Visions of Montara

When I found this photo a few days ago, it was just like being there. It's a long narrow steep ocean beach. After walking from the south end to the north and part way back on a sunny day, I used to make a nest for myself in the warm sand and sleep peacefully there. That was in the early 1970s. Much has changed in California since then, but the headlands, beach and ocean look just as I remember them. Many of my paintings from the 1980s and early 1990s were painted from memories of Montara Beach.

















Source for photo

The ocean wild like an organ played
The seaweed wove its strands
The crashin’ waves like cymbals clashed
Against the rocks and sands

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself ’neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
(Bob Dylan, from "Lay Down Your Weary Tune")

Listen

















("Beloved Ocean With Fearless Room In True Colors"
by am)

With immense gratitude to Steve Jobs

Listen to "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" from 1964:

"... I gazed down in the river's mirror
And watched its winding strum
The water smooth ran like a hymn
And like a harp did hum

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song your strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum"

In 1979, when I was 29 years old (and had a different name), and personal computers were just coming up on the horizon, and I didn't want anything to do with them, I made the above linocut, inspired by a photo of Bob Dylan on the Basement Tapes album, never dreaming that Steve Jobs (another serious fan of Bob Dylan) would design a computer that would open up a world of creativity for me, including allowing me to compose a book of my art work and poetry and to self-publish it.

While I was out walking on the South Bay Trail along Bellingham Bay this morning, it occurred to me that the creative energy and gratitude in this song likely spoke to Steve Jobs.

If you have time, listen to this. I had heard this once before. It's worth listening to again.