July 27, 2022, Wed — Incredible painting day doing the Champagne Beach grasses. The grasses absolutely bloomed under my brush. They looked so complex, but I found a way to simplify them that is pleasing artistically. They aren’t normal grasses, but have these fat pink grain heads, like long pink thumbs with thousands of whiskers. These amongst your garden variety straw-colored stalks. So beautiful.
I was dazed and amazed again today at how much I got done. Got to the studio late, noon, after sleeping in inadvertently till 8:45 AM. No idea what that was about, but I was having a wonderful dream this morning and was so comfortable and supported by the extremely kind people in the dream. I was in some kind of hotel run by the kindest people I’ve ever met. I remember thinking I wanted to study them and be like them. They were like angels in human form. I think I had a heaven dream. Where heaven really is a resort. Guess I needed that.
It was a wonderful feeling and I wrote several optional emails and notes to people that reflected that kindness. Sweet morning. Then, I get to the studio, and wow, I was actually done with the grasses by 4PM. So I packed out of there, left my salad in the fridge as I wasn’t hungry yet, and headed to Costco. What a coup to get that errand slipped in without taking up part of tomorrow.
And truly excited for tomorrow to start in on the sandy beach and the surf. I can taste it and not even too salty… maybe like butterscotch. Which is the color of the sand, that and pale pink. The water a black green at the wave front.
American Pie
Such a great day. I felt like a million bucks, belting out American Pie all day. Did you read that 50 years later, Don Mclean has a movie out, “The Day the Music Died”? Apparently he explains what the lyrics all meant to him. I read about it and proceeded to watch a Youtube of him singing the song live back in the 70s. It’s been stuck in my head ever since. Days now!
What an iconic tribute to that time period, American Pie. I doubt there’s a person in my generation who doesn’t know exactly where they were the first time they heard the song on the radio. From the get-go, it was utterly jaw dropping. In my case, everyone in the car stopped what we were saying and doing and sat frozen, absorbing every word for 8 long minutes. Obviously I didn’t understand much of the messages in that inebriated teenage moment, but it felt big and important. Later, building around the loss of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens in that plane crash, it became the bookend and eulogy to an entire era.
And can you teach me how to dance real slow
The end of rock and roll, the end of families able to live on one income. The end of wood shop and metal shop in high school. Fixing your own car. Girls having to wear dresses in school. When we all watched the same news and believed it. Before money had migrated to the top, laws were bought, and truth was declared a fatality. Innocent times that were put to bed with the murders (most foul) of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the infamy of Richard Nixon and Vietnam.
The era before people like me started blogging every day to help something called SEO which might or might not have something to do with Champagne Beach grasses 🙂
Made me cry today thinking about the words.
I found the link to watch the American Pie documentary on Youtube. And here’s a link to sign up for my newsletter 🙂
