There's so much going on in this one but it all cooperates nicely enough to appear serene at first take. The underlying landscape was a long struggle of dense forest interior coming and going, then avenues of trees into the far reaches, the obelisk in the distance was the first man-made element to appear in any of these paintings. I thought I would eventually get rid of it, too literal. But I did like the fierce verticality and glowing warm color, I "cut it in" from a luminous tree that was there before. The obelisk also gives a dreamy English park-like feel and sense of scale. I positioned the elephant not only for how he relates to the boy but also so it seems like he's just walked "out from under" the obelisk, that is, a second before this it would have looked to the viewer as if the elephant had a tower on his back... a subtle joke and reference to the famous British public house and South London district "Elephant and Castle", whose image I've always loved...so romantic and exotic. Also, I was thinking of the big sculpture at Bomarzo in Italy of the war elephant with tower devouring an enemy soldier. By walking "out from under" the monument our elephant is scorning not only his role in battle but any sort of symbolic saddling from mankind. He's plodding on, relentlessly free, baby. And since this lining-things-up visual game is in the eye of the beholder anyway, the elephant is not only unconcerned but probably unaware of it all.
I like how casual both the elephant and the boy are about where they are, they don't notice anything amiss in their broken-up, paint slash world. This comes up in other paintings in this series, the actors "sell the gag" by getting on with their doings, at the same time their tighter visual literalness throws the looser, crazy-color stuff around them into higher relief.
I could go on but I'll just point out that the boy/beast relationship is set up for bit of cozy and a bit of tension: who's looking after this kid? Does the elephant see him, does he see the elephant? It could be that each just walks off stage left & right unaware of the other.
The title is the opening line of T S Eliott's "Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock," whose vibe I'm happy to reference, but again the question: who's saying it? The elephant to the boy? The boy to his toy truck? I also like how the truck is facing backwards as it's pulled along, same direction as the elephant, different destination, implying that the elephant is maybe just the truck expanded from the boy's imagination.