Tales of Brave Ulysses at the Foot of the Sun

The Evolution of Ulysses and Aphrodite

Tales of Brave Ulysses at the Foot of the Sun

“I was Aphrodite walking into the bright sunshine of Love.”

I’m baffled, searching through hundreds of pages of sporadic jot notes, essays, and “save-for-later” story fragments — most of which may never be found in the noise.

I can’t find any notes I kept on the guitar I painted as a fun experiment — as a gift, and at the request of my husband. I still can’t get used to saying ex.

He suggested I paint one of his cheap guitars — one he’d actually let me touch — inspired by the 1964 Gibson SG Eric Clapton played with Cream, known as The Fool. I loved the idea. While listening to Cream, I searched for images and facts about The Fool. I learned the design was meant to represent good and evil, heaven and hell. According to Wikipedia, anyway.
It’s about “the power of music in the universe to rise above it all as a force of good.”
I believe that.

Of course, this would be The Tale of Brave Ulysses — the whole story arriving intuitively from the lyrics and the colors, unintended and some intended scenes lining up with themes and stories.

Each fret became a repeating world — a multiverse — all the way up the neck to the last one: icy, leading into the ocean and fire headstock. Tiny purple fishes at the centre of every world. Multiple suns rising from the blue oceans they live in.

This is where I met Aphrodite.

She has long golden hair and brown arms. She’s wearing a ball gown that reminds me of a two-toned octopus — crimson and turquoise — making roots in the ocean and emerging from what I later realized was the clamshell she was born from.

I wonder if her dress is really crimson and clear, and that the green is really the deep ripples of the ocean. There is sand on the distant beach and sails of a boat blowing from the back of the guitar.

The water looks cold — shaped like a fish in phthalo blue and silver-white waves — at the top of the body, if a right-handed person was playing it.

This guitar was my first “movie panel.” I’m just noticing that now. Aphrodite is painted on the pick guard like she is in the picture — but magnified.

The Fool has a scene in the pick guard, and I must have liked that.
The picture in the picture.
The play within the play.

Aphrodite is walking into the bright yellow sun, like the orange-haired girl in Lost in Hollywood walked into the guitar-shaped tunnel.

I was in love with painting then. It was new. The creative flow was exciting — aliveness and oneness rushed through me. Working on this was exhilarating. The literary and lyrical connections jumped out at me and made the process even more electric.

There are Gaslight and Fallon lyrics in every painting, even when they’re not at the centre. This one was Neptune — the song and the myth. When I flipped the guitar, I saw Sirens drowning in beginner’s precision — instinct trying to break through. The energy of a creative dying to be born, trying to be psychedelic but too-precise in the squiggly lines. Back when I still thought mistakes were mistakes.

A carpet made of gold perfectly surrounds a circle the exact size of a 45 that mimics the glowing orange orb on the back of The Fool.
But blue like Neptune — or maybe a Blue Beat record.
The shape of a giant blue fish from the front of the guitar becomes a record-sized circle, drowning mermaids in the sea.
Crimson-haired and turquoise-bodied, made up of tight squiggly lines.

Purple fishes swim all the way up the back of the neck.

The sail from the boat on the front appears again on the back — as if looping through dimensions.
Or maybe it’s the other way.

I really loved the blend of colours on one side: ultramarine and lemon yellow, with bits of aqua and accidental green — all as if pouring out from the 45.

On the other side, I painted — in very childlike bubble letters that feel so embarrassing now (I still have no idea why they’re wearing Christmas hats) — the words “Sing, Goddess.”

It was from the beginning of The Odyssey, and I knew it was talking to me, even then.
I knew I was at the beginning of something.
I was Aphrodite walking into the bright sunshine of Love.

Aphrodite was married to the god of fire, but she was known for her affairs with other gods.
I used to want to be known for something, too.

I love this guitar for what it meant to me — and to him, then. For what it sparked.
The way it combined story, painting, and music in an intuitive dance.
The way it pulled me into rabbit holes of lyrics and myth.

I love the record of uncertain brushstrokes and bridled bravery.

The story is there, but she’s still in the loudest part of the noise.
Still outside the stillness most of the time.
She knows the story begins her way out as she stands in the light of the sun.