Soup served hot, Soup served cold, and always the freshed of ingrediants are used.
T-Bird
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
This is the 73rd and final painting I completed in 2008. I'm glad the year is over. When I was explaining to a Buddhist friend of mine how hard 2008 was for me, he drew me a little picture of a bird flying with a bubble saying "Don't Forget To Say 'Wheeee".
I took it to mean that I shouldn't appreciate the opportunity and time I have, no matter where the journey leads me, and how hard it may be. That drawing stuck with me, and found it's way as my subject for this final painting of 2008.
"Don't Forget To Say Wheeeee" 24" x 30" Acrylic on Canvas
This painting is along the lines of my "Adam and Steve" series, but since I've already used the that title for one of paintings, this is "Adam and Yves". I'm sure my listening to the recent news of the California Supreme Court hearing the case to strike out the dreadful Prop 8, caused the topic of gay marriage to find it's way back into my psyche and manifest itself in this painting.
G'evening to you all. Letters are something that is rapidly dying. You have no idea how it used to be. Once upon a time, everything connected with the postal system: pens, paper, stamps, writing (the verb), desks, mailmen (and now women), post offices, post marks, envelopes, stationary, and the art of the mail box: all things were highly iconic and therefore fair game (and a rich source at that) as topics to include in all the arts (visual, written, and audio).
I see people, going day after day to their mailbox, hoping to find a letter from their true love, or word from a beloved one who was far away, or heartbreaking news, all such things and more contained in a letter box. Every letter was special. Now? We have cheap and instantly disposable email. It arrives and vanishes without leaving a trace (well, let us not get into the NSA), like empty, nutritionless calories.
Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought that death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
(From "The Waste Land" (1922)
What shall future generations read when they want to know something of the past, and of those who lived it? Letters are the richest source of material for biographers seeking to understand the life and times of those who came before today. Tomorrow, there will be nothing for them, or for anyone to read. Today the mail box is reduced to being a box for bills and junk circulars. I have 1000’s of memories of everything related to this topic going back to earliest childhood. The anticipation and the excitement, the heartbreak and the tears. Cards from Grandparents, an older sister, from a favorite Aunt, and from my mother when I got older and moved out onto my own.
If the masses of people of today actually had to make the effort to compose, ponder, write, review, revise and rewrite. And then print, put into an envelope, select a stamp (ohmygod: selecting a stamp is a topic in itself) and waddle to the nearest mail box and mail it, 99.9999% of messages would not be sent.
Take my surviving family as an example. Not a one of them who are younger than I have ever mailed me a card: birthday, Christmas, Easter, Halloween. Not a one. They are all too fat, too lazy; too uncaring of anything that is not fast food for the soul. Human lard bucketresses (they are all lazy females) who cannot compose a few simple sentences, put them to paper, seal it into an envelope, address the envelope, put a stamp on it, and walk to a mail box. Those older than I, and those departed all knew the fine art of letter writing. I am the surviving person in my family to retain this capacity. Those who are younger than I, are all marooned permanently on the living room sofa of death, watching TV.
I shed tears for those generations not yet born, for in their perceived richness of 24/7 digital distractions, there shall be concealed a deafening silence, and an abject and terrible poverty. I know (well, I do not “know”, I can only assume and believe, rightly or wrongly that I “know”) that some of you understand this topic. After all, you are still old school, and send real cards, complete with hand chosen stickers and appliqués, and hand made touches. I keep one such three dimensional “smiley face candy” envelope jewel from one of you on my monitor. If you are reading this, know that I treasure it.
People have remarked to me that I leave “content rich” messages on other people’s blogs. I do try earnestly to practice what I preach, and to put my heart and soul into my words and actions, in all things. It is this very trait that renders Facebook an exercise in futility for me. Facebook is all quick and easy cheap ass candy sprinkles (sugar and chemical dye). It is also a devious scam for your entire life to be monitored, tallied, and then sold to corporate and political crap sacks. and to like-minded sleazy diseased c*nts. Ann Coulter, for example (though rumor has it she is a twisted self hating Tranny). Facebook is not conducive to people such as me. By the reality of FB, I need to die and to go away. This I shall do someday.
And when I am gone (by “I”, I do not literally mean me, I am speaking of my generation, the last people who remember how life was once lived on earth) you (ditto, not “you” who is reading this, but instead all people who have never experienced anything analog and real, that you can hold in your hand, or make from scratch) will find yourself unexpectedly missing me terribly. You shall find yourselves experiencing an awful and crippling disconnectedness one day.
Now let us trot back to the topic of the analog postal system. I have seen photographic essays on mailboxes - both B&W and colour. Such studies in image go back many decades (some even predating my latest half century incarnation here).
Last night as I was walking I saw a scene that my mind captured as a photographic essay. Picture this:
A brightly coloured shopping center
People milling about
A “Nordstrom’s Rack” (it is an outlet mall)
A “Justice for Girls” shop
And some hideous shop that only carried pink junk for girls and their mothers, who want to wallow 24/7 in a world grotesquely over-populated by saccharine fairy princesses, and unicorns with cheesy ass ribbons.
And there, in the middle of this scene, sat three extremely hot teenage boys. Very handsome and varied in hair color and skin complexion. Sort of looking like three Abercrombie & F. models.
And the three friends were each glued to their phones starring into them, not talking to one another, or reacting to anything around them. I took a mental photograph, wishing instead that I had had a camera. I would have had no problem asking them their permission to shoot a pic, telling them to just keep doing what they were doing. I like finding the truth in all things. And therein was truth on display. The truth about the age in which we live.
On my next two laps around the mall (it is a .6 mile circular ring) the three remained unchanged – still glued to the phones, in silence. Finally on lap three they were walking, two still glued to their phones. The third one was looking at me, noticing that I was looking at them. He had the oddest, almost sad expression. He was the blond one, with blue eyes. And his slightly detached sadness was haunting to me. Again, I wish I had the moment forever captured on film.
1.Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 (Movement two) Melancholic inclinations. Obviously there is a strong current of melancholia in this soup. I therefore have chosen one of my favorite melancholic pieces of music. Russian, by dear Tchaikovsky, and is the second movement of the only official "Homosexual" symphony (his fourth symphony). His coded letters refer to "it", and the secret cypher discovered after he died tell us what "it" is. I featured the first movement in a different soup that you can find HERE.
I am off to take a bath. Thank you all who read this, for your being you. For those who do not read this, I offer Matthew 7:6. Me.
It's a little hard for me to resist letting images of my two dogs work their way into my paintings, when they're within inches of me nearly every minute of the day. So, I just let them go wild in this painting, without restraint, using my current living room as the background.
I had only lived in this house a few days when someone knocked on my door. It turned out to be someone running for mayor of Savannah, asking for my vote. He was trounced in the election, but we remained friends ever since.
He is a pilot, refurbishing his own plane himself, and asked me to fly to Miami with him next spring. The plane looks more like a bicycle with wings, but I'll probably end up going with him. And probably end up crashing with him.This is/was my first friend in Savannah.
"Sweet Pete" 24" x 30" Goldleaf, Acrylic on Canvas Happy Flying, TONY
Someone made a five minute video with my paintings and posted it on YouTube.com. I have no idea who it was, but they did a nice job of it. If you'd like to see it, click HERE.
As whimsical as most of my Day of the Dead paintings are, I can see they are still autobiographical and telling. This one is influenced by my fascination with the birdlife here in New Mexico, creatures I never really appreciated or even noticed much while in L.A.
I keep adding more seed feeders to the trees in my backyard, insisting each new one is the last one, because huge flocks now congregate here and last month I watched as a hawk swooped down to my feeders and caught a mourning dove, spending two hours devouring it in my tree.
I started to wonder if I was feeding the birds or feeding the hawks. The hummingbirds are my favorites though, by far. Fascinating beings. Tame to me, mean as hell to each other. And they love taunting Junior, knowing he doesn't stand a chance trying to catch them.
This is titled:
"Bird Man In The Desert" 24" x 30" Acrylic on Canvas
ild flowers, especially those that spring forth in an arid environment are such a joy. I shot quite a few pix of such flowers along the eastern banks of the Columbia Gorge in April.
Can anyone ID this beauty for me?
One of the hallmarks of the flood are the boulders strewn across the landscape. There are places in eastern Washington where the rolling landscape, made up of “ripples” that are ¼ mile between the peek and the trough of the ripples (caused by waves that were 100’s of feet high) is littered with boulders sitting in the middle of no where that are the size of a house. These are the “pebbles” carried by the flood. Here we see but a grain of sand.
Waiting for the Son? At first flash of Eden, we race down to the sea. Standing there on freedoms shore. Waiting for the sun Waiting for the sun Waiting for the sun Can you feel it now that spring has come? And its time to live in the scattered sun. Waiting for the sun Waiting for the sun Waiting for the sun Waiting Waiting Waiting Waiting Waiting Waiting Waiting Waiting Waiting for you to come along Waiting for you to hear my song Waiting for you to - tell me what went wrong This is the strangest life Ive ever known Yeah! As you can tell, I was facinated with the the huge massive chunk of lava that juts out into the Columbia River that I wrote about last week. It withstood the cataclysmic ice age floods, with waves 350 feet high that tore through everything else in its path. I like that. The immovable object.
I feel your heat and dusty whispers on the open road
This apparently neverendimg Road Trip Diarydamned well better end next week at Stonehenge. In the mean time, come in, sit anywhere you like, and have a bowl of audio soup for the soul.
1. Waiting for the Sunis from the DoorsMorrison Hotel LP. I have a love/hate relationship with the Doors. Or more specifically, their iconic heart and soul, the late and great Jim Morrison.
The problem is that he was an alcoholic. No, I am not one of those: prissy, preachy tea totaler. Hell’s bells, I was a bit toasted last night at Rickys on some fine Hungarian sweet red wine.
But taken to excess, alcoholism seems to go with a sloppy and insensitive personality type that is repulsive to me. Like that clip of the Hoff slobbering on the greasy hamburger that made the media rounds last month. All addictions (substance or behavior driven) seem to match up to personality types. One could argue that I am being hypocritical since I am no stranger to addictions, or perhaps that this sounds like a personal problem. I plead Nolo contendere.
Okay, now I can jump down from my soap box and tell you that at his best, Jim Morrison was knock-out swaggeringly stunning. This song brings back memories of a adolescent summer, and of a leather bar. This is very homo erotic music for me, and more than a little of the S&M leather scene. Big fricking time. ‘Nuff said about that.
2.Another Country is from Electric Flag's “A Long Time Comin’”. Damn. This is one of the all time lost masterpieces from the Psychedelic genre. It is all that, and blues, Memphis Soul. Holding it all together is the burning guitarist Mike Bloomfield. Bloomfield is all over Dylan’s legendary Highway 61 Revisited (Like a Rolling Stone). Another Country even has clips of LBJ’s Vietnam War speeches woven into the Psychedelic center of the song. If you are not familiar with this song, have a listen. It is absolutely a masterpiece.
3. Trans Lunar Risingcomes from a CD titled Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest by The Fireman. I featured this CD once before on Saturday Night Soup back on February 17, 2007. It just seems to make emotional sense to use thsi sister track as a soup garnish today.
All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your bowl of Saturday Night Soul for the Soul
I sketched this painting out on canvas, before I started painting it, in the midst of a torrential downpour. I've never lived in a place that rained so much, even in Hawaii. Even when it's not raining, water seems to just bubble up from the ground everywhere. Properties advertised as "Water Front" usually mean "Swamp Front".
The ground sort of oozes up water as you slosh through it. Being from Southern California it seems odd to me that I never see anyone watering their lawn or plants, and I have seen a single sprinkler since I've been here.
Swamps, pools, rivers and lakes seem to surround Savannah (all of them with alligators living in them), but people value them knowing they're the main line of defense against hurricanes and flooding. So the word "swamp" has become part of my everyday vocabulary, life, and experience.
This is the latest in my "Made Up Saints" series. Others have included:- The Patron Saint of Chain Smokers- The Patron Saint of Ants The Patron Saint of Chihuahuas -The Patron Saint of Gardenias- The Patron Saint of Painters- The Patron Saint of AIDS Prevention -The Patron Saint of Parrots -The Patron Saint of Bamboo- The Patron Saint of Dogs And this is:
"The Patron Saint of Schizophrenics" 24" x 24" Copperleaf and Acrylic on Birch Wood
of the King
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