Art magic & "Requiem"

"Angel in the Graveyard," courtesy of sxc.hu and Lesley Mackin
of Bournemouth, Dorset, UK.

One of the strange aspects to art is how it draws all things to its net--or so it feels to the maker.  All large works seem to have some sort of magnetic power to draw what is needed, but I suppose it is just simply that the world is full of many things, and when turning to a new pursuit, some suddenly stand out as if lit from below.  As I work on the text to Requiem, the collaborative piece to be done with composer Paul Digby and painter Lynn Digby, the world seems to offer the particular jog I need--a photograph of 11th century graves cut in stone and gilded by the sun, a certain poem by Cavafy, the frost on the windowpane... Too, this long sequence with its traditional structure reaches out to embrace the closing of two lives in the past two months--a suicide, a death from cancer--two events that meant so much not just to me but to the entire community where I now live. Small as a fleck or word or as large as a generous life:  each thing leaps into place. Perhaps it is as close to magic as I can come through words.