0731

July 31, 2022

 Up at 0630.  

    I turned on the TV to check out the guest and panel lineups on the Sunday morning talk shows.  I was, perhaps naively, surprised to see that Joe Manchin is the headliner on every major network. Hero/goat. Everybody is wondering whether Kirsten Sinema will get on board the Manchin/Schumer/Biden climate, prescription costs, etc., bill.  I switched to WITI local news to see how many people were shot and/or killed by gunfire last night and what the weather forecast looks like, realizing that there is a correlation between inner city shootings and homicides and summer heat waves.  The temperature and humidity go up, the killings go up.

    Watching the local newscast, I am struck, as I always am, by the tremendous vapidity of these programs.  All the on-air personnel are so very happy, happy, happy.  "We had 4 overnight shootings in Milwaukee last night, with 3 deaths including an 8-year-old girl" but, as you can tell by our lighthearted banter on the set, we won't let that sort of thing keep us from our perpetual state of on-air lightheartedness and being happy, happy, happy.  Nor will we let the shootings and homicides, the freeway drive-bys, the paralysis in Washington, the slaughter in Ukraine, the fires and floods occasioned by climate change, or anything else, prevent us from pretending to you, our viewing audience, that we are happy, happy, happy, and that we think that you are all gullible idiots.

    Finished watching the film "Memoir of War", the film adaptation of Marguerite Duras's semi-autobiographical novel  'The War: A Memoir.'  Protagonist's (Melanie Thierry) husband was deported to a German concentration camp, a reflection on the emotional turmoil, spiritual death after Germany surrenders and she waits to see if the husband will return.  "This is the end of the world. . . . A foreign land will rise out of this chaos.   Me? No place for me on this earth."   

    I tried again to do a very rough copy of Munch's Madonna, this time using grid lines.  I didn't expect the product to be very good and it isn't but I enjoyed painting it and am not finished yet by any means.  I left the big very dark eyes for tomorrow as well as the very dark bottom of her nose which looks pretty much like just a very dark triangle.  I can see now that the eyes and the nose have the potential for rendering the whole effort an occasion for a total paint over/reuse of the canvas.