Rejuvenation via Studio and Most Excellent Mail!
This past weekend I had an on and off stomach ache. On Monday afternoon I laid low for awhile and finished my parade book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. This book was rather mind blowing considering my interest in the parade.
Here are a few parts:
"While hierarchy is about exclusion, festivity generates inclusiveness. The music invites everyone to the dance; shared food briefly undermines the privilege of class. As for masks; the may serve symbolic, ritual functions, but to extent that they conceal identity, they also dissolve the difference between stranger and neighbor, making the neighbor temporarily strange and the stranger no more foreign than anyone else.....At the height of the festivity, we step out of our assigned roles and statuses-of gender, ethnicity, tribe, and rank-and into a brief utopia defined by egalitarianism, creativity, and mutual love. This is how danced rituals and festivities served to bind prehistoric human groups, and this is what still beckons us today."
"The capacity for collective joy is encoded into us almost as deeply as the capacity for erotic love of one human for another. We can live without it, as most of us do, but only at the risk of succumbing to the solitary nightmare of depression. Why not reclaim our distinctively human heritage as creatures who can generate their own ecstatic pleasures out of music, color, feasting, and dance?"
Since then I've been talking with Cinco de Mayo folk about parade updates. It sounds like Jason and Will have created a parade route for which I am enthused. Lyndsey has been busy working on her dragon head. She also had a genius animation idea that I am trying to get my mind around. Really it's how do we do it? and What's the most effective place to show it? I'd like to show it on buildings, really big.
Also talked with my friend Milton who I really want to carry in the parade. In this image of the sedan chair.
He has been in and out of the hospital with heart problems. He is an amazing artists from St. Louis that has been working diligently despite many obstacles along the way. His art slides were burned in a house fire, he had people refuse to give him artist advice because 'they'd never had any', and he has been battling health problems for the past couple of years. Despite all this, the work looks like it was created by a peaceful patient hand.
The other thing that made my days and studio practice was a series of new music mixes from friends.
From >Karlissima- A Tango Mix
From Brianna "the toughest girl i know" her CD Country Punkin', a great title if you know Brianna.
From Ian Weaver a mix of Hip Hop, Soul/ R and B, Reggae, and World Music. I've represented him through a work of his art.
Tonight I try to contact Jerome G about making an image!
Here are a few parts:
"While hierarchy is about exclusion, festivity generates inclusiveness. The music invites everyone to the dance; shared food briefly undermines the privilege of class. As for masks; the may serve symbolic, ritual functions, but to extent that they conceal identity, they also dissolve the difference between stranger and neighbor, making the neighbor temporarily strange and the stranger no more foreign than anyone else.....At the height of the festivity, we step out of our assigned roles and statuses-of gender, ethnicity, tribe, and rank-and into a brief utopia defined by egalitarianism, creativity, and mutual love. This is how danced rituals and festivities served to bind prehistoric human groups, and this is what still beckons us today."
"The capacity for collective joy is encoded into us almost as deeply as the capacity for erotic love of one human for another. We can live without it, as most of us do, but only at the risk of succumbing to the solitary nightmare of depression. Why not reclaim our distinctively human heritage as creatures who can generate their own ecstatic pleasures out of music, color, feasting, and dance?"
Since then I've been talking with Cinco de Mayo folk about parade updates. It sounds like Jason and Will have created a parade route for which I am enthused. Lyndsey has been busy working on her dragon head. She also had a genius animation idea that I am trying to get my mind around. Really it's how do we do it? and What's the most effective place to show it? I'd like to show it on buildings, really big.
Also talked with my friend Milton who I really want to carry in the parade. In this image of the sedan chair.
He has been in and out of the hospital with heart problems. He is an amazing artists from St. Louis that has been working diligently despite many obstacles along the way. His art slides were burned in a house fire, he had people refuse to give him artist advice because 'they'd never had any', and he has been battling health problems for the past couple of years. Despite all this, the work looks like it was created by a peaceful patient hand. The other thing that made my days and studio practice was a series of new music mixes from friends.
From >Karlissima- A Tango Mix
From Brianna "the toughest girl i know" her CD Country Punkin', a great title if you know Brianna.
From Ian Weaver a mix of Hip Hop, Soul/ R and B, Reggae, and World Music. I've represented him through a work of his art.
Tonight I try to contact Jerome G about making an image!
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