(This is a photo of Stan reading to my brother’s son Miles in 2009. He did the same with my son, Hayden years before…and to me a lifetime ago.)
First, I always stay mindful that you probably just tripped over this. In other words, this is just one person’s musings and may or may not resonate with you. Hopefully this short piece will.
Between the ages of 2 and 5, my father Stan, would read a variety of fairy tales, short stories and tell a bunch of his own along the way. As I endeavor to put this website together to honor him (I have come to think this is the overriding reason) learning about all the facets needed to develop it and then to manage and “handle his artwork”. Hundreds of images to sift through, decide on, take photos of, transfer and — well here’s where young boy remembrance start and eventually, as in full circle, perhaps ends.
The very short, nearly flat red hardcover, was called, “Michelangelo Mouse“. It was about an artist who always seemed to be blocked from finishing his work. But one day as he awoke, a painting he had eft unfinished in the evening, somehow was finished! This happened several times and people bought his work and loved them. One night he waited outside his studio door into the early hours of the morning. To his amazement he watched a little mouse with his tail, dipping in and out of his ink well, finishing a painting he seemed unable to finish.
Well, that’s all I really remember. But as I now work with my father’s art, sometimes completing a faded line, color-correcting an image to its original state, and doing small things that I believe enhance Stan’s paintings, but not interfering with the basic integrity of them, am I that little mouse? I talk with my father who says things like, “Absolutely that bit of contrast or sure, bring up this color or that”, because time his taken a mild toll. I also run across, “No, no don’t mess with that splash of color outside the black line or I meant that. Should leave it, okay?”…And, of course, I do.
I brought this up at The Mankind Projects/my MKP men’s group last night in what we call “The Work Round”. It starts with, ‘If I were to do work tonight, it would be centered around’ a specific issue. Mine was, well, pretty much what you just read. As I finished, putting out that my work was asking, “What am I doing with this website project?…Am I trying to stay in touch with my father? Am I unwilling to let him go?…” And a bunch of curiosities in between. Lastly, I asked, am I that mouse or am I trying to be that mouse. And if so, why?! One of my brothers offered, as tears immediately welled up, “If your dad hadn’t wanted wanted you to, he wouldn’t have read you that story.”
We can make things out to be what we want. Maybe tie them up with a neat little bow. I’m still processing (another MKP term 🙂