The Idle Artist

Posted to Grit Uplifted

I sit by the river, and it is a river of paint, the reeds like brushes, dipping and lifting it away to an imaginary canvas. I am Van Gogh, watching my vision flower across the sky, colouring the clouds, giving them life and animation. How casually they take up their roles, laughing at the piece: What care I? I am only air! Very well you paint me in the raiment of a priesthood, labour’s worn jeans, teenage fashions. Alright, I’ll dance for you, silly dreamer, and will you make a prophecy of my play? It is only the whimsy of the wind that tells this story, and only your own wandering mind that reads so much into it.

“Yes,” I whisper to the river, the brush, the canvas, to the mischevious actors on stage.

“And yet there is truth to it.”

Echo of the Reaper

Posted to Grit Uplifted

Death stalks tonight;
But guilty footprints, shrieking truth, betray his passage.
His heart’s a drum in sharp staccato,
Pounding mortal fear in mortal danger.
The darkness whispers:
“There is no escape…”
Blood on his fingers
And fire in the black,
The seeking eye of Justice comes hunting:
He is not the only one
To bear the reaper’s scythe tonight;
For he has run beyond forgiveness now,
And there is no return.

The Serpent Street Choir

The last meeting of Grit Uplifted in the session of fourteen was today. I feel slightly bloated. There was a small party with baked goods and a free beverage from Red Roaster, courtesy of the facilitators of the group. And then dinner at the Center of Hope directly afterward.

I spent some time after the confidence boost of reading some of my newest work at Grit walking the streets and imagining that I were leading a practiced choir of recruits from My Sister's Place and the expanded community in a slow march through the streets, singing "I Have a Right" together; two people carrying large, cardboard signs in clear black and white, one with "I Have a Right, by Sonata Arctica, from their album Stones Grow Her Name", and the other with "adapted and performed with choir by (me - name removed)" on either side by the front; instrumentalists who wanted to join in playing a simple, repeated rhythm on drums, perhaps even a guitarist.

For a long, instrumental break, I imagined the choir filling the space with a simple, rhythmic refrain in increasingly complex harmony (perhaps with parts of it singing a supportive harmony in simple aah's or la's),

"I have a right. You have a right. We have a right. We all have a right. The rich have a right. The poor have a right. The old have a right. The young have a right." ...Back into the chorus.

I imagined drawing much energy and attention while slowly progressing down some streets.

Only thoughts... But such beautiful, beautiful thoughts they are.

I really must think about trying to start up a small choir group at My Sister's Place. It would be an early step to some wonderful thing like this actually happening.

Ah, and in my imagination, with my ego, I called it The Serpent Street Choir.