Art and the weather report

If it never stops raining at least we will remember the sunshine. That’s the thing about images that are implanted in our memories, and good weather is a sort of backdrop to the main event.

It helps if the weather is appropriate to the experience. Like the full package would be to say, ‘it was a miserable gray day when my heart was broken.’ It just wouldn’t be right to have it broken in the most perfect weather imaginable, so in contrast you’d probably remember the heartbreak in unbearable heat.

When you hear about people drowning in rivers after floods, there is always a virtual feeling of deathly wetness, and one can almost have the whole experience instantly without even being there. I guess it’s the same with fire, only horribly opposite.

There is something cinematic about loss that other feelings do not have. That’s why fine art about losing just never seems to shape up to the real deal. Remind me if you know of one, but I can’t seem to remember a famous painting that adequately addresses loss.

I think Hopper shows us loneliness and alienation and that’s good enough, because his paintings can be devastating. But I’m not referring to empty cities of people who cannot connect.

I’m somehow relieved that the art form I’ve chosen does not have to include a weather report. Call it a higher sense of reality, but I just will not be brought down by a whole lot of rain on the front porch.