THIS IS THE KIND OF WALL I WISH WE'D BUILD

Note: Please click on photos to enlarge

Starry Eyes Debut Album 2019

I think I’m  calling this an impromptu, ekphrastic post, because it was stimulated—perhaps stipulated might be more accurate—by art that found a way to impart its sublimity by round about means. Simply put, it was meant to be.

Books on the Hill, 2021
Cleveland's tiny branch library

If you have a questing mind that is old enough, you probably know that there are treasures to be found in libraries. I think of the internet as the largest library ever created, perfect for this mind that thirsts beyond its drowning. Without it—the internet, not my thirsty mind...or maybe both?—there’d likely be no Cleveland or Mchael Wall in my world, and that would be a tragedy of treasure never found.

Michael and Cleveland at the Ice House
Bethlehem, PA, 2016

There’s something a bit ironic about this post because some could consider me iconoclastic, and Cleveland Wall is a librarian…perhaps of the iconic kind. And Michael’s muses and his music are acoustic, rooted in wood and holes and pegs and strings that seep enough sweet sadness to make eyes sting. Together they are The Starry Eyes.

Think back. Search your memory-mind for a time when you saw/heard/touched/felt/experienced something so sublime that your eyes filled against your will, and you had to demand stillness from that recalcitrant beating organ of yours that can leap or sink…depending.

Marriage of true minds
San Francisco, 1992

I don’t have to search too far or wide because, dear friends (all two of you) the union of Cleveland and Michael Wall is a “wholly” union, bringing together bits and pieces of gentle genius to create the beyond-beauty that bubbles up from the Wall wellspring as if humanity had never soiled the earth.

In West Bethlehem, PA, 2020
Note: No Soviets were harmed in
the making of this hat 😊

Except that they are human and flesh and blood and sight and sound. YES! And SOUND! Michael and Cleveland erect a Wall that keeps out the cacophony. I can’t hear bombs and bullets, curses and catcalls, recriminations about race or gender or anything else that drips of filth as The Garden of Terrors and Delights (a third of a misnomer for there is no terror) infuses my senses with...with…the nameless, the label-less, the experiential that eschews and scoffs at symbols.

The Starry Eyes at virtual 11fest, 2020

Cleveland’s mesmerizing voice and poetic creations flirt with Michael’s gymnastic fingers on acoustic strings...and I must let lids shut to squeeze each delectable drop from the smorgasbord of verbusic delight they deliver with finest china on a silk tablecloth.

My extended relationship with futility is a troubled one and sometimes I have to walk away just to feel ok. It’s really a clandestine threesome though. Ineptitude is my other relational, psycho-emotional partner, and sometimes I have to feint left and exit right to escape her. That’s what I’m doing now, slinking away from Futility and Ineptitude.

I’m only bringing you into my relational life so that you may have a clue about why I am compelled to end this post right here. I have no real hope of conveying, in words, my experience of Michael and Cleveland Wall budding and blooming together in their misnomered garden.

I wonder…what might your experience be? Please click the link and see! Oh, and if you do, for goodness sake, please let em know if they’ve moved you.