Melinda R. Smith

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It is not always, you know, going to be about painting, or on painting. In fact, now that I have called it something, something serious and upright, I will probably make every effort to defy it, to defy the label, defy the title, I will tell you, I do not like titles! I do not like them because they are constraints and because they are liars, we are never what we say we are, not because we are deliberate liars, but because we are incapable of describing great complexities with simple descriptions and few words, in the case of this blog, two: On Painting. Well, I do not want it to be about painting today, or on painting, I want it to be about helicopters. Specifically, the ones that are making mincemeat of the morning quiet. That is enough, it is enough to say that. If you happen to live in Los Angeles, you who are reading this (is someone reading this?), then I do not need to say more. If you do not live in Los Angeles (you who are not reading this?), then I cannot say more, for you do not know what it is like to live in a low-lying spill of a city that polices by air. But here is a nice thing I will say about helicopters: When they leave suddenly, they leave behind a deeper, more extraordinary quiet than the ordinary quiet they came into. That is a nice thing about helicopters.