Sonny's Blues

"Keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."

- James Baldwin

Every photograph is a certificate of presence. - Barthes

"The man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air ... more terrible because it has no words and triumphant too, for that same same reason. " James Baldwin

"Beauty in imperfection ... the internal world meets the outside world and takes shape. When my desire takes some kind of shape, it becomes a photograph. Photos: out of focus, rough, streaky, warped ... (person's daily perceptions) ... photograph the mysterious and unknown." Daido Moriyama

Notebook 2020

the hilarity of what it means to be human

treat other's work with loving sympathy

walk dirt to Julie's place

workers remove cement pilings for wire spiders

lines lead to tangled stories

huge cement sewage cyclinders dress dirt

overcast

village symbiosis

grandmother smiles

counts money

girls scrub pots and pans

chatter tongues

years now feeling knowing here

beauty and timeless metamorphosis

dance is a cosmic creation

stars and planets dance around universe

pyrrhic - the dance of fire

yes, the elusive beauty of human sorrow

which men will not for a long time

learn to understand and describe

and which it seems only music can convey

Creative People

I'm one of those people who has learned through living that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to.

I am a metaphor looking for a meaning.

I feel free to move away from safe familiar places and keep moving forward to new unexplored areas of life. Floating. If I had a penny for every time someone asked me when I’d settle down I could afford a world hypothesis!

Yes. I could bid on blessings. I’d sacrifice pre-linguistic symbols and create silent metaphorical abstractions. My linguistic skills would evolve into love, into discursive logic. 26,000 year-old Paleolithic iron and copper paintings create a secret symphony of ancient stories in a Spanish cave. Shamans experienced visions for the tribe. Oral transmission said a Griot.

No lengthy drawn out off-the-wall abstract explains my small empty self to anyone by virtue of who I was, am, and will be.

Life is a palimpsest. Trade security for adventures.

“There are two stories in the world,” I said to the Moroccan as we carried boarding cards through the Casablanca terminal. “A stranger arrives in a village or a stranger leaves a village.”

“Yes,” said Omar, a blind writer overhearing their conversation, “we might add there are also stories about love between two people, stories about love between three people and stories about the struggle for power. Stories are about characters revealing emotion through dialogue and action.”

He handed me a pile of yellow papers wrapped in rushes.

“A gift for you. It contains a farrago of evidence. Keep it simple.”

“Thank you.” Where do I find you?”

“In the caves south of Ronda. It’s a long walk.” He disappeared into Baraka.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation, A Memoir

Human beings and creatures flowering and dying in the void.

Art

express your emotions - music, poetry, painting,

dancing, singing, laughing, loving, living

creation & reception of art

establishes dialogue with mirror neurons - sensory stimuli...

art is self discovery

a good artist creates what they are

art has a sacred status -

raises us to higher moral & spiritual plane

shared experiences w/art emotional connections

active dialouge b/t artist & spectator & universal

Laos

Plain of Jars - 500 BC to AD 500 - Drinking vessels of giants. I was there.

ink brush pressure

I visit from Mars. It is 38 billion miles away. A way.

Earthlings visit a hospital to collect relatives with an expiration date ... a woman scrubs steel pots in a gutter soapy floods flow into street drains.

Earthlings are good at two things - eating and sleeping.

A young woman chops meat. Absorbing her rhythm I play my harp. She dances with a bloody cleaver. 

We share laughter. Music is the fuel.

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"When we dance the earth trembles, the earth feels the beating of our hearts and we become one with the earth. We must chant our being, and we must dance in time with the rhythms of the earth. We must keep the earth..." - Earth Keeper by N. Scott Momaday.

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I can help you. I can't solve your problem.

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Die cast - explanations have to end someplace

Character sketch in 20 words or less

Awareness - compassion - gratitude - kindness

Ink, brush, pressure

Line, shape, shading

Reality is the funniest thing happening

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – position or velocity

People talk about people talking about people

Pinpoint of light in left lung

Cancer sun flare

Meditate on the process of your death

A small sun glows in darkness

Active imagination shares a story – process

Talking with doctors in class

Illustrate FEARLESS

Fear speaks of patient death

Save the children

Language chunks

Courage

Curiosity

Focus on your breath

Meditation

Wushu slow methodical

Every movement has meaning

See through soft eyes

Gratitude

No mistakes in life art - happy accidents

Ink dances reveals point line shadow

Watercolor brush

Creativity has no rules

Take a line for a walk

Grow Your Soul - prose and poems from Laos/Cambodia