prince joins amy winehouse in the state we call death. it is comforting to imagine that in their shared state they are making collaborative music together.
both pushed the innovation envelope. both had to ignore some realities, and both paid the final price for that.
we who are left are left with their music. if it inspires us–and it has, especially among supremely talented musicians–they do not utterly die.
prince is dead. rumored, last i heard, of an overdose. tomorrow i’ll try a portrait of him, and a better one of amy.
my reaction to prince’s death was to seek, find, and watch AMY, a heartbreaking documentary. the portrait- attempt i made below was sourcedwith a freeze-frame from AMY. it is not good enough.
Mr. Herman Melville and I, it would seem, are brothers from other mothers.
In his highly-acclaimed novel Moby Dick, or The White Whale he unleashes one of the worst puns in human history, calling a cow whose two front hooves are stepping on discarded fish ‘slip-shod.’
Melville might claim that the opunions of Ishmael are not necessarily his own–but I know a Pun-Brother when I read one. 🙂
Mr. Joe Blow acts inappropriately. Those who know and love him shrug. “Oh, well–that’s just Joe being Joe.”
Sometimes we self-fulfill expectations by cutting extra slack for friends with failings. But my dear deceased friend Karen had a better head on her shoulders. When alcohol consumption had a negative impact on her musicales, she laid down the law: No More Booze. And she made it stick. And it was for the better.
We are not stuck with who we are. Not only might we reinvent ourselves, we might build ourselves. What can I do to make things better? is one of the most important things to ask.
Wiggle in the eyedropper, euglena
Wait until ready for the multicell arena
Howl unto the moon–to madness cater
Have your way outlandishly, O Satyr
OR: lustrously become a nurse
Of this wounded Universe
Caroline is a real challenge to portray. Her smile is so dazzling it leaves an afterimage on the retina. This is my third try at her, and I had to resort to saying depressing things like “I put my hand in a plateful of yuck” and “Bet you’ll work a double shift” to tone that smile down. It’s STILL dazzling . . .
Yesterday I clocked out half a day early. I had been “playing with pain,” my right foot screaming that I either had a broken bone or a gout flareup. (A day and a gallon of water later, I’m pretty sure it’s a flareup.) But I have been doing a lot of sitting and lying around in the meanwhile, getting up to page 57 with MOBY DICK and watching LEGEND starring Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy; and I just finished SPOTLIGHT, this generation’s ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, right down to Ben Bradlee, Jr.
And I’ve been drawing and versifying as well. Paradoxically, extra time on my hands makes me realize I don’t have enough time on my hands. This is my third blog post of the day, but it could have easily been posts 3 through 8 . . .
Not all of these were done yesterday and today, but if I weren’t about to watch TRAINWRECK I’d tackle “The Dreary Business of Joke Analysis,” which I’ve been meaning to write for some time. And I still feel like doodling, and more often than not I’ll get more post-ideas from the doodles. And I just bought some brushes with which to paint on canvas paper . . .
When I retire–and I will qualify for Social Security less than five months from now–I want to devote the time I’ve spent as a wage slave to these creative efforts. I want to review the 900-plus posts I’ve made and make salon-sized paintings based on the best 25 of them. I want to sculpt again, and make pottery, and write a retirement-community novel, and a restaurant novel, and a going-traveling memoir . . .
Twenty years more, dear Beneficent Universe–that’s all I ask . . .
slicing darkness we despoil
poison taints our alveoli
overcoats & furs & bling
tee times free of Vijay Singh
tame the land & blame the rest
yes, we flunk the Ethics tests
Questions? Comments? Requests to stop repeating myself?
Facing unforeseen adversity often generates FEAR whenever unknown forces energize.
“Simple–almost comic,” as F Murray Abraham as Salieri said of the beginning of a Mozart piece in AMADEUS. So that’s where Fear comes from. But how do we make it go away? For Fear DOES interfere–with endeavor, with romance, with peace of mind.
There is a Vonnegut book called GALAPAGOS which imagines the next million years of human evolution beginning with a handful of survivors of a disaster that wiped out the rest of the human race. Their heads become more streamlined, that they may swim faster and catch the fish they need to survive; their brains become smaller and less capable of deceit and other problems “great big brains” create.
I have a strong feeling that Stephen Baxter, author of MANIFOLD: ORIGIN, has read GALAPAGOS and was influenced or inspired by it. In M:O different offshoots of hominids such as Homines Erectus, Australopithecus and Neandertalis are stranded on an outsized red-dusted, atmosphered moon, which has suddenly appeared in Luna’s place. Onto this moon Emma Stoney, lover/hater of Reid Malenfant, has fallen, due to Malenfant’s foolhardy go-fevered impulse . . .
Sorry about that. Off-track digression. Please read the book if you want an ingenious answer to Fermi’s Paradox, which may be oversimply stated as “If there are other intelligences than our own, why haven’t they been here already?” The M:O connection with Vonnegut has to do with Baxter’s imaginings of the different ways different intelligences could evolve in different species. The most intelligent of his lot, his Homo Superior folks, look a lot like gorillas, and walk on their knuckles as well as their feet. They are so intelligent that they move vast distances by mentally manipulating space.
Each intelligence has its upside and downside. Neandertals are unhampered by mythology. H. Superior with its short lifetime and limited resources tend to wring every atom’s worth out of their “farms” rather than go spacefaring. H. Sapiens make great intuitive leaps, but we also lie and steal and such.
Back to Fear: Emma Stoney is called upon to think like a Neandertal in order to breach a barrier. She learns of their fatalism, their involvement in the moment, and their lack of sentimentality for tools and other possessions. While making tools in the Neandertal fashion Emma suddenly finds herself becoming the tool she’s making, and in that moment her connection with the Neandertal is made.
Fear, I think, is a lack of connection with that which we fear. Afraid to show your feelings to a potential Special Someone? Learn about that person and what welcome your feelings would get. (Do not stalk, though.) Afraid to go off the High Dive into a washtub full of piranha? Find something better to do. 🙂
Taking the light rail home from work means 45 minutes of sitting or standing around. Last night I had my iPad with me, and I killed some time with a series of selfies using its Photo Booth feature.
This one is a good metaphor for how I feel at the end of a meat-grinder of a day.
This is a metaphor for the transcendentally cerebral superstar I wannabe, but, given Marie Curie, Carl Sagan and John Von Neumann, among MANY others, know I’m not.
Here the metaphor is We Are Being Watched, by from-elsewhere folk who see with heat.
This one is apt in revealing how deep my depression gets.
This Cyclops metaphorizes fixation; and it’s un ignorable that a certain procreative organ is sometimes referred to as Mr. One-Eye. (I can be a real dick sometimes. So can you, regardless of gender.)
But sometimes the world’s kaleidoscope leaves us O-mouthed.
Lastly, there’s the seemingly Real Me, a one-off metaphor for Work In Progress.
Do not ignore the pinwheel’d eyes
In them there dwells a Poltergeist
Succumbing to a soup of fear
Tumultuous and HUGE and sere
Unto us all a brewing crisis
Reveals itself not AIDS nor ISIS
But Loneliness. Its weaving blade
Describes a dread entrapping braid
One with Clay, Image and Text 