TT

By Robert Hughes

Written on the centenary of Canadian painter Tom Thomson's mysterious death, this book consists of reflections upon twenty-two of Thomson's paintings. Each reflection stands on its own as a two-page word-image, imitating the concise intensity of Thomson's famous 22 by 27 cm sketches, examining creativity, authenticity, and identity in life. A further twenty-two vignettes flesh out the genderless alter ego that Hughes names TT, an irreverent nonconformist following a free-spirited way of life only very loosely based on Thomson. As the book progresses, TT takes on mythic proportions, and Hughes' language becomes more poetically challenging for the task at hand.

Meticulously researched by the author for accurate detail, Hughes also has 40 years of intimate familiarity with the lakes and hills where Thomson lived. In TT, a Canadian figure emerges along the lines of Gary Snyder and Henry David Thoreau.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Makete House Publishing
• Release date: Oct 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9780993805950

Robert Hughes

Robert Hughes has been teaching Literature and Composition for 30 years. The interest which informs his work involves identity in relation to the environment. As Hughes says, words, also, make up much of our environment, as do our own actions. The creating of worded works effects (not affects) our environmental identity. Indeed (Hughes notes) McLuhan makes the point that our environment remains for the most part invisible and inaccessible. Hughes tries to make it audible. This effort to investigate and embody identity itself frequently expresses itself in humour and whimsy, but is no less sincere for that. For more about Robert Hughes, visit bodywisdom.press.

Book preview

Not buried in The Park

Not interred near Owen Sound;

TT’s burrowed north-northwest

Dig-

└ gi-

└ ng

published 2018

––––––––

copyright 2017 © Robert Hughes

ISBN 978-0-9938059-5-0

email: [e-mail]

Makete House Publishing

www.bodywisdom.press

TT

on occasion of the 2017 centennial of Tom Thomson’s death (1877-1917)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing of the Author.

PANELS, VIGNETTES, & OTHER

Starting Tips

Panel: Nocturne – Hayhurst Point, Canoe Lake

Panel: Tea Lake Dam

Panel: Woodland Waterfall

Panel: Northern Lights

Panel: Sunset, Canoe Lake

Lake Paddles

Panel: Drowned Lands

Panel: Lightning

Panel: The Canoe

Panel: Purple Hill

Panel: Rocks and Deep Water

Panel: Black Spruce in Autumn

Letter: unsigned, to TT

tragicomedy-drama: Lost and Looking

Panel: Cedars and Pines

Legend: This Actually Happens ... 1  2  3  4

Vignette: TT zen (koan)

Panel: The Opening of the Rivers

Vignette: TT & Jesus

Vignette: TT Tao

Winter

Panel: discarded sketch. TT Nominalism

sketch: The Shack, by A.Y.

Vignette: TT Dada (The Jack Pine)

Vignette: TT Mystery

449

Street Doggerel

What TT’s Been Missing

TT Subversive

TT meets the Bureaucracy

Whitewater

Mainly pieces intended to be practiced several times before they can be performed fluently.

Panel: Tamarack Swamp

Panel: Lost Sketch – Manitou Mountain

TT’s Palette – the Reds

Panel: Bateaux

TT banks off Commerce

Panel: Sunset

Panel: The Lone Pine

Panel: The Dead Pine

Panel: Rapids on Muskoka River

Old Growth, Virgin Stands

TT & the Blackout

Indus-TT-rile

p’lannedUn’’’p’lanned

Vignette: TT Yo

Neuronic Opines

Dung it and Dig it

Panel: Unfinished Sketch

Starting Tips

Nocturne – Hayhurst Point, Canoe Lake

oil on birch board 8½ x 10½. 21.6 × 26.7 cm 319 words

C:\Users\Robert\Pictures\nocturne2.jpg

Down eastern’s shore, see dusk’s vertical black cedar trunks C:\Users\Robert\Pictures\crisscrossed trees.jpg jab lateral branches which, between, distant pale slots of fade mix with a diluted pellucid green. Who’ll believe newborn-leaf air?

Hereby a charred branch pops orange-yellow flame on a scuffed brown boot.

Stillness

breathes spruce smokes

rings spring peeper r-Eel Eel uh-Eel Eel-r Eal   Eal    r-Eel   eal  uh-Eel r-eel Eel Eel-r Eel

« pop! »

loud! fire ’s p

rucewood ssssss

A watch ’d count fifteen minutes pass 8:40 to 8:55 p.m. The lonely time when late-May’s dark closes in. Who counts?

The ice went out two weeks ago.

The frogs thawed three days past.

Seven pitches – three furlong – across Canoe Lake water, western’s shore gleams grey-green. One distant cottage lantern glows.

Now  here  dark-blue blinks between black masses, clumps, thick black blotches of cedar. Lifting. Thin has disappeared. Skin’s pierced in frog and lake damp.

What’s invisible stings knuckled hand-backs as fingers flick slim familiar handles, smear, slick and stamp black oils over pinked-yellow birch slab. Mix deepest green into that. Patch blue-black-black.

Too night to paint. Lean the board against a fire-gloomed rock. Tamp tobacco bowl; add flame. Walk twenty feet to shore to feel night surrounding lake.

At 45º 33' 38N, 78º 43' 1.18W, hill damps chill. Soil and granite bite teeth to bone. Lying there brings joint inflammations, lung phlegms, coughs.

Layer the woolens and gulp hot tobacco hot. Helps keep the blackflies off.

There are times when’s too late to paint, too soon to stop, too in to out. Day, meanwhile, never ends camp-tending: the tea-kettle on, blankets to dry, wood to saw, grub to, tools to, tent to, eye the weather which – (in T.O. weather’s intangible; 150 miles south the city lamps’itself) – but here : ... frog-peep settles in, around, up to Spring’s night deeps.

Yawn. Stumble to sleep ...

Not a single sound the darks – chilled hollows – for rest – gleams scurry sharp.

______________________

1. Hayhurst Point: Granite piles and rises headland-high, jabbing southwards into Canoe Lake’s northeast waters. Birch and pine woods. TT’s ‘home’ campsite, across from the cottages of Mowat town, and its graveyard. TT cairn tops it. 2. T.O. Toronto. 3. 45º 33' 38"N degrees, minutes, seconds

Tea Lake Dam

oil on birch board 8½ x 10½. 21.6 × 26.7 cm 333 words

C:\Users\Robert\Pictures\tea lake dam2.jpg

This is what what whats.

Which do woollened feet in moccasins touch? Sharp rocks and snapping sticks⦦! River dabs. Dig toes ⦣ set foot C:\Users\Robert\Pictures\zigzag.jpg purchase for whipping fly-line arcs╰╯╭╮ – great loops in river-mist – the hover-swish above wand-tip: spin-fore, snip-back:

launch!

Fish are not wet. They slide between quick waters currenting. Mucous.

Where cold blood spurts silvery, so the fly tempts jaw-topped pumping gills. Round eyes dart. In a flash feel line tug trout from splash; hand-grip the snapping rod; it’s all forearm flex. How slime grimes the palm and cold wriggles alarm on mossy shoreline rocks!

There. That’s three trout bodies in morning sun. Done.

Tea Lake dam longs grey-green in the green-grey run: a smooth, a pillow, a churn, a roar. Froth floods pupils and lungs. (But who hears the water-weeds on dam’s edge snickering in the weight?)

If it’s not felt from soles to palms.

If it’s not a flood of at in with upon

A mid-um-mist of hm-hm-hm mosquitoes dim dawn.

Now a walk around a steep short portage, push canoe off, paddle upwater. Lakes are not level. Paddles « here » don’t equal « there ». Only keels & backs feel water-slants, angled surfaces. Up Bonito. Up Canoe Lake’s empty southwest bay. It’s fast to say but long to kneel 5 miles/8 k