What do we do with our blogs?  When we borrow from each other, allude to each other, even cite each other, are we a mutual admiration society, patting each other on the back?  I don’t think so.  What happens – what we hope will happen – is that we will then venture further and find more art, more inspiration and more creativity.  It’s not that we are copying what our fellow has done, it is that what our friend has done reminds us of something we might do.  So let’s call it the interconnectedness of things.  Synergy if you please.

            I have an example.  My friend Rob, the creator of the wonderful Hammock Papers, posted this great Bobby McFerrin video.  But what struck me was the McFerrin interview, when Bobby says, “When I was a kid growing up and we bought albums, we treated them with such reverence, we would listen to every single cut, first to last, whether we liked the pieces or not, we were patient enough to at least give the [pieces] a chance.”

            I read this from Rob’s blog the very same day that I had read an oddly similar thing in Just Kids, by Patti Smith.  Smith is relating the experiences of herself and Robert Mapplethorpe at twenty years old.  Both will become famous avant garde artists, but at this point, they are “just kids” in New York with big dreams but no TV, no radio and no money.  Here is the excerpt from Just Kids.

"At night we played the records we liked to draw to on our battered player.  Sometimes we played a game called Record of the Night.  The album cover of the chosen record would be prominently displayed on the mantel.  We played the disc over and over, the music informing the trajectory of the evening."

          When music is used for the appreciation of it, and not just as background noise, you get Bobby McFerrin, and you get this:

 

Corvidae from Kaizen Journey

"I think crows are interesting, predatory, alert, intelligent..."

I do too, and I think your wonderful drawing is spontaneous and calligraphic.
Thank you, Alsokaizen.

More wonderful stuff here.

Clouds

"We people possess records, like gravestones, of individual clouds and the dates on which they flourished.

"In 1824, John Constable took his beloved and tubercular wife, Maria, to Brighton Beach. They hoped the sea air would cure her.  On June 12 he sketched, in oils, squally clouds over Brighton beach.  The gray clouds lowered over the water in failing light.  They swirled from a central black snarl.

"In 1828, as Maria Constable lay dying in Putney, John Constable went to Brighton to gather some of their children.  On May 22 he recorded one oblique bluish cloud riding high and messy over a wan sun.  Two thin red clouds streaked below.  Below the clouds he painted disconnected people splashed and dotted over an open, wide coast.

"Maria Constable died that November.  We still have these dated clouds."  

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

Maybe we possess records of the clouds as records of ourselves.

Radio Baseball

A little boy in pajamas,

Supposed to be asleep,

Sits in the hall, sits on the floor,

Against the wall, next to the door

Of his big brother’s bedroom

And listens to night baseball.

No one in the ballpark

Will have a better seat.

Pacquiao vs. Ali?

            The Manny Pacquiao versus Shane Mosley fight was last night.  I followed the round-by-round blow-by-blow via a real-time blog.  It was not a close fight; Pacquiao, the favorite, both with the touts and with the fans, won decisively. 

            Boxing is not as popular as it once was.  This has mostly to do with the fact that there is no Muhammad Ali these days; there is no one as brilliant inside the ring, no one as vibrant outside the ring.

            When I was young, Ali had captured the imagination of everyone, at least among those who had imagination.  He repeatedly did what nobody thought could be done. He defeated Sonny Liston.  During the referee’s instructions, the sports writers present suddenly realized – despite the statistics on the “tale of the tape” – that Ali (then, Cassius Clay) was considerably bigger than Liston.  He defeated Liston in the rematch, also, with the famous “phantom punch”, now clearly discernible with modern technology.  Later in his career, he would come back from a suspension for draft evasion to win back the title.  Still later, he won it for a third time.

Following the suspension, it took Ali several fights, including a title-fight loss to Joe Frazier, to reach the title fight in Zaire.  By the time Ali had earned another title shot, the new champion was George Foreman.  

            In Ali’s time, a heavyweight title fight was a major event, nearly as big as the Super Bowl, and attended by dozens of celebrities – even if it was in Africa.  At ringside for the “Rumble in the Jungle” were famous writers George Plimpton and Norman Mailer.  Nobody  - I mean, nobody - thought Ali could defeat the much younger, much harder-hitting George Foreman.  Of course, he did beat him, in fact, he knocked him out.  

            In last night’s bout, nothing surprising happened. Pacquiao was lackluster and still won handily.  For several years, I have been aware of the existence of a photograph that captures the astonishment of Plimpton and Mailer at the knockout of George Foreman by Muhammad Ali.  Below, please see what it looks like when something surprising does happen.

George Plimpton, center, Norman Mailer, with glasses

Marks on Paper

Sometimes I just have the urge to put marks on paper.

"Yin and Yang"   Charcoal on Bristol paper   May 1, 2011

 

I gave this about ten minutes. I didn't want to worry it to death.