revelator

the machinations of reality are powered by the decisions of the heart.

howl.

yesterday was one of those misty, rainy mornings on top of the mountain that look and feel eerie. a perfect morning for listening to stormy muse-witches  and standing at my workbench with leather in my hands. chelsea wolfe, tori amos, shara worden, neko case, gillian welch, emmylou harris. voices amaze me, the fact that a person can carry such a powerful tool with her everywhere. to be something that needs nothing. to howl, growl, project oneself so unapologetic into air, into earshot.   (photo from sugarhighlovestoned)

amanuensis.

so i'm reading the unbearable lightness of being by milan kundera, a book that i've heard about my entire life but somehow escaped reading until now. i've never seen the movie, a still from which may be seen above, portraying a scene from the book that was mentioned only in passing and i never thought about but is apparently ridiculously hot...
yet another book that speaks truths, scary truths, undeniable portrait of humans failing and struggling and being wholly themselves, formed by past experiences, memories and subconscious desires. how many of us actually take the time to step back and trace the bright red thread of an action through the dusty rooms of memory and experiences to its source? why do we do the things we do?
reading this book makes me wish i could have kundera follow me around, watching my actions while considering the context of my entire life. to be a character drawn out, a soul made flesh through a ritualistic process, a formula. take a person, form her like wind and water over stone, wind her up into action and watch her go. with consistently unpredictable results. to be human is the strangest thing.

"Human lives are composed...like music. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress."

everything i see is new and strange

unless you're from my home state of mississippi, you've probably never heard of walter anderson. born in 1903, he painted the wildlife and landscapes of the mississippi gulf coast in a way that is full of light and rhythm. he would row over 12 miles of open ocean to camp out on horn island, a desolate barrier island in the gulf, and paint or sketch for weeks at a time. in his cottage he painted a little room full of wonder that nobody, not even his family, knew about until after his death. the room is now preserved in the walter anderson museum in ocean springs, ms. i remember walking into that room as a child and it changed my life forever.

a friend recently gave me a children's book about walter anderson. its beginning describes what it truly means to live as art:

"there once was a man whose love of nature was as wide as the world. there once was an artist who needed to paint as much as he needed to breathe.." -hester bass, the secret world of walter anderson


anderson was completely self-taught, and lost himself in his art and love of nature to combat his mental illness. he escaped one hospital by scaling down a brick wall, drawing flying birds with a bar of soap on the bricks as he made his getaway. although known primarily for his watercolors, he also worked in ceramics and woodcuts. much of his work was lost during hurricane katrina, but his legacy lives on. he's the best american artist you've never heard of, and i'm so happy to share his art with beautiful people like you. xoxo

seths.

i am reading a book that is breaking my heart. you know good literature, visceral wordsmithing, when you snap the book shut saying "enough!", hurt but not fully understanding why. perhaps it has touched a rusty old chord that aches when strummed. how did this Karen Russell, this young woman with the haunting insight, get this entry into my mind? where the hell did this book come from? Swamplandia! is a beautiful and dangerous voyage that navigates grief, sibling love, family fidelity and shame that takes you into the same uncharted territory that Ponce de Leon entered when searching for the Fountain of Youth in the primordial swaps of Florida. here's a taste:

"Somehow I had worked it out in my mind to where I could believe in our mother without having to believe in ghosts exactly. In fact, I was discovering all sorts of beliefs and skepticisms turning like opposite gears inside me, and little drawers of hopes and fears I had forgotten to clean out. Sometimes while wandering around the park I'd catch myself praying in an automatic way, like a sneeze, that my dead mom's blood test results would come back okay."

ouch.

transported.

just saw trentemoller at the orange peel last night. apparently they hadn't sold many tickets so i got in for free. i was completely transported. i hadn't been so utterly moved emotionally by a live performance in years. labels be damned. "electronica" may turn some people off but this was rapturous. they were happy to be there!i thanked the universe for delivering me such a happy accident! there was no distance between the performers and the tiny group of us moving in the darkness to music that had been carried to us over hundreds of thousands of miles on a baltic breeze.

lupine dreams

just found this great artist featured on a great blog called iheartmyart.com (which was featured on nylon magazine's website)
john lupo avanti. his paintings are ominous and beautiful, calling to mind aubrey beardsley, egon schiele, and that creepy saloon painting you found at the fleamarket.
he's also coming out with a comic...check more of his work at http://www.poetryofline.com/

Mud Cloud Acrylic, published in Juxtapoz magazine 10/10

Dog Pack  acrylic on paper.

Ghost Ranch acrylic on paper