Speaking of Faith...

I listen to podcasts galore when I am working in the studio--more than music.  (In this phase of my life, whatever that means, podcasts are my audio preoccupation of choice.)  One of my very favorite podcasts of all time is Speaking of Faith.  I've listened to almost every Speaking of Faith show imaginable, and as they don't come out with new shows all that often, I don't get the delight of listening to SOF much anymore (unless I choose to do a "re-listen.")  BUT THIS WEEK, in a brand new show,  Krista Tippet interviewed a woman named Doris Taylor--a scientist who took a dead heart, washed it clean of cells (with shampoo essentially) reinjected the heart with stem cells, and then watched the dead heart come to life!!  Today I listened to the unedited hour and a half interview with Doris Taylor, and then promptly listened to the hour long edited version immediately afterward--which means I basically listened to the show two times back to back--almost 3 hours of Doris Taylor.  I was that moved!

Doris Taylor peppered her words with sayings like..."Wouldn't it be cool if...", "How awesome it would be if...".  As an artist who is supposedley engaged with the creative life, I was incredibly humbled.  My favorite interviews on Speaking of Faith are with scientists as, to be perfectly honest, they ask the strangest, most idiosyncratic questions.  After listening to Doris Taylor, and painting all the while, I left my studio and went into the world, down the leaf littered road; I was so taken with the brilliance of it all--of the order and disorder of life and living, and what might BE--of which we do not know, and yet, this unknowable reality is there
is present
exists!

I guess this is why I'm an abstract painter--I'm most excited by what I do not know--but sense, irrevocably.