Tag Archives: the arts
Around the World in 24 Hours
Milwaukee can be a rather uninspiring place in the dead of winter. Not that the light, feathery, cotton candy snow that piled up overnight wasn’t beautiful. As we walked to the breakfast cafe to meet Steve’s mother, we came up with an alphabetical list of adjectives for this particular day’s precipitation. I don’t want to complain about the temperature hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit, although it is a favorite local custom. There are much better ways to engage the imagination, and I live in a house which reminds me of this every day.
Scholar & Poet Books is the name of our other roommate. The drafty, old duplex we share rises over 4 levels: basement, first floor, second floor, and attic. She occupies every level and every staircase. She completely fills “my” closet while some of my clothes have languished in suitcases under the bed for 3 years. I am learning to appreciate her presence instead of begrudging her seeming dominance. In fact, I think I am coming around to choosing her company.
After Sunday breakfast with Mom, we returned to her, eager to taste her bounty. Samplings for the day included Irish, French, Argentine, Tibetan and Yiddish. She expands our consciousness, delights our senses and supports our livelihood and our dreams. Her body is an amalgam of tens of thousands of books and CDs with a few hundred other artifacts thrown in. She is library, concert hall and museum. She is introvert heaven.
We started by reading aloud a poem by W. B. Yeats, “A Prayer for My Daughter”, the howling North Atlantic wind of the Irish verses being matched by the Wisconsin bluster that rattled our windows. After delving a bit into Yeats’ biography, Steve then began his daily business of listing our friend’s appendages for sale while I went downstairs to do the dishes and make bread. After lunch, while the loaves baked, we began to discuss our plans to travel to Tibet. Internet research prompted a search through our stacks to find more information on that side of the planet. Steve came down with 6 books of varying relevance. When the bread was safely out of the oven, we went upstairs to watch a DVD, Manon of the Spring, having watched Jean de Florette just weeks before. This emotional tale of French village life transported us visually and linguistically to another world in a simpler century. I tried, unsuccessfully, to pick out the movie’s musical theme on my harmonica before returning to the kitchen to make dinner.
When we’d finished our meal and our wine, we retired to the bedroom to peruse the wall of jewel cases. We settled on a CD of Argentinian folk songs and dances by Suni Paz. In contrast to the Irish ballads we lit upon at first, these undulating rhythms drew us deeper into the sultry passions beneath our awakened senses…
Fueled by a solid Monday morning breakfast, we dove into the business of packaging our sales, accompanied by Moishe Oysher singing Yiddish, bluesy, vaudeville, Hollywood-like tunes. I have no idea what they were about, but his passages of improvised “scatting” made me think of Tevye stomping and shaking around in his barn, pouring out his desires to be a rich man. One of the books we packaged was sent to a Jewish community center in New York; it was a children’s book called Klutzy Boy. It made me laugh.
The anthem of my Alma Mater, Scripps College, starts: “Strong in the strength of all, venturing together, searching, exploring the life of the mind…” In the midst of a Milwaukee winter, this is the antidote to cabin fever. I’m grateful to be shacking up with Scholar & Poet Books.
(author’s note: to browse our inventory listed on A.B.E. Books, click HERE. To visit our eBay Store, click HERE.)
© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved
Advent Day #8 – Imagination
The countdown of free gifts continues – Imagine!
Imagine That!
Do animals have imagination? Do they think in concepts or toss ideas around? Or is that strictly a human thing?
Animals have some pretty incredible artistic skills. I think of weaver birds or bower birds, birds that display their expertise in foiling predators and attracting mates. Does that indicate imagination? Cats, chimps, elephants and others have created art with paintbrushes or paws dipped in colors. Is that imagination? Maybe.
What good is imagination? Why is it a useful skill or a precious gift?
It keeps us from getting bored. It motivates us to engage in possibility. It fuels hope. But I suppose it could also be said that it fuels depression or despair. So, it’s a tool that we have in our skull-shaped kit box. We can use it however we want. We get to be creators. And it’s free. You don’t need electricity to run it; you don’t have to have an account or a password. This is one of the greatest gadgets ever! Do we celebrate it? Encourage it? Teach it? Or do we try to corral it, censor it, mold it, sterilize it? Well, historically we have done all of these, to be truthful. What have you done with yours lately? Do you have a secret place where you put the workings of your imagination? A journal, a sketchbook, a doodle pad, a workbench, a tape recorder, a music staff, a photo album? Do you unwrap these presents for yourself sometimes?
When I was in college, I worked summers at a Christian camp. I was in charge of the arts & crafts area. It was called “Imagination”. Over the doorway in blue paint and gold glitter, the name hung like a talisman. Each day, I wondered which kid was going to come in and blow my mind with something s/he created. I remember one tall, skinny, shy kid with a speech disorder, named Devin. He was 14. He would come in and look bored. I gave him some clay and googly eyes. He joked around, embarrassed, and then made a pretty good likeness of E.T. from that summer’s most popular movie. The next day, five campers came into the shop asking if they could make an E.T. head. Not that the art was original, it was completely derivative. But the idea to create something started a fad, like the kids were just waiting for someone to allow them to explore their own imaginations.
Steve came up with a book from his bookstore collection called Artful Jesters by Nicholas Roukes. “Innovators of Visual Wit and Humor” it says. Here’s the cover:
The artwork is by Willie Cole; it’s called “Burning Hot I – Sunbeam iron with yellow and red feathers”. I would love to raid all the recycling containers on my block, set up a workshop in my garage, and make “Imagination” come to life again. I’d invite all those shy, awkward kids and the ones who pay too much for entertainment, and see if they’d engage in this wonderful ability we humans seem to have inherited from somewhere. We are co-creators in this world. It’s a pretty nifty gig. I appreciate all my blogging friends, my musician friends, artists, knitters, chefs, actors, gardeners, sculptors, photographers, architects, designers…thanks for opening up your shops and showing us it can be done.
Reckoning Love
“What’s in a love letter, anyway?” he asked.
I was in a mood. A little pouty and weepy, my inner 4-year-old whining, “I just don’t feel special!” God, why does this keep happening every month? It’s so ridiculous. Okay, rather than stuff it and wait for it to go away, I will wrap that little girl in my own arms and listen to her. She wants to feel loved. She doubts her self-worth every once in awhile and wants someone to show a preference for her and please her. “Little One, you are precious,” I tell her. I am taking responsibility for caring for this vulnerable one. Me. Passing that burden on to anyone else is manipulative and fosters a kind of co-dependency. I don’t want that any more. Oh, but I used to rely on it pretty routinely. I had a husband who, for 24 years, lavished me with gifts and compliments and love letters. I have been with Steve now for 4 years. He has never even bought me a greeting card. I do not want him to be other than he is, and I believe he loves me profoundly. So, what is the love letter game about? “What’s in a love letter, anyway?” Steve asked.
Six parts flattery to one part youth…or is that a martini? So I began to make a list of the elements of a love letter, Cat Stevens’ song “Two Fine People” running through my brain. In one column, I put the parts that I know Steve would never embrace. In the other column, I put the bits that I think he does communicate, albeit in person and not in writing. The list began to resemble another amusing song: “Title of the Song” (by DaVinci’s Notebook), which you really must click on and listen to if you never have before. …Now, wasn’t that fun?
So I showed Steve the little orange Post-It note that carried this weighty list. On the left, I’d written “flattery; promises: to rescue, for future, to provide; declaration of desire”. On the right I’d written “honesty, appreciation, gratitude, description of how I love”. I told him that his description of how he loves is unique and authentic to him and doesn’t resemble Cat Stevens’ (“…though Time may fade and mountains turn to sand…’til the very same come back to the land”). He walked to one of his bookshelves and took down his “Bible”, a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. “How’s this for a love letter?” he asked and read from “Song of Myself”:
The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs;
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn;
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns left;)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books;
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.
The little girl opens her wet eyes and looks wide. Wondering, feeling alive, an equal to the sun and the trees and the birds in the sky and every playmate in the Universe. Is this not Love, this embrace? I reckon that it is.
I’m 50! Me & Jodie Foster
I’m not a media watcher. I don’t even own a TV, but for some reason, I found myself drawn to Jodie Foster’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Awards this morning. I read the transcript online, then did a youtube search to see her performance of it. How do you get to be a gracefully aging woman of 50? How do you leave behind the fluff and come out real and wise and honorable? That’s what my blog project has been about, so I wanted to see Ms. Foster’s take on it. I was not disappointed. No doubt the lady is intelligent. No doubt she has compassion for the human race. What essence did she distill and pour for us in those 6 minutes of impromptu address being recorded for millions to see? Art is significant work. Media without privacy is exposure and becomes ridiculous and dangerous. Gratitude is important. Relationships are essential even though understanding is fleeting and loneliness is inevitable. And change is the atmosphere we live in, grow in, and die in. Resisting it is a waste of energy. Embracing it is mystically regenerative. I get that. I concur. Maybe I could be her soul sister, too.
Mensch sighting!
In my post a few days ago, (Oh! The Humanity!) I sent out a plea for examples of admirable human beings as an antidote to the kind of internet sensations who fail to inspire and instead make me nauseated. You know what I’m talking about, right? The rampant dumbing-down of our species, “urgent” stories of greed and fear and violence and stupidity and pettiness and the like are probably a dangerous toxin to our culture. Where are the role models who will help us do better and why aren’t we using our advanced media to promote them more often? For every “Who Wore It Better?”, we could be viewing 5 “Who Lived It Better?” stories. Why not?
I have enjoyed a morning at work in the kitchen and with the book business while listening to the music of my Mensch of the Day. This is an artist who has inspired me since my pre-adolescent days, and I’ve only just discovered this live recording from 2 years before his death. He is the recipient of the 1993 Albert Schweitzer Music Award and the only non-classical musician to be so distinguished. His humanitarian efforts supported the National Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, The Cousteau Society, and the Windstar Foundation. The CD I have was a concert for The Wildlife Conservation Society’s 100th anniversary. Ladies and gentleman…….John Denver: a singer and songwriter whose lyrics ring with authenticity and passion, whose music spans genres from country to pop to blues to rock, and whose commitment to peace and preservation permeated his career. As a cultural ambassador for the U. S., he visited China, Viet Nam and the Soviet Union and recorded a duet with a Soviet artist, becoming the first American to do so. In my mind, he follows in the footsteps of another hero of mine, Pete Seeger, who, at 93, is still active in the same kind of musical ambassadorship that promotes cultural tolerance and environmental responsibility. I did have the privilege of hearing him give a concert for children when I was in my single digits.
Who will carry the torch when he passes away?
To read more about the Schweitzer Award, see http://www.anchor-international.org/07.html. For more about John Denver’s career, see http://learningtogive.org/papers/paper349.html. For a good listen, go to “You Say the Battle Is Over”.
Blog Birth
In a display of shameless nepotism, I am using this blog space to announce a new daily blog that I now follow: The Elsewhere Condition, written by my oldest daughter, Susan. Grad student in linguistics, lead singer in a punk performance band, bride to be, and four foot eleven inch dynamo, she is an engaging writer and earnest soul. Here’s a sample from Day 2:
My other goal for this year is to lead a healthier life, which is rather like saying that I want my novel to be about “good stuff.” What’s “healthy?” How do I know if I’m healthier? Healthier than what? Healthier than the grad student grind isn’t hard to do. I’ve fallen into a morose and processed diet, the cornerstones of which are coffee, cafeteria sandwiches, ibuprofen, and the kind of pastries that come out of vending machines. This is offset by forms of exercise which include running after buses, lifting bags of books, pacing the hallways of the English building, and vigorous hyperventilating. Clearly, I can do better than this, but I’m still working out reasonable and helpful parameters.
So now I have another reason to log on every day. Check out The Elsewhere Condition. That is all.
Blog Of The Year – one star so far!
Naomi Baltuck of Writing Between the Lines has nominated me for the 2012 Blog of the Year Award! Apparently, this is an award which can be conferred multiple times. I think Naomi has gotten nominated 7 times in the year she’s been blogging. I’ve been blogging for a year and one third, and this is my first star. Naomi is a published author and professional storyteller. How cool is that?! Her blog is a delightful place where family, food, twinkly lights, travel adventures and costumes all blend into a magic world of pictures and words that reminds me that the real world is actually that enchanted kingdom where our dreams come true. In her Blog of the Year post, she cites a list of nominations that is currently serving as my map to blog exploration. I have already discovered a poet to follow from her recommendations, and I’m looking forward to that enrichment!
To read more about this award, click here.
I just nominated a few bloggers for The Wonderful Team Member Readership Award, but I follow another whom I will nominate for this award: Elena Caravela. Elena is an artist who shares her imagination in the form of sketches, watercolors, photographs, oils, and digital blends of all these techniques. I am awed at her skills and humbled by her collaborative spirit. When I write stories and poems for children (which I plan to submit for publishing as part of a New Year’s goal), I imagine her illustrating them because she is all about encouraging the artistic talents of others (see her blog & book: Portrait of a Girl and Her Art).
So, blog on! all you artistic, creative souls out there. “We are made of star stuff.” – Carl Sagan
Weekly Photo Challenge: Surprise!
Life continues; a new cycle begins. It’s the shortest day of the year. Imagine our ancestors noting the the diminishing of light and wondering anxiously if the sun would return…and it does! We are so used to “knowing” all this that we can grow so jaded and incapable of surprise and awe. But why not retain the ability to be surprised, delighted, bowled over by the wonder of Life?! And also to include Death in that cycle. One of my favorite passages from Walt Whitman (from Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself”):
“What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
Looking through my files of photos, I found two that I remember as being surprising moments of serendipity, both of which are of birds. Birds are surprising. They alight and fly off at their own whim, so catching one on camera is a gift. The first shot is one I took with the little Lumix when a hawk landed in the maple tree right outside my bedroom window. To have this elegant wild predator just a few feet from my hidden wide-eyed face was a real treat. I had to take the shot through a dirty window, but still…
This second shot is one I took the first time I went to a State Park with my brand new Canon Rebel T3i in hand. Sandhill cranes were flying overhead, and I took a chance that perhaps with this new camera, I would actually get a clear image.
Dance like it’s the last night of the world
A song from “Miss Saigon” is running through my head… ‘a song, played on a solo saxophone…so hold me tight and dance like it’s the last night of the world’. Not that I seriously think the world will end tomorrow. Aside from the darkness and the rain (instead of snow) here in Milwaukee, all seems fairly normal.
But it raises a good question. What would you do on the last night of the world? What would you want to be doing any or every night of the world?
My husband sang that song from Miss Saigon on a recital one February, a snowy scene visible through the plate glass window behind him. The tune was a tad high for him; his sweet tenor voice seemed a little strained. He lived only another 7 years after that day.
I would want to dance with him and Steve and my children and my mother, to hold them tight and look into their eyes until there was nothing else to see.
scillagrace 