RINTRAH–THE LION WHO WOKE TOO LATE: ME

Rintrah slept most of their lives. Incarnated as The Dave for the last remembered time, The Dave never knew what to grow up to be–despite, at 18, asking everyone.

He is an Artist at 70, and 20th-Century America didn’t have aptitude tests for that career choice. Still doesn’t.

I came to Canada in 2006 to begin a new career as a Swedenborgian Christian Minister. I was un the middle of a drawing that I asked a female bass player to pose for, while I took some stills to work from. I loved the way she played upright, acoustic bass with her eyes half closed. I approached her after the show and she thought I was a musician (I was a memory of a musician, then), who wanted to jam out on her bass. “Our policy is to refuse . . .” she started to say.

When I explained myself more fully, she graciously stood and began to play, eyes half-closed. I snapped some stills with a disposable camera I bought at a drug store: there were no cell phones back then.

Among all my worldly goods, I brought my portfolio to Canada for a “real job” called Swedenborgian Christian Minister. After 3 years of never drawing, before Canada I had drawn THE BEST SKETCH I EVER MADE ALL MY LIFE. I do not understand it. No practice drawings. Must be my Muse awakened.
I took the Drawing to an art shop to have an Artist frame it. “Please take care! I don’t think I can draw like his again!” I exclaimed! It’s on a stand on the floor, next to my piano keyboards, in my temporary Government-Housing, man cave. No big-screen tv in my man cave, although I like movies.

MY FRIENDS, WHY DID I STOP DRAWING???!!! Tell me because I don’t know.

I quit Swedenborgian Christian Ministry June 18, 2023 and I believe believers resent me quitting, resent me. I still believe, won’t stop believing. Just don’t want the job of professional believing. The pay is bad.

THE UNIVERSE awoke me from my slumber with one eye awake. Probably because it was sick, sick and tired of the Art spectre I was haunting Artists I wasn’t.

ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED

I am 70 years old. I quit Christian Ministry at 68 years old. But that’s just me.

Isn’t it remarkable how free-flowing this narrative is, without systematic development, like my sermons or published Articles in University Journals. Artistic–eh? We say “eh” in Canada.

An Art photo from a Social Worker’s waiting room.

FALLOW HEAD

There is a time for production and

A time for induction.  I am learning

A Scott Joplin piece and I have nothing

To say.  Fallow land is still being farmed

If not by man or woman, then by God

And if God be too high to comprehend cognitively and get, yet

All that is works on brain synapses

Which some call mind, others the soul

On a fallow head

 

I’ve labored hard abnegating everything else

Sabbatical’s completed creativity rests.

But since time still needs filled and CNN

Repeats itself on the hour and TV’s repeating movies fail to move

I play the piano.  And learn Scott Joplin’s Mexican Serenade;

I read a little, listen to classic rock, maybe jazz, and wake up my days to baroque, sipping coffee

In my following of sabbatical fallow induction

After all, there needs to be some substantive thing to make something

 

Sleeps dreams arrange the brain

Psyche’s stresses become meaning in sleep

MANIFESTO

Blessings rarely fall upon creativity,

The blessed gift that gives blessings to the world

Would that all God’s people were prophets

Business demands compliance to management

Academia demands conformity to pedagogy

The workers and scholars who meet success

Want creativity, don’t want creativity, wanton creativity

Constrained in a cage, the wings of creativity chafe

But soaring flights of fancy ill bear containment

Even at peril, wings flex their wits

Affront establishment, norms, aesthetic strictures

Flout trends, tradition, transmission of style

Interested only in release of the muse, manifestation

Fractious under pressure to demur to stricture, structure

Nature knows no other course

And must be itself, be it bless or curse

Knowing blesses only at happy realizations of muse

The which only creative natures nurture

Must manifest, make, make known, appear, make apparent

ODE TO THE NIGHT

I feel more at home, and love the dark of night

Then, my creativity, my psyche’s spark,

Flows into art and I drink in others’ insight

I love the peacefulness when everything is dark

 

Daylight is a threat to this contemplative

I strain to shut it out and turn into my mind

In night, the dark, the stillness lets my spirit live

And music, verse, and thought flow freely as the wind

 

I walk the night and love the darkness, the quiet

Day is noisy; light is a distraction

When I try to grasp a poem or express my spirit

Only nighttime gives my spirit satisfaction