Try to Remember

 ,,,a time in September...

With that song playing in the background, welcome to September 2026.

Memory is increasingly an interesting topic.

Try to Remember. A thing about aging is its constantly morphing casual relationship to time. Yesterday I watered everything, teeny tiny back yard in the morning in two waves of automated sweeping fans of water, relocated between their iterations. Then in the afternoon, the front, with just one and a personal session with the hose and its stream and a little struggling lilac bus in the corner of its even smaller footprint. I set a "Hey Google" reminder for each session, 45 minutes each, knowing that the odds were solid that I would forget and let the deluge continue most of the day if I did not. Contrary to intuition, water is not free.

Whilst watering, I painted. Painting is interesting these days, actually always has been for me. I lose sense of time, but I yesterday I relied on my trusty turntable and record collection to regulate the efforts I make to bring my (or others') photographs to the canvas. I listened to three full albums of Linda Ronstadt's justifiably legendary recording catalogue. I painted under coatings and some initial layers of color in fledgling efforts to bring this photograph to its acrylic life:

"otto's hayfield"

It's one I took with my little wide angle iPhone lens, looking out to the Bay of Alaska across Otto Kilcher's hayfield. If you know anything about the television series "Alaska: The Last Frontier" from Discovery Channel, you know that they are clearly his--he is the Yule Kilcher homestead family member who doesn't hunt. Yes, he consumes his protein and supports his life and that of his own family with products from his cattle, but he doesn't hunt like his brother Atz, now passed, and his nephews and their families. It's about the sanctity of life for him, and he's okay with the process of domesticating animals, giving them a protected life, and killing those when their time is up. To do that he needs hay, and those fields are definitely his. The summer breeze was lovely that July day, and I had just had a long chat with him, he sitting aperch his four wheeler, while exploring with my own son Colin. We parted with a hug and promises to stay in touch. 

Here's my progress so far:

It'll change. Oh, it'll change. I suspect that I'll spend days brushing and highlighting strands of hay with tones of green with yellow, and I'll experiment with techniques, and I'll do much of it with a background consisting of that golden voice of Linda--I have four more albums to listen to from my total of 11. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ronstadt#Discography, she recorded 29, though further inspection results in only 18 that were issued on LP vinyl, not counting compilations and such. Guess a trip to The Great Escape is in order. Just 7 more to a full collection? Likely a quest.

Sometimes when I'm painting my work is informed by rhythms or other energies in the music I am listening to. I do use the Spotify, and often, but when, behind my desk chair, there are 500+ vinyl records, most in primo condition, I feel compelled to pick and choose from the tangible. This Linda journey was initially informed by the addition of ten or so new albums from her catalog I came into possession of through my work to clear out a dead friend's home after she was found on its bedroom floor over a week after her flame of creativity and pain snuffed out for the final time. As such, the grooved slabs of plastic feel a bit magical. And the voice issuing off the spinning vinyl is nothing short of magic with or without that subtext. I have Marcia in my heart when I listen. I have Otto guiding my brushes. I indulge my own flame.

Be well.