Thanks for writing this! I find the first painting (Flaming June) to be so beautiful! Catches the essence of sleeping in peace and just knowing how valuable it is to have a good quality sleep that we don’t mind sleeping in seemingly inconvenient places :)
Have you ever seen it firsthand? It is more stunning than anything imaginable. Right along with its frame, ready to take the Salon by storm. If ever there was a depiction of complete abandon while remaining fully present, this is it.
Thank you for this. I think of many painters whose work I love and their depictions of sleepers (Modigliani, Schiele, Wyeth, Winsor McCay...) And my series of sudden fiction from the 80's (The Morpheus Cycle), a series of undreamt dreams and imagined imaginings. The research showing the physiological and psychological necessity of sleep for repair and reordering of our cells and thoughts and emotions. The cleansing out of pathways and the sweeping of rooms in the memory palaces we construct to contain and protect our lives and memories. Even for me, a complete aphant (no interior pictures, sounds, tastes, smells, touches); everything as words despite extremely detailed memory of memory and events and places.
It's funny because I have this idea that I nearly never remember my dreams, but in transcribing 40+ years of journals and letters I find periodic bursts of extremely detailed dream recitations popping up from time to time with years long gaps between them. And, deeply immersed in this long struggle with cancer and the enormous gift of reborn creativity it has brought gently carried in its mouth, I awaken frequently with entire paragraphs and ideas fully formulated and just waiting to be transcribed out of my head. Dream states and that reordering and unconscious consciousness has a lot to do with that. Receptivity enhanced by the proximity of death and the ample 'leisure' time of illness is fertile ground for creative and introspective endeavor.
You always show me into the world and memory and thought and emotion and art and philosophy. That is a kindness.
It's funny that you compare sleeping people with dead people. I've always seen it the same way. I've always taken pictures of my sleeping child. As a mom, one thing I always did when I saw my son sleeping was to listen to him breathing. I think, in my mind, I was always afraid he would not be alive. He is 17, and I still do it. On the other hand, I love to sleep because I have vivid dreams. Many times, I can't get rid of the sensation that I've been in a different world for days. Thanks for the poem from Borges. I've always read him in Spanish and marvel at the translators.
❤️❤️ Jorge Luis
Thanks for writing this! I find the first painting (Flaming June) to be so beautiful! Catches the essence of sleeping in peace and just knowing how valuable it is to have a good quality sleep that we don’t mind sleeping in seemingly inconvenient places :)
Have you ever seen it firsthand? It is more stunning than anything imaginable. Right along with its frame, ready to take the Salon by storm. If ever there was a depiction of complete abandon while remaining fully present, this is it.
I haven’t! Sounds like a beautiful experience :)
Thank you for this. I think of many painters whose work I love and their depictions of sleepers (Modigliani, Schiele, Wyeth, Winsor McCay...) And my series of sudden fiction from the 80's (The Morpheus Cycle), a series of undreamt dreams and imagined imaginings. The research showing the physiological and psychological necessity of sleep for repair and reordering of our cells and thoughts and emotions. The cleansing out of pathways and the sweeping of rooms in the memory palaces we construct to contain and protect our lives and memories. Even for me, a complete aphant (no interior pictures, sounds, tastes, smells, touches); everything as words despite extremely detailed memory of memory and events and places.
It's funny because I have this idea that I nearly never remember my dreams, but in transcribing 40+ years of journals and letters I find periodic bursts of extremely detailed dream recitations popping up from time to time with years long gaps between them. And, deeply immersed in this long struggle with cancer and the enormous gift of reborn creativity it has brought gently carried in its mouth, I awaken frequently with entire paragraphs and ideas fully formulated and just waiting to be transcribed out of my head. Dream states and that reordering and unconscious consciousness has a lot to do with that. Receptivity enhanced by the proximity of death and the ample 'leisure' time of illness is fertile ground for creative and introspective endeavor.
You always show me into the world and memory and thought and emotion and art and philosophy. That is a kindness.
It's funny that you compare sleeping people with dead people. I've always seen it the same way. I've always taken pictures of my sleeping child. As a mom, one thing I always did when I saw my son sleeping was to listen to him breathing. I think, in my mind, I was always afraid he would not be alive. He is 17, and I still do it. On the other hand, I love to sleep because I have vivid dreams. Many times, I can't get rid of the sensation that I've been in a different world for days. Thanks for the poem from Borges. I've always read him in Spanish and marvel at the translators.