Flies around the honey pot

Today...I read an article in the Globe and Mail with the bold headline: "Paint Brawl"...about squabbling between vying interests
hoping to protect their turf...in order to make money from the paintings of Norval Morisseau, Ojibwa artist. Norval, in the
meantime...his health failing...is in an extended care facility in Nanaimo, British Columbia...with his fragile state upping the
value of his pictures...as the vultures circle. Norval's powerful, mysterious, and other worldly pictures, once inspired me to
write a song about him called: "Copper Thunderbird". Once, at a Native gathering in Vancouver, when his life was at a low ebb, I told him about the song as I shook his hand, to let him know, that in his life he had inspired people. He didn't comment about that...guess he already knew that, and had been a magnet for people seeking him out, for a long time.
For me, the artist and his work will always come first, never to be confused by what the manipulators of market value make
of it. I don't think I'll ever be impressed by how much a painting sold for...I know that that is not about artist's work, but
is usually about the sordid manipulations of grasping Middle Men, and the possessive inclinations of collectors, rather
than the intrinsic beauty of a picture. So...I will continue to let Norval's images speak to me...the way they always have...free
from what the critics might have to say about them...or the bickerings and machinations of non-generators of art...the ones
I sometimes call: "flies around the honey pot". Quester.