Every new beginning...

Semisonic has a great song called 'Closing Time' with the poignant line 'every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.' It will be a few more years before that song comes out and enters my soundtrack, but the sentiment works at this moment- because the new beginning that was my life as an artist arose from the end of my relationship with Nikole. Of course, life rarely presents clear breaks without some sort of foreshadowing, so let's start with the art thing.

I actually began my tenure at Pepperdine as a business major. I took one business math class (which academically I had no trouble with) but I looked around at my fellow business majors and thought, "This is not my crowd!" Not knowing what else to do, I became an art major. You would think with my drawing ability that decision would have been a no-brainer. But that decision was fraught with anxiety- because at the same time I took that business math class, I was also taking a class called 2-D Design. It was my first introduction to abstract art- and UNLIKE business math, I didn't get it. The whole argument, "The artist meant to do that" was, I felt, a load of crock. And even if they wanted to do it that way, what skill was involved?

All that changed the next year when I took a couple of drawing classes. These were no problem for me. While I learned much, the skill of rendering an object or person in front of you came easy to me, I'd been working on it all my life. But during one class our professor, Joe Piasentin, took us to see a show of Picasso's 'Weeping Woman' series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. While we were pretty much on our own as far as meandering through the show, our professor did focus us a bit: "I want you to look at the different ways Picasso portrayed the crying eyes." So, for example, the image here, notice how the eyes are actually bowls pouring out the tears. It struck me.

But I was struck more by another drawing I saw in the exhibition, a small study for one of his major works, Guernica. The drawing depicted a mother, distraught over the death of her baby, whose lifeless body she holds in her arms. She is climbing a ladder, presumably to escape the horror that terminated her child's life. (This picture is NOT the drawing but it's very similar, to give you a visual.  I have yet to find a reproduction of the actual one that I saw.) The drawing was a simple line drawing done in pencil- which was important because I could see the 'ghosts' of the lines he erased. In particular he had drawn her leg 'correctly' - you could follow the curve that delineated the hamstrings, curving in at the back of the knee, bulging out at the calf, and tapering along her Achilles' tendon to the roundabout curve of her heel. A single line that was perfect. A 'perfect' line that he erased. He replaced it with a big fat triangle that resembled nothing of the human figure.

I didn't understand it.

But I did understand one thing- it was deliberate. The artist meant to do it that way and there was no denying it. You could see his choice- the initial, 'accurate' rendering, and its subsequent erasure and replacement with something...else.  This was the beginning of the beginning for me.  The fish was moving towards the hook.


Meanwhile, Moscow (for me) and Uruguay (for Nikole) had brought much reflection.  We had some serious discussions.  We decided to stick with it- and even decided to 'have a song.' In hindsight, though, I think it is telling that the song is a question... can you feel the love tonight?  In the romantic sense of the movie, the answer is of course yes.   But the question is not rhetorical, the choice remains open...