I Met a Girl

I met a girl on my front porch.  It was a Saturday evening and the rain had just started.  I snapped a mental picture of the sky just in case.  I imagined how the air smelled.  I heard my dog bark.  I saw a squirrel chasing a squirrel across my street.  I noticed that I hadn't swept the leaves from the sidewalk.  She said, “I’m here.”  And I said, “Yes you are.”  We hugged.  

I exhaled. 

Open Road, Black Sabbath and Two Sleeping Dogs

Did you know that I was only (7) years old when AC/DC released Highway to Hell?  Me either.  I guess I always knew it was earlier than my memory of it but have never put those two facts together until tonight aimlessly rifling through liner notes.  Today, I heard Shot Down In Flames on the poorly conceived and executed excuse for a radio station I listen to at work.  (Yes, I still listen to an actual radio in my office: No, I do not have a plausible excuse for why.)  I was as far from AC/DC in 1979 as is humanly possible.  Eddie Rabbit was my favorite “artist” then (I know, right?).  At some point I became aware and all of the crappy music I had in my mind was replaced with a desire to find the next amazing thing.  It only strikes me as something now because I would have assumed, outside looking in, that “it” was always there but “it” wasn’t.  I came to be me on my own terms.  What exactly that means is debatable and certainly isn’t encapsulated in any music, but it’s a part – a big part actually.  There was a moment, I’m sure, when it all clicked.  But I don’t remember when and that’s what’s troubling. 

I recently completed my yearly November sojourn to Mississippi for turkey and family and whatnot.  I have an odd affection for that place that I can’t deny.  It’s where I grew up.  I lament and relish that fact in equal measure.  I can’t imagine the cataclysmic event that would put me back in residence, but at the same time I can’t imagine not going back there occasionally.  There are good people in that state but they get drowned in the secessionist and racist bullshit that makes it to the national media.  It’s a shame really, because I have known some peace there – and still do from time to time.  The sad truth is though that I hesitate to be honest when someone asks me where I’m from.  I don’t lie, but I don’t offer the truth readily either.  The going and coming from Mississippi has taught me more than the living there ever did for damn sure.  You can’t really see a thing until you are no longer in the thing and you can’t even see that until you go back.  Again, there was a moment when that realization hit me, but I don’t recall when it was.

At some point on said journey, and I don’t remember whether I was coming or going, I realized this thing.  I was about that many miles west of somewhere that only exists in someone else’s memory when I became acutely conscious of this fact.  I had these (3) perfect things in no particular order – open Road, Black Sabbath and two sleeping dogs.  End of list. It was a perfect moment.  I’m going there or I’m going here or whatever or wherever.  It’s comical now that these three disparate truths crystallized for me that which I have never been aware of before:  being aware is all that really matters.

I recognized a moment.  That moment was my awareness of what was that Friday’s perfect (3) that made that Friday a perfect day.  That’s a powerful thing, right?  I’ve spent a lifetime trying to identify and capture it on a canvas but never really comprehended what the “it” was I was after.  That specific moment, that “it” was simply about understanding why I was smiling.  There is always a moment when I’m painting that I see an "it", and as quickly as it appears it’s gone.  That might seem discouraging but I find it to be an invigorating, perpetuating fact.  If I’m never able to capture “the moment” in acrylics at least I will know that I waged a noble war, at least I will know what I was trying to find.  There is always a piece in every piece that is near perfect – that does in fact, illustrate the idea I’m attempting to illuminate.  There is always a “moment” in every painting that is close, but I haven’t been able to make the whole piece be the whole idea yet.  So I will keep trying.  When the whole of the painting represents the whole of my thought then I will be an artist.  If that’s not art imitating life imitating art, I don’t know what is.

It’s not the destination but the journey that gives you wisdom.  It’s that you are going that matters, not that you are getting there.

Child’s Play

There is a church down the street from my house that is a haven of bustle from early to late every Sunday.   It’s an Ethiopian Church, specifically an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church – one of the few pre-colonial Christian churches of Sub-Saharan Africa.  Past that, I know very little about what they believe or how they worship or for that matter what or who they worship, nor do I care.  They are friendly people and they are fine occasional neighbors.

When I moved to this neighborhood a few years back the building they occupy was admittedly an eyesore.  The structure which I believe was probably a neighborhood school at some point in the past had fallen into disrepair.  The grounds left untended were overgrown and I imagine the interiors were a perfect venue for who knows what manner of nefarious shenanigans.  So I was surprised to discover that many of my neighbors were not excited that a church was moving in and some even contemplated an attempt to block their arrival.  What I didn’t know was that this building had most recently been a make-shift concert venue and the subsequent influx of ne’re do wells had been a nightmare – cars parking in yards, loud music to all hours of the night etc. etc.  Prior to that, it had been an artists' colony that had attracted apparently a less than desirable element as well and had a similar negative impact on the community.  I guess I understood the neighborhoods’ hesitance but I couldn’t get behind not welcoming a church into our midst.   A meeting with the leaders of the church was arranged and that quickly put everyone’s minds at ease.  Soon after, they started cleaning up the landscape, painted the exterior green and our new weekend neighbors moved in.

I told you that unnecessarily long story just to tell you this – I’m glad they are here.  Perhaps I think that their presence here is good for me.  That maybe some of their devout spiritualism will rub off on me or whatever. I don’t think that it’s possible to be religious via some sort of cultural osmosis but it’s better than nothing I suppose.  Plus and a more likely reason is that I like the increased activity in the street.  I spend most of my Sundays sitting on the porch stoop plotting my next move as it were.  Which is to say, watching squirrels dig up the flower beds and trying in vain to ascertain the actual growing of the grass or this time of year watching leaves fall.  It’s not an especially productive use of my time but it’s what I do.  Having a parade of taxi cabs and sedans packed with families drive by gives me something else to look at.  Fascinating, I know.

This morning I was reminded of the real reason I like sharing a block with a church.  It’s the exuberant and seemingly never ending child’s play that comes along with it.  I don’t have kids;  so I’m more than a little shocked to find that I enjoy a gaggle of screaming children running around my neighborhood.  It’s refreshing to see kids running for no discernible reason other than running is apparently really, really fun.  And screaming while you run is even better!  Running and screaming by yourself is one thing, but if you can achieve the trifecta of running, screaming AND being chased then there is clearly nothing in this world that can give these kids more joy other than maybe rolling down a hill of course.  Screaming and running, smiling from ear to ear without a care in the world. 

I don’t remember this from my childhood.  I’m sure I enjoyed running around for no reason as much as the next kid, but it’s not something I recall.  I was a weird little dude though so I’m not sure I played like other children did. If I didn’t, I really wish I had because it looks awesome!  I assume it would be frowned upon socially if as adults we were to run and scream and chase our friends around, but oh what fun that would be.  Can you imagine that?  If in the middle of an important business meeting a spontaneous game of chase broke out?  If hide and seek was an appropriate form of conflict resolution.  Or if instead of wars, we settled our differences through an enormous game of intercontinental tag? 

So that’s today’s big epiphany.  This world is far too serious, far too often and it would be a better place if we all could recapture and embrace the simple joys and pleasures we knew as children.  Yep, what the world needs now is simply more child’s play. 

There, I fixed it.

Drinking With Strangers

Wednesday, actually this whole week, was a runaway roller coaster from hell, which in truth isn’t all that uncommon (or for that matter all that troubling really).  In my profession, days sometimes tend to take on an uncontrollable life of their own and just keeping your head above water long enough is sufficient to win the day.  That’s the most difficult and simultaneously exhilarating part of my job though. It’s all about avoiding the big suck (which sounds like a seminar or a book I will teach or write some day). IF one can accomplish that on the regular? – That’s a true measure of success in my opinion.  These untamed days are often born of something as benign as a missed alarm clock or an uncooperative morning dog but they quickly, almost Gremlin-like morph into a wild mythical beast that refuses to be broken, devolve into a smoldering retarded fire full of nonsense fuel.  When I see the first telltale signs, I almost literally hold my breath until I’m sure.  That morning, I walked into my office to a ringing telephone harboring a frantic client’s expectation of urgent (unrealistic) requests (demands) and I exhaled, and quietly braced for the inevitable impact of the fall, knowing that today was going to be one of those aforementioned days.   Dot, dot, dot, when the car coasted into the gate at the end of the ride, my soul was sore.

So hectic was the day that I didn’t realize that I had received a package I had been waiting for.  If you’ve read this blog before you know how important and necessary the anticipation of the package is to me.  If you know me at all, you know that the package was full of books and music.  You also probably know that I believe that there is no ill this dynamic duo cannot cure.  And further, you most likely are acutely aware of the unavoidable fact that I’m about to tell you all about the contents of said package in excruciating detail and how it saved that day.  If any of the above is true then you would be right!

A few sleepless midnights back, I stumbled across a program on a television network, neither of which I had seen prior.  The show was Live From Daryl’s House on Palladia. Unbeknownst to me, this little jewel began as a web-based offering in 2007.  As I am decidedly less than digital, I’ve remained in the dark all this time.  I was jolted from my pre-dawn zombie channel surf into a heightened awareness when I heard Bodegas and Blood.  As I voyeuristically peered into their night, three questions bounced around inside my head in no particular order: How can I get invited to what seems to be the coolest house jam ever, Why does Daryl Hall suddenly seem less like a tool and Who the hell is Butch Walker?  Bodegas and Blood was the first track on the first CD I pulled out of the box when I got in the truck and if ever there was a more perfect antidote to break the fever I was in right then, I’m not sure what it is. 

As I listened to Butch Walker and the Black Widows’ latest CD Spade, I was bombarded with hyperactive glimpses of my musical memory.  At points his music sounds like what Mott the Hoople would have released if they’d been around now and not back then.  And then the next second reveals the obvious underpinnings of his southern roots, The Outlaws, Lynyrd Skynyrd et al, with an unmistakable wink and a nod to Electric Light Orchestra, Roy Orbison.  I was reminded of some of my ‘90s faves, Fastball and later Rooney, Everclear without all of Art Alexakis’ bitching about his childhood.  It’s like Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes strained through a North Georgia filter – like Georgia Satellites spun through West Hollywood knowledge. There are tones of Otis Redding and Jackie Wilson and Curtis Mayfield sprinkled in.  Don McLean, Jim Croce, Buddy Holly.  Department of Youth-like Alice Cooper riffs. Irreverent as Dash Rip Rock and as peaceful and intentioned as Taj Mahal with a Johnny Cash sense of humor to knock off the edge. There’s even an endearing Evan Dando smarminess to parts of the delivery. It’s every good bar band you’ve ever seen stumble through a set elevated to somewhere you’ve never been. It’s garagey and soulful, jangly and ordered.  There are Ramones-esque sing-a-longs and dare I say, Dixie Chicks-like Pop Country hooks and yet it’s not written with an agenda.  It doesn’t even feel like it was written so much as it feels like it just happened or maybe has always been there.  And that’s what makes it rock.  It’s Foghat meets Al Green meets KISS meets Jan and Dean meets Springsteen meets…whatever the hell Butch feels like.  There is a seamless merging of what he grew up on and what is happening now and it never crosses either line, it never feels contrived.  It’s genuine and exists only because it does. It exists perfectly.

I listened to his ’09 album I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart next and was equally as blown away.  This one’s different through the first few tracks at least, more contemplative.  The songs would be at home on Elvis Costello’s 1977 classic My Aim is True and yet they don’t feel dated.  So far my favorite is Trash Day, his scathing indictment of suburban hypocrisy.  The irony here is that I walked right past Criminal Records in Little Five when he was doing this in-store on my way to a They Might Be Giants show at the Variety Playhouse, with my head apparently buried in the sand.  But hey, at least I know now, right?

In an effort to remain in balance I’d also ordered a replacement copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I’ve had several through the years and I’ve worn them all completely out.  It’s one of those books that holds an eye-level rank on the shelves.  It sits chill next to Cool Hand Luke and A Peoples History of the United States and Manufacturing Consent and Live from Death Row and Steal This Book and On The Road and The Doors of Perception and it belongs there.   Dee Brown paints a more specific picture than anyone else ever has about the true nature of our American dream.  He tells the story that the History Channel leaves out, that we don’t really want to hear – he recounts through first-hand interviews with those on the other side, what it was like on the other side as our country established its heritage.  It’s the story of our ancestors’ systematic destruction of a vast and incredibly diverse network of cultures, original gangsta’ Americans, right?  It’s what happened before it was cool to be a patriot.  I’m not about to step up to a stump and decry the manner in which we acquired the land upon which we reside, but it is important that we are all aware of that purchase.  It’s important that we understand that as lambs’ wool clean as we like to think we are, that we are not.  It’s convenient and appropriate for us to laud the sacrifices our soldiers are making today, but hard to acknowledge the blood that spilled to even give us a “land of the free” for them to protect.  You can’t profess to be an American without understanding the value of this book, without accepting the truth therein.  Knowing our origins forces the question, are we really who we think we are?  I guess that’s a rant for another day and certainly way too heavy for a Friday night conversation.

I hold a belief that all good and meaningful Heavy Metal is dead.  The first time I heard Volbeat’s Still Counting on the radio, that conviction was utterly disproven.  What a joy it has been to discover this song and this band.  The song is probably about an ex-girlfriend I surmise, but these exact thoughts have raced through my brain sitting in myriad conference rooms around the way.  “Counting all the assholes in the room, I’m definitely not alone”, that is pure insight – into one’s self and their surroundings.  It’s a song I can sing along with (at the top of my lungs) and it sounds awesome.  The louder I sing the better I sound!  The music is akin to Metallica in its rhythm and drive, but there are not so subtle undertones of Clash-like ska chording.  The Living End come to mind, even some Billy Bragg records oddly.  There are multiple time and tempo changes in a single song ala Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath.  But what carries the band is the vocal – it’s incredible, it sounds like he is harmonizing with himself.  Glen Danzig powerful, Sully Erna in some respects: reminiscent of ‘70s metal greats – Saxon and Diamond Head, but not as dark.  Everything about it is exactly as it should be.  I’m well aware of Denmark’s still thriving Punk scene but who knew the Danes were such rockers?  I love it. \m/

Let me take a moment to celebrate my affection for a little Amazon ruse they call, “People who bought this item, also bought this…”  That modest tag has resulted in more purchases of questionable product than I care to admit, but it’s absolute marketing genius really.  The only reason I mention it is that all of the items in my Wednesday box were found through a search for a Tattoo magazine subscription that was rumored to be cheaper through Amazon – I wasn’t looking for music or books; I wasn’t really looking for anything.  But, there is a common thread woven through all of these items that I haven’t yet uncovered, but I am intrigued.  I’m intrigued especially by the fact that Pimp by Iceberg Slim appeared as I perused.  This is a book I’ve heard about nearly my whole life.  And who hasn’t heard a reference to Iceberg Slim in a rap song?  The back flap describes it as, “What Sun Tzu’s Art of War was to Ancient China, Pimp is to the streets”.  Really?  That’s an obvious must-read in my opinion.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Due to a brutal roll-over crash at Lenox and Chipper’s last Friday night at Turner Field, I had time to read the first few pages of Walker’s book Drinking with Strangers while sitting in traffic tonight.  I quickly realized that the dry sense of humor I’d heard in his lyric is prevalent in his writing as well.  There’s something about it that resonates with me.  It might be that he grew up around here even though I didn’t.  Growing up in small towns in the south is different for some people, people who don’t belong I guess.  The funny thing is that the ones who “don’t belong” actually seem to love it the most and that comes through crystal clear in his writing and his music.  I dig that.  I identify with that.  I thumbed through the black and whites at center spine and wasn’t all that surprised to see that his senior picture “rock star” hair was as ridiculous as mine had been.  I haven’t yet read the book and I already get it.  His self-proclaimed “rise to the middle” is certainly unlike my path but I’m sure we share similar stories with different names.  I love that title by the way, Drinking with Strangers.  I love it as the metaphor for a life it may or may not be intended to be, I love it as a simple statement of fact.

So, if you’re not familiar with anything that is italicized above I suggest you make yourself thus.  It’s important, plus there will be a test at some point (I’m almost sure of it [maybe]).  Meantime, I’m heading out to my local to have a drink or two with strangers and to shake off the sticky residue of this week.

A Red Letter Day

Saturday last, I had the good fortune of spending the day among ‘my people’ as it were, hawking my wares at the East Atlanta Strut.  If you were there, you know that this year’s event was one of the biggest and best in its (15) year existence.  I’m proud of my bit-part in that play.

I’ve discussed at length in this blog the inner personal conflict of selling and the converse joy of making art but I don’t think that I’ve ever truly understood either before Saturday.  The barrier that had prevented me from allowing the outside world inside my art was a fully self-constructed insurmountable wall of fear.  There is a little paperback I read two or three times every year called Art and Fear that deals with this apparently universal phenomenon.  The authors wholly illuminate the incredible reward of clearing that obstacle but for years I’ve conveniently withheld comprehension of that detail so as to reinforce that which I thought to be true – that my work wasn’t good enough.  Or that it wouldn’t sell.  Or whatever myriad of excuses I’ve thrown out over the years.  It was just too big of a risk for me.  For whatever reason early this spring, I decided that if I didn’t take on that risk full-force now, I never probably would.  And if I didn’t, I would most likely always regret it.  In spite of myself, I sometimes tend to be a rational person and usually (occasionally) weigh risk versus reward.  I finally decided that the potential reward far outweighed the potential risk.

And so I sat Saturday before the firing squad…

…tick, tick, tick…inside my head, time was on a death march to nowhere.  Nothing sold. My worst doubts were rearing their ugly heads – self-actualizing my own fatalistic prophecy.  (I’m well aware of how ridiculous this must all sound, so feel free to scoff.)  The knowledge that I was publicly falling flat on my face was consuming me.  I left Black Joe in charge and went for a walk to clear my head, to regroup.  When I returned, I saw him fiddling with the cash box.  Really?  Really.  I sold my first piece of the day and I wasn’t even there to see it!   Regardless, when Joe told me what I’d missed, that oft defended impenetrable wall crumbled.  I relaxed. I began to enjoy the day.  There was nothing but upside from then on.

I sold one piece and then another and then two – I brought (28) to the show and came home with (20). In between I talked to a ton of awesome people about something that I love to do.  That for me was even more rewarding than the actual selling.  I’ll probably never be a “working” artist and I’m not sure I want to be.  The truth is Saturday could have been a complete anomaly, lightning in a bottle or whatever.  I may never sell another piece.  None of that matters because I’ve found something that is all mine, that is all real and that no one can take away.  I cannot explain in words how mesmerizing it is for me to have a conversation with someone who not only appreciates but genuinely likes what I do.  I’m astonished by it really.  I’m floored by the fact that someone is willing to part with their hard-earned dollars just to have a canvas I painted hang on their wall.  It’s as satisfying and humbling an experience as I have ever known and I’m even more motivated to continue down this path.  I’m even more convinced that what comes out of my studio adds value to the world.

That last line might have sounded arrogant.  I’ve been told that I write from a position of power, that my words are often taken as egotistical, that I’m superior somehow.  I accept that assessment as I do all criticism, but that’s not what this is.  On the back of my business card is a level suggestion that if you don’t look closely for you will miss.  It says “go make art”.  It is an acknowledgment that the paint and thought that I put on canvas is no more exceptional than the art that you or anyone else is capable of.  It is only art because I used my own two hands and the wonky brain inside my head to make it.  The fact that I chose to do it, makes it art.  Everyone on this earth is an artist if they choose to be.  That shared possibility makes my everyday a little brighter.  Art matters.  I’ve always been aware of that truth but I was reminded of it in a most profound way Saturday.

If you came down to my ‘hood this weekend and I was privileged enough to speak with you about this thing I do, please know that you left a mark.  I’m unable to fully express how uplifted and inspired you’ve made me feel.  It’s impossible to put into words the depth of my gratitude.  All of the above is yet another example of my typically overstated method of stating the obvious – 15 September was a long overdue red letter day for this old soul.  I now have a touch point in time to go to when the real world gets in my way.  Thank you.  Thank you for giving me that.

If you didn’t make it out, mark your calendars for 3 November.  I’ll be at Chomp and Stomp in Cabbagetown and we’ll chat then.

Slow Train to Johannesburg

I drew the short straw of travel tonight and was relegated to the middle seat – a fortune worse than death considering my absurd claustrophobic mania.  Factoring in the probability of my propensity to attract unseemly travelers, I was forced to confront the reality of my compulsory, impending doom as I stepped onto the plane.  That seems negative, doesn't it?  It is, but it’s not really, all at the same time.  This pessimistic expectation, though rooted in certain historic fact is admittedly, an especially counterproductive prospect. 

First to the row; I sat down, stowed my bag and metaphorically rolled the dice.  The day had been gold up to then so I fully expected the other shoe to fall in the form of a fat, sweaty, vocal, heavy-breathing, misogynistic, racist, Republican asshole.  Bring it, said I to self and psychologically prepared to do battle with said asshole and/or to convene the tenets of my untimely demise at the hand of his misguided verbal assault.  I could not have been more surprised (and relieved) to see who I was actually going to spend the next hour and a half or so with.

So preoccupied with what I had internally created to be an epic battle of political and/or social dischord was I, that I only faintly recognized that she was carrying a guitar.  I only vaguely recall her courteous request of endorsement for admittance to her seat on my right side.  Reassured that I would not be forced into a cultural/emotional/theological Thunderdome, I relaxed and retreated flipside to my ridiculous Patterson paperback pretention.  Through the ensuing requisite conversation, I was delightfully enlightened with the decidedly obtuse details of her Christian missionary endeavor – traveling extended to South Africa solo for the first time.  I was just about to silently, psychologically address the obvious chasm between her path and mine when my astonishing left-side companion appeared, beleaguered with too many flowery bags and bad knees.

She was an American. Loquacious, Reform Jewish, unsure-expatriated, (17) years-in-Japan-weary, board certified lawyer – a paid lecturer, an academic, a scholar of the highest order, debating the potential pitfalls and positives of spending her golden years in Boca Raton. What once had held the promise of a fight-to-the-death, made for TV movie or at least a peaceful flight of self-programmed iPod, Jack Daniels’ induced bliss, quickly devolved into a celebration of…or at least a conversation about…I’m not sure exactly.  It was entertaining though: I was dutifully regaled with dichotomistic tales of idyllic garden landscapes and suppressive governmental authority presented across the tattered backdrop of her remembered American dream.  We talked about art and politics and foreign policy and Germany and Atlanta and colors and light and architecture and everything before and after and in between – as satisfying a dialogue as I have had with a perfect stranger in recent memory. 

Occasionally, my new-found missionary friend would interject random, witty anecdotes, punch lines.  As distressed as she proclaimed to be about the going she was on, she had an unspoken peace about her that I found refreshing.  There was a light about her countenance that I rarely see.  She had a lot to say but was too young to know what it was and yet was still confident, even if apprehensively.  I remember feeling that way a million years ago.  The difference is that she is apparently able to focus what was for me a random, undisciplined angst into a focal, refined purpose.  That’s incredible.  That is something to envy.  That makes me believe in the collective possibility of the human condition – even if we are as screwed up as I perceive us to be.  I would have liked to have been someone like who she is now (20) years ago, right? 

I wish I would have talked to her more than I did.  I think this kid could have taught me a thing or two.  I would have liked to have taken that (17) hour slow train to Johannesburg with her, but alas I am busy and important and have many volumes of leather-bound books or whatever bullshit I’m selling myself today.  That’s a joke.  She had more soul in her pinky finger than I’ve ever even pretended to have. 

I guess, that’s the lesson, eh?  Do what you want because you believe in it – not because you should, or “they” think you should.  I’ve always said some pseudo-intellectual variation of the same but it was all show most times.  She gets it – and doesn’t even know that she does.  I’m not often inspired my human beings.  I think as a general rule, we suck…but maybe not all of us.  I am a better person for our paths having crossed.

 At the end of the flight, all I could do to repay was point her to the train. 

Shifting Focus

Being accepted into the EAV Strut forced me into the self-realization of knowing that I was grossly ill-prepared to show my art in public.  Since receiving this notification, I’ve been feverishly at work on a seemingly endless list of tasks that need to be fulfilled before 15 September.  I’ve never been one to half-ass a thing and this thing is no different – a million details need to be identified and resolved in just less than one month.  If those million boxes are checked complete and the logistics of public presentation are satisfactorily resolved I still have more art to produce.  It feels like the night before my thesis jury every night (three hours of sleep is a victory).  I love that beating heart.  I've missed it.  The new website is nearly complete and will hopefully go live in the next (24) hours but there is still the tent and the table and the business cards and the packaging and the receipts and the price tags and the music and the rest of my manic enthusiasm to deal with prior to.

Yes, it might be crazy that I’m all in on this, but why else would I do it?  I’m less concerned with selling a single piece than I am with presenting the work in the best possible light.  Go big or go home, right?  Nothing risked, nothing gained.  There are hundreds of applicable clichés here and I’ve silently recited every one to myself in the last several days.  It’s not like I’m having an opening at MOMA, it’s a local festival!  They very well may accept every schlep who applies and I’m okay with that.  The most important fact to me is that I’ve found my way back to a place I haven’t visited in years.  I’m willing to be public with my art again – I’ve never been 100% cool with that.  I’m 100% behind myself this time and though that may be the first time I’ve said those words, it doesn’t feel like the last.  It’s intimidating, I’ll admit; like facing a firing squad intimidating, but I won’t know who I am now as an artist without facing it. “You can’t put something out there without watching it fall…only thing that’s scarier than dying is not dying at all.” 

So that’s that.  I’m putting this blog on the shelf until after the Strut.  I’m shifting my creative focus from words to paint.  Look for my website soon and if I don’t get back to the blog beforehand, mark your calendars for 15 September.  Come out and support your local lunatic.

Nine New Pieces

In a concerted effort to follow through on a commitment I made to myself and publicly a few weeks ago, I have been spending more time in my studio.  I will spare you the gory details of the path back to nirvana but suffice to say that July was a very productive month.  I’ve been making art for (25) years or more and the fire hasn’t always burned brightly – it has been stoked into a near constant roar over the last few weeks.

The manner in which I present my work isn’t for everyone.  You may even think it shit and I’m more okay with that than ever before.  For the first time in a long time I’ve been painting and creating what I see, expressing what I feel in the way I feel like doing so.  This awakening has brought great clarity to the creative process for me.  I still do this from time to time, but for years I would paint too much, take it too far.  There is a point when art is being born that is critical for any artist to be aware of and if that moment in time isn’t recognized, the whole project will die – that point where one more drop of paint, one more brush stroke will destroy the entirety of the piece.  I’ve struggled to see that peak since forever and have ruined countless canvases as a result.  I’m seeing it now and I’m more proud of that simple fact than I am the work that’s coming out of my studio these days.  My pulse has quickened and my intentions have never been more true.

What follows is July’s product – nine new pieces.  I remain confounded by the art of photographing art so I apologize for these shots not being stellar. As it’s always been, this work is about color and form and connectivity and…I’ll stop there.  There’s no compelling reason to bore you with hyperbolic pretension.  You will either like it or you won’t regardless of what I say. 

They are all acrylics on canvas and they are all for sale.  Check out my website for more, johncstantzart.com

07.01.12
12" x 24"

07.03.12
10" x 10"

07.04.12
10" x 10"

07.08.12
14" x 18"

07.14.12
24" x 18"

07.19.12
8" x 8"

07.21.12
12" x 6"

07.30.12
24" x 12"

07.31.12
8" x 8"

I Will Call Her 'Tomorrow'

There is a feral cat in the neighborhood who has taken a shine to me.  I can’t say precisely that this is a feral cat, but it is certainly of the neighborhood variety.  I would actually probably say that this is definitely someone’s pet.  And as far as taking a shine to me, that might not be factually accurate either – it certainly likes to be around my truck at night though.  “Taken a shine” is a funny expression, no?  I’m not sure what it means, if anything.

I feel like I have other things to concern myself with throughout the day, but I find that I’ve expended an exceptional amount of mental energy worrying about the well-being of said kitty when I’m not at home.  This is strange for me on many levels.  I don’t gush over strays.  I don’t worry about that which I cannot affect.  I don’t use the term "kitty". I don't even like cats!  I sure as hell have no desire to hold any dominion over such.  Every night, this ‘hood cat is here – under the tires, chillin’ on the bumper, bathing in the bed, sprawled across the hood ala Tawny Kitaen.  I’ve never seen this kitty anywhere other than intermingling with my truck.

What to do?

I surmised in the last few minutes that I should feed it raw meat, but only occasionally, right?  I don’t believe in having outdoor animals as pets but if I could convince a blood hungry cat to stick around outside that might not suck.  The thought behind being that if there is a seemingly wild animal outside of my house who has developed (through careful planning of course) an affinity for raw flesh then perchance I could reduce my financial home security commitment.  How incredibly awesome would it be to have an attack cat to dissuade the occasional miscreant passerby from profiling one’s crib?  And how embarrassing would it be for those with nefariously intentioned plots to have them foiled by a little kitty cat?

The previous is not the best or most creative idea I’ve ever had, but it is as workable as any solution that I can think of right now.  I developed a wicked allergy to cats since I had one last so I can’t be sure, but I think it’s a female – she has an arrogant, bitchy way.  For the last several days I’ve tried to think of clever names to call her, provided I accepted this into my life.  Allergies notwithstanding, Belle would never be able to co-exist with such an inferior species within the confines of the domicile – pseudo adoption is out of the question.  I don’t want the cat to think I don’t care though so tomorrow I will do…something.

She’s been around now for (9) days in a row, uninterrupted.  Tomorrow will be the tenth day.  If she’s here then, I will call her Tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Woody

Had the universe been large enough to contain his spirit, Woody Guthrie would have turned (100) years old today.  I often find myself wondering what he would think of what his beloved America has become.  In his life he was labeled a communist for his outspoken stance against the injustices that befell the migrant worker, his passion for ecological preservation, his disbelief in “big-business”.  He championed the working class, upon whose back this country was built and he was ostracized for having that voice.  He penned one of the most patriotic songs in the history of the United States, “This Land is Your Land” and still his character was often critically eviscerated as being anti-American.

He once said, “A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it or it could be who's hungry and where their mouth is or  who's out of work and where the job is or  who's broke and where the money is or  who's carrying a gun and where the peace is.”

When was the last time you heard any talking heads, whether left or right leaning speak with as much clarity as that?  The hell of it is that, it’s not a “folk song” it’s happening everyday on the streets around us.  The words he sang and thought and spoke all those years ago are as relevant now as they were then, if not more so.  In too many ways we haven’t progressed – if anything, we’ve regressed.  We’ve become even more a nation of whores:  political, social, financial, power hungry whores. 

Woody’s was the voice of reason in his time.  He called it as he saw and pulled no punches for anyone.  He believed in unions because they protected the inherent rights of the working stiff.  He believed that someone who worked an honest day should get an honest day’s wage.  He believed that government should not dictate or regulate the volume with which he spoke in public about his disbelief in the government.  He believed in personal freedom and accountability, but also understood that a government of a free people had a responsibility to assist those same free people when their decisions went awry.  He looked to government to not give a hand-out but to repay him what he was due – only in equal measure to what he had given it. 

He gave a voice to a whole generation of people who might not have had a voice without him.  He tattooed upon our national psyche the horrors of the Great Depression and the dust bowl and the great California migration.  He was our living, breathing, vocal Tom Joad.  He spoke when no one else would about ideas that no one else had. He was a democrat – not the party, but the ideal.  He was a believer in the inclusive possibility that is the American dream and sought only to ensure that it was equally available to all.  He was repaid by being dismissed as a socialist agitator and a schizophrenic after he died.

By all accounts, he was the least judgmental human being who’s walked the earth and was generous almost to a fault.  He would give away his day’s pay to a starving family when his own children were hungry. He would offer his coat to a shivering hitchhiker and catch a cold on his way home.  He possessed an unequaled generosity of spirit, of openness.  He held a hunger to experience the world and the people of the world and he wrote, or painted, or sang about every single person he ever met in his life.  He retained the childlike wonder of the unknown that most of us lose too early in life.  He continued to embrace the known and the unknown even as he lay dying.  He had the exceptional gift to be just who was at all times.

Through the years, his politics faded into the background and less and less was said or written about his “radical” nature.   Rightfully so, his music has been brought into the light, given the credit and acclaim it deserves but rarely received during his life.   He only recorded (400) songs but left countless thousands of others for us to discover after his death.  Billy Bragg, Jeff Tweedy, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Morello: these are just a few of the artists who have recorded and reintroduced Guthrie’s lyrical genius to the world.  His musical legacy is still very much alive today.

I have a print of a quote of his from an undocumented performance monologue hanging in my studio.  Every morning before I go to work, or go to play, or to mow the yard or to go do whatever it is that I’m off to do that day I read every word of the print:

            I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose, bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim, too ugly or too this or too that…songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

            I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built…I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.

            I could hire out to the other side, the big money side and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs.  To sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all.  But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that.  The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

These words are supposedly about how he approached the craft of songwriting but they transcend that endeavor and speak volumes about his true character.  I am not a singer of songs. I don’t have the gifts that he had, but I understand what he was saying.  For me these words are a treatise on how to conduct oneself on the daily and they fully illuminate the kind, thoughtful, patriotic man that Woody was. 

I believe that reading his words every morning makes me a better man.

Happy Birthday Woody.  I hope you’ve found the peace in death, that you were always searching for in life.

“Left wing, right wing, chicken wing — it’s all the same

to me. I sing my songs wherever I can sing ’em.”

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie

14 July 1912 – 3 October 1967

This Stack of CDs

Last weekend I spent some long overdue time organizing my studio.  My workspace had become little more than a depository for the remains of the day; old receipts, junk mail, open paint jars – a real mess.  Sifting through this disaster I knocked over more than one stack of CDs that had been accumulating for well over a year probably.  Yes, I know CDs should be in cases, not stacks.  For the record, the cases are dutifully alphabetized in the racks and this works fine for finding what you want to listen to.  But when I’m done with and on to the next, the path of least resistance is to drop the used on a stack and look for a new.  You’re probably wondering why I even own CDs at this point in the digital music age and there is a simple if illogical explanation – I’m a liner notes kind of guy.  I need the multi-folded inserts to fiddle with while listening for the first time.  Experiencing new music for the first time is a near spiritual activity for me and having the liner notes in hand is a prerequisite for making that ritual what it is.  It’s fascinating for me to see who the band thanks, who played banjo on track (7) or shares a writing credit on the title track.  These are all very important bits of useless knowledge for a junkie such as I am.  I’m fine being possibly the only living soul who has to wait for the package of new music to arrive in the mail.  I’m not always comfortable in the instant gratification world in which we live and I think that the waiting is a large part of the joy of the music for me.  But I digress, before I’ve even started.

I’m taking some advice from an old friend with this one.  I can’t imagine you actually give a rats’ about what I’m listening to, but she convinced me that you might so here I am.  In case you missed them, here are the first, second and third previous similar installments.  Yes, a lot of those links are broken and yes I just linked you to my own blog (shameless self promotion).  I haven’t done, thought or seen anything terribly interesting in the last few days and I don’t foresee said on the horizon so this is as good as anything else to write about.  A writer much better than I, once told me to only write about that which you are most passionate.  That’s good advice and is apropos in this instance.  Speaking of good advice, I saw the best I’ve ever received on a t-shirt the other day: Show Some F&@%ing Passion!  That’s simply gold, no?  At any rate, this stack of CDs wasn’t going to jump back into their cases on their own so I dived in.  By dive in, I mean audibly examined them all again before shelving.  What you find below is what was at or near the top of the stack, in no particular order.  Enjoy.

Banditos – The Refreshments

This song typifies much of the netherworld that was the mid-‘90s musical landscape – mindless, devoid of any true artistry, but catchy as hell.  Think Shawn Colvin, Oasis, Green Day.  Against that backdrop, this isn’t actually that bad.  There were good bands then but a lot harder to find.  I first stumbled into the Jayhawks in the mid-‘90s for instance and they remain a favorite.  Music, by and large had just become tired: verse, hook, chorus or for the especially audacious, verse, chorus, hook.  Regardless the formula, it was all quite catchy and little more.  I will say this though, I don’t recall the last time I heard a lyric quite as catchy and (sadly) true as, “everybody knows, that the world is full of stupid people”.  Sometimes, catchy is more than enough.

Shotgun Sally – Cats in Boots

Speaking of writing from a played formula! I probably should’ve saved these tools for the unavoidable hair metal blog I will feel compelled to write one day.  But since that blog will be about a thousand bands deep, here they are in this one.  If you remember anything about the late ‘80s – early ‘90s you remember that every time you kicked over a rock, some ass of a band like this jumped out from under.  This is the reason “grunge” happened – the ‘80s went too far and the opposite of, in the person of Kurt Cobain was about the only thing that could have righted the ship.  I have nostalgia for this though and all the other crappy bands I used to listen to.  Truthfully though, there is nothing to see here.  Let’s move along.

How Will I Know - Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers

I preface what I’m about to say with the fact that I say this about 90% of the cover songs I ever hear, but this really might be the best cover ever.  How can you take a song that sucks as bad as this and make it not suck so?  The only way, in my opinion is to be Nicki Bluhm.  [Not hating on Whitney (R.I.P.) but she was never my bag.] This version of the song is one of the best things I’ve ever heard.  One of the comments on this page crystallizes how I feel about Bluhm, “She could sing the phone book and I’d listen.” I perused the vast catalogue of YouTube covers that these guys did for weeks before I ever realized they were an actual band.  The first song I ever heard was this little diamond, I Can’t Go For That.  Can you imagine being in that van?  I will live my whole life and possibly never know how cool it must be to be that cool. 

I’m only now really starting to discover who they are and it restores my lost faith in music.   The songs she did with her husband on Duets are exactly what you imagine them to be – soulful, organic, mesmerizing.  When you see them sing Always Come Back you see two people doing exactly what they want to be doing, saying exactly what they want to say and being exactly who they are.  That’s a rare thing at least in my experience.  She’s stunningly beautiful but fits no stereotype.  She’s got a crooked nose.  She has weird bangs and dark circles under her eyes.  She reminds me of Karen Carpenter.  Her voice is flawless – what a beautiful thing.

If that’s not enough for you, watch them make Loggins’ and Messina’s Danny’s Song their bitch. I’m sure at some point they will cover Chevy Van and the hostile takeover of my childhood memories will be complete. 

Deep Inside My Heart – Rock City Angels

It is with a bit of sadness that I share this song with you.  Bobby Durango, the lead singer recently passed away.  Even though I knew it was impossible, I always thought these guys would get their due.  He believed it too, right to the end so it seems.  They unfortunately fall into a category and that was probably their undoing.  These cats were so much more than a “glam” band.  These dudes were Memphis kids; dirty, hungry rock ‘n’ roll kids.  The first time I heard them I bought the cassette.  After I wore that one out, I bought another.  When the time came to buy a third one, music had switched to CD and these guys weren’t on the short list to be converted.  So there were a couple of years where these songs only existed in my reminiscence.  When the world finally caught up and RCA was available on CD I bought (4) copies thinking that it might not last.  I’ve still got (2) left in plastic in case I’m right. 

This is the band that was always playing at the bars we couldn’t get into after the rock shows when we were in high school, but we would see them prowling the alleys behind the Daisy and Rum Boogie.  One night before we had any idea who they were, my boys and I helped load their gear into the van after their set.  It doesn’t matter who they are when you are (16), right?  Young Man’s Blues is still a top (10) preferred album start to finish.  The music holds up to this day, first to last track.

Harlem River Blues – Justin Townes Earle

Through a life long love of his father’s music, I was introduced to this young musician.  A few years ago at one of his shows, Steve Earle spoke about his son between songs. I didn’t pick up on it at the time but there apparently is a huge divide between these two – I didn’t understand until after listening to Justin for a while.  As it turns out, someone who I hold in high esteem…someone who in some ways I say is a role model for the youth of this world did something most (myself included) would think unforgivable – he walked out on his kid.  I don’t have any way to process or even to empathize with what JTE must have gone through and it pisses me off that I even have to wonder due in no small part to my connection with his father’s music.  This wound is laid open publicly on his latest album and maybe that is why it’s not a favorite.  I prefer his subtle acknowledgement of the tragedy that he perceived his life to be.  I prefer this song.  It was right before he famously made light of his estrangement from his father and just after he put himself in to get clean – some apples do not fall that far from the tree, eh? 

Regardless of what he feels about his pops, he can’t escape the musical genes he shares with him.  They both have a mournful tone, a certain longing for something or someone that even as skilled lyrically as they are that they can’t quite put a finger on, can’t quite put a face to.  They are both seekers and I can only assume, outside looking in, that this is part of their problem.  He looks like his mom in his countenance, but he is his father made over in a different genre musically. 

It’s the most jubilant song you will ever hear about someone’s own suicide.  As many times as I’ve listened, I can’t help but wonder if he is playing a part he thinks he should, or if this is what he was feeling that day he wrote it.  Either way it’s infectious.  Rockabilly through an NYC filter is about as original as you will find.  I love its timidity and its simultaneous bravado.  I love its contradiction – music versus lyric.  In many ways, he is a living breathing musical and intellectual dichotomy.  I dig that.

V – Golden Smog      

If there was a band that was more on my radar while I was in college, I’m not sure who it might have been.  This incarnation of the band included members of the Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Wilco.  Anything Jeff Tweedy touched turned to gold at that time.  And Gary Louris has been a staple in my musical wanderings for years.   

This song was released a few years prior to my time in Stark Vegas but was still in near constant rotation for me, especially after that one shitty winter’s unraveling.  It reminds me of flaking out of studio and those never-ending afternoons that stretched into bottomless nights at The Dark Horse – shooting pool and live music on a low stage and hot bartenders.  This CD has lived near the top of the stack since.

Nowhere To Sleep – Chatham County Line

I stumbled across these guys at a music festival in Memphis six or seven years ago.  Not sure why they were there – the headliners were Nine Inch Nails and the New York Dolls – but I did enjoy their abbreviated set.  I forgot about them until one night I was driving past the Earl on my way home from work a few years later and heard this song spilling out into the EAV streets.  I’ve been hooked since.  There’s nothing else to say really.  This is pure Appalachian bluegrass played by a bunch of kids from North Carolina; no more, no less.  They are keeping their roots alive and that is a wonderfully awesome thing. “If I don’t get near some kindling, dear, somebody’s gonna find me dead.”  Epic.

When My Time Comes – Dawes

They’ve been billed as the second coming of the Laurel Canyon Sound.  Some say where Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and America left off, Dawes begins.  I’m not sure that I agree with that.  It seems to reduce them to a lot less than they are.  There certainly are similarities I guess – I do hear a faint haunting of Sister Golden Hair or Ventura Highway in some of their other work, but this is different.  It’s more cynical.  In spite of what appears to be a throw-back sound, it’s decidedly modern.  I see it as the best of both worlds – they’ve drawn from the strange emotional well that must be growing up in suburban Los Angeles and have spun it into a music that’s all their own.  They don’t owe it to anyone.

Lyrically, I don’t think I’ve encountered a band in the last (10) years that has matched them.  It’s contemplative and internal at the same time that it smacks you in the face with your own personal meditation.  It’s background music that forces itself into the foreground with measured subtlety. I’ve been listening to this CD on the way to and from work and I swear I don’t remember the drive in either direction for weeks now.  It’s a beginning to end album.  The individual songs are great but they are enhanced when played in the context of the one before and after.  To say that I’m taken with this music would be a gross understatement.

The interpretation of this song through the vehicle of Cool Hand Luke was genius but even that falls short of what the song truly means.  It’s not secret that I’ve identified more with Luke than probably any other fictional literary character.  And it might even be genius that they give Luke the freedom that he chased his whole life at the end of the video that he never found in print.  I think that is what I find so compelling about this particular song.  It’s a sad, woe is me type of thing for most of it until he realizes the futility of his angst.  The lyric I reference is the same throughout.  It’s not sung with a different inflection even, but you know when it changes for him if you are listening.  

“You can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks. 

            Yeah, you can stare into the abyss but it’s staring right back.”

Each time you hear it, it becomes less mournful and more hopeful.  By the time you get to the acapella chorus towards the end, you know that what seemed like a hopeless estimation of his life on the front end of the song has become an acknowledgement of that which he cannot change but that which will never hold him back again.   He’s found hope.  The final tones are victorious.  It’s a celebration of overcoming odds and a determination not to be the sad-sack bastard that had always allowed himself to be oppressed by the world in which he lived.  When My Time Comes transforms from a prediction of his empty death to a celebration of the possibility of his future life.   It’s a hymnal to never giving up on oneself.

That’s a deal that I can get behind.

The ridiculous is that the deeper I went into the stack, the fewer I put away.  I’m convinced that none of the CDs I own are in their cases right now. 

I’m okay with that.