I was thinking I have to be still. I was thinking we all have to be still and fear not because if we are still and listen, the image will find our soul and implant itself in us, like a bee mounting a flower, an intimate union of spirit and mind. I was thinking one could paint great paintings, beautiful paintings, if this is followed. To just listen. To listen to your own beating heart, your own smelly burps, your own cracking knuckles, your own snorting nose, your own thunder in your ears. Art is a going out, and a shutting in. Going outdoors. Going out of your self. Going out of your way, whatever we mean when we say that or think that. Going out of your mind. Art is a going out. A departure. A going out of your day into your own dream, an entering of your inner conscious. This is where we find that art is a shutting in. Locking yourself in your studio flat until you have painted over 100 paintings. A shutting in of ideas and thoughts and memories, shutting and shoveling them into paintings. A shutting in of your own face. It is a cycle, maybe. IT revolves. The artist is shut in but then released like a hungry Lion, let out of the studio flat, let out of the cage, of the jungle, the art then devouring the viewer with beauty, a new beauty, something new and fresh. The art a going out yet again until it is time for the next time to hibernate, to heal, to look for the hem again, to go through hell again with the questions and emotions of life, but to look upward in all things even though you look downward at your own feet all the time, looking for things to paint, for things to pick up and glue into the paint, looking down at the ants and the worms and the weeds and the 8 of Hearts in the crack of slab.