Southern Trees, Rothko, The Locket & Francesca

So, I've had a few things on my mind I wanted to share...

A. The South (Continued)
Some exposition...
Last week I made barbeque (sauced) ribs and chicken. Biscuits, sweet mashed potatoes, too. Craving southern food. This was laregly brought on by an engaging conversation with some fellows from down south - Alabama and Virginia. Myself being from Texas, it was cozy and familiar. I informed them of Strange Fruit, the song written for and made popular by Billie Holiday. This song, which I am studying to the end of performing it live within the next 6 months to a year, is about lynchings.
A few years back, I saw a documentary on the song - it's history and what not. At one point during the film, a list of people who've covered it scrolls down the screen including UB40 and Cocteau Twins and many, many others. Do a search in iTunes; it'll give you a hint of how much it's been covered. Anyway, this list in the movie left me with a lasting impression. {Aside: I was just a budding singer then. In real life, that is. Deep down I've always been one...ever since the fourth grade when I sang "You Made Me Love You" by Judy Garland. The choir teacher said, "I never knew you could sing like that." Somehow, I got off the choir track and into instruments in middle school, only to return to vocals 15+ years later}
So Strange Fruit has captivated me. As has the south. In my blood. So Saturday night, I spent some time learning the song, downloading the Billie Holiday version from Lady in Autumn: Best of the Verve Years. I toiled over the melody. Chromatic and complicated, it is. I, unfortunately, had previously listened to the Cocteau Twins version excessively. I say unfortunately because, as much as I love them and Liz Fraser's angelic, the way she delivered the melody is, I daresay, too dramatic for me. It doesn't build enough. It starts at the top and has nowhere to go. But I like its darkness. Meanwhile, the Billie Holiday version I initially found to be too understated. However, after listening repeatedly, and putting it into context with the subject material, I appreciate its complexity. My mind keeps replaying the scene in "Lady Sings the Blues" where Diana Ross, like a child, wanders onto the post-scene of a lynching...
My point to all this: Saturday night after meditating on this song, and having a southern mood lingering, at some point I turned on the television. It was pretty late and I was dreamy and pensive. I don't watch TV often at all, but I decided to see if I could find SNL (no dice, Olympics instead) or King of the Hill or something. I have no cable, on demand, comcast, or whatever so I just randomly hit channel up and down. Nothing worth watching. So I thought maybe I'd try WGBH 44. Sure enough, it was a whole hours-long special on the South and Reconstruction. Hallelujah. Just for me. Right time right place and all of that. I watched as much as could before I exhaustedly, contentedly passed out.

B. Kathy McDougald
She is my piano/harpsichord teacher. She is an extremely trusting, giving person. She's half-Wiccan, half-Christian, and something of a feminist. I found her randomly through an ad in the Metro over a year and a half ago. Last week she told me about a woman named Francesca Cuccini, daughter of some famous composer who was talented in her own right, as a harpischordist. She is often playing works by other female composers, like Jacquet de la Guerre. Her advice to me is always about being strong, but following your heart, which is my fave brand of advice. People just giving randomly misinformed advice to me when they have no moral ground to stand on is not welcomed, thank you. Anyway, I'm truly thankful for Kathy. She's one of the people that would make me think twice about leaving this town...

C. Mark Rothko
I've been reading about Mark Rothko, the painter. The book, purchased for ten bucks at the Menil Collection Bookstore and published by the awesome Taschen, was written by Jacob Baal-Teshuva. It's simply called Rothko.
It is highly enjoyable and informative. I feel it reflects the spirit of Rothko and his works. While discussing it with a friend today, I found myself getting so excited talking about Rothko I couldn't get the words out fast enough. That is something I've never experienced with visual art before.
I feel lucky that I can go to Houston where the Rothko Chapel is located. It's an octagonal (similar to a baptismal chapel) non-denominational space for which he was commissioned to do a series of murals, as well as consult as to the architectural design of the building. {Morton Feldman wrote a special musical piece for the opening of the space as well. A friend is loaning it to me soon and I can hardly wait.} Sadly, Rothko died one year before the space was opened to the public.
I've also seen the "Rothko Room" in the Tate Modern Museum in London. A huge room that warmly houses his large colorful paintings.
His art affects me. I also find details of his life very interesting. Markus Rothkovich was born in Dvinsk, Russia, but grew up mostly in Portland, Oregon - a city to which I myself am headed and will be standing in one month from today. I hope to find something of him there...
Initially, I had no idea there was such an art scene in Houston, and while I lived there I hardly took advantage of it. Now with the wisdom of my age, I appreciate it so much more. People ask me if it's boring in Houston when I go. No, it's not.

On a related note, there is a Frank Stella exhibit up at the Sackler Museum. I took it in with my buddy Frank on Monday. We have a museum club. We also checked out the Sert Gallery at the Carpenter Center at Harvard. The Frank Stella was pretty well presented. Though I definitely prefer Rothko, there are similarities in size, geometrical shapes, and color use. I really like "Them Apples" and "Red River Valley".

The Sert is a cool little space, though the guards are unfriendly and intimidating. But it has a huge heavy door. The current exhibition is called Quantum Grids, and it includes an interesting piece by Fred Tomaselli. It a digital print of an article from the NY Times about some corporate embezzling bastard. There is depicted this aforementioned man and his wife leaving a courtroom. The artist somehow made what I can best describe as a color explosion like a harlequin around the man's face. And the whole sheet of paper is perforated into tiny squares to simulate a sheet of acid. Trippy. The other piece in the same exhibit I found worth mentioning is by a Chinese artist from the Fujian Province of China, which is known for gunpowder. His name is Cai Guo-Qiang. Though born in China, this artist went to live in Japan. His piece is a huge, wall-size sheet of paper with mushroom clouds all over it, more or less in a gridlike pattern. He made them with gunpowder. Originally, this piece was set up in the window of a shop in Chinatown in NYC which had chairs placed intended for sitting down to drink mushroom tea. Art and drugs. Drugs and art.

Other:
My locket, which I treasure, now contains a picture. Two, actually. W. Dubya. Not the one in the White House either. And W & A. My locket feels a bit fuller and more satisfied. For a long time, I liked not having anything in there, because I wasn't sure I could put someone's image and not have it be damaging. Now I fear this no longer.

I went to the doctor yesterday. There's a little weirdness with one of my breasts. The doctor said it could be caused by caffeine and/or hormones, and that it's perfectly normal and nothing to be worried about. But it feels uncomfortable...comes and goes...On a happy note, I lost two pounds since October.

Still looking very much forward to my trip later this month. While I'm out there, I'll hopefully meet up with Paula Kelley, who is doing a string arrangement of a Turkish Queen song called Chestbox. The process kinda makes me wanna do an all strings album. Or at least a few more tracks.