Wednesday, March 24, 2021

THE GREAT MYSTERY

I wake from this strange and beautiful dream. I have been invited to the studio of David Hockney, to view, or review, his newest paintings--perhaps to write about them for some national magazine. David--yes, I know him, because I wrote that book about him many years ago--David is his familiar, gnomish, shyly gregarious, incessantly cigarette-smoking self. He leaves me alone with the paintings.

Untypically, they are abstractions. There are a number of smaller ones, quite colorful and energized, but these do not first attract my interest. I find myself engaged in a massive canvas, nearly all white. It is perhaps more like a Sam Francis than a David Hockney, but there it is. I find myself lost in that vast expanse of whiteness, the color only in the periphery of my vision. There is an awareness somewhere at the back of my mind that I am supposed to have something to say about these paintings, something to write, but now I realize that I have no words. I have nothing to say. 

Rather than being worried about that familiar obligation, though, as I would have expected, I am overwhelmed instead by a sense of serenity. Lost in the whiteness of the painting, I come to terms with the simple understanding that this is a great mystery... 

And then, no. That this is the great mystery. 

And I am content to  have nothing to say.

2 comments:

Marie Smith said...

I have only recently begun to remember dreams. Nothing as interesting as this however!

Peter Clothier said...

I don't remember them very much myself. Last night I dreamed I tried to kiss Vladimir Putin on the cheek. Go figure!