What the desert taught me:

Over time, Texas became my spiritual desert. Not just that it was hot, but that it cut me off from any other source for meaning but God. My usually ability to make friends everywhere I went, and audience for my gifts, intimate peer support—all the things which kept me bouyed up in the past-weren’t here. It was just me performing for angels; and then the angels faded, and it felt like just me on a bare stage, hoping the fat lady in the back whose clap I could still hear, was Jesus.
If you are a theatrical person like me, it is hard when rehearsing with no audience. I play off audiences well. My humor requires a live conversation. So when God took away the audience, I wasn’t sure who I was for a while.
First He had to become my only audience, then, He had to ask me to stop performing for Him, even, and just be. That was the death part.
The mine en scene felt like that Samuel Becket play, Waiting for Gadot. I was just standing in a wasteland with one dead tree and me. And man, it was lonely.
But He wouldn’t go on relating to me solely through performance—even the performance of good or ministry. He wanted me to see who I was when not performing, when just being with Him. We would sit for hours in the back of the theater, watching no one perform. He wanted just to sit there with me, with no show, just us.
Then out there in that desert, theater watching a non-performance with Jesus, suddenly something appeared. An enormous Big Top tent!
Ok, get up there son, and do your thing, now that you don’t have to! Now that you can be visible without performing. And come off stage as soon as you don’t feel like your really collaborating with me. And sit here again in the back, just being. I’ll bring popcorn, I promise.
That’s how it was back then in Texas. And that’s what the desert taught me.

You know when you are too tired to know what you desire. That was the whole Summer that year in Texas.
My friend was pregnant on top of it, and I was trying to mc art happenings to keep the neighborhood inspired. We were suffering for our art, we told ourselves that year.
In truth, it was simply too hot—even for art. Our minds or imaginations no longer worked. We were monkey machines going through the pre-prescribed motions of life. We weren’t really living. Not because of the heat exactly, but more due to a general malaise which it only intensified, amplified—made overtly obvious.
None of us were happy. And we were all Americans, so we were doubly unhappy that we weren’t happy. No smiles that year. No white teeth or white sneakers. We were just too hot for appearances.
We used to do outdoor cinema on the sides of buildings back then, and I remember that Summer we kept showing Lawrence of Arabia to try to take courage from a very white man making it through the desert.
That year we also worked through several several director’s whole oeuvres so we could sound smart by fall.
We did Felliini, Kurosawa, Hitchcock, several French new wave directors and threw in some New Hollywood at the end. I think we even watched American Graffiti while actually making an outdoor mural. We were ambitious, young, half naked half the time, and very hot that year. We were just being ourselves, which is enough in itself. To be or not to be was our basic existential quest. Whether in a bar or temple didnt matter to us. We just wanted to be home with ourselves, and then potentially guide people home. And, if we were lucky, the art would be good.
The best thing about that Summer was the long nights.
We sat on porches sipping rose wine from rnorthern france, and talking about all our favorite mise en scenes in every movie ever. And why they were great.
We talked a lot, but mostly at night-luquascious us. The days snuffed or smothered all possibility of intelligent conversations. Everyone had no IQ until nightfall.
Anyway, my friend was pregnant, so we didn’t see her at all during the day. She was reading Tolkien and binge watching Columbo and other reruns on Cozi -tv.

America’s nostalgia can’t go back very far, but you work with what you got, in terms of memory. Old 70’s cop shows, comedy reruns like the Honeymooners, sad episodes of Mash, which never got old….war and humor, can get you through Summer.
Well, that was that summer anyway, and she had her baby, who eventually became a poet. So, it was a good summer, despite the heat.

My studio:
Half red old novels
Theology books well thumbed
Old journals
A bible I was given in France
From a man trying to kill himself
A long two headed broom from my mentor
Knives and hats from my grandfather
Photo after photo
Old cameras everywhere
Undeveloped film in each corner
Lights people gave me for my art
Super 8 film in un-matching boxes
Shoeboxes of paint of every color
My endless collection of all types of pens
Illuminated gospels
Hasidic literature
All the major sacred books
In many translations….
Botanical illustrations….
Foreign language books
Every type of speaker
And recording devices all the way back to the 70’s/
I will record life as I live it I wrote on my wall as a kid
Along with my first long word-beautiful.
I was hoping even back then
That life really is beautiful, as it claims to be.
Books on writing about writing
Maps, maps, maps
All the cities I loved and lived inside of.
Pictures of old friends on every wall
Pictures of new ones on my computer
Things to print make and make beer.
Equipment of all sorts.
A rare copy of the baghgavad Gita
Which highlights Arjuna’s questions like a red letter addition
Of the New Testament highlight’s Jesus’.
Signed copies of all my favorite poets
Who I got to meet.
Robert Bly, Philip Levine, Galway Kennel and the gang.
Even the late great clown and king—Allen Ginsberg!
Who I met during my art school days.
And was the only man I ever met who actually carried a hurdy-gurdy!
What a howl that man had. He could bellow and get a crowd going!
Photos of my mom and my wife—all over.
Birds, fish, and musical notes on every painting.
The daily music of the spheres, I suppose.
My endless drawings of a man on a tightrope
Walking between worlds….that and my red chicken man
Whose skin is disco ball-my only self portraits to date.
All the sketches of Paul Klee and Kandinsky.
And most of Chagall.
Many books by my professor friend on Van Gogh and God.
Every translation of every bible ever.
So many things I used to know.
Photos of all my cars through the years—
69 Kharman Ghio, 68 Saab, that 60’s Volvo I out bided
A politician for.
My dad’s books in many languages! Love translates!
Recordings of my mom singing operatic worship from Jerusalem
And in many spaces over the years.
Pictures of my grandfather and I just sitting on some sofa, being.
No photos of Jesus, but Jesus tacit in it all.
God became His Own art! That’s what my studio
Says.

Someone asked me which of the many cities you have lived in and loved, do you love the most? What a hard question!

As i experience cities as people, and i love many people–my heart has a wide circumference!

In terms of daily living, i would say Antwerp and Prague, but Jerusalem was so layered, it was like a poem which you just couldn’t get to the bottom of. But in terms of my identity, i think Antwerp would be up there. She values good conversation for its own sake.

The friendly curious creative way there, and blend of cultural perspectives in open friendly jazz like dialogue. And i like ports, where cultures converse.

In terms of American cities–i like Cambridge, Mass (where i went to art therapy grad school) lots! And of course, San Fran for the depth of lifelong friendships i made there. And of course, Richmond, Virginia has a soft spot in my heart, as i studied art and religion there with my remarkable mentor and made many life long friends. And Spring is hard to beat in that region of the world.

But Austin and Albuquerque have also been faithful friends to me. Just thinking about cities I’ve loved today, as i write a little article about my own life’s long love story. (a comedy to be sure!) Cars, cities and people, it is called. I’ve been blessed to live an adventurous life! Thankful to have loved so many.

We were seated next to one another on the plane,
The old man and I-
Both of us working desperately on our art
Knowing we would land soon.
Your friend is dying, I observed from looking at his art.
Yes, tonight probably.
What do you need friend?
Just to make some art for him as a gift.
That’s enough!
We cried when the plane landed.
Neither of us finished yet.

Evening’s gift, a simple pause to be:
“I could stand here all night and just look at the sky with you. But I have to get back to my delivery”, my deliverer driver said tonight. She was Italian and her name meant Joy in that musical language. Her family works down the hill, I know them well.
I said ,”Why don’t we just pause in thanks for life together for a second.”
And we did.
She could’ve stayed there forever. She needed it more than me today. Sometimes, just the invitation to pause and be, is all we need.
Sometimes, it’s just healthy to share a pause with one another, in simple thanks before an evening sky. Here we are together in this instant, alive. What a nice evening gift.
Nice to have a moment of pause with a daughter, just staring up at the sky for a moment, which felt like hours, and seemed to extend the eventing into eternity, where all our forever names dwell.

Today, people walk their dogs
Past many flowers
As hawks fly overhead, considering….
It is a good day.
Of course, high above us today
On this hill, war jets cut through the sky. Yet
Just above them, angels are singing
And talking to the dogs hawks and people.

Life occurs in layers.

Random mid-rashic notes on re-entering America: Trying to hear the Voice of Love daily.

As the roar of America’s elections take over the airwaves, I’m still-and even more-listening for that pure still quiet Voice of Love, which defines, names claims and contextualizes us all, and sets up a kind dialogue between friends.
We were in the womb, and something loved us, and brought us out, and gave us names and meaningful paths. That’s enough to be thankful for.
It becomes a discipline here, as the frequency and volume of America will break your ear drums, but hopefully not our heart drums.
As an artist who perhaps listens too much, it is a hard and easy time to hear what is Real.
The Voice of Love inside us is both quiet and enormously loud, (Elijah noticed this existentially!) once we tune into that station. Love toward ourselves, others, and something perhaps a bit bigger than us. Love is whispering our real names daily. But she requires us to tune in.
Every time I fly back into this country, I need noise reduction headphones on (reduce the “noise” to hear the Love-start in yourself!), but then if I listen well enough beneath all the daily dialogue and rhetoric/ entertainment of the moment, until I hear the tone of Love, that kind true fatherly voice….we go deaf to hear..I hear the poem of you, as a beautiful endless one worth listening to forever.
But to overhear this level of dialogue between us, requires a bit of focus-some spiritual radar!
They turned the volume up here, so I’m going back to older frequencies of being human.
Of course, I wish the politics and nations could take days or even years of silence, so we can all have room to hear the inner voice of Wisdom (knowledge applied in Love). To be a safe place for dialogue, discussion or active listening-would be a great calling now for “leadership” nations. That requires humility and depth listening.
Will that happen. Perhaps, one day, but for today, I scuba dive daily spiritually, until I hear, feel sense, that strata of Love, towards myself, others, and even the nations as they contend. And treat them all, including myself as friends.
The Voice of Love can be found everywhere, but it takes some time to learn to listen well daily.
I was at 911 it was easier to hear the voice of Love that day, (monochrome) than now. We must need to tune in on a deeper level than ever then. I’m trying. To channel love you have to hear it daily, hourly. Love is the ultimate context to interpret our text.
Perhaps, this is the best instant in history to consider the voice of Love, beneath and within us all. If, God is Love…..every-time we love or are moved by love, we enter in…..to our own names!

In the cognizant part of my day
When I could just play,
Before the Texas sun stole my mind
And only my heart was left here; I
Made three paintings and titled them all
Like Adam, naming animals;
Wrote a poem or two, helped
My elderly neighbor with her groceries
And watched birds and squirrels to see
How they do it. Get through the day
That is, and out-strategize the heat.
I must also read the desert fathers today,
And see what they had to say about it.
I’m sure a few made art also
To get by. Or just prayed all day.