The painting above is titled Paradise-The Land of Men, Birds and Ships. It’s actually a mural that was painted on a building outside of Paris in 1950 by artists Friedensreich Hundertwasser and René Brõ. It was saved from demolition in 1964 although I have no idea where or in what condition it now stands. I’ve featured Hundertwasser’s work, with it’s rich colors and organic shapes, here on the blog a few times in the past. I like his work, I like this and thought it fit well with the song I’ve chosen for today’s Sunday Morning Music.
That song is Ships and Birds from one of my favorite albums, Wilco and Billy Bragg‘s 1998 Mermaid Avenue. It’s a collection of old unheard Woody Guthrie lyrics set to new music composed by Wilco and others. This track features Natalie Merchant singing the lead and is just a lovely, simple song. A nice way to kick off any Sunday morning.
Have a great Sunday…
Finding some sort of joy in one’s life might well be the answer to most of life’s questions. It nourishes us and gives meaning to the moments of our lives. It makes us want to face the new day.
Sometimes when I am walking over to the studio in the morning I will have a song stuck in my head. Sometimes it is one that I recently heard, something from the radio. But sometimes it’s one that just springs deeply from the past, something I haven’t thought of in some time. That’s how it was this morning. And thinking of that song linked me to a small painting that I did many years ago.
I was listening this morning to the song 20th Century Man from The Kinks. Released in 1971 — don’t do the math, it’s a long time ago– it is a song of a man decrying his existence in a time in which he feels he doesn’t fit. Ray Davies may have felt that he would have been more at home in the 19th century but the odd thing is that the song’s words still fit very well for someone like myself whose life consists of mostly time spent in the 20th century.
Well, it’s time for Sunday morning music. I don’t keep up with music as closely as I once did. My mind is occupied in different ways these days and I tend to hold on to music and artists that I know, only stepping outside my comfort zone occasionally to seek something new– at least new for me. Sometimes I just stumble across it. Such is the case with Rhiannon Giddens.
We take a walk just about every day in a local cemetery. It’s not overly large nor does it have grand mausoleums or many elaborate memorials. It’s not even an extremely beautiful cemetery, although there are lanes such as the one shown here that I find lovely. It’s just a pleasant place to walk in relative quietness.
It’s the New Year and I am finally back at work. I’ve started working on some pieces that have been brewing in my mind for a while, some that are out of my comfort zone. I don’t know how they will turn out and there’s a good chance that most of this work will never see the light of day. I have found that quite often work that is too idea based or thought out never gets into any kind of natural flow or rhythm, at least for me. I have plenty of examples from over the years that I won’t show here.
I am taking a short hiatus from writing the blog just to recharge a bit. This has been a part of my day for over seven years now and I have tried to put out something every day. But I am a little run down at the moment , a little depleted. I need a short break and figure this time around the holidays is the right time to put the blog on hold. Maybe for a week or two. Maybe more. Maybe less.
Flipping on the car radio this time of year brings torrents of holiday music. Many of the local stations change to an all Christmas format from Thanksgiving to the end of the year and you are bombarded with holiday tunes from every era and every level of quality– good , bad and ugly. Most are happy, solemn, goofy or stickily sentimental. Or nostalgically melancholic.
In this part of the country, childhood memories from this time of the year usually include the cold and snow in some form. Frozen ponds with skaters on them. New sleds at Christmas going down white covered hills. Bundling up in heavy clothes and hats and boots.
Redtree Times 