Small Packages, Big Things

We May Never Pass This Way Again

by Seals and Croft

Listen Here

 Life, so they say
Is but a game and they'd let it slip away
Love, like the autumn sun
Should be dyin' but it's only just begun

Like the twilight in the road up ahead
They don't see just where we're goin'
All the secrets in the universe whisper in our ears
All the years come and go, take us up, always up

We may never pass this way again
We may never pass this way again
We may never pass this way again

Dreams, so they say
Are for the fools and they let 'em drift away
Peace, like the silent dove
Should be flyin' but it's only just begun...

So I wanna laugh while the laughin' is easy
I wanna cry it makes it worthwhile
I may never pass this way again
That's why I want it with you

'Cause you make me feel like I'm more than a friend
Like I'm the journey and you're the journey's end
I may never pass this way again
That's why I want it with you...

Recently there was a talk given to the public at large which included a good number of young, art students. The speaker, an artist himself was exuberant, joyful and rather a bit nervous. And he had a lot to say, a lot. Time was short; his remarks crunched into a 45 minute segment. The students in the audience had other places to go and things to do. For his part the artist-speaker, a middle aged man had much to tell, some thought too much.
And then there were the traditional nude drawings that he and so many before him have studied and replicated. The human figure, it seems, is an unending source of wonder and beauty.

While he showed  many examples of his "body" of work, it was clear that he is quite competent renderer, and he clearly enjoyed cartoon figures; his profession as a graphic artist somewhat limited his progress in these areas. This man's personal story was bold, irreverent, witty, amusing, and at times, startling, if not simply shocking. And he became a bit defensive. His youthful student audience was some, a bit offended.

Should he have defended what is his work, the beauty of nature? Or was it simply marred by his interpretations, his perception of that nature? Maybe he would be better to allow the work to speak for itself, to allow the viewer to take it in, to possess what one may grasp of its essential nature-- but he, the artist, did not allow for that.

He displayed himself quite dramatically in response by pulling up his own shirt! The audience was aghast. And to a Simple Mind, he was sweet in his own clumsiness and part-ignorance. It seemed more that he was trying to get at the lyrics of the song above, but never did, so mired in himself he was. And it's true, "we may never pass this way, you make me feel like more than a friend; you're the journey's end..."

For this man, the process of life is clearly as important as the result. May he be forgiven for his clumsiness, his brashness and his desire to shock for control; big things most often do come in little packages. This one was no exception.

"There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every affair under the heavens..."

~The book of Ecclesiastes 3:1-15



Art and Love, Existentialists in a World of Change

"Art is love." Somerset Maugham

Waiting on the World to Change

by John Mayer

Listen Here

me and all my friends, we're all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing and there's no way we ever could.
now we see everything that's going wrong with the world and those who lead it.
we just feel
like we don't have the means to rise above and beat it
so we keep waiting, waiting on the world to change.
we keep on waiting waiting on the world to change

it's hard to beat the system when we're standing
at a distance so we keep waiting. waiting on the world to change
now if we had the power to bring our neighbors home from war
they would have never missed a Christmas
no more ribbons on their door and when
you trust your television what you get is what you got
cause when they own the information, oh
they can bend it all they want that's why we're waiting
waiting on the world to change.

we keep on waiting.
waiting on the world to change
it's not that we don't care, we just
know that the fight ain't fair.
so we keep on waiting waiting on the
world to change and we're still waiting,
waiting on the world to change.
we keep on waiting waiting on the world to change

Author and poet, Somerset Maugham a prominent, early-mid twentieth century writer and poet most famous for the 1915 novel, Of Human Bondage, tells a tale of a young man, Philip Carey, orphaned and raised by an aunt and uncle. He grows in their home and leaves to find his way in the world. He has many experiences. The book is set in England and quite lengthy, coming in at about 600 pages. By about page 200, we find its young subject deep into the quest for meaning, purpose and love. Philip sets himself to learn the purpose of his life, what love is to him. After struggles and some failed attempts to start a career, Paris calls out like a Siren to him. He feels the pull of Art.

Not long after he arrives, Philip finds himself drinking it all in; the Left Bank, the people, the French culture, the free spirit of the Parisian capital is in stark contrast to London; the reader follows him through his  adventures there. He meets many persons, some odd, some bold. Many set him to thinking. One tells him, 'art is love.' He considers this in light of the more familiar, 'god is love.' The reader learns that this novel is actually something of Maugham's autobiography. 

Philip recounts his own early experiments in life, and what he discovers is what Maugham called, 'the artistic temperament.' Emotionally the young man comes to see not a desire to be invisible; he more wishes to risk for freedom in both the emotional and physical planes to engage in his art. Art, he finds, also requires courage and honesty in the pursuit of beauty, the thing he craves. The book is also an exploration of 1915 Europe in which society was for many, personally constricting.

This novel is striking in the Simple mind; it was written by someone who lived a century before and still, today, many of the themes examined are current and intently debated by artists. There is a strong spiritual theme throughout the book with the linking of love and art. It brings to mind the vast Vatican collection, a trove of art so large.
'Let us love one another; for in love, there is god. God is love.'