Everything connects

A number of years ago I took the artist to another country, a flat land with tall manners - the land of my paternal grandfather - and immediately upon hearing there was an artist in their midst, this relative of mine, an elderly man with a pipe in his teeth and a glint in his eye, snatched the artist by the hand and took her on a tour of some of the paintings on his small but fertile wall, pausing to share the stare with her so-to-speak. Memory plays tricks, has an artistic sensibility, a twisted shrine, but I do have clear in my mind this one painting of a silhouette of tall trees, skeletal, leafless branches, and a full halo of a moon glowing back at you like a blob of white metal. The two of them beneath this painting were spellbound and it was like watching someone arrive. Then: another time in the flatlands, a few years later, I watched the artist's pure delight at a museum near the capital and the breaking of the waves - culture was the thing and the culture of this country was a marriage of elegance and practicality, which I noticed the artist more than identify with, even caress like a finger on unfixed pastel. Somewhere in the mix, the artist created and worked on portraits of the entire family from this land, the very family belonging to the man, now dead, with the pipe and glint. Over a dozen faces - fourteen, maybe fifteen - stared down at me from the wall and this time it was as if I had arrived. It was like the slamming of salt and the slapping of water from one side of a sea to another. Respect. Anyway, the son of the pipe and the glint came across that very sea yesterday - for long boat read plane - and came today to see the artist and her work. All he was missing was the pipe. He had the glint, to look with. And the work, to look at. We were coasting.