Skip to main content

There was something about that sky that captivated him

 

There was something about that sky that captivated him

 

There was something about that sky that captivated him today. The harmony of faint layers of blue between the white & darkening-lightening grey. It invited him, encouraged him to introspection. There was the off hand cutting that painting pastorals wouldn’t win him the Turner prize. The focus was on political art. Anyway I’ve banged on about this before. What is it about the middle class that they enjoy reading about privation far from their ken. Sometimes in the same street. Not that they would notice. They keep suffering for text & colour, line & form. As if by feeling vicariously they are fighting a battle. & so he stuck with the sky. Inscrutable yet undeniably inviting him somewhere as yet unknown. The blue thickening out a good deal yet intertwining with the grey which now was filtering the late afternoon/early evening light. & barely a breath of wind. The birds moving about yet almost mute. A last ditch for the day’s food. No time to gabble. Soon enough the magpies will say their evening prayers while the other birds busy themselves with the evening’s retelling of the day & the blackbirds & shrikes look for a late worm. Why the city art scene so hostile to nature? If you ignore it much longer it’ll be lifting off your roof. Now a breath of peach-baby pink on the horizon & the sky lifting off before it shuts down. Phil Lynott taking flight on the antiquated cd, a gift many years ago from his eldest brother, though lost, though never forgotten. A memory. Wait, memories are out. We live in an amnesic zeitgeist. The present constantly rewriting itself. Hence the hostility to Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer when it appeared in the mid 30s, 10 years too late for the post war influx of currency-rich Yanks & a depreciated franc & the real bohemians stuck around through leaner times. & so all great movements in art come at times of prosperity for the struggling artist & nowadays we’re too poor to make art from leisurely contemplation. Preoccupied with poverty, filled with existential fear & dread ours is shoddy, thought poor, hastily made. Hence conceptual art, which is ready sculpture isn’t it? Just bought or brought art because the artist has no imagination nor technique & so all she can do is piggyback off foreign horrors. Somewhere between literature for the semi-literate & the techniqueless hammer & chisel man. Back to the sky & the grey had lifted not 10 minutes later. Much larger expanses of blue like you could Holi and be splattered in colour. It is inviting me in like a lover now & we will lie together in carnal sanctity.

 

 

Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“I didn’t know!”

  “I didn’t know!”   Don’t get me wrong In a Two Party preferred system  I have no choice but to give preferences to Labor The Coalition are scum But Jacinta Allen, Victorian Premier Claimed in a Truth Telling Commission that she never knew about massacres Of Indigenous people in the state She’d never looked up The history of her country The history of the state she leads She’s Premier! She leads a department that ‘manages Indigenous affairs’ We are currently in the process of negotiating a Treaty What did she think happened to all the Aboriginal people?! They went up to live up the Magic Faraway Tree? “No one told me!” No one ever told me either I fuckin researched It was really easy Took 10 minutes There’s this new thing called the Internet & you search stuff up Like History A subject no longer taught in many schools past year 7 I deduced a lot from observing the place & how allergic we are of looking at ourselves ...
2 comments
Read more

In a very unorthodox way

  In a very unorthodox way # (For Max Sometimes) In a very unorthodox way, I’m an Irish Catholic. Of course, in terms of Belfast politics that MEANS something. & while that maybe true – in Australia, for different reasons, as Fr Bob Maguire put it – when Mary first saw Jesus walking out of the tomb on day 3 of his death, she exclaimed “JESUS!!!” – the first time his name was used as a swear word. In that way of an irreverent joke, REVERENTIAL & ORTHODOX are not my way to the Sacred/Love*. For me – I’m not really into Theology – as Max Sometimes quoting me, quoting my mate Richard, quoting Bob Marley, quoting Rasta elders, said today “who feels it knows it.” & I believe that if I am to write my Mass/Symphony of Hope/Love, I must include at least one blasphemous hymn, else the vision depicted be simplistic, like George Handel’s Messiah. The Hope/Love represented or perhaps alluded to (if you prefer) must include genuine despair, dejection, transgression else it...
Post a Comment
Read more

Though it made me a poet

Though it made me a poet   This is a superior microwave to the last if  everything has to be a competition I guess it does! In the Kafkaesque vortex Where one is trying merely to ask a question Instead one is sold something I’m monastic or have acute anxiety Anxiety is pretty cute Like a decapitated bleeding brain Covered in snails turned carnivore By the wrack & ruin of a child’s innocence The fist in the sister’s face The knife in the wall Did I imagine the latter, dream it or see it? Who threw it? Must have been the bowie Still life goes on So I went to school the next morning & got my mouth taped up For being a chatterbox Such is the life of a privileged 5 year old It made me a poet     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.  
Post a Comment
Read more