I am running around this morning with a list of things to do. But I thought I’d share an old song that popped into my head as I was walking on the path through the woods that leads to my studio this morning. It’s kind of goofy but periodically this song shows up, buzzing its way through my head.
The song is The Laughing Song and it comes from Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. from back in the early 1970’s. The music of Hicks, who died back in 2016, is hard to categorize. It has bits of swing, country, jazz, pop and plenty of whimsy. He and his Hot Licks made a number of entertaining television appearances back in the time of the old variety shows that were a staple of TV before the advent of reality shows.
I can’t say that this song made me laugh but it always made me smile. Give a listen and have a good day.
Another August passes by and September mercifully comes through the door. I am no fan of the month of August as I have documented here in the past. Just the saying the word brings up pangs of anxiety and unease, images of hazy heat rising under a glaring sunscape.
September, on the other hand, has connotations of coolness, shortening daylight and a quiet calmness. The cycle of life has the leaves on the trees beginning to take on color and they will soon be drifting to the ground. September has that same drifting to the ground feel that eases some of the angst of this world, at least for me.
A sigh breathed in August is different than one in September. August’s is one of frustration and in September it is one of relief.
So, as you can see, I am pleased to be in the first days of September where I can sigh freely.
As has been my habit for a number of years, I generally play a version of one of my favorite songs, the classic September Song, at the beginning of the month. It has been recorded by so many artists that it’s not hard to find different performances of it each year. This year we are going with one from the legendary jazz singer, Sarah Vaughan. Beautiful version.
I read an interesting article in The Atlantic by Eliot Cohenthis week that has stuck with me for the past few days. It parallels the possible fall of the current administration to that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. How fitting that the Scottish play, as it is often called, might mirror the fall of a man with a Scottish ancestry.
The end may be brought about by those he has freely abused and those around him who serve him not from admiration or love but from fear and the self-serving nature of the position, things that will no doubt soon fall away as the downward spiral hastens and his true nature of this utterly selfish person becomes apparent to even those who still follow him with fervor.
As Cohen writes:
…his spirit remains tyrannical—that is, utterly self-absorbed and self-concerned, indifferent to the suffering of others, knowing no moral restraint. He expects fealty and gives none. Such people can exert power for a long time, by playing on the fear and cupidity, the gullibility and the hatreds of those around them. Ideological fervor can substitute for personal affection and attachment for a time, and so too can blind terror and sheer stupidity, but in the end, these fall away as well.
Who will be Macduff, the one who ends the reign of the tyrant, in this version of the play is yet to be determined. But the last words of Macduff before he is urged by Macbeth to Lay on, Macduff should be remembered:
Then yield thee, coward, And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time: We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, Painted on a pole, and underwrit, ‘Here may you see the tyrant.’
In case you don’t know the play, it doesn’t end well for Macbeth.
For this week’s Sunday morning music I have chosen a nice collaboration of a song from the great American songbook from Elvis Costello and the late great Chet Baker. The title fits well with an article about a man who demands love and loyalty but offers none in return: You Don’t Know What Love Is.
This morning, I was looking at the wall in my studio that is directly in front of the desk where I write this as well as the easels where I paint. It’s a large stone fireplace that is about fourteen feet wide made from local creekstone. There are bookshelves built into the wall, the shelves formed by thick slabs of bluestone. There are also three half round ledges that jut out from the wall that were obviously placed to show off tchotchkes.
I have a number of personal things littering the wall. There are several of the carvings from the years before I began to paint. An old snowshoe. A carved crow from a well known regional sculptor shares one of the half round shelves with a cheap carving of Don Quixote that my sister gave me as a Christmas present when I was still a kid . There’s a Buddhist prayer wheel given to me by a friend along with a thumb piano made from koa wood, picked up on a trip to Hawaii many, many years ago.
But in the center is a painting from a few years back, an abstract comprised of colorful blocks. I knew when I did this piece that it was strictly mine and wasn’t surprised that it didn’t find a home. There are several such pieces here in my main painting space. Maybe it’s the fact that I did them just for my own satisfaction that make them favorites of mine. I know this painting catches my eye several times a day and there is definitely a sense of satisfaction in each glance.
Even with that, I don’t know that I would do such a piece again. If I did, the scale of the painting would be much larger, maybe four or five feet square, so that its colors and forms had the size to make a real statement. A bold yelp whereas this small painting is a whispered wish. But that whisper is mine and I wish on it every day.
Below is a post from back when it was made. The quote totally aligns with how I see the key to creativity– finding that medium and process that corresponds with the way one thinks and feels.
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The artist is a man who finds that the form or shape of things externally corresponds, in some strange way, to the movements of his mental and emotional life.
—Graham Collier
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I have been working on dream inspired patterned forms, as I’ve noted here several times recently. I have been incorporating into the layers that make up my skies in simple landscapes where they serve to give added depth and texture. It works really well in that context and it would be easy to just use it in that way.
But there is something about some of them that make me just push them to the forefront alone without masking them with any representational forms over them. Something beyond narrative. Elemental. Like it is somehow tied to my own internal shapes and forms and patterns.
I was thinking this when I came across the quote at the top from the late jazz musician/composer Graham Collier. It made so much sense because I think that is, in general, the attraction of art for me– it’s an external harmony of internal elements.
I didn’t know much about Collier who died in 2011. He was a bassist/bandleader/composer who was the first British grad of the Berklee College of Music. He played around the world and also wrote extensively on jazz but he still wasn’t on my radar. While I like jazz, my knowledge, as it is in many things, is pretty shallow. So I decided that I should listen to some of Collier’s music.
The first song I heard was titled Song One (Seven-Four) and it just clicked for me. It was so familiar and seemed to be right in line with the piece at the top, a 12″ by 12″ painting on masonite panel. It made me think about the connection with music, how sounds often take the form of shapes and colors in the minds of both musicians and listeners.
Again, very elemental.
So I began to think of these newer pieces as music. It creates a context that makes sense for my mind, one that gives me a way of looking at the work without seeking representational forms. It’s an exciting thing for me and I look forward to some newer explorations in this realm in the near future. For Graham Collier’s clarification, I am calling the piece at the top Jazz ( Song One). Here it is :
The British photographer Alfred G. Buckham (1879-1956) was one of the pioneers of aerial photography. Already a photographer, his career as an aerial photographer began with the outbreak of WW I.
He became the first head of aerial reconnaissance for the Royal Navy and later translated that to a private career of daring and wondrous shots taken from small planes, often with him standing perilously on the plane with one leg tethered to it. He was involved in 9 plane crashes and it was only in the ninth that he was seriously injured, having afterward to breathe for the rest of his life through a tube in his throat after a tracheotomy.
This shot at the top of the page taken by Buckham from above Edinburgh, Scotland around 1920 is one of my favorite photos. I urge you to check out the website devoted to the career and work of Alfred Buckham. Interesting stuff.
I thought I’d accompany this photo with a track from the album Skala from musician Mathias Eick that is titled, of course, Edinburgh. Another track, Oslo, was featured here several weeks ago. Not all the tracks are titled after European cities, in case you were wondering.
I think this composition fits the photo very well, with a gliding beat that I can imagine aligns itself well with swooping over the Scottish landscape in a small plane in 1920. Give a closer look and a listen and have a good Sunday.
Well into middle-age now, I can’t remember a time when Aretha Franklin wasn’t around to provide vital part for the soundtrack of our lives. Her best known songs are part of who we are and how we define ourselves in our own time. She won’t be around but her work will continue that job for some time to come.
Here’s one of my favorites, a song from back around 1964 that probably has been overlooked a bit in the deluge of Aretha music that has been played in the last day or so. It’s a great song and a good look back at early Aretha. Here’s Runnin’ Out of Fools.
Been raining for a couple of days now, often in loud and long downpours. Looking out from my studio, I can see the run-off creek that runs through my property, normally dry at this time of the year. It’s gushing brown now, nearly overtopping the large culvert into my studio, and has a roar that fills the woods.
Down the length of the long driveway into my property, the water runs on it like it’s a newly minted stream while beside the driveway the creek rushes well outside its banks, meeting the driveway water and merging into a mass that covers everything. The end of our drive looks like a large, moving pond.
There are a few younger deer playing in the now hard rain, running through the heavy, muddy overflow coming off my pond. The ground is soft and giving underfoot, like walking on a sponge.
We’re fortunate in our location. High enough to avoid real flooding and far enough away from the water coming out of the creeks and run-offs that run through the property. A lot of other folks won’t be so fortunate and will most likely have to face a long clean up after the flash flooding that is taking place. A day or two more and we might be into heavy river flooding and that’s real trouble.
Hopefully, tomorrow will bring some sun, some relief. But for now, I’ll watch the water run brown with the deer splashing through it. A bit of a watered-in day, as my friends in Texas might call this.
Here’s a great version of the Bob Dylan song Down in the Flood from the bluegrass legends, Flatt and Scruggs. Enjoy and stay dry.
I am going to be brief on this Sunday morning. Probably like many of you, time is short and there is much to do this morning. But I wanted to still put out a piece of music and some sort of image as is the norm here on this blog. Long held habits are hard to break.
The image above is a painting,Radiance and Shadow, that is hanging in my current show at the West End Gallery. I thought I’d pair it with a tune from the Danish String Quartet, a group that deftly mixes folk and classical traditions. Their recent album, Last Leaf, is their take on a blend of traditional Nordic folk tunes and dances. This song, Shine You No More, is a new tune by one of the group’s members but is derived from the work of a 16th century English composer. It is definitely a dance tune.
Frankie and Johnny is an old American traditional murder ballad. What an odd term, murder ballad. It sounds like it should be American and it certainly has been well adapted here. But it does have roots going back to 17th century Europe. It just came here as part of our immigrant tradition.
Anyway, Frankie and Johnny is one of our best known murder ballads, one with a history that some says goes back to the 1830’s. It tells the story of a woman who is wronged by her philandering man and vents her anger by killing him.
The artist Thomas Hart Benton illustrated the murder scene in a print (at the top of the page) as well as part of his epic American mural located in the Missouri State House in Jefferson City. In the photo below, you can see it just above the doorway.
As a song it has been recorded by several hundred different artists in a wide variety of genres. I was reminded of my favorite version the other day when it came on my dad’s radio when I was visiting him the other day. This version from the great Sam Cooke was one that I listened to incessantly when I was a kid. The lyrics and Cooke’s vocal inflections are engraved in my memory bank. I believe that if I ever suffer from the dementia that affects my dad I would remember this song and Cooke’s take on it.
It is a tremendous version of a great song that builds and builds to a roaring crescendo. Cooke definitely puts his own signature on this song, as he did on just about everything he ever sang. This has stuck in my head for the last few days.
Give a listen. We’ll call today Murder Ballad Friday.
Many, many thank you’s to everyone who took time from their busy sunny summer Saturday to spend an hour with me at the West End Gallery yesterday. It was a very full house with plenty of faces I know well and quite a few that were new to me. Hopefully everyone went away satisfied with their decision to spend their time at the gallery.
I know that I am certainly glad they came. Their warmth makes me feel most welcome and their questions create the real form and content of the talk. I am always pleased at the questions they ask. Most are quite probing and require me to truly consider my answers. I know that sounds funny, that it seems obvious that every response should be considered. But there are some questions that I have been asked many times so the answers just come out reflexively. I am often asked questions at these talks that come from different angles, that require a moment to look at what is really being asked.
Hopefully, I got to the point of what was asked.
Again, a boatload of thanks to the folks who came and to Jesse, Lin and John at the West End Gallery for being the perfect hosts.
That being said, I can say that I gave a big sigh of relief when it was over. One would think it would be easy by now, especially given the open acceptance of the audience, but for someone who works in private solitude seven days a week it is a daunting task to stand before a group of people and try to speak coherently in an open and honest way about inner things.
When these things finally end the relief is quickly replaced by a feeling of fatigue that quickly sets in. I was wiped out after yesterday’s talk. But I am somewhat refreshed this morning and can start preparing for the next one, about six weeks from now in Alexandria. But I’ll put off worrying about that for a while.
For this Sunday morning music I chose a song about things being over. It’s a version of Bob Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue by the group Them from way back in 1966. Featuring Van Morrison who sang lead for the group before he had his great solo career, this is a great version of the song. Give a listen and have yourself a great day.
I am running around this morning with a list of things to do. But I thought I’d share an old song that popped into my head as I was walking on the path through the woods that leads to my studio this morning. It’s kind of goofy but periodically this song shows up, buzzing its way through my head.
Redtree Times 