A Ballad of Slate Colored Days and Moonlight and Skeletons

From 'A Ballad of Slate Colored Days

"I've just been looking out the kitchen window. You can see the skyline with its mix of brick, stone-colored, clear and black glass buildings and the marble gray tones of daylight. It resembles an urban impressionist painting of the late 20th century.  This place is a refuge; I just have to shut the world out a lot. I can hear the ferry boats hooting as they come in from the peninsula, the gulls, even winos cursing and empty wine bottles hitting the sidewalk occasionally -- but don't worry, it's safe in here(laughs). No one bothers me much. Invisibility -- that's the emblem of my being(laughs).  I know I'm not as bad off as some people. There was this guy I saw between downtown and Seattle Center. He looked very troubled and then he started screaming as he walked down the street. I saw him enter a run down apartment building. A few days later, I wrote a song about him(picks up the guitar in the corner and begins to strum and sing):  Morning stains the walls/a pale gray light/and I am waking up again/ in my Belltown room /to that which I must pretend/is worth the breathing/over and over again.  When take my medicine/the world is just/a black and white photograph;/there is no reason to rage/and there's none to laugh --/my mind a blank sun/a seed that is cut in half.  So many times/I wish I could fly over my life/like a gull over the choppy gray/of Elliot Bay.

From 'Moonlight and Skeletons'

    By my late 20's I had gone beyond the naturalism I had learned from my teachers in Norway and beyond even impressionism. I was no longer satisfied with rendering external reality or even capturing my first impression of a subject. Instead, I felt that one should portray "the reality alive in one's mind". I begun to paint ideas -- my figures and backgrounds now stood for something more than their literal nature.  One cold, April evening in my late 20's, I was walking through a crowd of Oslo's respectable bourgeoisie. I was looking for my first lover, Milly Thaulow but kept seeing this procession of pale, death-like faces. There seemed to be soul destroying in them. When at last I saw her, she walked by without speaking.

On an Oslo street,/they came towards him/under a sky of indigo./He saw their faces/in a luminous flow/like a river of moons/in the street light's glow.  They were bourgeoisie,/carefully attired/in stiff and proper black clothes./From their dark suits/and dresses, heads rose/that were skeletally white/and cold as ice floes.  He was a shadow/striding past that long line/of lunar countenances/and chilling breath/winding their way/to their fated deaths.