creativity – Page 7 – A View from the Wheelhouse

The Rapture of McWhirr

Posted on May 10, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Stars vanished in the rosey dawn and the earthen red facade of the old seafront was reflected on the smooth water of Port Townsend Bay. I served up kippers and joe to Captain McWhirr as he plotted our course across the Strait of Juan de fuca, drawing arcs over a chart of the eastern Straits with an aged compass that might have demarcated the first measured globe.

“Best we are underweigh at 0800 hours.”

“More joseph sir?”

Smiling strangely serene, he said:

“Aye, That’ll do nicely, old son.”

We headed out across the flat surface of Admiralty Inlet with the last of the flood, keeping Partridge Point fine on the port bow.

“ Now lay our course 318 degrees toward the Romeo Alfa buoy. Call me at slack water.”

“318 degrees it is, sir.”

McWhirr went below, leaving the weight of command to me. The calm, blue surface of the straits reached far westward. The regular thump of the diesel engine set a rythym that wove songs of lost schooners into our widening wake, and drew us, with the swirling kelp, into deeper sound.

O our packet sails tomorrow…

We bore away northwest. An eagle soared in high cirrus where the great indraught of the sea swept past the headland into the inlets of soul. Gulls were flattened across the blue vault of sky. The bell sounded and the sea heaved in steady writhing swells from the Pacific Ocean as the torpid heat drove all energy from the weary face of the world.

Shal-low-O- Shallow Brown…

A blip on the radar screen moved toward us through the seven concentric circles like a wrathful diety seeking tribute-like an archon who held Old Hand in irons, bound to earthly time, and from which we yet nursed a forlorn hope of deliverance.

And it fills me heart with sorrow…

The waypoint cross of the GPS fixed the moment on the still sea. All space was enclosed in the mystic compass rose, and our voyage was but another leg in man’s perpetual departure beyond the world’s edge; to where the the sunlight’s descent crosses the horizon’s sparkling band, and time intersects infinity.

Shal-low Shallow Brown

I went below to find McWhirr gone. There was only a tattered copy of Virgil’s Aeneid. A passage highlighted in gold caught my eye:

From me learn patience and true courage, from others the meaning of fortune.

McWhirr has left for the far shore, cut his painter and retreated through the diaphanous veils that seperate worlds. In a realm between the offices of master and mate he floats supine, hands clasped over his white beard, in surrender to the ebbing stream where all noble hearts must finally hie. He was the true sovreign of the watery sphere which had long held me captive. He is the enlightened aspect of my inner Captain Bligh, Noah of my being, guiding me safely past malestroms where the faithless whirl forever amid skeletal hulks and drowned chain.

Here’s a beautiful rendition of Shallow Brown by Sting.

videos

Dido’s Lament

Posted on May 2, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Beautiful rendition of Henry Purcell’s aria from Dido and Aeneas

Saturnius McWhirr stories

Esoteric Sailing 101-The Gnostic Gibe

Posted on April 27, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

The light north wind wafted over the sound and sent cats-paws scurrying across the blue surface of the water . We were sailing ~~down wind, up Colvos Passage~~ down Colvos Passage before the wind, in the afternoon ~~before~~ ~~the flood.~~

“Not yet,! Wait until I say helm’s a’ weather!” Bellowed McWhirr.

The big sail had collapsed in at heap on the fore stay with the forlorn aspect of a nihilist’s nose-rag.

“Steady…”

Then it luffed, as if thinking it over.

“… up a point.”

Old hand flew into the wind. The sail rose.

“Now bear away a touch.”

“Bearing away, sir.”

The genoa curved lovely over the port bow as I nudged the helm up, and Boreas’ own sweet northerly began to pull Old Hand slowly across Colvos on the opposite tack.

“That’s better lad. Ye’ll be another Joseph Conrad before long.”

I leaned against the anchor box to rest.

We flowed down the pass up sound…or is it up the pass downsound?

The gentle breeze caressed my face.

Aft, large eyes peered from the vegetation along the shore. Primeval beasts watched hungrily as we sailed back eddies past a dense jungle.

A derelict lumber mill hove in sight as we approached the opposite shore; it’s decayed pilings looked like a dejected stand of petrified loggers who had just cut down the last tree on earth.

“Ready to gibe, Mister Spencer.”

“Ready to gibe.”

“Helm’s a’ weather.”

The sail fouled in a hopeless tangle as Old Hand fetched up on the bank with a low rasping sound. She collapsed suddenly in a pile of flotsum.

She went down, by god.

“Ya scow-banker! I never saw such lubberly sail handling!”

With a volley of abuse, McWhirr grabbed a top maul and came at me like blue blazes with a bad attitude.

But then I had a flash. I saw that this whole maritime catastrophe was a mere shadow-a play of light. All the stormy seas and foul currents fate pitches at this corporeal vessel are no more substantial than an Arctic aura; and no less sublime in scope and meaning.

I really had it over McWhirr.

I was Captain now.

I flew into the sky as McWhirr tied a bowline on a jib sheet and tried to lasso my leg.

“Come back down here ya square-headed haddock! I’m more real than ye’ll ever be!”

My heart pounded in my ears. I looked up to see Old Hand nearing the shore.

“Ready to jibe, Mister Spencer.”

The sawmill had vanished in the blinding sunlight.

“Let’s put her about shipshape this time.”

Saturnius McWhirr stories

Saturnius McWhirr

Posted on April 24, 2013May 9, 2014 by Dogfish Bay

“ Have ye clapped eyes on McWhirr, mate?”

The weazy drawl came from a wall-eyed galloot who followed me. The starboard list in his walk, the hollow stare and grog-blossoms that festooned his weathered mug showed him to be a waister on a leaky bum-boat.

“He has a scowl like a North Sea line squall that would strike fear into the black heart of Beelzebub himself.”

He sent a brown spew of tobacco juice onto the dock as if he spat out the last vestige of the accursed name.

“They say, long ago, the crew of the old Uranus found him off Cape Horn-a mere babe afloat in a Quaker cradle.”

This was laying it on a bit thick.

I’d signed articles the day before-and, here I am, traipsing innocently down the wharf toward my next berth and this guy starts yammerin’ like some hop-head bit-player in a mid-20^th Century movie.

He pointed a boney finger at the dismal sky as his voice rose.

“They say he’s Zoroastrian ‘er some such heretical blasphemy that, as sure as I’m standin’ here, will lead the impious reprobates into eternal hellfire!”

This was prelude to my first encounter with Saturnius McWhirr…

Point no Point lies off the port beam at sundown. By the time we make Foulweather Bluff darkness has fallen, and the Kinney Point light is veiled behind a scrim of fog.

His gaunt profile lit green by the radar, McWhirr says:

“What’s all this about Aeneas? The Roman?”

“Trojan, sir.”

“And what has he to do with this voyage?”

“I don’t know sir.”

“Then I suggest you focus on navigating the here and now, son.”

It’s McWhirr’s watch. Sometimes he gets on my nerves. Zero imagination. Mention free association to him and he grabs a cutlass. He thinks it’s a Commie group…

Saturnius McWhirr stories

Ahab meets Aeneas

Posted on April 23, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

The sound of waves whooshed over the sandlot playground where, high overhead on the screen, elongated tars sang from the Pequod’s rigging. Dad had piled the crew into the wagon to see the awesome spectacle of Moby Dick unfold on a 50’s drive-in movie screen. Gaunt against the dusky tropical light, Ahab glowered over the taffrail, the very image of the leaden god that circumscribes our meager efforts on earth. Is that when I first heard the lydian call of the Siren’s sea?

“Ready about! We’ll never make our offing if you don’t wake up!”

McWhirr stands on the foredeck, grasping a weather shroud against the roll.

“ Ready about!”

The wind freshens, and Old Hand pounds into seas steepened by the brute contention of wind and tide, hell-bent on clearing the boulders awash off Skiff Point.

Why must we hurl headlong into the tide-race at Neptune’s mercy, when we might be lounging, beer poised, before the latest remake of the same old sea story, remote from the possability of drowning? At the question, the mind can only wander, and flow with the kelp’s sinuous curves into deeper soundings past the headland to the west…

Dad, from his wheelchair on the Laguna Beach hills, held lookout for whale-spouts on the gold-burnished horizon. A watch he may yet hold, in his heart. His stout heart, relic of the an ancient clan, has either been occulted into the rarefied vaults of the holy ones or lost in a cluttered closet on Dawson Street.

Then, in a dream, I found a a copy of the Aeneid among carved wooden heads on a laural-shaded altar. A sign? A waypoint that marks the passage of another life?

“We are becalmed, mate.”

McWhirr’s foghorn bass, seems far away.

The boom swings overhead. A clatter of gear from below rouses me in time to see an abomination of a container ship off Jefferson Head turn southeast around the Sierra Foxtrot buoy. I turn the helm alee, past sodden fishermen bent over gunwales, looking bereft of hope for even an enemic cod.

“3 fathoms. Let go here, mister Spencer!”

“Aye sir!”

I drop anchor and Old Hand slowly turns toward the flood. The east turns blue/violet, then slate-gray above the Cascade range.

“Have I ever told you that dream about Aeneas?”

“Who’s he when he’s at home?”

Let it go. That was another life. Another has signed on as swab this voyage. I was but a nipper who saw the hollow face of Saturn in the light projected on an L.A. drive-in movie screen. Just as now, he’s rough-hewn on the rocky peak yonder. He limps his sluggish round while the laurel tree’s shadow circles over the household gods, ever counter to the golden sun.

Saturnius McWhirr stories

Over the bleak whale-road

Posted on April 22, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

A bewildered Grebe in a punk hair-do ducks under the lightly rippled, gray surface of Eagle Harbor as we steam past the green buoy marking the channel. Old Hand heels sharply to port in a sudden gust as the honk of the Bainbridge/Seattle ferry echos over the rolling hills of Eagledale.

It’s Spring, season of departures; when we succumb to the age-old lure of quest, and deeds of heroism, tragedy or folly are undertaken. They are the stuff of legend, of epic voyages recounted around the galley table by dreamy minstrels or aged salts over a pint. Something in us is forever departing along the imaginal meridians vaguely descried in youth, over the bleak whale-roads of yore.

There’s Agamemnon’s dramatic farewell and foul sacrifice for a fair breeze toward windy Troy. Oaths hurled into the spray are drowned by the weazy bellows of a fake northerly gale. A sword held against a blood-red sky by a masked tragedienne brings down the threadbare curtain. It is the ritual re- enactment of the primal leave-taking, when carved gods brooded from the bowsprit, holding vigilant watch while we set out toward the golden isle of dreams.

I too, have sat hungry around those ancestral fires, a villan, hero or common swab, subject to the changeable turns of an unswerving fate.

I haul the main halyards as the mainsail flaps in the freshening breeze. Old Hand hesitates, like a portly dowager lifting her skirts before a pier-head jump, and falls off on a starboard tack toward the red buoy that marks the southern extent of Tyee Shoal.

We hear melodious calls to haul away in the pump shanty’s that float over the troubled waters of time- a theme that has lifted the spirit of land-lubber and salt throughout the ages.

In Watteau’s painterly celebration of leave-taking, Voyage to Citheria, we see jaded gentry waltzing down a winding path to a moored lighter bound toward the Arcadian isle.

Courses drawn on a yellowed, dog-eared chart mark the departures and arrivals that make up the saga of Old Hand. She recedes forever like a fog-bound light, into the theatical haze of memory.

What am I departing from? I set out before dawn, with only my own noisy mind as mate. The Captain, asleep below, will soon ascend the companionway stairs, glare at the rising swell, shout imperious commands like Gregory Peck, and set the unsteady keel of this narrative on a true course toward an imaginary landfall. He is the guiding spirit of this voyage, a horn-fisted old coot named Saturnius McWhirr.

Musings

Chop wood,carry on

Posted on April 17, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Its been very lovely in Port Madison this Spring. I’ve been regrouping after putting up the art show, taking stock and redirecting energy toward simpler things like chopping wood. We are talking serious wood chopping.

The building is a workshop built by Ed Monk. I’ve been privileged to Moor Old Hand at this historic site, built by one of the Northwest’s finest boat designers. I feel his presence in the stoutly built out- buildings and docks, and gladdened by the thought that, he too, hauled gear and materials up and down the steep path to the water. His can-do spirit inspires my humble efforts, and I take extra care in the stacking of split maple and cedar. This stacking is itself, an art.

old hand interior January '12 007 — Interior of Old Hand

At first, I was unimpressed by Monk’s designs. But as I worked on his boat-houses I came to see his ubiquitous, wooden power cruisers in a new light.

I find rusty, bent shipwright tools near Monk’s shop, and use an old, weathered workbench he made. After the long preparation for the exhibit, this physical connection with common objects that surrounded his life has inspired in me an appreciation for the simple aesthetic of usefulness.

My boat, Old Hand is not a Monk, but was built of such stuff. Her portly hull design is a scaled-down version of the hefty Norwegian lifeboats designed by Colin Archer. After 10 years of owning her I’ve greater appreciation for her ponderous lines and stout workmanship. So I am readying for another season of sailing. I look at tide tables and plot course South toward Old Hand’s first port of call: Gig Harbor.

So stay tuned for posts chronicling these adventures on the Salish Sea told in art, music and videos.

Paintings in Progress

Artwork in progress-a look back

Posted on April 6, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Here’s an installation photo from my show. It’s good to get it done. Now I can move on to other things. Like gardening, chopping wood, and writing blog posts again.

Putting up a show is always a double-edged thing. There’s the excitement and sense of accomplishment, but it’s also something of a let down in the end. It’s a summation, of sorts, a statement of where I’ve arrived at this point in time, life and career. It’s strange to think I did my first oil painting 50 years ago. I thought of showing this painting too, but couldn’t hang it without a little more work on it. Would this be cheating?

Paintings in Progress

Putting it all together

Posted on March 16, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

I’ve been cloistered in the studio, getting ready for my April art exhibit. Its been a challenge to bring all these images and colors into some coherent form. Having an art show forces you to bring work to, as Marcel Duchamp called it, “a state of definite incompletion.”

A way to get them up on the wall is necessary. I’m attaching hooks and wires, trying think of titles, and bringing some paintings back from the edge of oblivion . To do this you sometimes you have to be radical. Painting is a complicated business, and to narrow the focus can be, paradoxically, liberating. After putting this painting aside for a time, I covered the whole thing with a coat of indian red. It was the ground color I began with and I return to it in order to unify the disparate elements again. I then used my favorite tool, the paint rag, to reveal the under lying color. This gave everything a reddish tinge and shadows turned from cool blues and violets to warm red.

For a long time I’ve been interested in the Temenos, the enclosed, sacred space set off from worldly concerns.

The figures in this picture suggest gnomon. This is a greek word meaning both a column on a sundial indicating time of day, as well as one who knows. The gnomen are guardians of the spellbinding circle where we safely confront the unconscious and undertake the magic of creative work.

Musings

Hypergraphia-updated

Posted on February 23, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Writer’s cramp is neither a basic muscle problem, nor the high level disorder of the composition process seen in writer’s block, but somewhere in between.

Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease

1. I’m on my own for a week. Lily has left for Hawaii, leaving me to do something meaningful with my 7 days as a bachelor. Its time to start a post. Have I lost my ability to write since the last? Did I ever have it?

2. I’ve been reading my morning pages from 2010-2011. Those who follow of Julie Cameron’s Artist Way books know what I mean. Basically, you write 3 pages every morning whether you feel like it or not . Though I never progressed beyond this to her subsequent exercises, I’ve been doing them now for some 20 years (can it be true?)

After perusal of the pages and notating with the recommended red and green colored pencils, I see certain themes recur in dreams. Usually, I’m lost in some city looking for food and burdened with too much gear. The blockages I face in writing, art and life seem reflected in these endlessly recurring images of abandonment and loss in crowded cities somewhere to the south.

watercolor 036 — Watercolor by Craig Spencer

3. I listen to Hawaiian, slack key guitar and imagine what Lily is doing. A cascade of clear, lazy notes falls like rain on banana leaves while puffy clouds are blown across a vivid, blue sky with the tradewinds. ~~Festoons of bright jewels play over the dancing palms~~ Jewels of radiant light festoon the swaying palm trees while Lily does the hula.

4. I read more pages from 2010-11. There are exhortations to myself ~~to get~~ ~~moving-to overcome~~ ~~stasis.~~ to get moving. I throw pages out and keep only the dreams. These are the only things of interest-like the one of the earth gyres that inspired this painting. Only later did I realize it was a tribute to my ex-boss and dear friend Doug, who passed away from cancer 40 years after exposure to Agent Orange during the Viet Nam war.

The image of the twin gyres spiraling like whirlpools on the earth somehow seems related to this dilemma of intention versus receptivity. Or maybe Doug is simply telling me to get off my ass and get to work.

5. I told Lily before she left for Hawaii that its best not to stick to a set itinerary. Better to go with the flow, and adjust to circumstances over which you have no control (like volcanoes.) I might well have been speaking to myself as regards writing. After faced with a week of my own dark thoughts, negativity and acedia (sloth), I’ve decided to surrender to he natural ebb and flow of ideas and, like the ancient poets, call upon the muses for their aid in meeting the self-imposed weekly deadline for my blog post.

Port Madison, January '12 015 — Old Hand

6. ~~Today is overcast. The wind blows dark masses of cloud northward past the cell phone tower that looms overhead like an Archon whose only duty is to arrest my flights of prose.~~ Dark clouds fly past the cell tower looming overhead like an Archon whose sole duty is to arrest my flights of prose.

Maybe I’ll go clean the galley on my boat, Old Hand, or lay some dark hue on a fresh canvas and invite the muse into my fortress of solitude on the farm.

7. Why not write something? I resolve to have courage in the face of the blank page. I shall summon fortitude, and let not my hand be stayed by the inarticulate. O Muses, grant me a loftier theme! Inspire my oft-times loopy pen to transcribe thy song. Or at least not let my computer crash.