Nine Stanzas

Back when I was a young artist (I paint), I had enough talent to do what I was trying to do, but my work didn’t always turn out well because I did not know the science of painting. In fact, I didn’t know there was a science behind a the art of painting

To my great fortune, however, the Muses had sympathy for me and led me to the knowledge I was lacking. It turns out that there is an ancient science to painting, which is all but lost. Brief glimmers of it sometimes surface in the art schools, where otherwise it is barely understood.

However in several old art technique books, I found some clues to this lost science. And then, tucked away on a few pages in one book, I found laid out the simple rules of how a painting is constructed. And with my deepest gratitude to the “Fifty Secrets of Magicraftsmanship” by Salvador Dali, I would like to mention them here.

I know because of your great interest in music, and your plans to take up a career in the industry that I thought I would share these with you, for whatever benefit they might have for you.

To begin with you must have a background that is extremely luminous, but not too glary. The paint is placed upon the canvas in layers and this background will shine through the layers, illuminating them from within.

Then as we build up the layers, we must follow a certain order: you go from lean to fat, from the insubstantial to the highly defined, from large shapes to the smallest details, from the dark to the light. And each of these layers must compliment that which comes before and that which comes after. Never repeat the exact same color from one layer to the next, always choose another (usually similar) color that brings out the life of the previous layer’s color.

I really hope that you won’t be offended if I take a few liberties with your rap and use it as an example to illustrate the application of these ideas. (Obviously, however, I am no musician so I’m sure that you could do much better.)

Just going casually through your rap, I would say that the background idea that shines forth is “metta”.

The metta is real (could be the luminous ground)

Next come the big, vague, raw concepts:

A misguided youth
A decrepit school system
Everything destructive in this world
Scared of what u might find,

Then come more concise ideas.

Help my mates
Feeds his illusion of self
See round is violence and drugees from cocaine to speed,
Quit before it's too late
In a terrible state, fueled by their inner anger and hate,

Then come the details:

Chains of a self-made hell
Fueled by anger, regret and hate