Low?

 

As 2006 bled into 2007, there was a messiness to my life, what was happening in it, that I found distressing. Between Temple being what it was and the poetry world being what it was, I found myself stretched beyond any ways or manner I'd been stretched before. Seemingly out of the blue (though I'd seen her earlier in '06 on Stoning the Devil), and as if on cue, Mary H. called me and asked me to pose for her. I did. The result was this portrait, more than half of which was painted on one day. To the tune, interesting to note, of something I brought to her studio off Broad Street in North Philly, not far from Temple, for us to hear: David Bowie's Low album, from 1976. Mary, though we were on the verge of reuniting, was low too: by painting me as a composite of myself and Abby Heller-Burnham, she let the cat out of the bag; she was none too pleased that I'd consummated something with Abs. We were similarly low that day. But she liked the Bowie.