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Of the six brothers, Patrick is the one who most loved fishing. We others did too, but not as whole-heartedly. Our childhood home was only two short blocks from the Fox River as it flowed from southern Wisconsin through northern Illinois to eventually merge with the Mississippi. In The Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot called that legendary river “a strong brown god, sullen, untamed, intractable.” Pat and the brothers closest to him in age, Tim and I, would have agreed. From our own experiences with the Fox we would have added “dangerous” to the adjectives.

We three don’t live in Illinois any more, let alone fish for bluegills and walleyed pike in the Fox. However, for Patrick life without fishing is unthinkable, unbearable. As you see in the painting, this river in Montana is not a sullen brown god. Dangerous? Yes, they all are. Pat, miles away from any cellphone reception, is fishing for trout — brown, cutthroat and rainbow — as he has fished here every September for more than twenty years. Two days ago, he invited me and Tim to join him. Too bad; I’ll be in Spain. But Tim will fly to Montana.

Years ago I painted this image and shipped it to Pat. He politely returned it and asked that I correct a mistake. No problem, I repainted my error and sent the canvas back to him. So what was the mistake? Well, the image you see here is not the corrected version but the original, the one with the error. No one, not even Pat’s fishing buddies saw it, but Tim noticed immediately: “Our brother casts with his right hand, not his left.”

The cab driver at the airport in Havana was confused when I asked him to drive us to O’Reilly Street. My Spanish is pretty good, so his confusion confused me. In a moment all became clear: The driver, and everyone else we later encountered in the city, called the street “O Relly,” without pronouncing the “i.”

The lady in this sketch lived across from us on O Relly St. Drying sheets and clothing outdoors is a daily activity in most of Old Havana. The city radiates light and color, so in my eyes laundry draped over balconies simply added rainbows to the mix. But it was impossible to ignore memories of Switzerland and Lugano, where I lived twice: there you can be fined for hanging out laundry in public view. Playing loud music in public, or anywhere else, is also frowned upon.

In contrast, Havana would not be Cuba without music in the streets, and everywhere else. Spend a few minutes walking and you will be offered tickets to at least 5 or 6 Buena Vista Social Clubs. Do any of those places actually exist? Or are the tickets “chanchullos,” street swindles?

I’ll post more sketches of Havana soon, along with thoughts of music and street scams. Meanwhile, let’s leave the lady on the balcony in peace as she observes life on the street: vendors of mangoes and avocados, cruising DeSotos, Buicks and Chevrolets from the 1950’s, and elderly women in white dresses and turbans smoking cigars. She’ll make sure the laundry is indoors before afternoon storms drench everything. I imagine she’s also hearing guitars and dreaming of rainbows, elsewhere perhaps.

In her Nobel Lecture after winning the Prize for Literature in 1996, the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska explained how difficult it was to answer questions about inspiration. “Contemporary poets answer evasively when asked what it is, and if it actually exists. It’s not that they’ve never known the blessing of this inner impulse. It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.”

Her thoughts have given me a lot of comfort, especially when she also remarked, “Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from from a continuous ‘I don’t know’.”

I don’t know, for example, if the lagoon in this painting still exists in the town where I grew up. In winter we skated on its ice. In summers there were twilight concerts from the circular bandstand; people gathered around the shores to listen, perhaps to dance. Now there’s only a woman banging a drum, a man playing a trumpet, and a monkey on a leash. Does the animal carry a tin cup for donations? I wonder. And from whom?

The girls dancing in a circle also showed up in another image, “Texas Truck,” which I posted on this page recently. Why they appear in this painting, and wearing clothes, I don’t know.

The mood feels slightly ominous, but perhaps it’s only nostalgia, a real or imagined past that nudges us. What sounds could the musicians be making that impel the girls to dance? I don’t know. But like them, I love music. So even though I can’t hear it, I feel like dancing with them.

Inspiration feels like music I can barely hear. So I listen. And listen. And follow it, wherever it might lead me.