“It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding.”
“Normality is a paved road; it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow.”
“The painter of the future will be a colorist in a way no one has been before.”
“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”
“…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”
“In painting I want to say something comforting in the way that music is comforting.”
“Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.”
“I am an artist… It’s self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. It is the opposite of saying, ‘I know all about it. I’ve already found it.’ As far as I’m concerned, the word means, ‘I am looking. I am hunting for it. I am deeply involved.'”
“If one is the master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time insight into and understanding of many things.”
Cafe Terrace at Night
Garden with Courting Couples, Square Saint-Pierre, 1887
Vincent, smoking pipe 1887 melanotype showing Emile Bernard (second from the left), Vincent van Gogh (third from the left), André Antoine (standing at center), and Paul Gauguin (far right) in a group photo (I am not 100% sure of the photo’s authenticity)
“Van Gogh (sadly facing away) w/the great Emile Bernard” courtesy of Jerry Saltz
Van Gogh’s Self-portrait as a Painter (February 1888) Courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Van Gogh painted self-portraits because of a lack of models. He always found it difficult to get people to sit for him, probably a reflection of his awkward personality. Van Gogh also seems to have had a general aversion to painting close friends and family. Without models, the simplest way to develop as a portrait artist is to paint oneself, since this only requires the use of a mirror. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/07/09/van-goghs-self-portraits-what-do-they-really-reveal
“When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don’t even notice.”
“I’ve always been a Democrat, it runs in my family.”
“Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.” (Interview, The Los Angeles Times, 1969)
“They always ask me the same questions. Where was I born? When did I start singing? Who have I worked with? I don’t understand why they can’t just talk to me without all that question bit.”
(Interview, The Montreal Mirror, 1976)
Rufus Thomas was the preeminent DJ of Memphis’ WDIA, the nation’s first radio station with an all-Black air staff.
He was the first black artist on Sun Records, the label of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis. About Sam Phillips & Sun Records, for whom he cut “Bearcat” in 1953, the label’s first single to chart, Rufus Thomas had this to say: “Me and Sam Phillips? We were tighter than the nuts on the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Few of rock & roll’s founding figures are as likable as Rufus Thomas. From the 1940s onward, he has personified Memphis music; As a recording artist, he wasn’t a major innovator, but he could always be depended upon for some good, silly, and/or outrageous fun with his soul dance tunes. He was one of the few rock or soul stars to reach his commercial and artistic peak in middle age, and was a crucial mentor to many important Memphis blues, rock, and soul musicians.
{His} biggest hit by far was “Walking the Dog,” which made the Top Ten in 1963, and was covered by the Rolling Stones on their first album.” -Richie Unterberger
“Being the Queen is not all about singing, and being a diva is not all about singing. It has much to do with your service to people. And your social contributions to your community and your civic contributions as well.”
I always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.
Being a singer is a natural gift. It means I’m using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use. I’m happy with that.
I’m the lady next door when I’m not on stage.
Singer/songwriter/musician Aretha Franklin poses with choreographer Charles ‘Cholly Atkins’ (1961) [Photograph Credit Frank Driggs].
It’s hard. When you love food, and when you’ve done a high energy concert, you know, a carrot is not gonna work.
Aretha and producer Jerry Wexler
Aretha and Ray
courtesy of Jazz Reflections
The brother that gets me is going to get one hell of a fabulous woman.
Aretha Franklin, Receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush, 2005
I wish to descend in the social scale. High society is low society. I am a social climber climbing downward And the descent is difficult. (Junkman’s Obbligato) ― Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti in front of City Lights Books during the time of controversial obscenity trial regarding Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl”, which City Lights published. Circa 1957.
“freeways fifty lanes wide on a concrete continent spaced with bland billboards illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness” *excerpted from A Coney Island of the Mind
“The pennycandystore beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality” *excerpted from A Coney Island of the Mind
Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl,” and was tried on obscenity charges. He was declared innocent, a landmark victory for free speech.
“Ferlinghetti was one of the more politically-minded of the Beats, and has been continually active on behalf of liberal causes. He attributes his pacifist consciousness partly to his wartime experiences: he had been sent to Nagasaki, Japan six weeks after the city was destroyed by the world’s second atomic bomb.” * excerpted from “Lawrence Ferlinghetti” by Levi Asher
Natacha Atlas is a Belgian singer known for her fusion of Arabic and Western electronic music, particularly hip-hop. She once termed her music “cha’abi moderne” (modern popular music). Her music has been influenced by many styles including Arabic, drum ‘n’ bass, and reggae. Atlas began her career as part of the world fusion group Transglobal Underground. In 1995, she began to focus on her solo career with the release of Diaspora. She has since released seven solo albums and been a part of numerous collaborations. She is a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Conference Against Racism. excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natacha_Atlas
The daughter of a neurology lecturer of Egyptian descent and an English (occasional) costume designer, Atlas was born in Belgium and grew up in a Moroccan suburb of Brussels, becoming (semi) fluent in French, Arabic, Spanish and English and studying singing and the raq sharki (belly dancing) techniques she uses to dramatic effect today. Her paternal grandfather had shortened the family name, El Atlasi, on arriving in Europe: “I have ancestry in Morocco further back than Egypt,” she says in her clipped London vowels. “But that name is also found in Syria and Lebanon.”
Her father’s large LP collection ranged from Middle Eastern sounds to occidental classical (“My mum was more into Led Zeppelin”). The house she shared with her brother and sister swayed to the unmistakeable voices of Egyptian diva Oum Kalsoum, the Lebanese tenor Wadi El Safi and Lebanon’s beloved Fairuz, the latter interpreting material written for her by the Rahbani Brothers. “I just loved the Fairuz/Rahbani style of music because it was a fusion. The Rahbanis had studied both Western and Arabic music and were fusing them way before I was born. It just made sense to me.”
Later, when at boarding school in Sussex, England after her parents’ divorce Atlas nurtured an early teenage crush on Abdel Haleem Hafiz, the hugely popular Egyptian singer, actor and heartthrob who died, aged 47, in 1977. Aged 16 she moved with her mother to Northampton for two years – becoming the city’s first Arabic rock star – then started travelling to countries including Greece, Turkey and across the Middle East, looking up relatives and soaking up inspiration. For a while she shuttled between the UK and Brussels, singing in a range of Arabic and Turkish nightclubs and even a Belgian salsa band.
No art is superior to another one, but every art looks for expertise and perfection. This is life, which continues; this is why there is no death. There is continuation. There is no silence. There is a continuation of thought.
Music and silence… combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.
Marcel Marceau was known worldwide as a master of silence. The world-famous mime delighted audiences for decades as “Bip,” a tragicomic figure who encountered the world without words. But during World War II, his skills as a mime came in handy for another reason: He used them to save Jewish children during the Holocaust.
Marceau was recruited to help the French Resistance by his cousin, Georges Loinger, a commander in the secret unit who was part of the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, a Jewish relief group that smuggled Jewish children from occupied France to neutral countries. Loinger, who was credited with saving around 350 children, died on December 28, 2018 at the age of 108.
whole article: https://www.history.com/news/marcel-marceau-wwii-french-resistance-georges-loinger
"The blues is not a plaything like some people think they are."
Son House
"He was the mentor for both Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson, and if in his prime had been recorded as much as Charlie Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson or Robert Johnson, he would be considered the pre-eminent artist of his time. He would have his proper appreciation."
Dick Waterman, blues historian and photographer
Nick Perls, Dick Waterman, Son House, Phil Spiro. Those three discovered Son House in Rochester in 1963 after having had disappeared from the music scene for 20 years
Skip James and Son House, Copenhagen, 1967
Thanks to Facebook friend, Henry Ridge, for this performance video
“Make do with what you got.” – Solomon Burke
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001
At 68, Solomon Burke remains as Jerry Wexler, founder of Atlantic Records, once described him: “a piece of work: wily, highly intelligent, a salesman of epic proportions”. In the 1960s, Wexler recalled, he got into a debate with Philadelphia DJ Jimmy Bishop as to who was the greatest soul singer of all time.
“We talked about James Brown, and Otis Redding, and Wilson Pickett. Then Jimmy said: ‘Solomon Burke. With a borrowed band.’ I agree on both counts.”
Excerpt from an amazing interview by Robert Chalmers
“Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.”
Comment on why his hit NBC TV show couldn’t get a national sponsor. (1956) Quoted in article at the Songwriters Hall of Fame
“I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.”
“I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.”
The Chieftains perform with Ry Cooder (right) at a concert in Glasgow
Ry and Taj Mahal
“Musicians understand each other through means other that speaking.”
“In oddball places, the electric guitar has been taken as an almost alien object – this weird, six-stringed instrument that fell down to earth and was then played loud but with traditional grace and intelligence.”
“No second chances in the land of a thousand dances, the valley of ten million insanities.”
Photo by Susan Titelman
From “Ry Cooder & The Moula Banda Rhythm Aces: Let’s Have A Ball”, a film by Les Blank taped at The Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA on March 25th 1987.
Concert was from a two night run – the last of nine total dates on the NorCal tour. Shot on 16mm film with an audio remote truck in the alley. Movie was released in Europe but not in the US. Great band, at one of the best venues in the ‘States, the last two nights of the mini-tour they were truly on fire. One venue was so small the band filled the stage and the dance floor.
Band:
Ry Cooder: guitar, vox
Jim Keltner: drums
Van Dyke Parks: keys
Jorge Calderon: bass
Flaco Jimenez: accordion
Miguel Cruiz: percussion
Steve Douglas: sax
George Bohannon: trombone
Singers:
Bobby King: tenor
Terry Evans: baritone
Arnold McCuller: tenor
Willie Green Jr: bass
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein visits Hopi House at the Grand Canyon, 1931. Photo by El Tovar Studios Museum of New Mexico Photo Archives
Albert Einstein and Mrs. Einstein visits Hopi House at the Grand Canyon, 1931. Photo by El Tovar Studios Museum of New Mexico Photo Archives
Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.”
“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
“When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.”
“Black holes are where God divided by zero.”
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
“It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
” Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.”
“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.”
“I’d rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.”
“We all know that light travels faster than sound. That’s why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.”
“I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.”
“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.”
“If you follow the crowd, you will go no further than the crowd. But if you walk alone, and find your own way, you will likely find yourself in places no one has ever been before.”
“Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren’t these the same questions as last year’s [physics] final exam? Dr. Einstein: Yes; but this year the answers are different.”
“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”
“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music… I get most joy in life out of my violin.” Albert Einstein, 1929
Good Black Men (Facebook Post)
Read this slowly and let it sink in. Look at the faces of these beautiful engaged students. And consider this brilliant conscious voice, world renown physicist in this powerful (1946!!) photo — that WAS NOT heard or seen in 1946:
In September 1946, Albert Einstein called racism America’s “worst disease.” Earlier that year, he told students and faculty at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the oldest Black college in the Western world, that racial segregation was “not a disease of colored people, but a disease of white people, adding, “I will not remain silent about it.”
When Albert Einstein moved to America, he was disappointed to see how black people were being treated. Even in his new hometown of Princeton, he observed separation of the white and black societies. Einstein thought of segregation as “unacceptable.”
“There are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious, but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the ‘whites’ toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out. Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force and in the white man’s quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery.”
Albert Einstein, very rarely accepted honorary doctorates but he did so for Lincoln University, a small historically black college in Pennsylvania in 1946. He also gave a lecture before a small group of students who are seen with him in the picture. After 70 years, photo of Einstein’s visit to Lincoln surfaced when a woman appeared in “Antiques Roadshow.”
Her husband, who was a photographer, was present in that classroom. It doesn’t take a genius to know that racism was, and still is, a problem in America, but the fact that the word’s top genius said it speaks volumes.
This is the desk of Albert Einstein the day he died on April 18th, 1955. Science has found a link between clutter and extremely high IQ. Thanks to Wiley Lowe on Facebook.
After his death Princeton invited his wife to come and clear out his desk…While there they wanted to impress her by bringing her into this huge gymnasium full of high tech equipment when they told her -“Mrs. Einstein…Here, thanks to your husband we can now figure out the secrets of the universe.” She looked around at all the massive equipment and quietly remarked…”I don’t understand…Al just used a pencil and a napkin.” (thanks to Michael Moses for this story)
“I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with “Beat”… the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific… People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks and finally I was called the “avatar” of all this.” “The Origins of the Beat Generation” in Playboy (June 1959)
“My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I’m a wretch. But I love, love.” Satori in Paris (1966)
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
“I’m going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.”
Kerouac, as quoted by Allen Ginsberg in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice (2006), page 250.
“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
“The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view.”
“Life must be rich and full of loving–it’s no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.”
“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
“Believe in the holy contour of life.”
“Be in love with your life every detail of it.” Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956
“Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world.” Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969
“They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!'”
“The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death.”
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
“At one point the driver said, “For God‘s sakes, you’re rocking the boat back there.” Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our soulsall our lives.” On the Road (1957)
“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass.” The Dharma Bums (1958)
I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down. Jack Kerouac: Angelheaded Hipster (1996) by Steve Turner, p. 117
“So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.” Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings (1999)
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Reality is frequently inaccurate.
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Always keep a towel handy.
(thanks Michael Procell)
DON’T PANIC!!
(thanks Satya Katy)
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Ornette Coleman, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for “Sound Grammar,” the first jazz work to be bestowed with the honor.
photo of year, 2006, awarded to
John Abbot by Jazz Journalist’s Association
I decided, if I’m going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I’m going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.
To me, human existence exists on a multiple level, not just on a two-dimensional level, not just having to be identified with what you do and what you say.
DJ Spooky and Ornette Coleman
I don’t really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I’d like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.
Ornette and Deandro Coleman
photo by Elliot Landy
I remember once I read a book on mental illness and there was a nurse that had gotten sick. Do you know what she died from? From worrying about the mental patients not being able to get their food. She became a mental patient.
In the mid-1960s, it looked as if Arthur Lee and Love would become one of the dominant bands of their era, alongside fellow Los Angeles groups such as the Doors and the Byrds. Yet despite recording at least one masterpiece, Forever Changes (1967), Love were plagued by personal problems and infighting. Lee, who has died aged 61 of leukaemia, never quite lived up to his own mythology, although he had been rebuilding his career after time in jail.
Love evolved out of folk-rock group the Grass Roots and by late 1965 were building a reputation for their dynamic live shows around the Sunset Strip and at Bido Lito’s in Hollywood. They were the first rock group to be signed by Jac Holzman’s folk label, Elektra.
Original guitarist Johnny Echols was a childhood friend from Memphis and Lee was proud to have formed rock’s first mixed-race band. “I lived in Tennessee until I was five years old, and it was segregated,” said Lee. “A multiracial band was my thought from the beginning.”
Adam Sweeting, The Guardian
Love’s first appearance on the Dick Clark Show
Arthur Lee and Jimi Hendrix, 1969
Jimi Hendrix and Arthur Lee met in 1964 or 1965 at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, where singer Rosa Lee Brooks was recording Lee’s song “My Diary.” Lee claimed the session was Hendrix’s first time in a recording studio, though it seems likely Hendrix had already cut “Testify” with the Isley Brothers.
From documentary Love Story, Lee talks about his history with Hendrix and his influence on the guitarist’s dress style:
“His brother told me that Jimi Hendrix took a look at my first album and said, “I think I’ll try it this way.” He stole my dress attire, mate, and I don’t appreciate that shit, but [laughs] I can’t play the guitar like him at all.”
The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.
For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.
Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.
I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection.
Bobby Womack wrote and originally recorded The Rolling Stones’ first UK No. 1 hit, “It’s All Over Now.” He started his career as the lead singer of his family musical group The Valentinos and as Sam Cooke’s backing guitarist.
Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can’t do anything about that.
It’s a really unfair world because life is, where I am; all day long we listen to American music. So I don’t see why the radios in the U.S. cannot even put aside one hour a day just to play music that is not American.
There are a lot of homes for boys, but very few for girls, that is why I chose to do for girls.
And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it’s third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries, now it has changed to developing countries, it’s much more polite.
Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you. First intelligible words spoken over the telephone
(10 March 1876)
I just called to say I love you. Stevie Wonder
“Portrait of Miss Keller with Anne Sullivan and Alexander Graham Bell in a garden. They are simultaneously using three modes of communication: spoken language between Miss Sullivan and Dr. Bell, the manual alphabet between Miss Keller and Dr. Bell, and lip reading between Miss Keller and Miss Sullivan, circa 1894.”
Alexander Graham Bell with his family and friends at the lodge, Baddeck, Nova Scotia. Collection of Photographs of the Alexander Graham Bell Family (Library of Congress).
ca. 1890
“My mum was more into Led Zeppelin.”
“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”
.” Lee claimed
the session was Hendrix’s first time in a recording studio, though it seems likely Hendrix had already cut “Testify” with the Isley Brothers.
, Lee talks about his history with Hendrix and his influence on the guitarist’s dress style:
b-ray bloggin' 
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