Sunset, Wednesday, 20 May 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on linen, 16 x 20.

Tonight’s big ‘empty’ sunset with ‘nothing’ in it – the kind of sunset no one would or should or does paint – reminded me, later, that “time has no beginnings and history has no bounds.”

I have this on no less an authority than Gordon Lightfoot in “Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” I’m not a folkie – the next thing out of my iChing was “My Brain Is Hangin’ Upside Down [Bonzo Goes to Bitburg]” – but that GL item is one of the most thrillingly boundary-bending songs ever written. (Get the less orchestrated studio version, 6:22, if you can’t obtain the live track.) The boundaries I mean trace territories of music, lyrics, history and commentary.

Today I called Flint the foxhound a scoundrel. Then thought better of it. He’s a houndrel.