Muladhara Collage Video

This is my third mixed media collage in a series for the Chakras. This one represents Muladhara, also known as the root chakra.

Music is by Deep Forest, "Katharina."

Muladhara Collage

Sunday night I finished my third mixed media collage in this series of chakra inspired artworks. This one is Muladhara, also known as the Root Chakra. It is symbolized by the color red, earth, and desire. I will make the video for this collage Monday night, but I just wanted to put this link up tonight for the photos.


View more close-up photos here.

"Slip of the Tongue"

Adapted from the poem "Slip Of The Tongue" written and performed by Adriel Luis. "What's your ethnic make up?" A young man makes a pass at a beautiful stranger and gets an eye-opening schooling on race and gender. Directed by Karen Lum, produced by Youth Sounds Factory.
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I'm sharing this from YouTube.com. I found this some time ago and I am still impressed with the movement and message in this spoken word poetic performance. I really like the metaphors and play on words. You might have to listen to it a couple of times to catch it all, because part of the impact of spoken word performance IS the performance.

Black Mountain Story (Part 1)

This film was created by Appalshop and is hosted on their YouTube.com account.

Vishuddha Collage Video

I took pictures as I worked on this collage so I could create a stop-action video of my work on it. I think it turned out quite good and is better than the one I made for Anahata. Music is a clip from "Bulgarian Melody" by Deep Forest.

Vishuddha Collage

I finished the fifth chakra mixed media collage, Vishuddha.
View more photos here.

Anahata

I have finished the Anahata mixed media collage. Finally! I think at some point in the future it should be enclosed in a shadowbox, but for now it will have to be open and very much tangible. I have more detailed photos of the collage here, but this is the full shot:


Yesterday I had a vision of what the 5th chakra collage will look like, so I will begin the Vishuddha one next. Very Blue.

Bjork and e. e. cummings

Click the image on the right to go to a video created by Knightengale on YouTube. It is a beautiful show of flowers becoming colorful. The music is by Bjork, "Sun in My Mouth," which is based on a poem by e.e. cummings, "Wade."

"wade" by e.e. cummings

I will wade out
Till my thighs are steeped
In burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
And leap into the ripe air
Alive with closed eyes
To dash against darkness

In the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers
Of smooth mastery
With chasteness of sea-girls
Will I complete the mystery
Of my flesh
Will I complete the mystery
Of my flesh
My flesh

Snakes

This piece is written slightly different from the rest of my childhood memory pieces. It is a combination of thoughts, memories, metaphor, and philosophy. It does need some more editing and rephrasing.
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There's snakes in the consciousness. They are slithering round the spiral above the world, their long forked tongues hissing out-and-inward, tiny red glimpses in a larger green circle curling in on itself. Maybe Gaelic music accompanies their monotonous hiss and slither, hiss and slither. When they reach the center, the abyss, one by one they disappear into someone's dream. Plop!

A young girl realizes seventy snakes are slithering around her in her front yard. They seem threatening, suspicious, curiously seductive yet surreal. She is frightened because she has been told to be frightened of snakes. To respect and be aware of their poison, their natural authority.

Another girl stands outside her mother's house, kitchen window in view, her fingers and mind preoccupied with a leaf or flower in her hand. She feels something cold brush over her bare feet. Slither and hiss. A green garden snake slowly glides over her feet and onward to the garden. The girl looks up, curious, at her mother's jaw-dropped face in the kitchen window. The girl waves and shows she is all right.

While growing up in Mississippi beside a small pond she knew of water moccasins, rattlesnakes, and cottonmouths. Her visits to feed turtles, heads a tiny bubble glinting sunlight disappearing when bread crumbles plopped too close, she saw the snakes sunning on floating logs or tree limbs overhanging the pond. She respected the distance and their solidarity, their independence of any creature. Their ability to abide by their own rules and no other creature's rules. They were powerful creatures, snakes given this cold authority and unconditional respect.

As she grew older snakes appeared less and less in her dreams. They were collecting in other people's dream consciousness, colliding, hissing, and slithering. Does their absence in my recent dreams reflect on my current life? Do I lack authority and independence? Where is my own power? Respect? My self-governing rules?

Yesterday I visited a friend who saved a young snake just before the snow hit town. Before the temperatures dropped and before the cat tore into the tiny snake's long exhausted body. She grasped it gently, took it inside, and gave it to the empty aquarium. A few rocks, some soil, and a little brush to hide in, the snake begins to recover though feline teeth mangled its skin visibly. She handled the snake, it twisting around her fingers and wrist, tiny tongue darting in and out, and my out-reached finder caresses its head. His eyes, tiny specks of light, shine upward.

I've never really thought about snakes before. Never really taken time to consider their meaning in my existence. I am no Eve. Down a long line of women I may be a daughter of Eve or Lilith or Mary or Martha or Ruth or... my mother. From each learning their history, their victories and mistakes, and making discoveries into Self. Into the consciousness as snakes wind down the spiral to gather in dreams and memories, recollections that I identify with only after creating the fiction of my story of how that me, the barefoot girl staring down in awe at a green ribbon slithering over her Summer warm feet, is the same as the one woman now in a friend's house looking at a tiny snake winding around her wrist.

She remembers the death of a snake. In middle school -- not too long after that coming-of-age experience she once identified with the Biblical Eve who ate the forbidden fruit, who listened to the serpent, who bled and gave birth to three brothers -- she saw a snake die. In the courtyard Mother stands, broom handle downward, her grip white and face stern. I stand with my hands behind my back, two steps up the sidewalk peering down and on my toes: "Is it dead?" Between 7 and 13 I had gained a fear of personal power, authority, independence, and self-governance. Her self-respect is shadowed. Her father opens the door, towers behind her, "What are you doing?" Mother responds, "Just a garden snake. Harmless. Laura saw it."

The snakes of 7 and 13 have not visited in a long time. They are visiting other children in dreams and memories. A woman recalls her first encounter with a rattlesnake. A water moccasin peers from the riverbed as an elder gathers herbs. And Eve tilts her head upward, peering into the fruit tree's limbs past delectable sun-ripe forbidden gifts of color. The Serpent, hissing persuasions, slithering from limb to limb, peers into her eyes, commanding respect and authority. She, trusting him, plucks a juicy ball of energy, tastes it open-mouthed, and realizes her own independence and authority.

CSM Exhibit

So the Council of the Southern Mountains Exhibit is up and visible! I took some pictures of it today and I am excited about it. I love it, and appreciate everything that Chris Miller did to get these final steps completed. It is very photo-focused, which is what I tend to like, but there is enough text to provide an overview of the history of CSM. Each photo has identification so if a researcher wants to view that specific photo in hand, then the Archivist can find it easily. This is my first exhibit to have participated in the production of it. I gathered all the materials and overall flow of the exhibit, but Kevin Puckett styled the colors, fonts, and graphics, and some of the layout. Brittney and I proofed the text and Chris made modifications as needed in the design as the installation went up. I believe the exhibit turned out wonderfully and I am very appreciative of everyone's help in the entire project. Also, take a look at the exhibition website if you haven't.


More photos of the exhibit.

George Michael

It is 1987. George Michael just released his album Faith. And I have a walkman with a little stash of cassettes to listen to all summer long. I'm 11 years old, summertime between fifth and sixth grades. The sun is bright, blue skies and I love being outdoors. Dad's lawn mowing business is doing well, but all the crews are out mowing lawns. I can walk around with my headphones on by the barn and in the small field of sparse trees, listening to cassettes and singing along without a worry that someone can hear me and complain. I don't have a singing voice but I love to sing. It feels good and it doesn't matter right now because no one is concerned about me. I walk along the dusty dirt and rock drive to the intersection of Route 1 and Old Canton Road. Before crossing, I look both ways and head towards the little A & B Mart and Mr. James. On my headphones George Michael's been singing "'Cause I gotta have faith..." and I'm singing along. Of course I had no clue what the song was really about, but I liked the way George's voice sang and I liked the movement of the composition. And the song felt good.

After buying a Flintstone orange push-pop and my dad's carton of Belair cigarettes (Mr. James already knew these cigarettes were not for me) I walked back, singing along to another George Michael song on the Faith album, "Father Figure."

"I will be your father figure.
Put your tiny hand in mine.
I will be your preacher teacher.
Anything you have in mind.
I will be your father figure.
I have had enough of crime.
I will be the one who loves you
Until the end of time."

Once again, I had little idea of what the song was about but felt that the song was honest and positive. I liked all the other songs on the album, and especially remembered the video for "Freedom '90." I never noticed the news at the time, but apparently there was some controversy over it. But the controversy was simple and nothing of magnitude: the video was a symbolic breaking away from Michael's ties to his old band, Wham!. He did not appear in the video and several symbols of his past was destroyed in the video: his guitar, jukebox, and leather jacket. But who was in the video? Supermodels lip-syncing to his vocals on the track. I have heard this song again recently in a YouTube video criticizing George W. Bush.

I heard "Father Figure" the other day and remembered in a flash of memory walking on a powder-fine dirt drive to the corner mart for candy, Dad's cigarettes, or just wandering around around the trees in lazy Summertime singing to George Michael's songs. A brief love affair with that album before I moved on to another cassette.

Smurk (painting)

A friend on Youtube.com, xSJPX, posted another video of her painting. It is pretty neat to watch, so enjoy. Also, here are her comments on the video:

"I want to call this painting "smurk." Why? I don't really know. It's too bad that the quality came out so yucky. The painting has a lot of texture that makes it look like cyclone kind of thing. But all you can see here is shading. :( "

Education Rant

Yesterday I was talking with a barista at one of the coffee shops about books. I asked her what titles was she required to read in high school and she honestly told me that the ones she was required to read she had not read. She also said she cheated on the computer tests for these books by having friends who did read the books take the test for her. I have forgotten to ask what titles were assigned, but instead I asked her if any of the books were ones I remembered reading or being required to read. Books such as George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, stories like "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, Lord of the Flies, and goodness, she has never read or heard of T. S. Eliot, nevermind his "Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock" and The Wasteland. She'd never read Wuthering Heights, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and A Separate Peace. No Fahrenheit 451 for her. I wasn't going to bother asking if she'd read Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, Heart of Darkness, The Awakening, or anything by Thomas Hardy. Can't bother with Emerson or Thoreau. I really am curious. I want to give her a test, one she can't pass or fail but would satisfy my curiosity of which books that I was once assigned to read are still being assigned to high schoolers. I am indeed curious.

I am sure my mother's generation might have wondered the same thing when they saw what books I was required to read and that the list did not include books they were required to read in high school. These are books which made me grow, look around myself at a larger world, appreciate other cultures and contemplate relationships. Thoreau and Walt Whitman brought out the nature-lover in me, lover of landscapes: pastures, forests edging creeks, mountains in the distance, desert sunsets, and especially the simplicity of a single tree. I was the only one in my senior A.P. World Literature class that had actually read Crime and Punishment (not the Cliff Notes) and loved it. Yes, loved it. I summarized it as a psychological thriller. But I will delve into more bookish memories in childhood memory posts for another date.

This particular individual I spoke with also told me that she doesn't like to read anyway. I couldn't fault her for that, since not everyone finds enjoyment in a good book. But I was surprised that she'd never heard of these other books, which led me to think that the school she attended did not include them on the required books for reading list or even the optional one. What happened? They cannot be archaic as I can claim that many of the stories can still apply today. Many of the lessons to be learned in those books still apply today. Many of those lives are still present in our society now, just in a slightly different representation.

So what happened to good reading? Why are these books abandoned?

Lemon Jelly - "Ducks"

Cute! As you've probably noticed the pattern, the videos are linked from YouTube.com. Well, someone added me as a friend on there, so I perused the videos they marked as favorites and came upon this one video. Lemon Jelly is a name of a band of which I am only slightly familiar. In Ground Effects one day the music really struck me and I asked my friend Zach, a barista at the time, who was the band. That's when I discovered Lemon Jelly. The title of this song is "Ducks," and the video itself is a psychedelic trip. Very amusing and the music is certainly different. Enjoy!

Boys on the Side

After a little searching I found the root of my memory of Joan Armatrading's song, "Willow." It is the movie Boys on the Side. I think I have seen that movie a few times, and just thinking about it now makes me want to watch it again. Too bad I doubt own the DVD.

I know that I had the soundtrack for a while. I might still have it. I played nearly all the songs on it constantly. A mix of artists like that hit a personal string in your being at different times. One day you're driving in your royal blue 1982 Pontiac sedan down Old Canton Road past a "Christmas tree farm" and Strong Road. You round the curve past the lake on either side, large houses with decks overlooking the water. Past houses with peeling paint and rusty cars parked in the dusty and gravely driveways. And Joan is singing,

"I said I'm strong,
Straight,
Willing
To be a shelter
In a storm
Your willow
Oh willow
When the sun is out"

I found other songs by Joan Armatrading and I liked them equally as much, but for some reason I had tied myself emotionally to "Willow" and couldn't create such a fond memory with the other songs. No significant event happened in my life while listening to "Willow." No revelations or epiphanies, at least none that I can recall now. Just a quiet memory of driving one sunny day, either late Spring or early Autumn, probably during my senior year of high school. Since the movie came out in February 1995, maybe I was already contemplating graduation and the responsibilities to follow. It is very possible I was thinking about a classmate who, over Christmas break, had been admitted into a rehabilitation center for his addiction to acid and marijuana. I was concerned for him and hoped he'd get better. I was also concerned for another friend who was worrying herself sick about him. Maybe I wished I could be a willow for my friends, or that we were already willows for each other, sheltering and protecting each other in whatever way we were able. Willow.

Joan Armatrading - "Willow"

I cannot remember how I ever stumbled across Joan Armatrading. Maybe it was a soundtrack to a movie, but it was definitely this song, "Willow." I love the way she sings it. Much how I like Tracy Chapman's music. Now there's a music memory post prompt. ;)

A week of art

I stumbled across this neat video on YouTube. The title says "1 week of art works." So I think he filmed himself and friends creating art on this wall, edited it together, sped it up, and added music, of course. I like some of the appearances: a horse, a policeman leaving a notice, and a few other funnies.

Deep Forest - "Sweet Lullaby"

Sasi sasi o to aro aro
O angi si nau boroi amu
Ni ma oe e fasi korona
Dolali dasa na, lao dai afuimae
Afuta guau mauri, Afuta wela inomae

Sasi sasi ae o angisi nau
Boroi nima oe e fasi koro na
Dolali dasa na, lao dai afuimae
Afuta guau mauri, Afuta wela inomae

English:
Young brother, young brother you be quiet
Although you are crying to me
Your father has left us
He has gone to the place of the dead
Protect the head of the living, Protect the orphan child

Young brother, young brother hey? although you are crying to me
Your father has left us
He has gone to the place of the dead
Protect the head of the living, protect the orphan child

Interpreting the Song:
"This interpretation and lyrics come from one very old lady, living in Fataleka (one of the Solomon Islands), as translated by her grandchildren. The song is said to be very old and hence the new generation does not understand every word. The song is about a young child crying because he does not see his father with the family. In response, his elder sister sung this song to comfort as well as tell him the reality, with an appeal for their deceased father to protect this child in the land of the living. Local ancient belief is that the dead care for loved ones they left behind. The old woman also said that the sample, if listened to carefully, used some words and sounds that were added to make it sound mellow. Expression of some words twice, as well pronunciation of most of the words are different from that of normal conversation. Eg. 'O' should be OE', Angiangi should be angisi. This is very common with local traditional songs. Thanks to the people of the Solomon Islands for the lyrics, translation, and interpretation."

Buffalo Creek 72

I stumbled across more videos pertaining to the Buffalo Creek Flood Disaster of 1972, but these films are from Appalshop from the 70s. More of this particular film is located on the YouTube account for Appalshop.