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Blackbird in the Cathedral
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Category Archives: Video
The Misbelieve Tree
Watching the final episode of Treme last night on HBO reminded me of the richness and incomparability of New Orleans and the life-changing 5 years that my wife and I spent living, working, and redefining ourselves there from 2005 to 2010, roughly the same timeline that David Simon and Eric Overmyer followed in the creation of Treme. We had been there just under 6 months before Hurricane Katrina hit. That portion of my experience and memory will forever be eclipsed by the following 4 and a half years dedicated one way or another to one form or another of rebuilding. Treme helped me begin to make sense of the fullness of that experience, which I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. New Orleans is an incomparable city in so many ways, and it has an enormous lesson to teach the rest of the world; and Treme, if I may generalize, should be a central component of the curriculum.
Last night’s final episode of Treme coaxed out a pre-Katrina memory. I was reminded of one of the many trees that we had to have removed from our property in Algiers Point, one of the few things we got done BK (Before Katrina). Some folks in the neighborhood called this tree a misbelieve tree or a misplease tree. It was, in fact, a Eriobotrya japonica or loquat tree, which some called a Japanese plum tree. Its trunk had been damaged, it leaned very much, and the arborist said it had to go. Those names, I’ve read, are associated with the tree’s name in either French or Italian. I’m not sure. Any ideas out there?
You’ll see this tree in living color 15 seconds into the following short video that I put together (images and terribly slow soundtrack) to celebrate our selling the property, which I’ve been told was the last house to sell in the Western Hemisphere in the summer of 2008!
So much so
So many people nowadays begin their sentences with so! So much so that it’s almost easier to count the number of sentences that don’t begin with so. So what? So here’s what I think. So some time back in the 1980s, somebody got fed up with processes, declared them to be wasteful, and decided it was time to accentuate products over processes. So that was fine for a while, but it quickly caught on, and by then, naturally, people got carried away. So eventually it wasn’t enough for folks merely to favor products over processes; no, they had to declare their complete displeasure with all processes and be associated with nothing but products, results, and outcomes.
So at the same time scientific illiteracy was on the upswing because of all the frivolous emphasis on stuff like the scientific method, which everyone knows is just a fancy name for just another process, which in this case is nothing more than an unnecessarily elaborate and expensive gotcha game that elitists like to play to make hard-working Americans feel dumb. So it’s like logic or something. So in order not to sound dumb or liberal and end up wasting everybody’s time beating around the bush instead of making a point, folks started beginning their sentences with SO, which is a conjunctive adverb like THEREFORE that pretty much used to be reserved for introducing the juicier clause in a compound sentence that delivered the intended, targeted punch line. So it’s like a preemptive strike this starting a sentence with so. So it’s like starting off with therefore. So it helps everyone jump right to the conclusion and appear more scientific, more results-oriented without wasting all of their good moves on foreplay.
So I believe there was an actual turning point in the 1980s when society as a whole came to the collective realization that accountability – as we knew it – was at stake and that each of us, each and every one of us, needed to take personal responsibility to say what we mean, mean what we say, and get to the point. So all it took was a simple, cost-effective, time-saving, performance-enhancing conjunctive adverb: so. So this turning point, this moment of truth that I’m referring to came to life in the form of a simple question that continues to resonate in the hearts of genuine leaders:
Whew! Random TSA Pre✓™
Cowboy and I have been dropping Ann off at the Des Moines International Airport (DSM) pretty frequently over the last few months. This morning was no exception; although, we had a few extra minutes to gulp down coffee at home because she was somehow randomly selected for TSA Pre✓™, i.e., expedited screening. It’s the little things in life that make the biggest difference.
Actually, she wasn’t dragging a wheeled tote, because today’s round trip will end before midnight, theoretically.
Ann’s definitely no stranger to the friendly skies as illustrated in the following documentary from September 2011 of her first flying lesson:
…but the hallway is hell (Part II)
A few days ago I posted this core drawing for which I had a couple of other versions. I went with the theocentric version. So I put them together in iMovie for the “hell” of it.
Might want to go “full screen” on this so the text doesn’t get chopped off.
Leadership Strings Attached
Back in May of 2011 a colleague hosted a party in Clarinda, Iowa, which as I look back, was without a doubt the highlight of my Leadership Iowa experience, Class of 2010-11, Best Class Ever. I won’t name any names; folks’ll know who’s who, if there’s any knowing needed. Suffice it to say that the host invited a couple of exceptional guitar players, and another classmate and I brought along our guitars. It was a real treat to play along with them; the rest is history as long as we’re talking about unrecorded history, those tunes went up into the nighttime sky like incense smoke never to be collected or confined.
On a related and completely ironic note, what prompted me to drag out this fond memory, and I’ll include the photo below that helped refresh my memory, was an accidental discovery that had happened earlier this afternoon on my Roland GR-20/G&L S-500 guitar set up. I was using a midi connection, something I usually don’t do, and stumbled into a setting that enabled a visual display of the musical notation set in motion by the synthesized, guitar-driven signals. I videotaped a snippet of that before it went up like incense smoke.
The photo:
Princess 1396 No. 2 by Eberhard Faber
(Pardon the interruption, but since I posted this long ago, I’ve added a gallery on the right-hand side of this blog dedicated to the Princess No. 2 School Pencil. Please read on, oh, and welcome.)
In a short video posted today by the New York Times, 72-yr. old Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell says, “If you put the pencil into a drawer, and you will leave the room, and you will not come back, but your great grandchild will come back and find the pencil, the first stroke he writes, it doesn’t dry out, it lasts virtually forever.”
Such is the uniqueness of this instrument, especially the Princess No. 2, which has tickled my fancy for decades. Across the top of my home page is a photo of larger-than-life-sized Princess No. 2, which I carved out of poplar, engraved, painted, stained, and sealed back in the mid 1980s.
2014
I look forward to doing more sculpting and carving once I get my studio back up and running; stay tuned…
I’ve added a few thematically related drawings from that era, but first, check out that short video:
Unfortunately, here’s what’s left of the Eberhard-Faber Princess No. 2 School Pencil.
Hey Stella
In a recent conversation I was reminded of the Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest, a special event of the annual Tennessee Williams Festival held in Jackson Square in New Orleans, LA.
This drawing is roughly based on my memory, my imagination, and the YouTube video that follows.
I posted this short video while living in New Orleans in 2009. I invite you to take a look; you just may get a kick out of it.
A Shoe Theme Has Emerged: Men’s Shoes Can Be Loud Too
We wear shoes. Some of us would have a harder time sneaking up on others because of the sounds our shoes make. One of those sounds prompted me to produce this clip:
That little clip was based on something similar I had already tried a couple of weeks ago (see below), I used the following two images in iMovie, did some editing, and added some sound tracks. These are the two drawings done in Fifty Three Paper, the iPad drawing app.
Fifty Three lets you duplicate a drawing. I did so, erased the hammers, and added bunny slippers. Wishful thinking?
BULLETIN: This just in from the Des Moines Register: Police: Dispute comes to head with hammers
The following short clip, entitled Airport Security or TSA, is the prototype I referred to.
The two drawings use in Airport Security or TSA:
Little Boxes, Armour Hot Dogs, Earworms, & Neti Pots
Let’s see; how did this drawing come about?
That recurring moment when you have the song Little Boxes running through your head and it keeps turning into the Armour Hot Dogs theme song
Earlier today, for no apparent reason, I found myself, no, heard myself thinking about the tune, Little Boxes, (1962 song by Malvina Reynolds) made famous first by Pete Seeger in 1963 and then more recently by the Showtime television series Weeds. Now, for the record, back in August of 2009 I crafted and posted a related YouTube video with my own sound track, a variation of Little Boxes, because I was so taken by the song. However, this morning, each time I tried to hum along with Little Boxes, as it was being rendered to me by my own unique stuck song syndrome, the melody would morph into the Armour Hot Dog theme song, as portrayed in the 1967 TV commercial. Think about it. Hum along: Little Boxes…Armour Hotdogs. OK, that’s enough. Quit while you’re ahead!
There is nothing worse than an earworm that starts off one way and undergoes a metamorphous inside your head before it goes on…and on…and makes itself at home.
portfoliolongo 