I've been lurking on other blogs today, more specifically Lee's River and The Individual Voice, and have gotten wrapped up with overblogging again today. If any of you remember when I first started this blog, I had amassed close to 200 posts in my first month alone (more about that coming up). So when I found Tiv's posting about her blog addiction and the ensuing comments, I thought to myself (and also commented): Oh goody goody! Looks like I've fallen into a "Blogoholics Anonymous" thread...
I actually said a heck of a lot more things, about my unorthodox "method" for curing myself from my own addiction mostly. That turned out to be unwieldy for just a comment, so I promised Tiv to go into more detail here. So here goes my story of how I (almost) recovered from my Blog Addiction (but not quite):
Eleven months ago, I was working in the capacity of art director for a mass market women's magazine. Read: the perfect job for someone who'se passionate about magazines and also... the perfect job to develop full-fledged AADD, OCD, PTSD and every neurosis in the book essentially (ok, maybe not PTSD). Since I was very much a typical professional single gal at the time with all that implies (living with my cat, commuting to another city via business class a couple of days a week, routinely too burnt out evenings and weekends to see friends or be sociable...) I very often had nobody to talk to when I got home late from work.
I desperately needed a place to vent. I started with Craigslist Rants & Raves. My posts there became so frequent and so wordy that people started screaming at me "HEY LADY, START AN F-N BLOG AND LEAVE US ALONE OVER HERE @#%$*#!!" (Craigslist Rn'R is not for the faint of heart I assure you) "Leave her alone," others responded, "finally someone who actually has something to say!". So I did just that. I started an anonymous blog where I could say all the horrible nasty things I was keeping bottled up inside. About my wonderful but completely insane job (where everybody acts as though lives were actually at stake, and the word "deadline" looms large and can translate into ginormous monetary losses.)
Who knows? Perhaps I was already cracking under the pressure and the blogging was just a way to self-medicate. Probably. There was that, but there was also my private life, which sometimes, when I wrote about it, totally sounded like I was making it up - like a soap opera or several seasons of Sex in the City. I was actually accused of making up my own life stories by irrate anonymous readers sometimes. But what can I say? My life has been somewhat surreal from conception, and that's a fact [mum, I don't know if I'm at liberty to disclose exactly why that is here?], I told some of my deepest darkest secrets, stuff that I'd never told my therapists even, and it felt great. I felt I had finally found the right outlet for me: "I will heal myself by blogging anonymously about my insane life, put all the pieces together and then I will be whole again." It was my little dark secret, my ultimate guilty pleasure, and my readers were eating it up.
Of course it got totally out of hand. At first, I put out maybe two, three posts a day, and then some days I'd sit there and crank out one post after another till I got to more than 15 a day—and loooong ones at that! (on weekends and sick days only obviously). Couldn't stop typing. Typed so much my hands started seizing up on me. That shoulda been a sign right there. I knew I was in real trouble when a tech savvy friend of mine told me that among the THOUSANDS of blogs he's got on his daily feed, he'd never seen anyone blog as much or as often as me. Should I be proud of such an accomplishment? I'm mostly embarrassed, actually. I was so addicted to my blogging that when I went on a trip literally on the other side of the globe, with beautiful everything to experience and beautiful coasts and sunshine all day every day, I STILL made sure to sit there and post at least one entry per day to keep up to date on what was happening in my surreal life. Craziness.
Then a wonderful thing happened. Well sort of. Depends on how you look at it. Fact of the matter is it's been hell and I wasn't sure I'd come out in one piece and/or with my sanity intact: I had a complete nervous breakdown and fell into a severe clinical depression. The doctors sent me home with a whole pad-full of prescriptions, and more or less ordered me to get as much Rn'R as I needed, for as long as I needed. I've been off work for just over five months now. Doctors say it'll be a while before I fully recover from this. Sigh.
At first, I felt guilty about having all that time on my hands, and having gone from 200 miles an hour multitasking frenzy to... nothing, I needed to keep busy, so I kept up the volume of blog entries. In fact, I started a whole NEW blog (the one you're reading now) in addition to the first one. So in the span on seven or eight months, I had accumulated well over 1,250 entries. That's right. One thousand two hundred and fifty entries in eight months, which averages to roughly five posts per day.
Eventually an even deeper wave of depression hit, and I was rendered incapable of doing much of anything at all. Could barely take care of myself. By then, heaven knows how, I'd met my boyfriend who came to stay with me and helped me around the house and give me moral support as best he could, against all odds. [Now that's devotion: God bless you, you know who you are].
At that point, I had no energy for anything. Couldn't get myself to look at a magazine cover, didn't have enough concentration for books, didn't have any ideas about what to blog about other than "I'm depressed, I want this to stop" and THAT got old real fast. I got tired of ranting on the other blog. I had nothing helpful or interesting to share on this one. I was barely able to shower and brush my own teeth (brush my hair? what for?) A month or two of sleeping ensued. Everyone worried, and I'm really sorry about that my dear friends and family, but if you ask me it was probably much needed.
And then one day, a few weeks ago now, one of my guardian angels (aka my boyfriend's dad) said: "drop whatever books you've got going right now, you need to read some fiction, get out of all that serious stuff". And he's an intellectual and a teacher for heaven's sake. So I took his advice. I looked at my own library shelves and saw all these wonderful books I'd been amassing over the years and just picked up the first one that tempted me, and finished it in two days flat. I've been on a reading binge since. It's been wonderful. Sublime.
I'm not quite out of the woods yet, but the very fact that I'm sitting here and blogging about all this, right out in the open where EVERYONE can read this, including my coworkers, bosses, collaborators around the world, extended family... well for one thing, I'm sorry if I've gone on and on, but I just feel like I'm starting to come back to life, as though I'm taking my first deep breath after being stuck under murky waters for all this time. And it feels great to just come out in the open and not let all the shame weight me down anymore.
So am I a blogaholic? Am I not? Maybe. Maybe not. Does it really matter at this point? It comes and goes in waves. Sometimes I have ideas. Sometimes I don't. I'd like to start writing my own fiction, and I know better than to try to do that here, or rather out there for all the www to see. Kind of ironic that I should be more comfortable spilling my guts for all to see but so private about attemps at writing fiction. But that's just one of my many many contradictions. I'm sure anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis would have a field day with that one.
That's my story so far in a nutshell. Thanks for reading.
September 30, 2007
Hi. My name is Smiler. I'm a blogoholic.
Tag, you're it!
So I've been tagged for a meme, it seems. Thanks Riverlee, that's real sweet. What's a meme you ask, and how does one pronounce that word? Well I CAN explain the conceptual part of it, but the application can be quite broad actually. According to m-w.com, a meme is "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture." And it's "meme" like "gene". Which is an apt example, because one explanation is that the meme is the genetic building block of culture, and a meme therefore acts in a similar way as a gene does, so to speak. But don't take my word for it, DO go ahead and read about it on Wikipedia.
So. What are you supposed to DO if you don't know how to interpret it? I'm not sure exactly. It can take on so many different kinds of shapes from just a few words or paragraphs on a blog post or just an image (as in advertising campaigns), to hip sneakers, to a popular song, to a painting by the hottest new painter (or an old master rediscovered... yet again) or a poster with a political slogan or... a car... designer clothes... so many things. So it can become a tricky exercise. It's an very cool challenge for a creative like me, to be sure. Especially since I'm very interested in the idea of spreading more wholesome values through grassroots movements AND the popular media alike. You could say I've been researching this whole notion of the meme for nearly two decades now. It can go so many ways. Boggles the mind really when you think about it.
Keep things simple Smiler. Don't start driving yourself too hard over what is meant to be an amusing little exercise. Yeah yeah, I know. I'll just keep it to a post about my aproach to writing, since this particular meme that is circulating right now is meant to be a thing about writing, which... I might have an idea or two about that, though lord knows I am by no means any kind of expert to be talking about writing (unless you count the fact that I've been journaling since I was nine, but who hasn't?) 
Here's an interesting tidbit about memes: Malcolm Gladwell made a fortune just by explaining the phenomena of how memes spead to the masses in what turned out to be a bestseller called The Tipping Point. And what are bestsellers if not perfect examples of memes in action? His explanation of what the tipping point is: "that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an examination of the social epidemics that surround us. and he says:"The word [sic] "Tipping Point", for example, comes from the world of epidemiology. It's the name given to that moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. It's the boiling point. It's the moment on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards."
So... it's contagious. Is that something people should worry about Well actually, it very much is transmittable, yes. Which just the point. For instance, once I've published my meme, I'm supposed to tag others too. But for my part, I have every intention of spreading only good-for-you, wholesome, life-affirming, soul-nurturing type stuff, k? K.
Now Smiler needs to do her research to figure out what she's supposed to be writing about. See you again soon folks.
September 29, 2007
Because you've all been dying to know, I'm sure.
After some deliberation it occured to me that this post probably needs a foreword to explain just what's going on here. As previously mentioned, I'm presently reading The Moon and Sixpence and because I've just finished Stephen King's "On Writing" a few days ago (and I think he mentions that book in his suggested reading) I'm taking my time reading it, as opposed to racing through it as originally planned, so I have plenty of time to mull over the story in my head, think about the characters, place the book in the context of the period during which it was writen and published, and it occured to me that it's the sort of story which might have been quite scandalous in it's time. I myself have been so directly touched by it, that I imagined conversations about it, much in the same way people nowadays might describe a best-seller or the latest soap opera episode. So here is the latest episode from The Moon and Sixpence as interpreted by yours truly:
If you ask me, Charles Strickland is as sad excuse for a human being. I'm just at chapter thirty one (out of fifty eight), and already Strickland has: given no warning at all and gone and left his wife of seventeen years along with their two teenage kids without a dime (or a pence) and a note that basically says: "I'm leaving you and the kids. I'm off to Paris. I'm not coming back. My decision's final." BOOM, just like that. So the narrator of the story follows him to Paris and tries to reason with Strickland and get him to go back to his family, only Strickland... essentially doesn't give a damn about anyone or anything. He just wants to paint - even though he apparently sucks at it. He then gets sick as a dog, is on the verge of DYING in a rat infested dump when a fellow artist by the name of Dirk, who'se a goofy guy but a good soul nonetheless (and happens to think Strickland is an unrecognized genius), offers to take Strickland into his own home, even though Dirk's wife Blanche is vehemently against the idea. Dirk and his wife nurse Strickland back to life... and then, guess what??? The wife decides to leave Dirk (the silly but kind bad painter) for... GUESS WHO? That's right. STRICKLAND. But that's not all! Dirk, because he is such a kind and forgiving (and damned stupid) old fool offers to leave his own furnished apartment to the new lovers, and Strickland, that BEAST, doesn't even have the courtesy to object, and isn't the least bit perturbed about breaking up yet another marriage, even though he most likely doesn't give a damn about Blanche either any more than about the wife and kids he left behind (as these pages will no doubt show). So poor old stupid Dirk is besides himself with sorrow while Strickland, that no good MoFo BASTARD is just sitting there on Dirk's chair in Dirk's apartment, with Dirk's WIFE by his side, calmly smoking a cigarette (no doubt also supplied by Dirk).
I have a good mind to go and kick his ass!
Wait, I'm confused... WHO is it you want to beat up?
STRICKLAND of course!!!
Relax Smiler. It's just fiction Smiler, these people don't actually exist.
Huh? Oh yeah... of course... I knew that. (looks away pouting as if to whistle).
Though... you DO know the book is based on Paul Gaugin's life, don't you Smiler?
Yea yea yea, of course, yea. Hem hem.
Right. So. Hope I didn't give anything away. I might report back on the rest of the story. Or maybe not. I get too upset when I think about that Strickland bastard who uses the pursuit of his art as an excuse to be completely devoid of morals or sensitivity to others' needs and feelings. If the story describes Gaugin's character as well as his life, now I know why I've never been a big fan of his work. It's always somehow put me off for reasons I could never quite put my finger on. But then again, if I was truly to base myself on the artist's character and moral values (or the writer's or designer or architect, etc) to evaluate my appreciation of their actual work... that would rule out a whole lot of art, music, books...
Right. Best not think about that one too too much.
Chakra art
It was only a matter of time before I started getting into all that. Yes folks, I'm talking chakras. I've been doing yoga for more than thirty years now so it's quite amazing I hadn't taken interest in chakras sooner. My excuse? I had never really been into with the spiritual aspect of yoga - maybe early exposure as a toddler to ashrams... with all that chanting and those weird looking deities and blissed out faces all around put me off. So up till a few years ago, yoga had only been a means to stay in shape, period. The "other" stuff, all that spiritual new agey hocus pocus stuff (ironic to call it new agey considering yoga has been around more than five thousand years!) well I wouldn't hear of it.
So why now? How come the sudden interest in all things spiritual and chakras in particular Smiler? you might ask.
It's been a very gradual thing over many years, but lately, with so much time on my hands and so very little energy to run around, I guess I was bound to delve into matters to do with the larger question of the universe and what moves us and so on (to put it in ridiculously simple terms). And that's where the chakras come in.
But I don't want to overwhelm anyone with all of this. So for now, I'm just showing you these two pieces of artwork, which are called Chakra Art. I can't tell you the name of the artist because that info doesn't seem to be available, but I CAN give you the site where I found them: http://www.artoriginals.co.uk/. By all means knock yourself out over there, goodies abound! More to follow on chakras soon enough.
September 28, 2007
My two cents...
I'm reading another great book—The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham—which has been sitting there for years among the piles of great works I have here in my home. The story is so good, I got through half the thing in just one day. Mind you, it's a small book, so it's relatively easy to get through. What slows me down a tad is the language, which is Veddy British and also Veddy Old Fashioned. (can you tell I haven't read much Shakespeare?). But that only makes it kind of quaint and helps paint the picture of a very particular era (pre WWI), but the story itself (and did I mention it's a good one?) could very well have been writen in this century. In which case it would probably be taking place in New York and Bali instead of Paris and Tahiti, and nobody would be all that shocked about Strickland suddenly leaving behind his wife and children to pursue his art, since we live in a world with no morals nowadays, but whatever, at least we're all free to do as we please. And right now... it pleases me to go finish off said book in the comfort of a bubble bath. The dishes can wait.
Meditations from the mat
I've been a very bad yogi lately. That's the bummer about depression and loads or medication. You lose the will and the energy to do the very things which you love and can help you get better.
The whole idea of yoga is to be in the moment and follow the breath. It's not about "accomplishment" or "results" or "productivity". But I've always expected a lot from myself. At one point, my yoga practice and meditation was taking up to two hours a day, and that felt great, but then I just kept cutting back and back and back as I started my downward spiral, till I was barely doing a couple of sun salutations if anything at all. Everything became tortuous to do because there's always that nasty little voice in your head saying "you're not good enough", "who do you think you are" or "come on! snap out of it" etc. Since being awake was a living nightmare, the only thing left to do was to lay underneath the covers and sleep most of the day, where pleasant dreams might visit me sometimes. I don't know how my boyfriend puts up with any of this, which makes him more or less a saint.
I was thinking of all this just a little while ago, as I was doing half a dozen sun salutations or so. It felt like a big workout. But instead of berating myself for having so little stamina, I decided to be grateful for how good the stretching and moving felt, and that helped push away the constant chatter in my head... at least for a few seconds at a time. 
And then, I turned to Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga by Rolf Gates. Today's reading was as follows:
We are to think of ourselves as immortals, dwelling in the light, encompassed and sustained by spiritual powers. The steady effort to hold this thought will awaken dormant and unrealized powers, which will unveil to us the nearness of the eternal —Charles Johnston
"[...] Either we believe in our innate goodness and beauty or we do not; it is up to each of us to decide. We may spend our entire lives believing a lie about our true nature, or we may put our trust in our own grace. Either way, most of us have to choose what we believe about ourselves each day, each hour, each moment of our lives. The Yoga Sutras suggest that we stand in our divinity, that we consciously experience ourselves as miraculous.
In the second sentence, Charles Jonston returns us to one of the central truths of the Yoga Sutras: that energy is like a muscle; it grows when we use it. We grow in our capacity to do the right thing each time we do the right thing. Steady effort to hold this thought will awaken dormant and unrealized powers within us, which will bring us closer to that which we seek. So our divinity is affirmed, and the manner in which we can make maniferst this divinity is outlined. We believe and act accordingly, and as we do, this belief grows in our life. We believe in compassion, and compassion grows in our lives. We believe in love, live lovingly, and love grows in our lives. We stand in our light, live our light, and the light grows within us. We need only make a beginning, and that beginning will foster within us the power to move forward."
You never know what you might find...
I started organizing this blog a little bit better a couple of days ago. My mom gave me the idea, since she started her own blog, and of course it's a very good one, called Lee's River. She started creating categories from the get-go, which is a smart idea because blogger doesn't have tabs available in their templates (she has a category called "Dame Sally Markham" a character for Little Britain, and it's quite outrageous, I can assure you). So I've decided to follow her example, and I've spent a day or two going through my 300+ entries to put them in my newly defined categories, which allows readers to find material in my archives more easily. Go ahead and try it, knock yourself out... you never know what you might find.
Motivational Quote of the Day
" All great achievements require time."
— David J. Schwartz: Former professor, author,
and leading authority on motivation.
September 25, 2007
Re: On writing
"This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don't understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it's good, not why it doesn't when it's bad. I figured the shorter the book, the less the bullshit."
—Stephen King, On Writing (Second Foreword)
It's a good book, and a good read too. I'm somewhat relieved by the fact that King prones reading as much as writing as a means to become a good writer, because I've been a little bit short on the writing lately. The fact of the matter is I've only writen journals my whole life and my own life is not what I want to be talking about these days. Or at least not my present life. I've been wanting to try my hand at fiction for some time now, and this book gives some very good tips and pointers on how to get started. So thanks Steve for sparing me from the torture of a Creative Writing class. Now if only I can stop reading long enough to make some time for scribbling, we just might get somewhere.
September 22, 2007
The Radiant Child
“I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.”
—Jean-Michel Basquiat
“The only thing the market liked better than a hot young artist was a dead hot young artist, and it got one in Jean-Michel Basquiat.”
- From "American Visions", by Robert Hughes (click on the link to view full article)
“I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life.”—Jean-Michel Basquiat
“[Basquiat] was born in Brooklyn in 1960 to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother. He drew as a child and read English, Spanish, and French by the time he was seven. At eight he made cartoon books based on Hitchcock films. At 16 he created a persona named Samo and began writing poems. In 1977 he started painting these on the D train. When he was 18 an article about Samo appeared in [The Village Voice]. In 1981 he had his first one-man show and Rene Ricard wrote an article in Artforum about him (and Keith Haring) titled "The Radiant Child." Less than seven years later he died of a heroin overdose in the building he rented from his sometime painting partner and longtime admirer Andy Warhol. In eight years Basquiat had gone from street kid to art star to the grave.
Good or bad, Basquiat was a shot of adrenaline into the then shriveled art world. He was a pioneering architect of hip-hop culture and a stiletto to the heart of the white establishment. Ricard hyperbolically called him "the soul of the art world." Whatever he was, his paintings of words are words of warning; his pictures are mystic proclamations about past black champions and heroes. Hip-hop founder Afrika Bambaataa has talked about "setting history on fire by adding a fifth element." That's what Basquiat did in his short time on earth and why he still matters.”
—From "To Hell and Back" The Village Voice, April 18th, 2005 (click on the link to view full article)
“Believe it or not, I can actually draw.”—Jean-Michel Basquiat
September 21, 2007
I wonder if this ever happened to Miles...
So I'm sitting here and trying to find something interesting to post about. And coming up short again. But no wonder. After all, there isn't that much happening in my life lately. Mostly pills and side effects and sleep and doctors, and then more doctors, more pills, more sleep. And that's when I'm not feeling so sad I want to dig a hole in the ground and crawl into it. All of these things, I wanted to write about while I'm listening to Miles Davis who said: "Do not fear mistakes. There are none." But then I though, "what if some of my professional contacts read this? won't they think less of me? won't they figure I'm finished, washed out, done, over, kaput?". And what about friends and family, won't they needlessly worry about me? But I'm tired of all this shame that's prompting me to stay holed up in my apartment. This week alone, I've missed a friends wedding and a couple of yoga classes that the teacher had personally invited me to, not to mention all the emails and calls I'm not returning because "what am I going to tell them?" Because I just can't find it in me to put on a happy face and pretend everything's fine.
The scariest thing of all is how UNcreative I feel. I keep buying all these great books on creativity and design and photography and art and then they sit there on the shelves taunting me, because the second I actually crack one open I start to get an anxiety attack and I have to put it down again. I've been wanting to paint and draw for months now, and for once in my life I actually have time on my hands, but my inner artist won't cooperate. In any case, here are a couple of books I've been keeping close at hand for when that finicky inner artist is ready to come out and play:
Hand job - A Caltalog of Type by Michael Perry
"Hand Job collects groundbreaking work from over fifty graphic designer and hand typographers, an international array of today’s most talented typographers who draw by hand. Michael Perry selects work representing the full spectrum of design methods and styles. Each hand-drawn work is entirely shaped by the artist’s unique process—every one a carefully executed composition enhanced by unplanned “accidents” of line, color, and craft. Hand Job also includes photographs of found type, artist’s studios, and the tools that help make typography come to life. Michael Perry is a graphic designer and typographer who has created hand-drawn type for such clients as Urban Outfitters, American Eagle Outfitters, MTV, Rome SDS, Polyvinyl Records, and Amelia's magazine."
The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher
Amazon.co.uk Review: "The Art of Looking Sideways is an absolutely extraordinary and inexhaustible guide to visual awareness, a virtually indescribable concoction of anecdotes, quotes, images and bizarre facts that offers a wonderfully twisted vision of the chaos of modern life. Fletcher is a renowned designer and art director and the joy of The Art of Looking Sideways lies in its beautiful design. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters with titles like "Colour", "Noise", "Chance", "Camouflage" and "Handedness", Fletcher's book, which he describes as "a journey without a destination", is "a collection of shards" that captures the sensory overload of a world that simply contains too much information. In one typical section, entitled "Civilization", the reader encounters six Polish flags designed to represent the world, a photograph of an anthropomorphic hand bag, Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the moon, drawings of Stone Age pebbles, a painting of "Ireland--as seen from Wales" and a dizzying array of quotations and snippets of information, including the wise words of Marcus Aurelius, Stephen Jay and Gandhi's comment, "Western civilization? I think it would be a good idea". Fletcher's mastery of design mixes type, space, fonts, alphabets, colour and layout combined with a "jackdaw" eye for the strange and profound to produce a stunning book that cannot be read, but only experienced."
Quote of the day
"In all art, what we decide to leave out is no less important than what we decide to include."
Anon
September 19, 2007
Listening to...
... Miles Davis's It Never Entered My Mind from Workin' With The Miles Davis Quintet. It's definitely one of my all-time favourites. Been listening to lots of Miles Davis these days. It seems to suit the slower pace of my life as of late. I have several albums of his, but two of my favourites are Ascenseur Pour L'échafaud (which was completely improvised during the recording) and this one playing just now. I'm not so crazy about the more experimental-type tunes, the ones with no melody at all... they make me think of a cat playing with a ball of yarn, jumping all over the place and wreaking havoc, or maybe of a Jackson Pollock painting (I've never been a great fan of Jackson Pollock). John Coltrane has one such song (among others) which literally drives me bonkers called Chasin' the Trane and it goes on for no less than sixteen minutes! Sixteen minutes of chasin' the train is altogether too much if you ask me, but then you land on his version of In a Sentimental Mood and it makes it all worthwhile.
I'm really interested in this whole notion of "doing what you love" (see quote of the day in previous blog entry). Sometimes we fall OUT of love with the thing we were most passionate about in life, and then it's a matter of either finding something new to love, or working things out and finding a way to renew that commitment with a more mature understanding and maybe... less expectations. Kind of like working through a relationship, I guess. Okay. Getting too philosophical here. So. Back to Miles Davis. That man most definitely loved what he did. How else could he have gone on and produced such a strong body of work AND been innovative and pertinent through all those decades?
A quick research yielded this:
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz musician widely considered to be one of the most influential of the 20th century. A trumpeter, bandleader and composer, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s. Born in a well-to-do family in East St. Louis, he became a local phenom and toured locally with Billy Eckstine's band while still in high school. He moved to New York under the guise of attending the Julliard School of Music, but his real intentions were to hook up with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He quickly climbed up the ranks while learning from Bird and Diz and became the trumpet player for Charlie Parker's group for nearly 3 years. His first attempt at leading a group came in 1949 and was the first of many occurrences in which he would take jazz in a new direction. Along with arranger Gil Evans, he created a nonet (9 members) that used non-traditional instruments in a jazz setting, such as French horn and Tuba. He invented a more subtle, yet still challenging style that became known as "cool jazz." The recordings of the nonet were packaged by Capitol records and released under the name The Birth of the Cool. The group featured Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, and Max Roach, among others. This was one of the first instances in which Miles demonstrated a recurring move that angered some: he brought in musicians regardless of race. He once said he'd give a guy with green skin and "polka-dotted breath" a job, as long as they could play sax as well as Lee Konitz. After spending 4 years fighting a heroin addiction, he conquered it, inspired by the discipline of the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006. He has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame. To view Miles Davis's complete discography, click here.
Portions of the above biography were taken from the official Miles Davis website which I encourage you to visit. It's well designed and even features some of his artwork. 
Motivational Quote of the Day
"Chance can allow you to accomplish a goal every once
in a while, but consistent achievement happens only
if you love what you are doing."
Anon
Famous Drag Queens
I don't think these images need any captions, but if anyone feels inclined to submit some, I just might publish the best ones. I must say that Bushie junior in purple and lime green wig is positively adorable. The dress is in especially good taste and suits her complexion well, though I think I've seen it worn on a stripper once (in that most excellent Demi Moore movie "Striptease" maybe?). Billie well... she just has charisma no matter how she styles her hair. And who would have ever thought to put the words "Prince Charles" and "sex goddess" in the same sentence? Wonders never cease.
September 18, 2007
Why Running with Scissors is worth running around for.
"Sometimes when you work in advertising you'll get a product that's really garbage and you have to make it seem fantastic, something that is essential to the continued quality of life." From the first sentence of Augusten Burroughs's Dry, I was hooked. One review reads: "Fans of Burroughs's darkly funny memoir Running with Scissors were left wondering at the end of that book what would become of young Augusten after his squalid and fascinating childhood ended. In Dry, we find that although adult Augusten is doing well professionally as an ad writer for a top New York agency, Burroughs's personal life is a disaster. His apartment is a sea of empty Dewar's bottles, he stays out all night boozing, and he dabs cologne on his tongue in an unsuccessful attempt to mask the stench of alcohol on his breath at work. When his employer insists he seek help, Burroughs ships out to Minnesota for detoxification, counseling, and amusingly told anecdotes about the use of stuffed animals in group therapy. [...] And while its one thing to lay off the sauce in rehab, Burroughs learns that it's quite another to resume your former life while avoiding the alcohol that your former life was based around. This quest to remain sober is made dramatically more difficult, and the tale more harrowing, when Burroughs begins an ill-advised romance with a crack addict. Certainly the "recovered alcoholic fighting to stay sober" tale is not new territory for a memoirist. But Burroughs's account transcends clichés: it doesn't adhere to the traditional "temptation narrowly resisted" storyline and it features, in Burroughs himself, a central character that is sympathetic even when he's neither likable nor admirable. But what ultimately makes this memoir such a terrific read is a brilliant and candid sense of humor that manages to stay dry even when recalling events where the author was anything but." Took me two days to read the thing.
Having not read his memoir, Running with Scissors, today I decided that I MUST get my hands on it to read more about all the horrific details of this man's childhood (featuring an alcoholic father, a manic depressive mother who gives him up for adoption to her psychiatrist and an adolescence spent gobbling prescription pills and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and the psychiatrists pedophile 33-year-old son. All sounds terribly glum, I know, but he manages to make the most unlikely topics entertaining, even, dare I say... funny.) So I decided to try to save a couple of bucks and purchase the book in one of the many second-hand bookstores in this city, but no less than six shops and one library visit later, came up empty handed. So no Running with Scissors for today. Though I must say Augusten did inspire me to go back to editing bits of my own surreal life which are chronicled among my countless journals and blog entries... so if anything, thanks for that Augusten...
September 17, 2007
La citation du jour
"L'avantage d'être intelligent, c'est qu'on peut toujours faire l'imbécile, alors que l'inverse est totalement impossible."
"The advantage of being smart is that you can always act like an idiot but the opposite is completely impossible."
—Woody Allen
September 16, 2007
September 15, 2007
Why I love illustration.
There's so much amazing talent with such fertile imagination out there. I just discovered Pietari Posti today while doing random research on the web. He's just a kid really, and working out of Barcelona. Apparently others have discovered him much before me, since he's been recognized in PRINT Magazine European Design Annual 2006 and his client roster includes such notables as American Airlines, Dazed & Confused, Fast Company, The Guardian, Greenpeace, National Geographic, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Nokia, Seed Magazine, The Telegraph, Time Out London, The Times (UK), Volvo & Wired, just to name a few... but I think the work speak for itself. You can see more on his website - click here.
All illustrations by: Pietari Posti
Quote of the day
"The task of genius, and humanity is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously."
—Henry Miller
"...and still pay the rent."
—Mom
September 14, 2007
The word of the day
Call me a nerd, call me a mama's girl, call me a bookworm, call me what you want, but I just LOVE looking up words in the dictionary. I'm presently reading Zadie Smith's On Beauty and she provides me with several opportunities to look up m-w.com, though I have been known to peruse The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary of the English Language Deluxe Encyclopedic Edition, just for the heck of it.
Today's word is:
Malapropism
Main Entry: mal·a·prop·ism
Pronunciation: 'ma-l&-"prä-"pi-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Mrs. Malaprop, character noted for her misuse of words in R. B. Sheridan's comedy The Rivals (1775)
1 : the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase; especially : the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context
2 : MALAPROP
- mal·a·prop·ist /-"prä-pist/ noun
Hmph. Sounds like something I do a lot of myself. Oh... and the book is good too.
Recent reads
It had been sitting there on my bookshelf, along with so many other great books, beckoning, yet patiently waiting for it's turn. And then one fine day a couple of weeks ago now, I finally picked it up. Hmmm... Renaissance Florence... A wealthy cloth merchant's adolescent daugther with a keen interest in art... Religion, Sex and Intrigue... All that proved an irresistible mix. I couldn't put it down. My only complaint is that I finished reading it in just two days, and then it was all over, but that's nobody's fault but my own. There have been several other books since then, but The Birth of Venus aka Alessandra's amazing life story still lingers in my memory...
La citation du jour
Les miroirs sont des glaces qui ne fondent pas ; ce qui fond, c'est qui s'y mire.
[ Paul Morand ]
September 8, 2007
More mandala
I didn't have to go searching very far for the first one, as it was right there on the Wikipedia page about mandala. Isn't it beautiful though? Its a contemporary mandala made from a photograph of tree fungus. A little investigation brought me to the Earth Mandalas site where I found the second and third mandala made from photographs of yellow and magenta chrysanthemum, and blue/purple pansies. Simply sublime. Click here to see more.
September 5, 2007
This just in
From one of my favourite contributors, aka mom:
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "He who is in love is wise
and becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks
at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes
and his mind those virtues which it possesses."
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Love, love, love:
That is the soul of genius."
Krishnamurti: "The problem, if you love it,
is as beautiful as the sunset."
Henry David Thoreau: "There is no remedy
for love but to love more."
Erica Jong: "Love is everything it’s cracked up
to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave
for, risking everything for. And the trouble is,
if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more."
Wishing you a love-filled day.
September 4, 2007
Cringe-fest aka Miss Teen USA 2007
This is why there are so many dumb blonde jokes out there.
Question: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Amercians can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?
Miss Teen South Carolina 2007: "I personaly believe, thaaat... U.S. Americans are unable to do so, because-uh some people out there in our nation-ne don't have maps, and I believe that our ad-education like such as in South Africa and and I-rak everywhere like, such as, and, I belive that they should..."
Click here if you can't view the clip on the page.
Motivational Quote of the Day
"The human physiology is part of the cosmic physiology. Every rhythm of the universe therefore naturally has an effect on the individual and vice versa."
— Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: Founder and teacher of the Transcendental Meditation program
September 3, 2007
The old woman and the toad
My boyfriend and I were discussing online dating and while I was certain I had canceled any postings on such sites many moons ago, it occured to me that I may have forgotten one out there. Sure enough, I found one on "Reciprodate". Shortly after creating that account, I had rendered it inactive because I never could find a way to cancel it (those buggers always do make it so difficult). So since they won't let me leave altogether, I decided to have myself a bit of fun with their questionnaire instead.
Name: Pinkie
Age: 86
Education: No School
Location: McGehee, Arkansas
Occupation: Retired
Height: 7 feet 11 inches
Income: $1
Body Type: Gargantuan
Smoker: Smoke Regularly/Daily
Hair: None
Drinker: Lush/Alcoholic
Eyes: Dark blue
Status: Unavailable
Religion: I'll tell you later
Have Children: I'll tell you later
Ethnicity: Asian, Native American, Black/African descent, Islander, White/Caucasian, East Indian, Latino/Hispanic, Middle Eastern
Want Children: Yes
Languages: Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Swahili, Dutch, Malay, Swedish, Tagalog, Finnish, Pidgen, Vietnamese, Wookie, Hindi, Sanskrit
favorite saying: don't judge me, I won't judge you.
I'm most happy when: the sky is green
I'm least happy when: the grass is pink
A character from a book, a movie, or television that I can really relate to is: humpty dumpty
If I found a $100 bill on the street: I would eat it
Before I die, I'd really like to: see pigs fly (ideally they'd be wearing tutus too)
The first thing people usually notice about me is: the giant mole on my forehead, but I hide it under my pink hat
One thing that people don't notice right away about me is: my hump
My favorite article of clothing is: my pink hat
The most important thing in my life right now is: making time to pick my nose
The most important quality I look for in someone is: that he's not a heroin addict
The best way to make me smile is: dig a hole in the ground and bury yourself in it
The last album/song that I bought/downloaded was: I don't do that, music is the devil's work
The worst feeling in the world is: when my dog catches fleas and spreads them on my bed
One of my biggest pet peeves is: people
The strangest or most embarrassing thing that has happened to me is: being caught licking the sidewalk
A great way for me to spend a weekend would be: jumping out of a moving train
My favorite smells are: toad saliva and cat urine
If I only had time to save one thing from my burning home (besides people), it would be: my pet toad and the litter box
My favorite line from a movie: "The End"
This inkblot looks like a picture of: use your own damn imagination!
"The old woman and the toad" painting by: Judy Somerville
La lune est le rêve du soleil...
Les citations de Paul Klee
«La lune est le rêve du soleil.»
«Le génie, c'est l'erreur dans le système.»
«L'art est à l'image de la création. C'est un symbole, tout comme le monde terrestre est un symbole du cosmos.»
- Théorie de l’art moderne
«L’art ne reproduit pas le visible, il rend visible.»
- Théorie de l'art moderne
«Un monde heureux suscite un art ancré dans l’ici et maintenant.»
The two trees
BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with merry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Loves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the wingèd sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.
by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Serigraph by: Eyvind Earle
Turning 'Have to' into 'Want to'
By John Abdo
"In studying the habits of people — why they succeed or fail either personally or professionally — I've discovered that successful outcomes result from a "want to" motive opposed to a "have to" viewpoint. The psychology of both, "have" and "want," are polar opposites with very predictable consequences.
People whose actions are fueled with a "have to" attitude do so mostly because somebody else is demanding them to or they've been backed into a corner and have no other choice. A couple of "have to" examples: "My doctor told me that I have to lose weight, otherwise serious medical complications are in my foreseeable future," or "I have to spend time with my kids because when they grow up they'll think I was a bad parent." However, consider these comparisons of shifting from a "have to" to "want to" mentality: "I want to lose weight so I can be healthier and more productive for my family and business," or "I always want to rush home from work as it inspires me to see my kids growing up each day."
What initiates and sustains action is thought. And to produce successful results in any area of life, those initiating and sustaining thoughts must be motivated from a "want to" attitude, which is a characteristic relative of passion. Those who endure the process of getting back into shape or losing fat, or those striving to build a business and generate more income, with a "have to" attitude struggle arduously, and any achievement is often temporary due to lack of a sustaining successful motive. A "have to" motive is more of an obligation to some other will or desire, but certainly not that of the beholder.
You must learn to enjoy the process. The journey might be long with some bumps along the way. But, learn to love it anyway, and find pleasure in your ability to do what so many others have done — become successful in spite of the obstacles. This can be accomplished only when you "want to" do what's necessary to attain and sustain your goals. When you enjoy the process, you send powerful signals throughout your entire being, providing you with the energy, strength, endurance, courage, and confidence you need to succeed and remain successful. Champions in sports and business enjoy the process and literally enjoy the struggle; a good sweat is always healthy. When all actions are fueled with the proper mental energy, success is not only possible, it's inevitable."
