25 April 2020. Martinez Marina I
But what is this portly Chinese sage doing with grandma at the Martinez Marina? Well, it's a filtered memory--that is, all the elements are true, but they come from widely spaced places and events. The trick being to keep the whole set present. Which isn't so hard, really, when the drawing leads the way--because in the feeling of each line you sense the entire spectrum of possibility. I don't mean to make this too grandiose--after all, we're looking at a piece of copy paper with some pencil marks--but that's just the point--some pencil marks. What else do we have?
The simplicity of this theater appeals to me--impresario of the immediate, dramaturg of the everyday. The three panels could represent a play. How did Chekhov construe it--if there's a gun in the first act, you know it will be fired in the third. But why this martial analogy? There don't seem to be any weapons here--not even a brandished knife. Human beings being what they are, I know I may be leaving something out--and M and I did disagree as to Cormac McCarthy. But in my own universe, we'll go with the squirrels. Let them be, so to speak.
I've been learning to play that, actually--always a little late on the uptake. My thirty-year delay. The lyrics must have been particularly meaningful back in the late '60's. They still are. Mother Mary come to me--I always took this as an act of Catholic repentance, in an offering to the secular world. (After all, John Lennon's on there, too.) But yesterday I looked it up--Paul McCartney's life. And what registered most, but only later that night, was that his mother had died when he was only fourteen. And her name was (also) Mary. Meanings are never singular--it can be a Catholic image, too. But I like this new possibility--as part of how I'll sing the song...
