05.01.26

There's a little couch by the window upstairs. I usually sit there lately with my coffee. Back on the caffeine. I just went a year without any, no green tea, etc. These are things I weigh over time. The thing with the caffeine is that it just gets the engine firing. I can name the peripheral benefits of abstinence, but it feels like a threshold is being churned and turned without effect. The engine just won't turn over the way I want. I can feel coffee in my chest. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" Now we're cooking...and the ideas just start spilling out the way they used to. Strange. People are strange. Looking at the landscape of the past twenty-thirty years is strange. Waiting outside record shops with the tax calculated to buy one magical sonic event. The blind romantic self-imposed tragicomedy of one's twenties. Hang on...

So outside this upstairs window I can look across the farmlands, covered in a thin layer of snow, somewhere northwestward over to the other farms. There has been a consistent feeling of Maxfield Parrish-hood to the countryside since we arrived. You may be familiar with a color called "Parrish Blue", but when I think of Maxfield Parrish I think of a gradient from horizon to the top of the canvas. That's what I feel most at least. A few mornings ago we were walking Bjørn on a new path and went across a field connecting the roads and I looked east and there it was. I'm sure I've been in its direct presence multiple times but it struck me then. "That's what Parrish was trying to do." Maybe it's the reflection of morning snow lighting up the sky in a particular way but it looked otherworldly beneath a layer of white clouds.

Outside this window we watched the corn being planted and harvested, the apples growing and falling, the wind blowing the walnut leaves everywhere, falcons dropping out of the sky for mice, and so forth.

For months I was fascinated with the work of Parrish, a titan of painting and commercial illustration largely forgotten these days. It started with a vintage postcard I bought as a birthday gift; just liked the way it looked and had no idea who had done it. Three years later I was watching an old music video for a song I liked and it said somewhere that Parrish had inspired the aesthetic so I looked him up and ended up sitting there for hours absorbing this goldmine of colors. 

Note: I have finally found out what you call this thing. It's not chromesthesia. It's not connected to sound ninety percent of the time. It's technically called "Emotion-Color Synesthesia". It's a matter of seeing specific color contrasts and hues and having a profound emotional reaction to them. I'm sure it's not as rare as I've made it out to be, but then you see something like Parrish's "At Close of Day (1941)" and it's like "Ohhh now HE got it!" ... Well, I've learned in the course of things that my long-held subjective/interpretive whims don't amount to much but I do relish the possibility. I like it when someone else says "Yes! Exactly!" So I started this rediscovery of Parrish and it ebbed and flowed and I would circle and come back to see if I felt the same thing on the 50th glance and his work seemed to hold up. 

There are the obvious critics to commercial work of this nature. Alfons Mucha and all the others who had a serious gift for illustration (especially around the turn of the century) found themselves being offered generous sums of money to help whatever corporations wanted to present themselves in whatever light. You've got to allow for context with these things. In the rear-view mirror you can see things on their own and ask whether they stand the test of time. The critical thing about Parrish is that he happened to be around at the perfect time to take advantage of new developments in printing. The whole thing is a study unto itself. At one point it was said that every one in four households had a Parrish print above the mantle or next to the dinner table and it was more than usually "Daybreak (1922)". As for me, I just like how he worked with colors. I have two prints above the living room couch. I won't say which ones. They aren't his more famous pieces but I did go to moderate lengths to find, acquire and frame them. 

Wow. The coffee is really kicking in...

So, when we were living in Flagstaff I had to go to Hobby Lobby in the mall to get them framed and it was one of those wonderful synchronicities wherein as I was waiting, I dipped into some of the adjacent shops, one being a curio-antique sort of place which stood out amongst all the imported petro-chemical plastic of the others. Directly to my left was a small section of wall dedicated exclusively to original Maxfield Parrish prints. So, I told the owner why I was there and we struck up a whole conversation about the subject and why Parrish was super cool and probably still worth having in framed prints around one's house. I continue to appreciate and research his work, but admit my true passion still lies in more abstract landscapes. More and more lately, I'm inspired to pick up a brush again but I can paint in my head until that happens. Composing and editing has enough similarity to whet the appetite for now. 

...which is where I'm supposed be instead of the laptop.