The Eraser

I got Thom Yorke's new album last week, and I've been listening to it quite a bit. I find it very interesting, which I think in this day and age is one of the better compliments one can make about a musical work of art in this age of homogeneous, intellectually insulting drivel.

Music for Your Head

• Arctic Monkeys
• Ben Kweller
• Cat Power
• Cursive
• Damien Rice
• Death Cab for Cutie
• Eagles of Death Metal
• Editors
• Elefant
• Elliot Smith
• The Flaming Lips
• Fugazi
• Iggy Pop
• Iron & Wine
• Interpol
• Kaiser Chiefs
• The Mars Volta
• Modest Mouse
• The New Pornographers
• The Notwist
• Nouvelle Vague
• Pavement
• Queens of the Stone Age
• Thom Yorke
• Radiohead
• Spoon
• Sufjan Stevens
• Sun Kil Moon
• Tool

Cursive

After a steady diet of near-constant touring across three continents, including a stint opening for The Cure on the 2004 Curiosa tour, Cursive was a quintet on the precipice. Their then-most recent record The Ugly Organ had racked up considerable accolades--named one of 2003's best records by Blender, called "the best album of (the band's) career" by The New York Times and given a 4-star rating by Rolling Stone--but the band, ragged and road-weary, opted for an ambiguous hiatus rather than forge onward to the daunting task of Follow-Up to Hit Record. All was quiet in Camp Cursive for more than a year... And then, slowly at first, after much decompression and contemplation, they began to discuss and then assemble a new record as a freshly reconstituted four-piece--the longtime core of Tim Kasher (vocals, guitar), Matt Maginn (bass), Clint Schnase (drums) and Ted Stevens (guitar, vocals). The band's reemergence finds them self-assured and assertive as ever. Rather than retread familiar artistic ground, Cursive has unfurled their most adventurous and accomplished work to date, Happy Hollow. Happy Hollow is an expansion of Cursive's trademark discordant swell: dissonant yet distinctively melodic guitar sounds and frontman Kasher's ever-cathartic yowl now mesh and clash with horns, piano, accordion and other various instrumentation. The new songs are marked by a new bounce, a buoyant strut and a recognition that hey... this is fun.Still informed by a sharp lyrical pathos and a wise, road-tested sense of dynamic interplay, the songs groove and dart with brash swagger, interspersed with hints of gospel and skewed blues. The rhythm section, heavier, tighter, and more propulsive than ever, drives the songs forward while horns careen over dueling vocals and interweaving guitars. Never repeating themselves, always pushing forward artistically and never settling, Cursive returns to raise the bar with yet another groundbreaking new album, Another Hit Record as Follow-Up to Hit Record. Happy Hollow's first single "Dorothy at Forty" is another typically atypical Cursive romp, catapulted by incisive guitars, punctuated by horns and jerking to a stop before mightily spiraling away into the song's rousing coda. To be released July 11, "Dorothy at Forty" is backed with non-album tracks "The Bitter End" and "The Censor."

Sufjan Stevens

After the death of Elliot Smith a couple of years ago, I wasn't sure if I would ever find a singer/songwriter with whom I connected. I've been searching the vast musical expanse, and in the process, I came across some interesting cats like M. Ward, Damien Rice (who is truly amazing), and Donovan Frankenreiter. These guys to some pretty interesting things, both harmonically and lyrically, and Damien Rice is the one who affects me the most emotionally.

Lately, however, I've been listening to every Sufjan Stevens album on which I can get greedy little hands. Sufjan Stevens is an American musician, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist from Detroit, Michigan. He is known for his lyrically focused and instrumentally rich songs that often relate to faith and family. He has enjoyed wide critical success in the United States. He is considered part of the folk revival in indie pop, but his influences are very broad, including electronica, the jazz of Vince Guaraldi, and the academic minimalism of Reich and Glass. Stevens has announced plans to make an album for each of the 50 U.S. states, beginning the series with the albums Michigan (2003) and Illinois (2005).

Many of Stevens's songs have religious and spiritual allusions, but his album Seven Swans has the most direct religious references. Stevens has expressed that he is Christian, but does not overtly advertise this aspect of himself in his music. Stevens has also stated that he does not try to make music "with a message," or music for the sake of preaching. "I don't think music media is the real forum for theological discussions," says Stevens. "I think I've said things and sung about things that probably weren't appropriate for this kind of forum. And I just feel like it's not my work or my place to be making claims and statements, because I often think it's misunderstood."

More Leigh Art...

Creation A Deux

Creation

My artwork...

Expressionism & Sculpture

Expressionism is a much less important current in sculpture than in painting, since the ethnographic sculpture by the Fauves might have evoked a strong response among sculptors. Only one important sculptor shared in this rediscovery. Brancusi, a Rumanian, moved to Paris to study advanced art around 1904. But he was more interested in the formal simplicity and coherence of primitive carvings than in their savage expressiveness; this is evidenced in The Kiss which was executed in 1909. Brancusi had a 'genius of ommission' - to Brancusi a monument is an upright slab, symmetrical and immobile - a permanent marker like the styles of the ancients and he disturbed the basic shape as little as possible. The Embracing Lovers are more primeval than primitive. They are a timeless symbol of generations - innocent and anonoymous. Brancusi's 'primevalism' was the starting point of a sculptural tradition that continues today.
Until now, African pottery, wooden carvings, and textiles had been viewed essentially as handicraft because, it was argued, the religious, military, sexual, or decorative functions of the works suggested that they had not been created as art, to be appreciated for their own sake It was the magical and mystical quality of the "Primitive" African art that inspired Brancusi; and the quality that counted most.
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Around 1910 Brancusi started to concentrate on two basic forms of such uncompromising simplicity the Newborn or The Beginning of the World; and soaring vertical 'bird' motif, ie Bird in Space He was fascinated by the antithesis of life as potential and as kinetic energy. Brancusi's early works were influenced by Rodin and by the impressionists, but after 1908 he rapidly evolved his characteristic personal style. With the basic intention of laying bare the underlying nature of an image, he abandoned the use of live models and adapted a simplified, streamlined style In describing the evolution of his art, he said: "One arrives at simplicity as one approaches the real meaning of things." Two simple organic shapes predominate in his work: the egg and the elongated cylinder. An example of the former is Sleeping Muse, in which the figure is represented simply as a stylized ovoid head Bird in Space is a long, graceful cylinder of polished metal, its lines reminiscent of the curve of a bird's wing. Here Brancusi refined the organic form to the point where it became almost totally abstract, a conceptual rather than an actual representation. The artist also worked in shapes that are more geometric. By concentrating on pure form, Brancusi freed sculpture from its 19th-century pictorialism and prepared the way for 20th-century abstract sculptors

Balancing Act

IlaSahai Prouty is the artist in residence at ArtSpace in Raleigh. Prouty is a sculptor and printmaker, often utilizing castings of her own body to create her work. Prouty earned her BFA in Painting from Brown University and her MFA in Printmaking from the California College of Arts. She was a resident artist at the Penland School of Crafts, and has taught in schools for 14 years. Prouty's work has been exhibited throughout the country including at the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA; Worcester Center for Crafts, Worcester, MA; GreenHill Center for North Carolina Art, Greensboro, NC; Penland Gallery, Penland, NC; Rebus Works, Raleigh, NC; Duke University, Durham, NC; and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC. Prouty has also completed numerous public art projects, and is currently working on a large-scale glass sculpture for Yellowstone National Park.

Tom Traubert's Blues

Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did. I've got what I paid for nowsee ya tomorrow, hey Frank, can I borrowa couple of bucks from you, to goWaltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzingMathilda with me.
I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley and I'm tired of all these soldiers here no one speaks English, and everything's broken and my Stacys are soaking wet to go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing Mathilda with me;
now the dogs are barking and the taxi cab's parkinga lot they can do for meI begged you to stab meyou tore my shirt open and I'm down on my knees tonight. Old Bushmill's I staggered, you buried the dagger in your silhouette window light go to go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing Mathilda with me now I lost my Saint Christopher now that I've kissed her and the one-armed bandit knows, and the maverick Chinamen, and the cold-blooded signs and the girls down by the strip-tease shows gowaltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing Mathilda with me
no, I don't want your sympathy, the fugitives say that the streets aren't for dreaming now manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories they want a piece of the action anyhow go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing Mathilda with me
and you can ask any sailor, and the keys from the jailor and the old men in wheelchairs know that Mathilda's the defendant, she killed about a hundred and she follows wherever you may go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing Mathilda with me
and it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplaceand a wound that will never heal no prima donna, the perfume is on an old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey and goodnight to the street sweepersthe night watchman flame keepersand goodnight to Mathilda too.

~Tom Waits, Small Change

Theora Hamblett

I have discovered a new artist - Theora Hamblett. Hamblett was born in Paris, Mississippi in 1893. She taught school from 1915 to 1936 before moving to Oxford in 1939. There, Hamblett ran a boardinghouse for university students and also worked as a seamstress. It was not until 1950 that she began painting. Four years later in 1954, aprominent New York City art dealer Betty Parsons was visiting Mississippi and recognized Hamblett’s talent and successfully promoted her career. Basically a self-taught artist, she always had an interest in art and had taken a few art classes at the University of Mississippi. She developed her own pointillist technique, or using dots of vibrant color to create her compositions. Originally, Hamblett painted her childhood memories, then the Southern countryside, and later on, she painted religious and visionary works. Upon her death in 1977, she left her artwork to the University of Mississippi museums.
Theora Hamblett , one of many famous artists from Mississippi, is known for painting beautiful pictures of nature, but what made her famous is how she painted. All of her paintings are painted from a child’s point of view. A continual theme in Hamblett paintings was images of children at play. She wrote “I have so many memories of playing games under the trees when I was a young girl. When I became a teacher I still enjoyed watching children play, and often played with them.” Stylistically she used a palette of pastel colors and stylized dots of colors for the leaves on the trees.

Love...

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Love is a condition or phenomenon of emotional primacy, or absolute value. Love generally includes an emotion of intense attraction to either another person, a place, or thing; and may also include the aspect of caring for or finding identification with those objects, including self-love. Love can describe an intense feeling of affection, an emotion or an emotional state. In ordinary use, it usually refers to interpersonal love, an experience usually felt by a person for another person.

Affection, Affectation, & Alienation

Quite simply, affection is the expression of love. It symbolizes security, protection, comfort and approval, vitally important ingredients in any relationship. When one spouse is affectionate to the other, the following messages are being sent:

You are important to me, and I will care for you and protect you.
I'm concerned about the problems you face and will be there for you when you need me.

Affection is, for many, the essential cement of a relationship. Without it, many feel totally alienated. With it, they become emotionally bonded. If you feel terrific when your spouse is affectionate, and you feel terrible when there is not enough of it, you have the emotional need for affection.

One of the most important consequences of our emotional isolation is that we cannot feel the way we affect others. And that creates the temptation to hurt others because in doing so we don't feel the pain we cause. If we were connected emotionally to others as the aliens were, we would be far less tempted to do anything thoughtless, gaining at someone else's expense. That's because in so doing, we would be hurting ourselves as well.

Lack of empathy helps makes thoughtlessness possible. Since we don't feel what other's feel, we tend to minimize the negative effects we have on others, and consider our thoughtlessness to be benign. An angry outburst is regarded by some as a creative expression. Disrespect is viewed as helping the other spouse gain proper perspective. And a demand is nothing more than encouraging a spouse to do what he or she should have done all along.

Refuge Prayer

Refuge Prayer

O Amida, I take refuge in you,
Ocean of Oneness, Eternal Life and Light;
Entrusting with my whole heart and mind
In your Primal Vow;
I am empowered by you to live a full, Compassionate and creative life,
I dedicate myself to the service of all beings,
Striving to help others realize,
Their human potential and Enlightenment;
May your Teachings guide me
Throughout the day, in my relationships, work and play. Namo Amida Buddha

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Twelve o'clock.Along the reaches of the streetHeld in a lunar synthesis,Whispering lunar incantationsDisolve the floors of memoryAnd all its clear relations,Its divisions and precisions,Every street lamp that I passBeats like a fatalistic drum,And through the spaces of the darkMidnight shakes the memoryAs a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one,The street lamp sputtered,The street lamp muttered,The street lamp said,"Regard that womanWho hesitates toward you in the light of the doorWhich opens on her like a grin.You see the border of her dressIs torn and stained with sand,And you see the corner of her eyeTwists like a crooked pin."The memory throws up high and dryA crowd of twisted things;A twisted branch upon the beachEaten smooth, and polishedAs if the world gave upThe secret of its skeleton,Stiff and white.A broken spring in a factory yard,Rust that clings to the form that the strength has leftHard and curled and ready to snap.
Half-past two,The street-lamp said,"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,Slips out its tongueAnd devours a morsel of rancid butter."So the hand of the child, automatic,Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.I could see nothing behind that child's eye.I have seen eyes in the streetTrying to peer through lighted shutters,And a crab one afternoon in a pool,An old crab with barnacles on his back,Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three,The lamp sputtered,The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:"Regard the moon,La lune ne garde aucune rancune,She winks a feeble eye,She smiles into corners.She smooths the hair of the grass.The moon has lost her memory.A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,Her hand twists a paper rose,That smells of dust and old Cologne,She is alone With all the old nocturnal smellsThat cross and cross across her brain.The reminiscence comesOf sunless dry geraniumsAnd dust in crevices,Smells of chestnuts in the streetsAnd female smells in shuttered roomsAnd cigarettes in corridorsAnd cocktail smells in bars."
The lamp said,"Four o'clock,Here is the number on the door.Memory!You have the key,The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,Mount.The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."
The last twist of the knife.
~t.s. eliot