I want to, I want to, I want to take you higher. If you remember 1968 and all the goings on, you’ll surely recall Sly and the Family Stone. Stand!, Everyday People, You Can Make It If You Try, Sex Machine, these songs defined the day. Where’s Sylvester Stewart when we need him? Calling on Sly Stone!
Love, Peace & Happiness has been a hopeful adage and pursuit for as long as we can remember. Many musicians have written and sung about this topic – The Isley Brothers, The Chambers Brothers, Orlando Julius. Look them up.
The accompanying depiction isn’t suggesting the sentiment is not nobel or worth pursuing. We believe it is. It’s just that most of the time, it seems that it doesn’t often work out too well.
Let’s keep on trying.
Here is our “What is Man?” drawing as a 3-dimensional object placed near one of our favorite sightseeing destinations – Bombay Beach, California. The region has all you’ll need to keep you entertained and busy finding many fascinating tourist spots. Driving north from El Centro, you’ll encounter Brawley, a town grown amid the Imperial Valley, its denizens busying themselves with raising cattle, growing feed to feed them, and food crops for the rest of us. About halfway up the east side of the Salton Sea on California State Route 111, you’ll find Bombay Beach, which was once a thriving resort town, until the lake decided otherwise. This area is a particularly remote place devoid of people, dry and unforgiving. Stop in at the Bombay Beach Market for a cold bottle of water or soda. As you depart, look off into the distance and squint and see if you can envision our towering monument, arising out of the desert floor, silently proclaiming, “What is Man?“
Claes Oldenburg said something about the scale of a piece of art having to be a specific size before it looks right.
We think this is just about right.
At times words fail us. The subject of this picture appears to be one of those times.
Apparently, this is a photo of Mr. Swift sewing while seated behind some sort of screen or scrim. That being the case, why is he outdoors? Is this plen air sewing? Again, why is he sewing outside? The machine is not a treadle – where is it plugged in? We don’t think we are going to satisfactorily answer these and many more questions this picture begs.
Let’s just accept it for what it is – an odd timeless picture of an elusive, eccentric Elvis Swift.
