The Classical World: A Novel of Ideas

The near constant refrain when I look at my paintings these days—what was I thinking?

That it’s possible that I was doing the right thing but applying it to the wrong medium, that I may drop wet paint on the story I’m now attempting to write and ruin it forever.

At a time like this It feels like I’m walking around in a world where no one loves anyone.

The cure? To re-read a book I’d written in 2018—The Classical World: A Novel of Ideas—and the see whether my life lived up to the writing or my writing lived up to my life, or both?

By page 164 I’m convinced The Classical World is a good book, not because I wrote it but because it’s much, much better that I remember it being and lives up to the goal I had of writing something I’d actually enjoy reading, and then some.

In many places The Classical World is such a good read that I have to ask myself out loud, “who wrote this book?”

It couldn’t have been me! I’m a painter.

Photographic study for next painting, tentatively titled “Frito-Lie.”