Why?

 Well, I don't know.

I just know the arrival of each day is the opportunity to discover how one's being at any moment is important. I'm working on a song, a painting, and a...what? There have to be three things, don't there? 

What's the third thing?

The song is this (dashed parts are phrasings I need to remember):

If-I-had a timemachine clock

that ticked while it tocked

I don't think I'd turn back its hands

I many not have had

as much as I want

but believe it's bout all I can stand

Ahhhh, retirement

Stayin' alive 

is the sole requirement

I did my time walkin' the line

and now that it's mine

I play all the time

It's warmed up to freezing

which has me believing

that I may go outside today

I got nothing to do

but write this for you

to sing what I have to say

Although you may not hear it

or come anywhere near it

I'll quietly sing it and play

You-may-not-be around

to hear the sound

but that goddamn tree fell anyway

instrumental break 

Ahhhh, retirement

Stayin' alive 

is the sole requirement

I did my time walkin' the line

and now that it's mine

I play all the time

instrumental break

I will put on my hat

my coat and my gloves

and take my dog out for a walk

it may sound lame 

but just the same

sometimes I wish he could talk

Scheduliberation

the ultimate vacation

I did my time walking those lines

and now that it's mine

I play all the time...

The current painting is of my friend and brother Matt Melon, he of Magic Metal Designs fame, from a photo I took of him working while my friend and brother, Rocky Alvey, and I sat watching Columbo reruns on Matt's laptop, smoking cigars, and drinking bourbon in his makeshift workshop in East Nashville on a  cold November day. Matt is welding and well, I guess I just love the photo image and wanted it to be (more or less) immortalized in acrylics on canvas, as if my painting it would do that. When I finish it I want it to live on the wall of the big shop he's building outside of Lyles, TN. I'm still working on it:

The third thing is you. I don't thank you enough. I don't tell you I love you enough. I need to work harder to do both of those things. Thank you. I love you. If I didn't have a mental image of you I would not be able to do this. I do. Maybe I should paint that. Maybe it's too vast to reproduce, or maybe too miniscule.

Brrrrrrr December

 Okay, it's not nearly as cold as most years at this time but I'll repeat that Tennessee cold is colder than any other because of the omni-present humidity. That humidity is cursed in the summer and the winter with equanimity. 

On a happier topic, I'm beginning work on a new painting, another dive into another arena of complete inexpertise (there is some uncertainty if this last is actually a word, but apparently Wictionary approves).

I had a chill (in every sense of the term) experience at my friend Matt Melon's detached garage workshop in Madison a few weeks ago, sitting with mutual friend Rocky Alvey, smoking cigars, drinking some Green River bourbon, and watching Colombo episodes on Matt's laptop while Matt worked (see https://www.magicmetaldesigns.com/ for how truly magical his metal artistry is). I snapped some pics and one of them is this one:

Matt Melon making magic

There are soooo many angles and objects in this image that I may well tame it down. On the other hand, that is what gives it its interest, so I may lean more toward realism than I have really yet to do. It's never boring, largely because if it seems to be getting that way, I will veer away onto other paths of decisions. Stay tuned.

I recently finished a pic I alluded to in my previous post (https://scottmerrick.blogspot.com/2022/11/december-2022-looks-to-be.html) and I'm pretty happy with it. Anyway, here are two stages of it--the first is what I brought into the workshop, and the second is what I consider the finished piece:

UPDATE 121622:

I attended the awesome Blended/Broken Color full-day workshop led by sensei Charles Brindley yesterday at Scarritt Bennet Conference Center and Charles made some suggestions for my "rocky's ridge" painting that I spent the whole afternoon implementing, (pictures above). Luckily for me, ten feet away from me in the full-to-capacity painting studio the amazing beautiful and amazing Amanda Shires was working on several absolutely beautiful abstract canvases. I got to meet her at the end of the day when Charles gathered the artists around my easel to view the final painting. I laughed when he told them "this guy came out of nowhere" to learn painting. Amanda was painting with her mother, Lisa, also a very capable artist, and both were really, really nice human beings. New adoring Amanda fan, check.

On another topic--Yesterday my brother Ed and I sat in on a Zoom meeting with our first cousin twice removed, Kathy M., who lives in California and who recently tracked me down via this blog. Her mother, the daughter of our half-aunt (nothing is simple), recently passed away and left behind what appeared in Kathy's background to be a dozen or so bankers boxes of letters and photographs. I won't be sharing these as they come my way, but childhood pictures of our dad, baby pictures of us with our mom, and the like  are exciting to look forward to. As of now the only baby pic I have of me is on the cover of my novel, Lives, and Kathy has already sent me another one. Who's that grumpy baby?

Mom and me at 4 months old

I look forward to continued correspondence with this distant newly in-touch cousin!

Finally (let's just go for it--is this the randomest blogpost ever?) I'm hitting The Blue Room Bar at Third Man Records Friday night, with my pal Rocky, for a show featuring the Lockland Strings, a group of East Nashville musicians who get together and perform a concert once a month or so. I am all giddy and expectatious (sic) to see Madi Diaz live, as well as to be introduced to a tidy handful of other performers I have not heard, until I put together this playlist on Spotify with one "record" from each artist who will be there. Feel free to listen, and I do recommend randomizing, if you can't make the show. (Note: Peter Mulvey will not be there, but it was the album with SistaStrings I found that features the most of them.)

Cheers! Have a lovely Winter Holidays season! 

Wait! I want to share that Thursday night we'll be attending "A Sonos Christmas," live at the Parthenon and getting to hear our marvelous, beautiful, talented, and, well, perfect daughter Miranda sing. She auditioned for the choir a couple months ago and was embraced into it, happily. Although I had the pleasure of attending the Timbre Cierpke Christmas Concert at a Nashville church this past Thursday and got to hear her sing, my honey has not and I couldn't be more excited to sit at the base of the golden Athena and share that experience with my life's love. Well, I couldn't be more excited until Friday at the Blue Room!

Now go be good and have fun!