-Goodbye Blue Monday, For Kurt Vonnegut, 5″ x 7″ oil, April 2007, painting by Mike Schultz © 2007 – 2008, all rights reserved, used by permission of the artist, –posted on red Ravine, May 7th, 2007
At the time I wrote Forget Vonnegut – Jane Kenyon Lives On , I ran across this painting of Vonnegut on the Mike Schultz Paintings website under Recent Work, Kansas, April-May 2007.
The painting reflected back to me how Vonnegut’s experience as a prisoner of war and his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden profoundly influenced his writing. The 1973 novel, Breakfast of Champions, was alternatively titled Goodbye Blue Monday.
I fell in love with Mike’s paintings, most recently of landscapes in Kansas. And I think you will, too. In his Progression of a Painting you can see his process, something every writer and artist knows intimately. If the world only knew the hours and hours that went into finished pieces of writing and art, we’d be the richest people on the planet.
What I also noticed about Mike is that he tithes his art. He is generous of spirit and gives back to the world in many ways, only one of which is his provocative body of work. If you check out his Paintings for Heifer International you can find information about Heifer International and view his latest contributions. Thanks for sharing your work with the world. It’s an inspiration.
-Monday, May 7th, 2007
I’m sitting here trying to measure out with my hands the size of “Goodbye Blue Monday.” It’s quite small. Packed with energy. The clouds, the gray-blue of the surrounds. Very cool.
LikeLike
It is a cool painting.
Yesterday, for some reason out of the blue, I was thinking about my uncle Alan (my mom’s baby brother). He is a Vietnam War vet. He was a lieutenant in the armored cavalry and was in charge of several M-60A1 tanks. He won a bronze star for bravery for capturing a Viet-cong weapons depot. The only person he has allowed to read his journal is his brother, my uncle Eldon.
War must be hell! His war experiences shaped him into the man he is today. Only in the last couple of years has he started taking part in Vietnam War veteran reunions and such. I think it was a part of his life he just wanted to forget, but for some reason, now he has opened that door a little.
He’s recently retired from his administration position at a vocational college in Athens, GA. I guess he likes this new chapter in his life.
LikeLike
This picture of Goodbye Blue Monday reminded me of a book I was reading last night about physics and entanglement theory. The idea of entanglement led to a discussion of super ice and the author made mention of Ice Nine from Cat’s Cradle. What great inventions Vonnegut made – ice nine, grand faloons and karasses. Which somehow seemed like a mixture of karma and harassment. And now the image of a cats cradle, mixing in with entanglement, a length of twine wrapped around children’s fingers in a complex web. I picked up an old tattered copy of Jailbird the other day and tried to read it but it just felt so dated. ah how quickly we forget…
LikeLike
Mimbres Man, that’s how I was feeling when I wrote the Kerouac Goes To War post. It felt like I was remembering war’s impact on our family history.
There was a man at work recently who took over raising his sister’s 3 kids while she went off to Iraq for a year. All of us know at least one other person, if not our own family, who has been impacted by war. War affects all of us.
LikeLike
Motek, wow, physics and entanglement theory is no light reading before bedtime! I had forgotten the inventions like Ice Nine that Vonnegut made up in his writing. I know exactly what you mean about going back to books years later – sometimes they do seem so dated. And, at the time, they were so profound.
It’s always interesting to see which ones still ring true for me. I wonder – does that mean the book stands the test of time? Or I haven’t grown beyond it?
LikeLike
I adored the book Watership Down when I read it out loud to Dee a couple months back. But I wonder if reading it to a child had something to do with it. I was listening to it with a child’s fascination, perhaps. Or maybe not. Maybe I would have loved it even if I read it silently to myself only.
I have some lithographs I bought when I was 19. I was a student at the university, working at a frame shop. A woman I knew (she lived in our neighborhood) came in to get a suite of four lithos framed. I fell in love. It turned out she underwrote the printing and had two sets left. (She wasn’t the artist, just the patron.) One was going to MOMA in San Francisco, and she offered the other to me at a great price. I’d just gotten a tax refund for that exact amount, so I bought them. Anyway, this has to do with changing tastes or things feeling dated–I still enjoy the prints. They’re still wonderful. But I feel like my eye has grown beyond these images. Or something. I’m not enamored of them anymore. Can we also grow out of our art preferences?
LikeLike
ybonesy, I remembered that I wanted to respond to your question – can we grow out of our art preferences. I think it’s a good one. To me, the answer is yes. I think we can grow out of art the same way we grow into art.
There are a couple of things that come to me about why this happens:
1) emotional maturity and growth – different things speak to us along the spiritual path
2) the piece of art might be period specific. and once that period is over, it’s not classic enough to hold up over time.
3) tastes change with age – the things that are important to us are different as we age. it’s a natural part of the process.
4) cultivating skills at viewing and choosing art – art is personal. But there are ways of looking at art (language and critique) that are common to the art community. And ways of looking at art that are vernacular. The more we know and study art, the more we might change what we like. Other times, there may be no change at all. We knew from the beginning what we liked, regardless of the way we looked at art.
It seems like the classic artists that stand up over time, speak for a certain movement or period. Or are on the cutting edge of a paradigm shift that is happening in art. Or maybe they are so prolific, they can’t be ignored.
I wonder if it’s the same for writing? I have to think about that.
LikeLike
his stories suck
LikeLike
don’t hold back, bud.
hey, I like saying your name. bud.
LikeLike
When I saw the name bud, I thought of Father Knows Best. Wasn’t the oldest boy named, bud?
Well, bud, you have to admit, regardless of what you think of Vonnegut, the painting rocks.
There’s an interesting essay on Vonnegut in Steve Almond’s new book, (Not That You Asked). The essay is called: Why I Crush On Vonnegut – Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt. I think it’s one of the best essays in the book. It opens up a whole other world on Vonnegut, first as a person, then as a writer.
It was beautiful to hear Steve Almond read from it in his own voice at the Minneapolis Central library a few months ago. I don’t think it’s giving too much away to include an excerpt:
LikeLike
Based on that excerpt alone, I am going to buy that book!
It takes a big person to *admit* that he is affected by the woe of his past and present and to commit that to writing for all the world to see.
LikeLike
[…] dark — all characteristics I love in a writer. Other favorites are Franz Kafka, Thomas Bernhard, Kurt Vonnegut, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzaburō Ōe, and Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Buddhadasa […]
LikeLike