takin't in

Today. I had to meet a poet client first thing this am. I had my breakfast, then met him in his wonderfully empty home. His home looks like...remember the farm house (sic)or (barn yard or something like that!) by Walt Witman. There is one line among the four of so lines in that short poem..yes,the one that ends with "haze and vista". well! Say haze and Vista to yourself about ten times, eyes shut. A picture will emerge. The essense of that pic is my poet friend's wonderfully empty house! Empty, except that he has started collecting paintings. And then he has these two heavy marble-like-topped rattan tables- one round and other rectangular. And he has a couple of durable, very useful chairs. Sit in them and you relax! Apart from these and his computer(with a special, spacious, comfortable looking chair)there is a mat spread on the floor. That's it. Then there is a door that leads to his antechamber. Is that how you say it? The inner room/s, I meant. His girlfriend lives entangled in some long cloth - off-white I imagine,- somewhere within the inner room. The Sanctum. The Sanctorum. Anyways,we met. The meeting was about a sketch I am asked to do for his forthcoming booklet( bookling) of poems. This was our third meeting already. He has given me a photograph of his hut where he used to live before coming to this wonderfully empty house. A capsule, it is called. It is a simple structure with a keet roof, common in south India. The hut or the capsule is seen surrounded by wilderness. Green green all over and craning through the forest are a few palms. He wanted me to do a line drawing. I'd done several sketches(twice already)as per his brief. 'Simple' sketches are not so simple afterall. I showed him my new sketches. He sat there pondering. I knew the deep "feeling thing" my sketches were undergoing.I know the man well. So I decided to look at his walls. He has acquired a new painting by someone I don't remember. The painting is a small canvas. Acrylics. Red tiny squares submerged beneathe a matt white, obviously applied with a roller or a squeezee. He likes the painting. He likes it so much that he paid quite a bit for it. As I said I don't remember the painter. I prefer,rather, not to remember. But this gave me an indication of where we are at with Art today. Everybody paints now a days. Reminds me: About four years back an old acquaintance-a student really, of mine introduced me to a young overpainted, underdressed, carefully careless girl. I said hullo expecting to shake hands. My student introducing me to her as "*** is a painter". This carefully careless lass ignored my extended hand and said, "Yeah, everybody is a painter now a days!" I felt my bristles rising, but she was sexy. So I agreed with her saying" you are right. Wasn't so in my days" etc. Not that I am that old, but this little upstart obviously had seen the world. Took me four more years to see the part of the world she had already seen. Or else, my understanding of the word painter has not changed with the fast changing times. 'Painter', to me, signifies or signified something grand, almost sacred and magical, like the name Piero della Francesca. Not this common run of the mill trash. A painter has to be deep. A painter has to be necessarily a philosopher. To my mind his mind is engrossed in the depth of things profound. And he works meticulously at his art, fashioning images with significant rhythms. And then I see that. The painting. On my poet friend's wall. It disturbs. It disturbs the wonerful emptiness of the ambiance. I look away. I don't tell him anything. I don't want to say anything about it.We discuss his book jacket some more and then I leave. But then I had to get it out of my system. Puke it out into a blog. Hence this! Agreed, it is not greatly thought provoking. But blogs, I imagine, may not all be for profound, it is enough that it comes from the depths- De profundis.