Ground Plane

 

The rain in Spain, and other things that go together.

 

Dear You,

There's so much packed into a word!  All the meaning there ever was for you, and then, all the meaning in the future, and the dictionary meaning, and also, the translation meaning, and all the meaning for another one!  It's very crowded inside words.  

There was a cloudburst, and that, means just one phrase:  Cloudburst at Shingle Street.   Your song for the day, and a teensy part of what can be carried in the word 'cloudburst.'

Until the clouds lift.

herd

 

White Robe, Susan Rothenberg, 1974.

Dear Riders,

Today, a small herd of horses: a poem, two paintings, and a song.  None of these horses have been overly romanticized, or infantilized, or idealized, and I like to see that.  I hope you do, too.

Chix, Susan Rothenberg, 2003.

inverse

Dear Listeners,

Two songs for you, today.  They are kind of inversions of each other; for certain occasions, you will want to invoke You Won't Fall, and other times, maybe even right now, you will want to use Don't Let Me Down.

erasure

 

Shed.

 

OK

Dear Whomever & All,

How are you?  Take a few minutes to answer, or you can use these handy check boxes:

[]  Nothing nice to say, so saying nothing.

[]  I'm fine.

[]  I'm well.

[]  Could be worse, considering.

[]  I am too privileged to be entitled to be anything but guiltily fine.

I thank you for asking me, in kind; I am feeling surprised, at how low one can go.  Have this song, for today, and let's keep a good thought for tomorrow, as remote as that seems.

Marking Time.

Image courtesy of the Museum at Eldridge Street.

Dear Calendar,

You are chock full of National Days (case in point: National Create a Vacuum Day), and I cannot seem to manage to celebrate even a few of these, so I am setting my sights low, on just one per year, and National Egg Cream Day is today!  

If you have never had one, well, you can go out and find one, or you can make your own.  Here is a website devoted to egg creams to set you off enjoying, celebrating, and drinking egg creams on their big National day!

We used to drink them outdoors, at a cafe called Swilly's, in the sun, with Nanaimo Bars, near the train tracks, when the walls of the cafe were covered in a friend's beautiful paintings.  It was a feast of sight, sound, and taste.

I Can't Tell You: an anti-note.

                                       

Pettakare Cave

Dear Contemporary Parlance,

I can't tell you how much I wanted to reach out to you during this challenging time of being together alone.  It's just that I am so busy with diving deeper into self-care, that I haven't found the time.  There used to be time, but, I think it wasn't really there.  It was just crammed into smaller instants, because it was an all you can eat buffet of time.  Now that I have all this time, I am using it much differently.  I don't even recognize it as the same substance, actually.  And I really don't have time now, to observe your normal and play my pantomime role in it.  So, don't come around here for your precious 'normal,' because it's not here, it went away, and I don't miss it even a tiny bit.  Also, if you come over for a cup of 'new normal,' don't bother to knock, because I will be self-isolating for your protection.

 Not, and please never do, signed "warmly."  It sounds as if you are just starting to get mad, just at the outer edge of outrage that you should have started feeling years ago.  Instead, let me sign, 

hotly,

yours,

for now.

PS  

Your song for today.

The Wonderfulness.

 

Michael Johansson

Dear Viewers,

Ooh, you are going to love these sculptures!  They are just what I would make, if I could make such things.  Actually, I think I might be making these same things, but with different materials.  

What, then is the subject of these sculptures?

A: The stuff humans made that aren't being used as originally intended, being used in new, formally compelling and visually interesting ways: hair dryer, plastic brick, suitcase, flashlight, gameboard.

And the content?

A: The re-presentation of the stuff humans made and aren't using is a little sad, but also nostalgic, funny, silly, and almost, very nearly, joyful.  All the multitudinous associations and meanings of these items, but also the negation of those meanings, because they cannot be used in those ways any longer.

End of art lesson!

Crossfade- Green

Bonus observation:  What an utterly charming artist, that would describe the media so completely accurately as 'ordinary items!'

Losing track.

Dear Radio Dodo Listeners,

I may have sent you this tune, this song of the day, before; enjoy it again, or for the first time.  It's been a lot of years of sending you tunes, and I don't keep very good records.  It's funny about keeping records; all these saved letters and cards, journals and diaries, photographs, receipts, and lists; they become very thin, very pale, very tattered in time.  Like memento ghosts, because their substance has transmuted, and their original meaning is lost too.

Still, what memento shall I make today, so the dust of tomorrow will have someplace to fall?  How about this: a 4 by 4 foot cube of plaster, layered, troweled textures, planes shifting and truncating, overlapping.  Washed with a palest cobalt blue, and on it, I will write you some words, words that subvert themselves, contradict, and open out in vagueness.

Until my next transmission, be well, and be making.