Transformative art, living art - performed, heard, seen, read - has the power to embody the deepest questions and to penetrate people at the speed of light. Really funny stuff works that way, too!
What works of art have inspired you?
Transformative art, living art - performed, heard, seen, read - has the power to embody the deepest questions and to penetrate people at the speed of light. Really funny stuff works that way, too!
What works of art have inspired you?
Live Art...God's work inspires me, sunsets with all their glorious colors, tiny snow capped mountains, ocean waves sweeping up the sand filled shores...no wait...that's global warming...sorry
What art inspires you? Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. I haven't read this in years but it was the first title that popped into my head. A. Caveat: I read Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein at about the same time and, while it still has a few good things to say, a recent rereading showed them nearly completely drowned out by his somewhat outdated -- misogynistic, for one thing -- cultural stance. So I don't know if Childhood's End would live up to my memory of it ... and given my experience with Stranger, I'm a little reluctant to find out.
ART The most moving performance of a song Ive heard in recent times was Elton Johns singing Goodbye Englands Rose Candle in the Wind at Princess Dianas funeral in Westminster Abbey, London. Goodbye Englands Rose May you ever grow in our hearts You were the grace that placed itself Where lives were torn apart
galleries and museums are not the only places to admire art, sometimes you can visit a neighbor across the street and finds treasures.
Can art really travel at the speed of light? Hell yes. And faster.
Quantum Law-yers have found that when two photons are spit out of one atom in opposite directions, they can become “entangled”. Then, even though these photons are twenty feet apart, reversing the polarity of one will change the polarity of the other. Change it instantaneously. Faster than the speed of light.
This quirky phenomenon gets cited as a clue to Dark Energy's mysterious role in the cosmos. Or to suggest the potential oneness of everything. Or simply to illustrate how little we understand about the way the universe works.
Curiously enough, art suggests and illustrates pretty much the same things. The grand mystery, the universal oneness, the tender seedling of human understanding. And art makes it all a hoot. A howl. A hallelujah. Instantaneously.
Plus, art celebrates the startling power of beauty. Beauty in all its forms. Especially the forms that seem quite un-beautiful at first. Beyond the Great Wall of Preconception, art can surprise us and expand us. In the blink of a molecule.
Art. Traveling at whatever speed it feels like.
Right now: Rumi and Rauschenberg
and Arvo Part
ahhhhhhhhhhh!
I'm with Kate on this one.... plus Pollock, Reza Abdoh and Fosse.
I think that when a human being speaks the truth, the real truth, it is more inspiring than 100 sunsets.
The novel "Atonement," by Ian McEwan, opened my eyes to the capacity of writing to redeem and transform the world.
In pre-World War II England, a young girl bears false witness in a crime of rape and thus ruins her older sister's life, and, more particularly, the life of her sister's lover. In adulthood, the girl becomes a writer and repairs the past through her writing. Live Art has the power to not only penetrate at the speed of light, it has the power as well to penetrate to the depth of the soul.
I am grateful to say I just saw Maria Sibylla Merian's art. An amazing woman, ahead of her time, it's ridiculous that I've only just discovered her. I used to own a tulip watercolor print by her and didn't know it. Luscious and vibrant and pretty. A bug here and there...I had no idea of her influence and mastery. She didn't just paint them, but discovered and named bugs! From 1647-1717. I feel gut-level pride for women who were incredible and hardly known. I'm amazed at how few were mentioned in my own education. But when I discover one, it lifts me up and warms my heart. And if you want to see something else for your eyes to feast on, go look at the Cheech Marin collection at LACMA. More known but unknown LA artists. Delicious, fantastic, hilarious, mean great work.
I've just visited the Natl. Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC and came away with the understanding that real, living art continues to live even after more than a century of attempts to bury it. All the women painters working during the Impressionist era, for instance, about whom we have never been allowed to hear or see (I mean besides Mary Cassatt and Rosa Bonheur) are still alive and well and throbbing with passion and beauty.
when Picasso said "Art is a lie that helps us to realize the truth." ~ was he just bullshittin?
I've been thinking:
The thing about ending a story, a play, an opera - it's where you make your point.
It's where you come across with what you are really trying to communicate with the piece.
Here's something I've noticed in all the new work I've been involved in, whether writing it myself or acting in a workshop or just talking to the writers: There is a tendency to try to bring in a whole new idea at the end of the piece; the writing of it brings a new understanding of what you were getting at in the first place and the writer wants to jump to that new understanding rather than wrapping up the initial idea.
I think if the initial idea is brought to life clearly enough it leaves room for the viewer/reader to make that jump themselves rather than be told about it.
I'm interested to hear how other writers look at ending their pieces.
DAYS
by Philip Larkin
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in.
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running across the fields.
It's so surprising how the nature of each day is so particular. Even from hour to hour - whole new vistas and self-made traps spring up!
Las Vegas Home Salon v. 1.0.10162k+9
Dina Emerson, Jonelle Wilson and I recently hosted an arts salon in our home. It was a first in many ways. Allow me to tell you about it and the aftermath.
First of all, DNA is a marvel, a trouper, a champion and not a bad looker. Charms to sooth, to say the least. As such, she has had the good fortune to be colleague and friend to many other relatively right-minded talents over the years, as I have I. Currently we are in Las Vegas, newly partnered after a disastrous trial separation lasting 22 years, and some of these friends and colleagues came to our home to present their art for each other.
The visual arts included two local painters courtesy of Jonelle (Jessica Galindo & Cindy Sullivan) displayed largely around the living room as well as a featured display by sculptor/jeweler/Tarotist and dear friend Kirk McLaren from Virginia, including new jewelry designs inspired by several of these new friends and colleagues at their day jobs with Cirque du Soleil. Throw in a warm night, an ample garden, toys for the kids, a still pool, festive lighting and a few comfy chairs and canapés and this was the setting in which we would discover if we could identify and were in touch with our community, and could we serve it. Hopes were high.
DJ was not a hat either of us had the time for but we made a point to include a CD of DNAs uncle John Trino playing Slack Key Guitar in the background. Live performances included:
* DNA "It's Only Time"; Voice and Crystal Wine Glasses
* DNA & Katya Melkamini "Beau Soir" by Debussy; Voice and Piano
* Katya Melkamini & Lise Nadon; Piano and Violin
* Nathan Van Arsdale; Bass-Baritone
* Kirk McLaren “Original Work”; Piano
* Silja-Marie Nordenhaug; Voice
* DNAs musical score for a multi-media dance performance on the lawn featuring herself and Julie, a performer from Mystere
* and a closing set from a hot three piece band made up of Cirque stage technicians
And that, within our home, is what happened between 8pm and 11pm for approximately 80 people to enjoy, and maybe talk up with others later to eventually lead to participation, because a dozen or so enthusiasts wanted to share what they love doing the most for people who may appreciate it.
While wearing a dozen different hats and running around learning on the job how to wear even more, I barely managed to speak to a dozen people and consider myself lucky to have an acceptable audio recording for documentation since my memories of the actual event are so fragmented. So much was going on that it went by in a blur but everywhere my eyes landed as I passed through I saw my expanding community engaged with each other and it was awesome.
Actual and possible aftermath includes:
* a proven location to showcase a variety of performers
* enthusiastic offers from performers to participate in the future
* enthusiastic offers from chefs/cooks/caterers to participate in the future
* enthusiastic offers from the audience to participate in the future as audience and/or performer (YES!)
* a talent pool forming of individuals that may lead to ensembles
* a gathering place before events where kids can learn musical cooperation to present at subsequent events, with or without their parents accompanying them on stage
* the creation of a media library documenting the works presented by all for all
* the creation of a line of jewelry inspired by the participants
* the creation of a sculpture garden based literally on the performers
This is just my list. I’m confident DNA will have her own ideas.
So it goes.
All in all, I am beside myself with joy at the prospects. Indeed, I feel as though I’ve stepped into a parallel universe suddenly, ripe as it is with right-minded possibility and I marvel. And I must share it. The very nature of our success depends on our providing y’all and more with an opportunity that compels you to participate at any level you desire to. In the end it’s done for you anyway as we strive to serve our community by uniting it in freaky fun and fellowship.
In case you missed it the first time, here’s a link to Dina performing “It’s Only Time” at the Cirque du Soleil Cabaret last month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovIj28xzuD4
And a link to "The Music Box" performed by Magalie Chacon and Jason Biltz, which may have launched a new jewelry line by Amulets By Merlin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4ZpDZxVdag
And there you have it.
Selah n
Wow! What a fantastic and fertile event!
Very inspiring!
FIRST DANCE
(prepping for the public presentation of SONGS AND DANCES OF IMAGINARY LANDS in July 2010)
The grand clean-up was accomplished by Scott, Sara, Halldor,Tony Palermo and his son Nicolo, Alan, Atsushi, Gretchen our supermezzo, Maggie and moi cleaned up 5 or 10 years worth of dirt in our new Production Office in a mere 4 hours!
After we’d swept dusted washed the walls inside the little offices and cleaned up the industrial strength lights fresh out of storage, we slopped water around to loosen up the dirt in the big room, and the first Imaginary Dance was born:
muddy water everywhere – Halldor vacuuming the puddles with the wet/dry shopvac, Maggie working the giant sailor swabbing mop that Sara hunted for us – Scott, Atsushi, Gretchen and me coming along behind drying the floor; shuffling the old towel/rags with our feet; sometimes in orderly rows sometimes any road we wanted to take, playing slow-motion near misses and collisions.
This piece is alive and percolating and spilling over into all the ordinary preparations surrounding it!