Bereavement… and of Francis Bacon.

My mother’s cousin died this morning.

GRIEF… wailing, neverending torment that infects others with its sickness. Though… does it really infect? We, all of us, intermingle, as do our breaths, our electrical fields (misname them ‘auras’ if you will), and suchlike. Grief melds with others and makes them feel the intensity of its passion, even — if heard — across vast distances.

TEARS… streaming. Picasso’s ‘Weeping Woman’ suddenly makes incredible and vivid sense. Francis Bacon’s melting faces portray the truth of our grief, torment and angst. What lies under our masks that we present to the world, to each other, oft times even to ourselves. The POTENTIAL there, underneath it all, awaiting catalysts.

Unadulterated grief so vivid it looks theatrical, abruptly even mocking. A window between us as the hearse drives away. I can say and do nothing since we cannot communicate — only look. I feel like a voyeur, like a character from a panel in one of Bacon’s triptychs. Studies from the Human Body, 1970 features, in the final segment, a man who seems painted on a door and yet also viewing as though through a window. He has a camcorder set up to record some private act or other. I suppose in a sense I too merge into him, since here I sit, typing about all this now.