New Conclusion

(Archetypal City)

The painting is owned by Reverend Jim and Mary Kellett; in whose Springfield home this account was roughly drafted. The surface was wrecked once by an experimental glaze. Resulting bubbles were slit, pressed down and glazed anew. This "sculpted" surface will disintegrate eventually, but they accepted it for religious implications.

The painting (about 1980) recalls a waking dream at the end of writing over seven days the rough manuscript--entitled "Fetch Me My Fiddle"--some 30 years ago in California. Around midnight I switched on the TV well into a George Lucas movie production of "THX-1136." When actor Robert Duvall was soon called to account before a governing council I remembered the stride of Cervantes from a dungeon--upon stairs to face the Inquisition--in the musical "Man of LaMancha." I switched off the TV and my own version commenced.

Something told me from beyond words that it would be a "merry dance through hell." I preliminarily scaled nine rungs of the abstraction ladder that night. Each third of the way an inversion occurred in everything learned before. A dramatic test was presented at each stage on whether I would continue with a new synthesis (triangulation beyond the first two or three "rungs" on which I had been stuck by either/or logic).

At the top a very Black Hole appeared (all around the far rocky crag on which I visualized myself standing). A splendificent vision soon flashed alight--for an instant--far out in the dark vastness: a luminous city that somehow reminds me of Mont St. Michel. An accompanying message appeared--again from beyond--which I translated into words. It has had me hard at work since: build a bridge.

Then the big picture shut off, as suddenly as it began, along with the whole waking dream. I found myself sitting on the bed bewildered looking through French doors at dawn breaking outside upon my yard in Adobe Canyon.