Thelonious Monk ...rhapsodic Jazz

Hours of Thelonious Monk, on earphones, close, intimate, syncopated piano, no-one plays piano like him, trombone, the eroticism of jazz, drums, beat of skins, hours and hours, immersed, deeply, his discography, and I find him unlocking my heart and taking me through the labyrinth of my feelings.

And I remember you. You are there in every note. You are the sensual rhythm. You are at the centre of my heart.

Love.

✵

Thelonious, and wonder why I only came to him now, but realize I have been arriving all my life.

His idiosyncratic complexity particularly appeals to me.

≈
sensuous complicated smooth syncopated improvised rhythms he plays as I like to dance without prediction knots and whorls flow and collapse sweeps passions trills the sweet edge of sex lush dark entering each other over and over passages long lingering ecstasies and sorrows

☯

Monk plays with sensitivity, feels every pulse, nuance of the music of his band, the rhythm of the piece being played, his pianistic response always changing, the room, the audience, the air, the touch of the keys under his fingerprints, the pedal under his toes, his whole body an instrument for the piano, notes, even when in a collection it seems to me notes rather than chords, responding, resonating moment by moment, an inner music singing inside the outer tune, sometimes stopping and standing while the other musicians continue to play, then resuming, but not where he left off, we are at another eddy, another turn, trill, witnessing our journey through his journey of the music of the song.

☯

Monk's extraordinary piano playing has brought me back to the clarity of my heart, exploring the labyrinth of my feelings through many hours of his Riverview recordings.

Monk's syncopated improvisational style is well-known, yet listening to his earlier discography, in the range of 184 songs or so, on a Nano iPod and great earphones, Bang & Olufson, is never boring, it's like traveling a long river to the ocean, the journey through his life of music remains exciting, vital, near.

I cannot say how this music speaks to me - it doesn't speak to me, it speaks with me.

It lets me sing my song even as I rhapsodize through the delicate and complex notes Monk plays.

Gratitude.




Thelonious Sphere Monk, Monk's Blues (1968)




YouTube URL: Thelonious Monk, 'Round About Midnight.'

Spit of postage-sized yard

Moi, moi, and moi, ho hum. Bo-ring! BUT. Cleaning up the spit of postage-sized yard out back, fun! In the Summer, full shade due to a tree. Perhaps throw some seed for grasses or ground cover - all in all, it'll be a nice place to sit with morning coffee or on hot Summer evenings! Happy, happy.

My son, who actually helped, had gone by this time. And my daughter, who didn't, took the photos. I've included one of her in this group.

(click on photos for larger size)















My beauty. A sweetie unparalleled.





Shhh. This one. What's Photoshop for if you can't de-age? I had given myself
a bright fuscia pink face but found the muted sepia tone nicer.
C'mon, an "art shot" alright!

(pssst -> ... the original untouched one)

::laughing:: xo

The Effects of the Recession

A restless night, too many of us in crisis. I feel myself falling into the flying apart.

My sleepless but drowsy concerns become like Surrealist images where components split apart, twisting in the distance.

A slow-motion spin of walls, wardrobes, kitchen drawers, bits of conversation, kalaidescope of images spanning years, remembered and loosened, geometric and organic, intersplicing in the distances between molecules.

It is a very tidy universe in magnified microcosm despite our messy realities.

Perhaps the holding together doesn't help; perhaps it's time to let go.

What is the mind if unfettered, uncomposed, freed of nervous culture?

No answers came, the warden was banished, the bars fell away.

In the tumbling of synapses firing randomly,

Was I freed?

Did I sleep? Fitfully, in relapses. When I woke the world was its illumined glossy enlightened place where warm sunlight spreads across bedspreads and there are hugs and warmth, French-press coffee and fresh bagels.

The world in its normal motion; everyone, fine.

Two Dascha Friedlova Photocollages

Dascha Friedlova, Photocollage, XXVIII Fallen Leaf

Dark, somber, like funeral flowers. A cold draft about the photograph. Feels like the funerary atmosphere of the death of a loved one, the passing of a life, the memories, even as flowers that will wilt and fade soon. One can almost feel the spirit that is looking back at life being here, in the viewpoint of the image. Though it is a warm, sunny Spring day outside, and my room is sunlit, this photograph definitely has a cold feel to it, as if I were in the house or funeral home where these flowers were laid.




Dascha Friedlova, Photocollage, XXXII Equinox Egg

What is being reborn out of what is dying?

It's disturbing, the human figure looks pale, perhaps dead, and the moth the way nature makes everything sustenance for everything else.

Or perhaps it is a surrealist image in which a moth is emerging from a face. The moth looks like its growing out of tendons in the face, that the skin has been stripped.

In the strange imagery of the dream, it is a rebirth?

What is being reborn out of what is dying?

__
Note: not meant in any way to be a discussion of Friedlova's oeuvre, only some impressions I had of two of her photocollages, neither of which are particularly representational of her work as a whole.

Pylon by Larry Carlson

PYLON from Larry Carlson on Vimeo.

Began exploring Larry Carlson's videos today. There is a driving simplicity to this one. Though there is an overlay of images, mainly we witness a pulsing, throbbing, multi-colored pylon. It's primal - that heartbeat. Powerful, technologized, loud, slicing the air with its sound wave, but steady, organic. A pulsing diamond in a scaffolding, a sacred geometry structure, a pyramid. The light is bright, luminous, visionary, the colours, rich, primary, vibrant, its beating, pulsing is hypnotizing, and encompasses opposites of calming and energizing. The man who holds the pyramid is still throughout. His steady holding of the pulsing, shifting, changing, transforming pylon works well as a framing to the vital energy of the heart-like beating. Something grounding in that steady hand.

Do I hear all of life's pounding pulse here? Even our sun has 'heartbeats' - maybe a dozen a century.

If the universe itself has a 'heartbeat,' it would sound and look like "Pylon."

A short, brilliant art video. A woman in negative appears near the end laughing. The light is an exploding dance of colour. It could become obsessive, beating in our ear like Poe's 'Tell Tale Heart.' Only the imagery in this film is expansive, visionary. The pylon goes through phases of beats, it's got a rhythm to its rich pulsing colours, returning to the simplicity of the original green screen occasionally; and the beat itself speeds up at one point, just like a real heart. It's like a highly-charged powered solar cell, this beating heart.

And what a gift to be able to download this! It's pulsing away in the corner of my iMac. "Pylon" is looped and playing endlessly. Like a bright eye: solar, oceanic; of crystal.

As I watch it, I think not only diamond, but exploding

atomic bomb.

Of the life force of the
seedpod.

_
direct link to Pylon

Nitter Natter

I'm writing a script this month, as you know. I can't believe how hard it is! Perhaps because I discover what's next as I write, it's a laborious process that is slow at best. I'm trying to polish it as I go, so when it's finished I can send copies to friends. I'm drawing inspiration from Surrealist art, which is fascinating since none of this was pre-planned. Trying, in between realistic scenes, to get into 'that imaginative space,' that strange 'dream-space,' is challenging and often my brain hurts! It's easier to be logical, for sure. The 'strange logic' of the Surrealist image requires neurons to fire a different way! Silly, I know.

I have a Windsor & Newton 'deep edge' 24"x30" primed canvas ready to go (bought with some of the deposit sent for my little painting) - but seem to have pulled or torn some tendons in my right elbow and the doctor says to rest it... though with grocery shopping for me & my kids, walking a dog who is strong and pulls on the leash, and general housework, I'm finding it's not healing very fast if at all. I may decide not to care and work on the canvas soon... thinking floral... though I do love to do figures, but then I should go to a life drawing session for some new images... and should I continue the quick 'line' drawings of figures that I've taken to doing, or try something more conté crayon, though that would require longer poses? I really like leaving my artwork somewhere in the realm between drawing and painting, then the figures are like a script, though also painterly.



"Prostrations," page-sized, India ink & watercolour pencil
on archival watercolour paper, 2006 (click to enlarge),
the little painting that's sold.

Granny's 86th Birthday

Granny's 86th birthday - My mother, Florence, is in the middle, behind her is my brother, Allan, and to the left my neice, Freya, and nephew, Shaman.

We were returning from a celebratory birthday brunch at Future Bakery.

My Son's 22nd Birthday

My sweet son turned 22 on April 2nd. My daughter, who's not in the image unfortunately, baked and iced the cake. We were unable to light some of the small candles in the middle, and it was one of those strange things - as I walked with the lit cake the unlit candles lit up! They were all burning! The cake itself was celebrating.

You can see my son, Adrian, my mother, Florence, and a bit of my brother, Raymond. And Keesha our dog. The image is a little distorted since I took it off my webcam, but it's still fun.

Philippe Sainte-Laudy's textured photostream

Philippe Sainte-Laudy: I love this photographer's work, especially these textured images. That I can embed this slideshow here is such a gift! Though do click on the link below and look at them in screen-size.

direct url to Philippe Sainte-Laudy's photostream

The Jade Heart

I joined scriptfrenzy.org where you undertake to write a 100 page script in the month of April. As is my way, I approach this project without any ideas for characters, plot or any other preconceptions, preferring to let the story tell itself. I begin where I am, the title riffing off of a necklace I recently beaded, the opening line off a line of a recent post. I am also presently taken with some of Bill Brouard's digital art images, which I find inspiring, and which form a visual core for the description of the two characters in this section.

If I complete the challenge, I intend to condense the hundred pages into about fifteen and perhaps make a little video of some sort, not sure. I'll only leave this up for a few days, Blogger stripping all the correct script formatting that it's written in. This is yesterday's effort - and to me, today, it reads more like a Greek play. It's meant to be a poetic dialogue, that's what I wanted to write. Anyway, sharing...


EXT. BEACH, OCEAN TO ONE SIDE, FOREST IN DISTANCE ON OTHER SIDE - NIGHT

A woman walks on a deserted beach. She is dimly lit by spotlight. To one side is the ocean; in the background on the other side we see the shadows of a dense forest.

She is wearing a mid-calf length white cotton dress that has a pale floral pattern; it is loose but revealing of her curves, cleavage. She wears a head-dress that is composed of partial faces, eyes, shards of mirror, images projected and pasted, like a lantern in that it emits light yet also lit from without. Whispering sounds that rise and fall with the waves accompany her.

She is laughing. She is speaking out loud to herself, and thus introduces herself to the audience.

ESMARELDA
I laugh hysterically like a hyena let out of the zoo. It’s as if I am about to fly apart into my components.

I am a kaleidoscope that spins and bits of colour and sound are reflected everywhere in ever-changing fractal patterns.

It’s as if I am not a whole but a composition of varieties held together aesthetically.

I carry spirits with me. I have many seeing eyes. The eyes are all around my head, some of them are men’s eyes, or women’s, or children’s. I don’t know how they came to be there. I have eyes in the front of my head that have dark brown iris’ and blink. The other eyes never sleep.

Everywhere I go voices whisper. Voices telling me about worlds I know nothing of. Voices telling me what is to become, what has been, what will never be, what has always been.

Was I divinely ordained to the sun, or the moon? Both of which glisten on my ear lobes in lustrous earrings, though I do not know where the jewels came from. Perhaps it is the ocean that is my compatriot spirit. My name is Esmarelda- a Spanish name meaning emerald, but mar means sea, briny, ocean, the blue, the deep, drink.

Was I born out of the ocean foam? Perhaps I was born under an artist’s hand.

I don't have blood or bones. I’m composed of images, translucencies and opacities, pastel pencil lines and oil paint, planes of motion move when I walk. The eyes all about my head watch. I am a vision become real.

Or perhaps I’m not sane. Or perhaps I am very, very sane.

Sometimes I hover above the ground in the forest, alone. I converse with angels.

I bleed like everyone else.

If you cut me, I’d fall away like paper.

Esmarelda leans to pick up a stray seagull feather on the sand. She brushes it over her wrist, holds it like a stylus.

ESMARELDA
Why don’t I have paper, a pencil when words form, already distilled? That I listen to even as I speak them, that appear like the wind of their own volition?

A male angel in silhouette flies towards her, lands beside her on the beach. He wears only a white thong. He is young and muscled, though he has a purity about him.

AARON
I have come from the mountains that are dissolving into sand deserts. Chameleons appear everywhere with their tongues flicking, eating sand bugs. Otherwise the terrain is empty. It is high up, in the place they call the Himalayas. I fly through the future and between peaks are hot deserts of fire.

ESMARELDA
Lie with me, angel. Lie with me here on the sand. Fold your wings around me.

Aaron moves towards Esmarelda, his arms open. They embrace. Their hands glide over each other’s bodies. They lock their bodies together, undulating with passion. There is fierceness in their lovemaking. As they slide to the ground, her legs open around him, and they make love. His wings are held high behind him; her headdress is visible. They are a beautiful, exotic couple.

Distant choral singing and natural organic sounds of ocean, sand and shells accompany their love song on the beach. After orgasm, Esmarelda lies back and speaks.

ESMARELDA
As beautiful as making love to a divine song… such passion on the crest of a wave, you bring me up to it, and then wash me blissfully over. You are my sea-light.

AARON
Angels are like bonobos, my dear! We make love anytime we wish with anyone we wish. It’s an orgasmic heaven!

They laugh. Esmarelda pours sand from her hand onto his thigh.

ESMARELDA
I like it when you fly by. You’re beautiful and fun. But who am I, Aaron? No one else sees you. They think I imagine you, that I am a troubled woman who is consumed by imaginary spirits and voices. When I told Cheri about you, she laughed. She said I was afraid of men, that men were afraid of me, that I made you up.

AARON
Only a few have the special sight to see the angels who protect all creatures who live in time and space and are subject to the whims of fate and to entropy, to decay.

There are many levels of worlds within this one. At one time they thought of it as hierarchies, stacked on top of each other, from the bestial to the angelic.

But we all exist in the same continuum, you and I, and all the other beings. The only true differences between us are that our perceptions are opened to varying degrees.

Your eyes, my beautiful Esmarelda, are more open than most.

ESMARELDA
I have too many eyes! No one else has so many! Yet no one but you and the other angels see the eyes in me which are always looking.

Aaron shakes his head.

AARON
People do sense what appears as a headdress that emits light and colour and seems to be composed of translucent moving images. They feel not watched, but witnessed. While they are fearful for you with your visions, there is also comfort emanating from you and this is why you are left to wander freely. You have a power about you. Everyone feels this.

Esmarelda, interjecting, points to a flock of angels approaching in the sky over the ocean.

ESMARELDA
Shhh… my philosophical angel! Where are the angels flying? There are so many.

Aaron’s massive golden wings open and as he lifts into the air, he caresses and kisses Esmarelda’s hand.

AARON
A gigantic tidal wave has swept over half the earth. There are many dead, many grieving.

The angels of the earth are congregating to help the dead in their mystical journeys, and to help sustain the spirits of the living so they may have the courage to continue.

Esmarelda waves to the airborne angel who turns in his flight towards the flock of angels and joins them as they fly along the beach. They fade into an altocumulus mackerel cloud sky - their wings becoming clouds - which fade out as they disappear. There is a deep sound of angelic music, choral voices in a Philip Glass-type composition of layering of similar sounds until a tonal density is achieved.

Introducing Opera Face Gestures for Controlling Your Browser

Opera Face Gestures for Controlling Your Browser. A droll tech Opera blog entry here. It's gotta be the best April Fool's joke I've found on the World Wide Net today. Or maybe they're seriously developing this technology.

Watch the video, then try the facial gestures out on your own screen, then imagine everyone in Starbucks doing this.

I laughed for a long time. I laughed hysterically like a hyena let out of the zoo.

Jade Heart

Am I writing? Am I painting? Am I watching a film? Am I laughing with friends?
No.
I'm beading.

Some of us become true hippies late.

The Home-Office...

The 'home-office' (studio/bedroom/meditation space), as is, without any tidying up! Yes, that's a thick plastic sheet on the desk for the painting that's not happening, and another one under the layers of dog blankets. See, I am like a "little ol' Italian lady in that way - with my plastic-covered furniture'! I buy it at Honest Ed's for $3./yard, what a great price - anyone'd go crazy with the stuff! Great for painters and pets. Hey, not tooo much knicker-knacker clitter-clatter on the desk; it could be cleaned up in minutes for a painting space, now couldn't it? :::Grins::: How about your workspace?

'Collision' of Dance and Disability

Beautiful, powerful, affirming, and, wow, can these folks dance!

A video of dance & disability, a mind-heart opening for the viewer who may be stunned to see the (im)/PERFECT body in ecstatic motion like this, yet we love the courage, energy, expansion of self, and feel, ourselves, joyful in our participatory watching...of an energetic release into what is a sophisticated aesthetics of dance and an accompanying joy.

'Collision' of Dance and Disability

Source: video.nytimes.com

A New York City dance company called Gimp turns a prevailing notion of physical handicaps on its head. Then comes a leap, a pirouette, a lift....

______
(NYTimes doesn't give an option to share with Blogger, but I wanted an image of the video, so copied and pasted it. While the image seems to be an active link, please note that the titles are definitely active links, or click here.)

Tiled Discus Thrower

For days I have been trying to upload an image to tile like this on my home page at Twitter, but Twitter is hesitant, no, downright resistant.

Actually, there are currently issues with uploading background images and their technical department is 'working on it.'

Being impatient, I made a tiled image of my little discus thrower to see what it would look like!

(click on image for larger size)

Chinese zither:GuZheng 風雨 /古箏獨奏： 毛ㄚ

If you have 8 1/2 minutes, this is an amazing GuZheng, or Chinese zither, performance. Such musicianship!

This woman, who plays the GuZheng, and whose name I am not sure of, the Chinese is impossible for me, is a true virtuoso. A pure artist: a "living angel." Her performance is a dance, sensitive, powerful, and above all, graceful, with the Chinese zither, what an instrument, who is like her lover. A lover who sings to her. I've watched it over & over, transfixed.

direct url: here.

A day later, after reading the comments at YouTube I discover her name is 毛ㄚ Maoya, that she was born in Beijing in 1979, and that her latest album was issued 6 years ago in China. The piece that she plays was for a competition and is actually not Chinese, but Japanese (why I probably like it so much). As one commenter said, "Just found out that this is actually a Japanese piece that was written by a Japanese Master. Which was not meant to be played on a Chinese guzheng but rather a Japanese one. 毛ㄚtook it to another level and proved the master wrong and inspired us once again that nothing is impossible. Not only her dedication to this instrument but the way she carried herself while playing is truly masterful. Too bad she's not a performer but a music researcher. A true one-of-a-kind treasure."

'Frozen View Count' issue at You Tube

I do not make any money from my videos at YouTube, I am just an artist sharing my work. I recently posted this at a community board at YouTube:

I am wondering, since it's only one of my videos that has a view count frozen at 201, if it's because after I uploaded the video I sent links to all my friends through my private email (rather than YouTube's service since some people had complained about their addresses used for spam by YouTube).

If I sent a link to that video, which is a small 'dance/art film' piece of work to 50 people in Toronto, where I live, and they all dropped by to view it, would that appear as spammers?

Which they most definitely are not.

I spent some time writing and editing the comment in the editorial, and I've posted that video quite a few places and hence have started the viewer on it myself a number of times each time I go in to grab the code.

Meaning, is either of these two possibilities- a number of views in a short time span in one location, the city I live in, or personally going in to the site and starting the viewer each time -why that particular video's view counts has been inexplicably 'frozen'?

Or have I been targeted by actual spammers, and YouTube just hasn't informed me that my work has been hit by that kind of attack?

I'd personally like more information on what is going on with the frozen view count - re: telling us exactly what it is that's caused the lock down.

Thanks!

Brenda

Oh, the video in question is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Fgg1mx2sA&feature=channel_page

Can anyone at YouTube tell me exactly what the infringement on thisparticular video is? What exactly has caused the frozen view counts?

_____
Also, I earlier posted this query:

Besides the view count issue that I'm currently having with YouTube, and that hasn't been addressed, or even acknowledged, I am wondering why this site is able to post one of my videos when I have DIS-enabled embedding? Why is YouTube allowing this?

http://video.baamboo.com/watch/1/video/nOlfVVwa5BE/phim-video-clip-On-Butoh-based-Dance-A-Saturday-morning-amble-Brenda-.html

I am not happy with YouTube presently.

Problems. No response. Equals Unhappy YouTuber!

Addendum: YouTube suddenly released the view count on my video today, March 19th, 4 days later, without any explanation.

Addendum 2: YouTube froze the view count at 307 views on the same video, White, for 4 days about mid-April, and then resumed without explanation.

Why is YouTube picking on this small video?

Bruce Branit - World Builder (high quality)

A strange man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves. This is a short by filmmaker Bruce Branit known also as the co-creator of 405.

Filming took one day, and post-production two years. A Michelangelo of our times? As creative as painting, writing, composing... the artist is using digital tools, creating worlds, merveilleux!

An architect's dream!

___
Direct link: World Builder.


Update March 13th:

Awww, this is so sweet! This video has been viewed over half a million times, and he has time to send out these tiny batches of thank-you's...an amazing guy, clearly.

bbranit has sent you a message:

World Builder Thanks

To:[about 20 people, including me]

Thank you for your support and your kind comments. Really an overwhelming and amazing response. Now I am speechless. It's been a real pleasure to see everyone embrace this movie. The feedback has been tremendous!

If you are on Facebook please stop by and become an official fan of the short. I hope to be able to expand upon the story of the builder and his love in a larger feature film as many of you have asked about. Everyone here and their response may help make that happen. So check out....

http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Builder/73936485659

...I hope to have some updates and inside info on there every now and then.

Bruce Branit

Celestial DancerIII

Terry Snow - Healing Music (6:13min)

There have been many difficulties in my life in the past few years that sometimes I forget to stop and breath. I was transfixed by this gentle piano solo this morning.

Terry Snow writes: "A contemplative piano piece, written at a time of needing balm and comfort. The music refers briefly to the rhythm of a funeral march in the central section before returning to the "healing" theme. The piece gains warmth from being written virtually all on the piano's black keys, in the key of C sharp major.."

Direct link to Terry Snow's piano solo. "Terry Snow is a New Zealander who enjoys composing for classical music ensembles such as string orchestra, piano trio, string quartet etc."

Sweet the pleasure of your friendship

Recently I had a birthday (on March 7th) and received many birthday wishes and so I composed this little video of thanks to accompany my thanks to each person...

Photographs from my collection: flower mandala on the sidewalk in the late Summer outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival, 2008; images from Lumiere, Trout Lake, Vancouver, 2004; photo of me taken by Oswald Phills on March 2, 2008 at Sublime Cafe in Kensington Market.

Snippet of music from the group, BEMS, album "Panspermia," track, 'Forme Troppo Perfette.' A group found on Jamendo with the Creative Commons License: give credit to the artist; distribute all derivative works under the same license.

____
Direct link to this video at YouTube: Sweet the pleasure of your friendship...

White, a Butoh-inspired dance by Brenda Clews

A poetry in motion. I played with negatives. It reminds me of ice and snow, of liberation from constraint. Of imaging between being and non-being. Of the mother. Of the sorrow of the mother earth. Of disappearing into and emerging from. Of the continuous cacophony of the dance of life. Of the disjointed, an awkward grace. The film loses some of its quality in the uploaded video: the semi-opague layers appear more like faded images than the transparencies they are. Yet you let go of the white leaf and let it float out to the sea. I wanted to add a poem, and perhaps that's next. The flowers are from photographs I took last year of mandalas of fresh flowers in the street outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival. The increasing presence of the flowers behind the screen of the dance is a reminder of what is ever-present, profundita natura, the profundity of nature at its most beautiful, fragile, transitory, in the flower. I leave you with a screen of flowers, like a prayer.


Hi beautiful friends, Sharing 'White, a Butoh-inspired dance.'.. film clip from late last Summer, and then all last night editing (editing video I'm discovering is like that:-) ...layering... images, sounds, yet not wanting to disturb the vulnerability, perhaps strangeness, of this 'silent film'... Butoh can express the painful and beautiful paradoxes of life in an intimacy that is almost unbearable to watch, I don't know if this film has that, but it's in the intent.

Feedback is always wonderful as I stumble down the path of this art form.

If 'White' opens something out in you, even in resistance, or in a sense of discomfort, then that is the Butoh influence, and then I'll know your reaction is like mine. For I don't know who that woman is, something else takes hold, another energy flows through.

Many thanks for taking the time to look at this. Many thanks for the blessing you are in my life,

hugs, Brenda xo


direct link to the video at YouTube: White, a Butoh-inspired dance.

Erica's 'Dance Our Way Home'

The theme was Amaterasu, Japanese goddess of the sun, a retreat to and emergence from our caves. In the slivers of mirrors we saw ourselves and we enjoyed our shining. We mirrored each others' beauty. Did we become luminous beings by the end of the day of the dance of the shining?

Our sun-wings spread like sun beams caressing the air and we flew as angels of light, I am sure of it.

Everyone's skin was fragile, luminous. Didn't matter what age we were, or size, or what life has carved on us.

Did our eyes shine delicately lit radiating out to illumine the world?

I saw the women's eyes shining; I saw them enlightening the world with their woman-wisdom, their wily smiles, their open-flowered red hearts. I saw their curvaceous dances, their plunging depths, the way they flung themselves into ecstatic states from which they would never emerge, never, if life was composed of the harmonious flowing energies of the dancefloor.

The unwinding from the tight to the relaxed was like approaching an apex and once you reach it you fly. With your feet, your hands, your twirling torso, your wildly swinging hips.

We flaunt it. Our tulle and taffeta and silk and microfibre; pinks and greens and purples and blacks; yogic symbols and alpine wild flowers. Hot breath; luminous, damp and streaming.

In the dance we are embedded in the broad sweeping swaths of sun as she revolves around the planet illumining the world as she goes, spreading rays of wisdom like falling petals of light from the crown of the thousand-petaled lotus that she wears.

We are. In our quiet ways. Or exhibitionist. Or wildly celebrating. Deep. Rich in our sorrow. Visions. Glimmering. Sparkling. Bedazzled. Radiant. Luscious.

Dancing at Erica's Dance Our Way Home (DOWH) is very sweet.




Many thanks...





Beautiful Erica Ross leading a prayer for peace at a DOWH session.


A video created during a short post-DOWH dance at Summer Solstice where my voiceover was this poem:

Oz's Photo

Oz's photo of me yesterday. Oswald Phills is a powerful djembe drummer who I know from Tam Tam along with his beautiful partner, Eve. He used to send out a great newsletter, Drumcultures, on the drumming scene in Toronto as well as life around Kensington Market, where they live, and I think he might resurrect that project in the future as a website. I knew he also was a painter but did not know about his film-making abilities, which I've been discovering on Facebook. Yesterday, at Sublime Cafe in Kensington, Oz filmed a short film he wrote with Ordo and I acting in it. I love the script, Oz's filmic consciousness is very much the 'art film.' He's a brilliant guy, all in all.

Starfire in the Night

A little painting, still wet, that I quickly painted
to accompany the poem...
(posted with the 'accented edges' photoshop filter)

sliding around the world
through many crowds
Mumbai, New York, Rio
like an image from a billboard
flat like film
a projection of light
these burning neurons
their shadow prism shifts

no separation

a market in Madrid
harsh sleet of Himalaya
blade of grass in the prairies

I could be dying

or in a spacesuit on the moon

no separation between me
and the world,
which is my dreaming paradise

nothing was lost

release the inner hold
there is no tight control
write by cell-light

dark hours of running
on this side of living
in the bright world
of the lion's mouth

flying into outer space

where the universe
contains such combustion

stars burn for billions of years
keeping galaxies alive

I searched for you
and found you
everywhere

if you could set all your dissolves
to a fifth of a second
the mathematical regularity
would be bliss

Was a stomach bug, I assume. Not "the stomach flu" (because not accompanied by the usual 'either-or-both-ends' accompaniments) but something that sets into your belly and aches worse than childbirth. I was only 5 hours in labour with my first baby, and a 3 scant hours with my second. This was worse. The gut ache was unrelenting and grumbled in sometime in the wee hours of Friday morning (sort of 2am-ish), peaked on Saturday accompanied by a mild fever, which dropped by Sunday though the gut felt like oozing palpitating ingots of rusted iron. I groaned through the Academy Awards, dang (how often have I watched enough of the nominated movies to make watching the show worth-while?) Today it's mostly gone, and good riddance to ya! Class tonight was thankfully fine - though I didn't eat all day 'just in case,' and munched on some peanuts and a cereal bar in class because I was starving. I don't wish it on anyone!

Running a mild fever, an excruciatingly sore spot in my belly - on my left, lower down, not sure what it could be. Probably they're unrelated: one the flu; the other too much of a work-out last Tuesday doing an abdominals yoga set with my son and then walking a brisk 10km two days later. So Advil and drag myself out to walk the dog in the blizzardy evening, and then rest with a heating pad and perhaps Seven Years in Tibet tonight.

A gadget-type

Speed test of my Internet provider, Bell. I think it looks good, but I'm not a techie! The site says it's faster than 81% of connections. Now what this means I'm not sure...

I admit I'm a freeware/open source gadget-type (who leaves thank-you notes for the developers). Recently downloaded Camouflage, a terrific little utility that 'hides' the icons on your desktop for instant de-clutter! And I just found a great little application, a Timer Utility for the Mac. Then I opened Audacity (another free program - I've not yet gotten the hang of how to do these little things in Apple's Garage Band, not like Apple's old Sound Studio, which was easy to use), grabbed some Tibetan Bells music, cut a small clip out, fiddled with it a bit (increased volume, a few mini cuts), saved it as an .mp3, and viola! I have the perfect "alarm" of delicately ringing Tibetan Bells for when I'm finished a yoga mediation! It's so beautiful!

Fragments towards a meditation on the body...

A recording that's bobbing back on the SoundClick charts, unexpectedly, momentarily.



If the embedded player doesn't appear (it's mysteriously absent on RSS feeds), click on these links to listen: DSL or Cable;
Dial-up.

"Mujeres," by Juan Gelman

A bello compliment I found on the Internet. Juan Gelman is a well-known Argentinian poet.

Igooh | Letras

betzalel | 18/09/2008 |

"Debía tener unas 12397 mujeres en su mujer"

"Mujeres", un hermoso poema de Juan Gelman, recitado en su voz.

Tags: juan gelman, mujeres, mujer, poema, poesía, audio, brenda clews

"Mujeres en verano". (Brenda Clews)

Mujeres



decir que esa mujer era dos mujeres es decir poquito
debía tener unas 12397 mujeres en su mujer
era difícil saber con quién trataba uno
en ese pueblo de mujeres
ejemplo:

yacíamos en un lecho de amor
ella era un alba de algas fosforescentes
cuando la fui a abrazar
se convirtió en singapur llena de perros que aullaban
recuerdo
cuando se apareció envuelta en rosas de agadir
parecía una constelación en la tierra
parecía que la cruz del sur había bajado a la tierra
esa mujer brillaba como la luna de su voz derecha

como el sol que se ponía en su voz
en las rosas estaban escritos todos los nombres de esa mujer menos uno
y cuando se dio vuelta
su nuca era el plan económico
tenía miles de cifras y la balanza de muertes favorables a la dictadura militar
nunca sabía uno adónde iba a parar esa mujer
yo estaba ligeramente desconcertado
una noche le golpeé el hombro para ver con quién era
y vi en sus ojos desiertos un camello

a veces
esa mujer era la banda municipal de mi pueblo
tocaba dulces valses hasta que el trombón empezaba a desafinar
y los demás desafinaban con él
esa mujer tenía la memoria desafinada

usté podía amarla hasta el delirio
hacerle crecer días del sexo tembloroso
hacerla volar como pajarito de sábana
al día siguiente se despertaba hablando de malevich

la memoria le andaba como un reloj con rabia
a las tres de la tarde se acordaba del mulo
que le pateó la infancia una noche del ser
ellaba mucho esa mujer y era una banda municipal

yo
compañeros
una noche como ésta que
nos empapan los rostros que a lo mejor morimos
monté en el camellito que esperaba en sus ojos
y me fui de las costas tibias de esa mujer

callado como un niño bajo los gordos buitres
que me comen de todo
menos el pensamiento
de cuando ella se unía como un ramo
de dulzura y lo tiraba en la tarde

Visitar la galería de cuadros de Brenda Clews en Flickr

"Debía tener unas 12397 mujeres en su mujer" fue publicada por betzalel el 18/09/2008 a las 11.28 en Letras.
Ha sido marcada con los tags juan gelman, mujeres, mujer, poema, poesía, audio, brenda clews
y recibido 0 comentarios.

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Why do we write? Or create?

Why do we write? Or create? For moi, it's over-ripeness... and for you?

Click here, if the embedded video doesn't appear.

Figurative No.1

for my son

It may or may not be finished, but feels as if it is. I'll call it a figurative abstract.

(click to enlarge)

First Wash of a new painting...

This drawing sat on my desk, it's 55mm x 74mm, 300lb archive watercolour paper, on that piece of plywood, under tissue paper, since last Summer. Many things have rested on it, papers, purses, gloves, hat, scarf, sweaters, until I cleaned it all up a week ago. Yesterday afternoon I threw water all over it, which ran everywhere, on the floor, all over my class notes (requiring a 'drying out' on a towel in the living room) but never mind that, and started rubbing paint in.

The painting wasn't too bad, really it wasn't. But for no reason that I can think of I found a Waterman fountain pen that still had ink in it (oh, rue the day for pens with ink when you shouldn't!) and inked in the figures, after they'd had their first wash of paint. I only looked at the lines, was comforted in the process of outlining and ignored the whole painting in my act.

What a mess! Why'd I do that? Inking by rote, rather than with a sensitivity to the image?

Now I have to try to clean up- the inked lines far too dark and insensitive. Because I drew them after the first wash of colour, the colour doesn't adhere to them, nor did they bleed into that first wash as would normally happen (since I used to ink first, then paint).

Oooh, la!

Is this why it sat like an accuser on my desk for over 6 months saying, paint, paint, when I would choose the 'by rote' path rather than the 'in the moment' shifting and changing as light and colour asked, and be forced to confront my own predilections, my own habitual patterns, all the immovable grids in my perception?

Arghhhh.........

Playing with an Animoto slideshow...

Does it work, or not? Doesn't matter. Just playing. Animoto mades a video out of whatever photos you upload, and adds whatever music (in this case an .mp3 of a poetry recording I did some years ago) to it. It's a 30 second freebie. The slideshow video is here (if there's any problem with the embedded one below). The poem, Whorls of Angels, of which there is a snippet, can be found here. Hope this posts alright!

Happy Cupid's Day!

´ ¸.♥¨) ¸.♥*¨)
(¸.♥´ (¸.♥´ .? *¨* ¯¨*´¸
`*.¸.*´* .• *¨* ´¸ .`¯¨*•´
¨*• *´HAPPY CUPID DAY!!!!!¸
¨*• .*¨¸ ¤.¸ ´•.¸ * ´¤.¸ ¸.
.¸.*´¤ ¨.*• ¤.¸
¨* *.¸.*´*¸ .• *¨* ´¸ .`¯¨*•´
¨*• .´ *¸ .• •**”˜˜”*°•. ˜”*°•♥•°*”˜ .•°*”˜˜”*°•.
♥-:¦:-•*'''''*•-:¦:-•:*♥*:

-•:*'''''*:•-:¦:♥
(¯`v´¯) (¯`v´¯)
*`•.¸(¯`v´¯)¸
★ º ♥ `•.¸.•´ ♥ º♥.•*¨`*•♥.•´*.¸.•´♥


(gotta thank Carmen Colmenarez for an extraordinary explosion of happy punctuations!)