The Realization
The Realization
As I approach the city with foreboding, the rain falls on the wind. Stepping out from the forest, the sky is alight with flame as the telephone poles turn to gallows. Huge windowless towers filled with strangers who remain strangers to each other promise only a world devoid of aesthetics.
I leave the forests of Long Island and Tober, my little dog. The forests are beautiful, impressive environments, especially if you've had the privilege to grow up, even for a little while, in or nearby them. The most legendary are places like the forests of Poland and Siberia, though I hear they're fast disappearing. But as a teenager, I visited nearly every day and camped out in as much as possible the younger newer forests of New England, in Connecticut and Long Island.
It was a privilege, I know. Most of the world's peoples are stuck in the midst of inner cities or crowded suburbs, or suburban slums, as I was later to find out in my visits to developing nations, the so-called "Third World", later on, after I dropped out of Oxford University to go on the road. It's cash crops and natural recourses that collect the people into the crowded zones, the city system. The panic induced over the population explosion is a ruse. The visitor rarely goes beyond the crowed city of a destination except to go to specially groomed resorts. The impression is easily conveyed that we are up to our ears in population. It is not so. Greed, maybe, but not population.
You so-called experts, where have you been. This traveler has logged over two hundred thousand miles and I saw an empty planet. Even in Java, the most populated location on Earth in the days I was there back in 1984. What I saw was a people being displaced by the plantation system. I wrote about this problem in my article about the painting "High Water '96". Those who assert overpopulation, they're bought off. Somebody holds their leash. Never trust a text book, kid. They have to tone it down or they'd never sell. Mediocre at the best and deliberately misinforming at the worst. I'm being polite here. The only way you're going to find out is to get the heck out of the comfortable institution and go out there and find out for yourself. Until then, shut up.
You who form such deadly opinions based only on the things you read, how dare you? That's seems pretty arrogant to me. Populate the emptiness and you'll see such prosperity that can handle ten times the population you claim exists right now. I tell you, if you insist on having that attitude that people less fortunate than you are nothing but cattle, then you are going to have problems and big ones really soon as you experience the upheavals of world history. Here's another tip for you wanabe experts: man doesn't have the ability to accurately assess populations. Nobody really knows for sure how many there are out there. What are they looking for, justification to clear more potential plantations of villagers?
This painting's for you. You need to step out of your pretty forest, too. Get out there and face up to the real problems. Get a handle on what's really going on, it will surprise you. But be careful, the people out there are going to resent you bitterly, you who emerge from the privileged ranks. They're not going to welcome you with open arms.
So the painting shows a self portrait seen from the back as I leave the beauty of the forest and proceed to the city with sincere reluctance to assume the role of, more than artist, the unaffiliated observer, looking behind the scenes.
Oil on canvass. 1965 This work is lost.
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