2009 San Francisco

I left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me.
To be where little cable cars
Climb halfway to the stars!
The morning fog may chill the air
I don't care!
My love waits there in San Francisco
Above the blue and windy sea
When I come home to you, San Francisco,
Your golden sun will shine for me!

George Cory /Douglass Cross

In San Francisco I draw for two days filling a sketchbook and trying to capture all the incredible shifting perspectives of the hills, all bathed in the rich warm light so familiar from Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings. As a pink dusk settles on the city I keep on drawing, venturing deeper and deeper downtown. Only once does my wife look at me despairingly, willing me to put the pencil away and shut my sketchbook so we can go and get a drink somewhere. We stumble across City Lights bookstore. Looking down from one of the hills at the twinkling lights I imagine John Coltrane’s beautiful soaring solos as I draw and I understand Tony Bennett’s beautiful song properly for the first time.

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