The Art You Left Behind

Despite what you think, the water lilies will still float in the river of paint, Frank and his fedora will still be sitting at the bar in the wee small hours of the morning, Papa Hemingway will still be consumed by that moveable feast and the ever illusive marlin and Rick will still be fighting the Nazis in Casablanca while looking at you, kid.  Because the potency of art can neither be defeated nor diminished by time any more than the radiance of your soul or the resonant voice of your forever singing heart.

Art in any form, is here not only to inspire us but to remind us that there is unimaginable beauty yet to be found at nearly every turn.

It has, after all, survived everything.

Wars, sickness and financial collapses have not reduced the luster of Van Gough’s haystacks, silenced the songs of Sondheim or strangled the words of Jane Austen.

Think of yourselves for now, as soldiers who have been sent off to fight a war in a foreign land, where nothing of your current reality exists.

While the days spent fighting on the scorched earth viral battlefield are littered with corpses and fear, the night, like Mother, gives you cover and safety, but best of all the light of the moon, which allows you to write home which in this case is the art you left behind, that  is counting the days till your return, ready to greet you with a head-spinning, train station kiss.  

The kind that tells you emphatically that you are loved.