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Posts Tagged ‘West End Gallery’

Heading to the Clouds

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 7, 2025| 5 Comments »

Cloud Flyer— At West End Gallery

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are, if indeed you cannot get it above them, than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

–Henry David Thoreau, Letter to Harrison Blake, April 1853

This morning, I spent a few minutes looking intently at the image of the painting above. It’s a small piece that is part of the Little Gems exhibit now hanging at the West End Gallery. Something in it captured my attention this morning. Not one thing that I can spell out in words. Just a brief flash of feeling that for that moment held me happily spellbound.

Maybe it was just a quick escape from things in this world that have been harassing my mind as of late. I don’t know and, for that matter, I don’t care. We all need to climb into the clouds for dreaming and introspection every so often so that, like Thoreau wrote in a letter to an old friend above, we know where we truly are. We can sometime be deceived or misled, by others and ourselves, so that we don’t clearly see our placement in this world clearly.

We might think too much or too little of ourselves. We might respect the opinions of others while ignoring our own. We might place too much trust in the wisdom of others and too little in our own.

We sometimes need to get up above it all, to place ourselves in and above the clouds. Oh, we can’t stay there, much as we might like, but the clarifying effects of a short sojourn there are mighty.

It centers one’s soul.

The paragraph from Thoreau’s letter from which the passage above was taken also makes the point about that if we trust and respect ourselves, we have the ability to elevate our lot in life and live a fulfilled existence:

It is worth the while to live respectably unto ourselves. We can possibly get along with a neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we respect but very little; but as soon as it comes to this, that we do not respect ourselves, then we do not get along at all, no matter how much money we are paid for halting. There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life. It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are, if indeed you cannot get it above them, than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

That was very much in the same spirit of what I saw in that brief flash I felt while looking at the image at the top this morning. Feet-on-the-ground-head-in-the-clouds kind of satisfaction. Or should I say, Hand-on-the rudder-head-in-the-clouds?

Not sure on that one.

Here’s Joni Mitchell and her classic song, Both Sides Now. This is a favorite version of mine from her 2000 album, Both Sides Now. It is different in tone and sound to her original. Deeper and more world-weary. As you would expect. I read that it was as though the 24-year-old Mitchell wrote this song specifically for her 57-year-old self to sing.

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Demigods: The Dream Eater

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Dream Eater

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.

–Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags (1942)

King of the Night Forest 

I had two pieces in this year’s Little Gems show at the West End Gallery that were a bit different than my typical work. The liberty to experiment and show work that is a little out of your normal lane is one of the things I love about this particular show, which ends a week from today.

These two distinct outliers, King of the Night Forest and Eye of the Trickster, were featured here. They were representations of beings or demigods from a not fully formed mythology that only existed in my mind. I am not sure this mythological world will ever be more defined than it is in these paintings.

Eye of the Trickster

And maybe that’s as it should be. Maybe they should exist only to serve as a jumping off point for someone who might stumble across them someday in the future when they are deciding what should be saved and what should go in the dumpster. Maybe they will inspire that person’s imagination, playing to their fears and dreams.

Maybe. Maybe not, Who knows for sure?

After doing these first two Demigods— I decided just now that is what I am calling them– I felt I wasn’t through. I wanted to explore and expand this world a little more. I did three more pieces, all 14″ by 18″. a bit larger than the first two from the Little Gems show. The last of these three, The Dream Eater, is shown at the top.

The Dream Eater is a being that does just that– takes away and devours your dreams. Greedy and cruel, he is never satisfied. Even when all the dreams and hopes are sapped from his victims and they have been pulled down into his hellish pit in the netherworld, he is already hungering for his next target. 

That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Perhaps that’s why I felt the need to paint this creature. I don’t know for sure. When I start these things, I have no idea where they will go or what I will see in them when they are complete. They obviously represent some other thing that is rolling around in my mind as I work.

I doubt these last three Demigod pieces will ever see the wall of any gallery and I imagine the first two will join me soon after the end of the Little Gems show. I’m fine with that. In fact, these pieces and those from other years that share this same sort of difference give me a special sort of pleasure when I experience them here in the studio.

Maybe it’s because I know they are those parts of me that I’ve wanted to, but have failed to, withhold from eyes other than my own. There’s something freeing sometimes in letting the outside world get a peek at your inner world. 

I’ll show the other two Demigods sometime soon. But for now, I am just going to try to keep this thing from feasting on my dreams while I listen to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road from Elton John. It’s a song about the loss of dreams, one that loomed large in my youth and somehow got lost in the hubbub of the intervening years. I can’t remember the last time I pulled out the album or consciously listened to it in any other way. Probably decades. But I recently watched a reaction video of the song and was instantly reminded of all it was and is. Felt a bit foolish for taking it for granted for all these years.

We sometimes do that with great things, don’t we?

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Hello in There

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 5, 2025| 2 Comments »

Summerdream (1995)– At West End Gallery

The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or dreaming.

–Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Many of us walk a fine line between remaining engaged with the outer world with all its chaotic madness and escaping into the dreamlike quietude of our inner world. I think we need to keep the two somewhat in balance, to never reside fully in one.

For as much as the inner world nourishes our souls and dreams, we can’t reside in that place entirely. And try as we may, we can never fully retreat from intrusive reality of the outer world. It is always lurking nearby and must be dealt with.

But we need to maintain that inner world, that place to dream and expand. A place where we can float on a warm breeze, unburdened by the weightiness and gravity of the real world.

I am not sure what brought this on this morning. Maybe I felt the need to avert my eyes from the outer world for a moment? Nobody could be blamed for that in this strange moment. We all need to visit that inner world for at least a short time every now and then, if only to be reminded of what we are looking for in the outer world.

The question is: Can the dreams of our inner world ever come to reality in the outer world?

That’s a big philosophical jumping off point that I am not willing to leap from just this minute. Like most people, I have outer world needs to which I need to attend. But in doing so, I will bring my inner world along with me.

Maybe I’ll ponder that question at some point while I am floating on a breeze. Maybe not.

Here’s a song from the late John Prine that I’ve loved for a long, long time. It still gets to me after hearing it countless times. It’s a live performance of Hello in There from 2001. It’s a song about aged folks who live in an outer world that has passed them by and now ignores and they have retreated into their inner world which is filled with more memories and images from the past and fewer dreams for the future. But in those remaining dreams, they might sometimes be floating on a summer breeze. And this line from the song’s chorus surely might be echoing there as well:

Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day

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Art’s Refuge

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 4, 2025| 2 Comments »

Island Getaway– At West End Gallery

The power of the good has taken refuge in the nature of the beautiful; for measure and proportion are everywhere identified with beauty and virtue.

— Plato, Philebus (ca. 350 BC)

Philebus is a fictional work presenting a conversation between Socrates and two young Athenians on the value of pleasure in relation to the highest level of Good. The two younger men see pleasure as being this Absolute Good.

As might be expected, Socrates, disagrees. He points out that there are different forms of pleasure. Some are of little value and some, such as pleasure for pleasure’s sake, are harmful to man and which should be avoided.

Just before the line at shown here at the top. Socrates points out the harm in such pleasure:

That any compound, however made, which lacks measure and proportion, must necessarily destroy its components and first of all itself; for it is in truth no compound, but an uncompounded jumble, and is always a misfortune to those who possess it.

This passage sure feels like it was written around 2500 years ago for such a moment such as we are experiencing here in this country. It seems to be an uncompounded jumble that is set on destroying itself and all of which it is comprised. It without measure, proportion, and reason. It has become a land governed by beings that appear to be soulless and artless, devoid of any measure of Beauty or Absolute Good.

When I read this, it made me think of the value and necessity of art as a refuge from this world. As Socrates pointed out, there is goodness and virtue in those things by which we define beauty. We are on the brink of an artless and ugly world. Engaging with art or creating art in times such as these serves a valuable purpose. It reminds us that these is and will always be goodness and virtue in that which appears beautiful to the human spirit.

Art is our refuge.

It comes in the literature and poetry we read. In the music we play and in the movement of our dances. In the films we watch, and in the statues and paintings that we experience.

As difficult as times may be in the near future, we must remember that Art is a both a refuge and a repository for Good, as well as a link, a path, to the world and future we desire.

Take refuge in your art.

Here’s song I last shared about four years ago. It fittingly titled Shelter and is from Lone Justice from back in the mid 1980’s. Led by vocalist Maria McKee, they were very hot for a few years but they couldn’t hold together long enough to reach the potential that so many saw in them. They disbanded in 1987 and Maria McKee went on to a solo career. I thought their two albums were very good and they were regulars on my turntable back in the day. The chorus from this song pops into my head every now and then. It was produced and cowritten with McKee by the multi-talented Steve Van Zandt, who was the subject recently of a wonderful documentary, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, that centered around his efforts that were instrumental in using his art to cast light on apartheid and end it.

Such is the power and refuge of art.

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The Strangeness of Things…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 3, 2025| 6 Comments »

 

Land of Seven Moons— At West End Gallery

The first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe.

–Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (1951)

I live a pretty isolated existence so I can’t speak for everyone, but it seems like a lot of people are feeling alienated by the jumbled strangeness that is taking place. It’s an overwhelming sense that the landscape around you as well as the people within it and their customs are foreign to you, that you somehow don’t fit in. 

It’s a sense of feeling like a stranger in a strange land, to use that term that descended to us from Moses in the book of Exodus and its later use as the title for the sci-fi classic from Robert Heinlein. It’s a term I’ve employed a number of times through the years to describe the sense of alienation with which I have sometimes struggled.

I have to admit that this feeling is in air around me in recent times. However, this sense that many others may well be experiencing that same sense of estrangement from an existence that once felt naturally homelike makes me believe, like the words at the top from Camus, that there is a progressive step, a way forward from this, at least for us as a group.

Though it overwhelms our minds now, we have to understand that the reality that we observe in this moment does not have to last forever. And because there are so many of us feeling this new sense of strangeness, it will not. 

That’s just my feeling this morning. There may not be anything instructive in it. But it perhaps it can provide some comfort, as strangers in this strange land, knowing that beyond the now alien emptiness around us there are others who are looking up at those same seven moons, wondering as I do how they came to be and if they will always be there. 

Here’s song that sprang to mind just now. Actually, the lines from the chorus:

Nobody told me there’d be days like these
Strange days indeed
Most peculiar, mama

It’s Nobody Told Me from John Lennon, recorded near the end of his life and released several years after his murder. 

Strange days indeed…

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The Inner Eye

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 27, 2025| 4 Comments »

Where the Road Ends— At West End Gallery

We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth.

–Helen Keller, Light in My Darkness (1927)

I came across the passage above from Helen Keller and felt it pretty much summed up what I often try to describe here about the inner landscapes that we create within ourselves, those places that I attempt to represent in my work.

This passage comes from a chapter called Opening the Inner Eye, where she writes of how the limitations set upon her by her disabilities forced her to find compensations that allowed her to function in the outer world. More than that, it opened up an inner landscape to her, a place where she could be her best self. This allowed her to realize that happiness or self-contentment has little to do with outward circumstances but comes from within.

She writes of those who are not physically disabled, people who are living without limitations which has made them “mentally blinded” to this inner world. They are never forced to seek new capabilities within themselves and, as a result, resist anything– society, church, etc.– that expects them to display what Keller describes as nobler things from them.  She adds that they then stumble through life with their mental blindness, saying in effect, in her words, “I will be content if you take me for what I am — dull, or mean, or hard, or selfish”

It makes me wonder if perhaps the great divide in this world right now is between those who have opened their inner eye and those who are mentally blind, sometimes willfully so. Might it be a conflict between those who seek to grow into those nobler things and those who refuse to recognize– or are blind to– their lack of them?

Just wondering this morning. I don’t know that there is an answer. In my inner landscape, that’s okay.

Here’s a wonderful piece of music for strolling through that place. This is Cavatina as performed by guitarist John Williams. It was written in 1970 by British composer Stanley Myers (no relation!) for the film The Walking Stick. This version from Williams is better known as the theme for the film The Deer Hunter.

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Preferences and Possibilities

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Completeness— At West End Gallery

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, — it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.

–Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882)

Below is a poem from the late Nobel Prize-winning Polish poetess Wislawa Szymborska (1923–2012) called Possibilities. I featured it here back in 2015 but it struck my fancy this morning and I thought I’d share it again and maybe add a bit to the original blogpost. It is basically a laundry list of her personal preferences. Some are small and some significant but all contribute mightily to her wholeness as a person. We are all the totality of our own laundry lists of preferences that define our character and personality just as our DNA determines our physical characteristics.

It’s a simple yet thought-provokingly complex poem that leave me wondering about my own preferences, my own possibilities. What are those small things that give you shape, make you who you are? Do we rely solely on these preferences in making the choices that we face in this life? Or do we sometimes make choices that do not align with our own preferences?

There are a lot of Symborska’s preferences that strike a chord with me. For instance:  I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. That certainly has been my preference for most of my conscious life.

Then there’s: I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. Like writing poetry, painting can often seem like an absurd thing to do. I often find myself asking why I am alone in the woods smearing paint on surfaces. Is there a purpose or meaning in it?

But I have known the other side of that coin, living a life where I wasn’t painting, and that existence was far more absurd for me. Absurd to an unsustainable degree.

And that final line says it all: I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being. We may never know whether there is a reason for our being but that should not take away from the life we have here.

If this is all we get, live by the possibility of your own preferences and not those of any other.

Live as you are. As you want to be.

You might not agree with some of her preferences. That’s okay– they’re not yours to determine. She is simply giving us a loose outline of her individual nature, her humanity. And there’s poetry in that for any of us.

I am also including a song which was a favorite of Symborska, who requested that the version below from Ella Fitzgerald be played at her funeral. The song is Black Coffee and since being written in 1948 by Sonny Burke it has been covered by some of the great vocalists of our times– Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, k.d. lang and so forth. You could pick any as your preference and they are all special. It’s that kind of song. But this version from the great and grand Ella Fitzgerald is extra special.

POSSIBILITIES

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

–Wislawa Szymborska

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Two Angels

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

All of Time-At West End Gallery

My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night:

My desire and thy desire
Twining to a tongue of fire,
Leaping live, and laughing higher:

Thro’ the everlasting strife
In the mystery of life.

Love, from whom the world begun,
Hath the secret of the sun.

Love can tell, and love alone,
Whence the million stars were strewn,
Why each atom knows its own,
How, in spite of woe and death,
Gay is life, and sweet is breath:

This he taught us, this we knew,
Happy in his science true,
Hand in hand as we stood
‘Neath the shadows of the wood,
Heart to heart as we lay
In the dawning of the day.

— Robert Bridges, My Delight and Thy Delight (1899)

I have things to attend to this morning, so I am sharing a simple trio that deals with something other than the state of the world or even the creative process. The trio today has more to do with love. I guess you could argue that love– or the lack of it– plays a vital part in both the state of the world and the creative process. So, maybe it is pertinent?

I don’t know. I just like this group and felt they all interwove well with each other, all dealing in a way with the theme of two angels. The poem above is from Robert Seymour Bridges (1844-1930) who was a British poet and the Poet Laureate of Britain from 1913 -1930. I was going to include just the first verse but the poem is not that long.

The song, Two Angels, is a longtime favorite from Peter Case. The painting at the top, All of Time, is at the West End Gallery. It’s one of those pieces that stick in my mind, maybe because its creation didn’t come easily. I began it then set it aside for a long time, often looking at what was there and wondering what the next step would be. It was a bit of an enigma. I was finally able to complete it so that it both pleased me deeply and found its own voice. That’s always satisfying.

The hard-fought ones often leave the deepest impressions—in painting as well in love and in life.

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Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 18, 2025| 2 Comments »

Passing Through Blue– At West End Gallery

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
At this still hour the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there
Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;
An embryo God; a spark of fire divine.

—A Summer’s Evening Meditation, Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825)

I had come across the short verse, taken from a much longer 1773 poem, above a few months ago and set it aside with the intent of using it in a blogpost at some point. I wasn’t sure how to use it or if what I was reading in it was the intent of the poet.

This raised a whole bunch of questions, beginning with: Does the author’s intent matter in what I was seeing in her words? Or does what I see in one of my paintings matter in how others see it? Is someone’s else interpretation of it equally valid even if it differs greatly from my own? 

Some tough ones there.

I often use quotes and short passages from literature to initiate a post. While I try to discover their original context and meaning and adhere somewhat to it with my use, I take liberties in my interpretation. I may read something into them that was not part of the original intent, just like you may look at a painting of mine and see something that speaks something to you that is different from or beyond what I saw in it. Something that speaks in a personal language that only you know, something drawn from your own life experiences and sensations.

I think it’s all appropriate so long as the differing interpretation is not employed as justification for anything harmful or denigrating to others. I worry sometimes about that, more so with the writing here than with my painting. Sometimes, in trying to not be too specific on a subject, I recognize the rhetoric of what I have written might be equally applied by those who have a viewpoint that is in complete opposition to what I meant. For example, the definitions of freedom or revolution I write about might not be the same as someone else.

And the vice versa applies here.  I check for the original meaning and context because many years ago I used a quote without checking. It’s been long enough that I can’t remember the subject of the quote or from where it came. Whatever it was, it seemed to serve what I wanted to say. I later found out from a reader that its original meaning was the complete antithesis of what I read into it and was trying to convey in the post, that it came from a person associated with hate groups and was meant to advocate some form of white supremacy.

I was mortified and deleted the post immediately. Since then, I try to find the context of anything I use.

But for the most part, the meaning and purpose one takes from a piece of writing, music, or art is theirs alone. I have often told the story of a lady approaching me at an opening. We stood before a painting of mine that was simple composition, sections of two tree trunks that intertwined around each other as they bisected the painting’s surface from bottom to top. I saw in it a certain human sensuality, one that spoke about how we depend on the assistance and affection of others. She hated the painting and let me know that she saw nothing but the subjugation of women and male dominance in it.

I was stunned. I didn’t see anything like that in that piece before she spoke. I saw it after even if it still didn’t register fully in the way she saw it. But I could see what she was seeing.

I didn’t try to tear down her viewpoint or justify my own. No matter how hard I might try to assure her that it was never intended that way, what she saw was what she saw. Her reading of it was as valid as my own. And I let her know that.

And I guess that’s the way it should be, in most cases. You do what you do, you try to express what you are as a human in a way that you hope comes across clearly to others and that whatever you do, it doesn’t harm or be used to harm others. For the most part, it works out okay. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

You just hope you’re not too badly misunderstood. Or worse than that, not heard at all.

Here’s song on that subject. It’s a fine interpretation of a favorite Animals‘ song, Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood from Cyndi Lauper. Good stuff.

At least, that’s the way I see it…

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Passionata/ Valentine’s Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Passionata–Included in Little Gems at West End Gallery

There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance … some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone.

― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Valentine’s Day in the year 2025. Though there is a lot that could be said about both the Valentine’s Day type of love and the year 2025, the two seem incompatible. At this place and time–2025– writing about romantic love seems almost trivial. And that might be a mistake as it may be only love, in its many facets, that sustains us going forward. So, for this Valentine’s Day in the year 2025, I am going back to a post from the good old days– 2022 (yikes!)– that deals with the sustaining power of love. The only difference is the painting at the top from the Little Gems show, which nonetheless serves as well as the painting shown in the original post.

The lines above from the 1972 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Angle of Repose, from the late Wallace Stegner really jumped out at me this morning. To be honest, I haven’t read the book so can’t speak to its context but its concept of two vertical lines tipping together so that they meet and prop each other up to create a self-supporting false arch just seemed like the perfect imagery for today, Valentine’s Day.

Every lasting relationship depends on this arch. I hesitate to use the word “false” though I understand it is in reference to the distinction between “true” arches that have angled stones and a keystone at its apex that binds it all together and “false” arches that have the appearance and serve the same purpose but are constructed in a less sophisticated manner, sometimes haphazardly or by sheer accident.

Two trees falling against one another in the forest, for example.

Or maybe even two trees that grow together and eventually seem almost as one. a la the trees in my Baucis and Philemon based paintings.

I’ve been part of such a false arch for a very long time and as a result Valentine’s Day takes on a different look for me. Though it maintains a romantic aspect, it is more about a deeper recognition and appreciation of all the many aspects that make up that other vertical line that somehow fell my way all so many years ago to create our false arch.

And, as the Stegner lines above point out, this false arch might be as much as one can expect in this life. I certainly can’t ask for anything more.

Here’s one of my favorite Rickie Lee Jones songs, one that seems fit for this post. It’s a song that I never thought received the recognition it deserved. This is We Belong Together, from her classic 1981 album, Pirates, with its cover photo from Brassai of two Parisian lovers of the 1930’s.

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