the sweet melancholy of fall and the gorgeous autumn leaves.

It is of my intention.

Dear Intentions,


Once, I made such a case, a scene really, against water taps in refrigerators (I want water in my sink, not my fridge) that the man who plumbed and built our house started to feel bad about having water in his fridge.  Despite this feelings, he plumbed our coolerator alcove for water anyway; and behind our very modest Maytag (it isn't stainless, or large, but small and white and 18 years old) in the dust and obscurity, is an eight foot coil of glowing copper tubing waiting for the 'next owner' whom we presume won't have any sense whatsoever and will want, at the touch of a button, cold filtered water to pour forth from their major appliances.

The point, here, is that I hadn't intended to make the builder feel bad about his entitled, first world, luxuried way of life, and so similarly here, I don't intend to ruin your blithe and harmless enjoyment of Paganini and Haydn.  It's a warning, really; if you treasure your feelings about composers Haydn and Pags, maybe just turn the page now, discontinue reading, and pour yourself a nice tall glass of cold water from a spigot in your fridge.

If, though, your appreciation of music can stand some criticism or dissenting opinion, read on.

Many years ago now I gave a painter I knew some music on a cassette tape.  Music that is good for painting:  Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 (of Sorrowful Songs).  My painter acquaintance responded with Pags and Hay, saying that the music I had given her was entirely too melancholy.  The tape she gave me was suitable for weddings and inattentive listening.  What is often scornfully referred to as 'background music.'  It was safe and melodious; easy-listening as 'classical music' goes.

As for my own conception of music, I often wonder if any music except the lament is worth making the noise of.  Still, if your daily activities do not require the solemnity of melancholy music, then good for bloody you; but the undertaking and creation of a world of depth, space and understanding from nothing; a world with its own light, its own cosmology, requires music with a bit more gravitas.  In other words, if you are making a painting, you will want some serious, insightful, mournful, and exquisitely beautiful music like the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.  May it serve you well; I've been using it for years. 






PS
I wonder if the refrigerator of the future might play Paganini on demand?