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Mississippi Violet Fire started on the western banks of the Mississippi River in Montrose, Iowa in the fall of 2019.  I was driving from the source of the Mississippi River in Minnesota down to St. Louis down the slow river roads, drawing the River with river water and india ink, camping and sleeping in my Volvo.  I stared into the silver grey river, it was wider than I’d ever seen it.  3 days ago, I had walked over the River’s beginning in 16 steps.  The night before I’d met some Iowan bikers at a river bar and we came to a late night understanding about life and the virtues of the road back at Brak’s house, where they showed me handmade knives and put me up.   The painting was quiet, eyes moving with the water, the brush moving with eyes.  My mind however was not quite right, IPA chiming, climbing out of the river, onto the road, mythical Highway 61 which shadows the bloodstream of Americana.   I had to be in Nashville by nightfall and my heart was buried by a thin layer of mud as the river beckoned and rushed by.  My thoughts gave way to the pantheon of music that pulled me out here, Son House, Dylan, Bruce, Buckley, Louis, Buddy, Jimi, Jazz, Blues, Country, Rock & Roll, the classless Soul body electric freedom howling sound that ran up the River and rang out into the world. 

 

I brought it out a year later in NJ, after a rough day of plunderous self-work.  Love, forgiveness, violet magenta light, green sea stones from a small beach in Italy, spring storms, little tea roses- all were placed into the circle, covered with Holi pink pigment from India (pink of the madness of love) and a hot purple.  Surrounding the circle I lay an orbit of Mississippi River earth collected from the other side, somewhere in Illinois.  The dry blue dahlia that Z had given me back in SF had lost most of its petals, and it was calling now to burn.  I had to be careful to not strike the match too soon.  Lighting the Dahlia and igniting the painting was an act of radical self forgiveness, transforming our wounds into power, empathy and healing smoke.  When the painting is on fire, decisions are made from emergency - there is no time to think, the body instinctively and emotively performs the true call of the moment and color.  On fire, the painting is as alive as the painter, of the same species of intensity.  The star in my heart was now burning purple, shining anew with resurrected Love.  Purple stars are the hottest and hardest stars to find since our eyes see a greater spectrum of blue, or perhaps they burn hot into ultraviolet light, out of sight, the purple behind the darkness, that purple I saw one night in the Redwoods -

the compassionate dark hum of the universe.

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