Saturday, December 13, 2003

Art At Last I'm feeling proud of myself: I've finally got myself to actually do some of the sketching I've been telling myself I wanted to do. Getting from 'saying' to 'doing' has not been simple, direct or easy for me. Two of the books I recently received in the box were books of watercolor sketches of Paris and of Italy by two different artists. I love to look at watercolor sketches and have been promising myself to try doing some for a long time. The books are well-made, in oblong format (wider than they are tall) with the artwork carefully reproduced and printed. There is some text in each book, but the lively watercolor sketches are the real heart of both books, and their focus. I chose these books because I wanted to see what experienced artists would do, showing Paris and Italy -- architecture, people, day, night, atmosphere, life both bustling and calm -- through the artist's eye and hand, rather than the photographer's eye and camera's lens. How did the artists approach what they saw, and put it on paper for us to see? Would it be possible for me to not only view the sights through their work, but also get ideas on how I might approach trying to do such sketches myself? It did seem so. All action is superior to all inaction, as the Bhagavad Gita (3:8) makes clear, but I had managed to procrastinate by substituting inferior actions -- doing the dishes, straightening the house, reading other books, etc. As I woke from a nap this afternoon, I found myself gazing towards the study. Its paneled folding doors were slightly open, leaving a long narrow vertical view of the bookshelves on the far wall. 'That looks like a good sketching subject to begin with,' said a voice inside my head. And with far more self-discipline than I thought I had, I bullied myself into grabbing a sketchbook and a pencil and starting to draw. I had to work fast, as the light was starting to fade -- a benefit for me, because it kept me working without stopping or delaying till the pencil sketch was finished. Hooray! Something actually done at last! The chain of procrastination finally broken! Wow, that was fun! Maybe I'll do another... My Paris Sketchbook. Watercolors and drawings by Alain Bouldouyre; text by Christophe Anduraud. (Flammarion:2003). Originally published as Mes Carnets de Paris (Flammarion: 2002). 129 p. ISBN: 2-0801-1137-X. My Italian Sketchbook. Watercolors by Florine Asch; foreword by Dominque Fernandez; notes on the Grand Tour by Olivier Meslay. (Flammarion:2002). Originally published as Mes Carnets d'Italie (Flammarion:2000). [Art direction is by Alain Bouldouyre]. 133 p. ISBN: 2-0801-1147-X. 7:54:24 PM     Hearts in Atlantis I've just finished another of the books in the box, Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis, and I am blown away by it. I'm not surprised that it's as good as that, because King is one of our best writers and storytellers nowadays and has been for a long time, and it's hard to find anyone who is great at both of those things at once, and King is. The man can't seem to sit down to a keyboard without writing his -- and your -- socks off. And he writes a lot -- hooray! And I for one am grateful for a good thing. No, it's just that I'm never prepared emotionally for just how powerful his writing is, how far into my guts he's actually going to reach before he starts pulling. I don't mean, either, that he blows your socks off with horror stuff. Oh, of course he can do that; he's good at what he does. But he can do it without all that, too, as here: because he goes into the ordinary and makes it extraordinary, gets us to really see it, lights it up from all kinds of sides we wouldn't ordinarily think of, even backlights it so it's limned from a glow that comes from somewhere we can't quite see but know is there, all right. In Hearts in Atlantis, he works his magic through mostly ordinary people we see at extraordinary moments in their lives. Yes, there is a little of the uncanny in these five stories, all tied together one way and another, just enough to provide a lot of that light source, to point up what's ordinary, to make it visible. Five stories, set in five different years, connected by a few events that happened to a few people, with the Vietnam War not always entirely in the background, in its bad-habited way. But how wonderfully vital and compelling the stories are, way more than this commentary. Read it, read it. King, Stephen. Hearts in Atlantis. (Scribners:1999) 522 p. ISBN: 0-684-85351-5. 8:51:18 AM

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