Jay Wrote

I looked at his painting and snickered.  His women looked like sullen wax candles melted weeks ago because they stood too close to the hearth.  He could not afford the slow constant heat of good coal, even though we were in the coal fields where Zola had researched Germinal .  Every night as the sun disappeared I scavenged behind the coal wagons that hauled the miners’ piles to the rail spur.  But last night, a pair of armed constables chased me off, one hollering “Van Gogh, if I catch you, you’ll wish you’d never come to visit your failed-preacher brother.”   The coal hopper was empty as we finished the bread and wormy apples that was our dinner.  He went to the vestry and gathered a pile of dusty hymnals and discarded bibles in his arms and returned to the cottage.  Once Genesis and Exodus were sacrificed, Vincent threw whole volumes onto the grate.  The flames leapt high, pages like orange-rimmed black leaves scattered onto the scarred woo...

  Clouds Followed His Every Move       All around him, there are spies. Some of them are detached observers, like glass surfaces and still pools; others, such as coats in store windows, are prejudiced witnesses, lynchers at heart; others, again (running water, storms), are hysterical to the point of insanity, have a distorted opinion of him, and grotesquely misinterpret his actions.     Nabokov, Symbols and Signs In 1980 my brother moved from Vermont to live with us in St. Paul after a falling out with co-workers. David believed they were drug dealers and plotting to harm him. Six weeks later he was on the street under hot summer skies. I put him there. He was twenty four years old. He could have become one of the lost chronic homeless, like Sam, my friend's brother, who sank into the muck of life on the street and disappeared.  David’s childhood was hard. He was born with developmental troubles. He may have been hit by a flu virus during gestation. No...

The topics of censorship, oppression and youth mental health occupy my mind quite a lot these days: Jeez, just grow up!      Toughen them up - they don’t have a clue about stress. Or oppression. If you are shielded from dis-ease in your encounters, you’ll miss a lot of good in the world. Someone else’s myths should not censor me or anyone else. Both my children have had treatment for anxiety. Why would you say something to deliberately hurt someone? Isn’t it as bad to be cruel to a group as it is to a single person?  Or worse? How can you, in your position of privilege, have anything legitimate to say  about this issue to the victims of historic violence? Isn’t some art beyond acceptable? To you?  To everyone? Censorship, Essay 1, Breasts (elsewhere on blog) Censorship, Essay 2 Taravat Talepasand’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” - Art and Action At Macalester College The Art Macalester College, like its neighbor, Hamline University, has recently dealt with question...

Finger Poppin’ with The Horace Silver Quintet, An Appreciation Jay Wilkinson, August 23, 2023 When eyes are closed, it is hard not to imagine that I am at a table in a club.  Facing the stage. Thirteen feet away.  The table in front of us is, miraculously, still unoccupied. There oughta be the clink of glasses twenty feet behind me and murmurs of drunks and lovers around us. Sax and drummer, Junior Cook and Louis Hayes, are to the left, bassist Eugene Taylor center and trumpeter Blue Mitchell stands to the left, behind pianist Horace Silver, who plays the 1954 Steinway that stretches across the front of the stage.  When the snare or trumpet launches a variation or a solo, their sounds arise up. How is the cymbal sounding like it’s five feet higher than the piano?  A sax solo on the left will not be echoed on the other side of the stage but is heard there organically.  Silver vamps behind the horns - a trainer’s hands stimulating a horse’s shoulders just before t...

Censorship - Time, Place and Manner    The topics of censorship, oppression and youth mental health occupy my mind quite a lot  these days. • Jeez, just grow up!    • Toughen them up - they don’t have a clue about stress. Or oppression. • If you are shielded from dis-ease in your encounters, you’ll miss a lot of good in the world. • Someone else’s deeply held myth should not be allowed to censor me or anyone else. • Both my children are getting treatment for anxiety-related troubles. • Why would you say something to deliberately hurt someone? • How can you, sitting in your position of privilege have anything legitimate or helpful to say  about this issue the victims of historic violence? • What is the purpose of art?   • Isn’t some art beyond acceptable? To you?  To everyone? BREAST     My mother grew up in the rock-ribbed conservative farm country of northern Vermont. It was  the Depression and her land-rich, cash-strapped, dirt po...