“The artist must live to paint, not paint to live.” — Charles Webster Hawthorne
“Muchas veces me siento solo. Pero tengo amigos, pocos pero buenos; tengo gente que me quiere. Y tengo además un refugio que no todos tienen y es el hecho de que esencialmente soy un escritor. Mal escritor, buen escritor, eso no importa. Lo importante es poder refugiarme en la literatura, eso es lo que más me ayuda a escapar de la soledad". Jorge Luís Borges
I feel alone often. But I have friends, a few, but good; I have people that love me. I also have a refuge that not everybody has and that is that I am essentially a writer. It is not important if I am a bad or a good writer. What is important is to find refuge in literature, it is what helps me most to escape solitude. My translation.
The above quotes kept to mind a few weeks ago when I reposted a blog called Who is Going to Go First? I wrote of the ramifications of dying before my Rosemary. Someone I know posted a thumbs-up emoji. I cannot understand how a sad and melancholic blog could elicit that.
I have come to understand the compulsion that the painter Charles Webster Hawthorne wrote about. I wrote that in a blog here.
Writing my daily blog (as Borges said is not important if it is good or bad writing) scanning my plants (good but after almost 4000 who might care besides me?). Taking photographs at age 83; should I retire my cameras?
What is patently obvious is that what I do every day I do just for myself. Last night I went down to my living room and listened to Bill Evans playing Round Midnight. This CD is one of the most remarkable ones in jazz. Evans explains his method in great detail and includes a justification which is a personal one. Suddenly listening to Bill Evans hit home. I am alone. I live in a Borgesian solitude
Round Midnight - Bill Evans Conversations with Myself
But I must continue as there is no escape.
