The Big Small

Pape Station is a small place. It has a little name and a narrow busking space, which is, apparently, shrinking. When I returned today after an absence of several weeks, the rectangle of yellow dots designating the performance area had shrunk to maybe three feet by one foot, because a new garbage-and-recycling sorting bin had replaced the garbage can.

The sorting bin is a good thing (in fact, it seems to draw people to the immediate area) so I'm not complaining. I can still fit into the space.

This week, I've been thinking about big things! A big CD release concert! At a big venue! With a band! (That's pretty big, for me.) A few people from (small) radio stations have interviewed me about my music...giving me a chance to think big thoughts about why I wrote the songs in the first place. "Why do you write about little things?"

I answered something (off-the-cuff, not edited, not exactly right) and later found myself thinking about Mrs. Popeski and Bob Dylan.

Mrs. Popeski was my high school art teacher. She required us to create what she called "home drawings", one per week. We had to draw an object or objects in our house. Some students protested that their house was not interesting enough, but she was firm. It didn't matter how humble your environment was: if you observed it carefully, set your subject in the right light, invested time and care and improved your technique through practice, you could produce beautiful work. (This was proven true by my friend Janice, whose gorgeous drawings of objects in her famiiy's small house will someday, I predict, be worth a lot of money.)

Bob Dylan, master poet and illuminator of details, summed up the poet's eye when he wrote "In the fury of the moment, I can see the Master's hand, in every leaf that trembles and every grain of sand." In fact, I think we all can see it. But usually we don't notice it. And even if we do, we can't express that we see it so eloquently. (I certainly can't.)

But it's worth trying.

So today I returned to Pape Station, to observe the afternoon, while painting with the melodies and words I know. Once or twice, I got a phrase just right...other times, I rushed through it, missed a detail. When some people noticed me, I realized that I too am a detail, a footnote, a bit of local colour. Worth being.

Earlier today, I was feeling tense with anxiety over my upcoming "big" event (which, as I had already observed but pretended not to notice, isn't really so big at all). I calmed down only when I did something humble and easy, something virtually insignificant in the big scheme of the entertainment world.

Welcome back to the Big Small.