Accompanied by Ghosts . . .

Traveling Back in Time . . . Accompanied by Ghosts

And now for the Nighttime Crowd:
The late nite noirists
The mystery lovers
The dreamers
The somnambulists
The dreaming somnambulists
Or
Perhaps those on the other side of the world
Just waking
From fever pitch dreams of
Walking in their sleep
Traveling back in time
Which “may involve some unusual behavior” . . .
There and back and there again
Because while life may have ground to a halt
The Muse and
Dreams go on
Accompanied by ghosts of other selves
Accompanied by ghosts and another.

Notes from my Notebooks:

The Lost Notebooks from My Days in LaCorona.

One of the Instagram threads I follow is that of a favorite singer/songwriter, Sam Phillips (https://samphillips.com/) who, in addition to popping up acting in some films I like, comes up with some pretty cool visual art as well — something in the fun surrealist vein of collage. Anyway, a post of hers I saw earlier this week regarding her own journal coincidently combined with the passing of Peter Beard (whose journals are where the real meat of his matter lied & where I was taught the potential for journaling) obliquely got me past a sticking point on a page of my own I was working on.

When I’m outputting prints or combining factors for a mixed media piece there’s usually a lot of false starts. One of the momentous door openers I was given decades ago by a chance encounter with a story about Peter I heard led me to hold onto those false starts of mine. The reason being (Peter’s thinking): they may not at all have been “false.” Since then, I collect those pieces into envelopes & occasionally will throw them into journals to see what (if anything) happens . . . even if whatever it is doesn’t happen for decades. So it goes, as my favorite Hoosier used to say. Such was the case with the particular photo, twenty years old, that is the focal point for this entry. Recently, via a supporting role the image had worked its way into another piece (finally completed but that’s another story). Two nights ago, though, there was something more that this photograph wanted to say & it was REALLY itching. I took it off the original white page in the journal onto which it had been placed “for further consideration” & threw it instead onto a black page from another book. Hmmmm, yeah, that photographic negative state. . . . something clicked and then I was hemming & hawing along to somewhere that I still didn’t know, . . . but the feeling was warmer. The broken tabs on the black notepaper that resulted from it’s being torn from its original notebook suddenly seemed too empty. A waste to leave untouched. And I looked again . . . and they became heads. I doodled on this late into the nite until, I thought, I was getting nowhere. Besides, my cat was telling me to get out of her room and go to bed. A few hours later I woke up from my sleep. The phrase came to me: “Accompanied by ghosts of my other selves.” I have no idea what, if anything, that means. But that’s what therapists are for! Anyway, some white ink onto my dipping pen and those titles from the Land of Nod were added, along with some watercolor color for balance, etc. and . . . NEXT page. Thank you. Moving on now.

But first! Thanx @samphillipsongs (https://samphillips.com/) for an oblique block of the roadblock on this one.
And to Peter Beard for having been Peter Beard — I was/am amazed by his work, absolutely in awe of his output and guided by his artistic spirit. And while I wouldn’t have wanted to be him, I’m so glad he existed.