Yesterday I went to the corner deli to get cigarettes and a chocolate bar, everywhere were newspapers with photographs of a young devastatingly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor on the covers. I had seen a still very gorgeous Taylor while in college. I had my first and last show of some of my paintings, a piece or two from a series I had been working on based on Michaelangelo's slaves on his tomb for Pope Julius, a great favorite of mine and something I was 'studying' whatever that means as an art student in a small mountain village in Switzerland. Apparently, I don't remember much, my professor, a charming man who enjoyed a bit of scotch with his breakfast and who had come to this small Swiss village to teach via Oxford had sent in my work for a show in the very posh village of Gstaad where the swells and stars gathered. So I had to go to the opening, not really one of my favorite things to do.
As I walked from where the bus dropped us off to the gallery space, this all a bit hazy, except for seeing the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She had a scarf on her head, so I didn't really see the famous black hair, but I'll never forget her eyes, her skin, flawless, such incredible beauty without any make-up on. That I'll never forget. No idea where she was going, but it wasn't anywhere about celebrity, just a woman walking in a mountain village. I had to go to this opening where the swells had gathered. When two women came up to me covered in furs and jewels and asked me while looking at one of my paintings if this was the new 'dry brush' technique, I decided right there to give up any thoughts of trying to make it in the world of 'art'.
So I drank too much wine, got a bit ill on the bus back from Gstaad to Leysin, the village where I went to school and went to my room and studio which was on top of the building I lived in, an old TB hospital where Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain and destroyed all my work, a practice I tend to continue to this day.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
In The Beginning And A Penguin Party
For over a year I had kept a blog going on MySpace. It had started as a release of sorts, a way of spitting out what I was feeling at a certain moment, an easy way out, I thought, easier than, 'painting it'. It's not easy and being 100% truthful isn't or writing something somebody else might actually read. In the process the blog started getting lots of attention especially by a few musicians so it grew into a combination of personal events that touched me and as support of musicians and artists I had both great regard for as people as well as for their work. I hope to be able to do the same here. So I'll begin with a combo platter...
On January 7th of this year while dangling about yet another music networking site I saw a man named Dave Milligan make a page. A few things attracted me to click the button and 'check him out', The name of his main band, The Penguin Party, the words he wrote, "It's all about music. That's all I do. All the time. Help!" and his name, Dave Milligan.
While growing up in Queens, New York I met a gal in Junior High School who I became inseparable from. I come from a very educated middle class background and though I truly admired where she came from, a lack of formal education but parents of unequaled integrity, she didn't. So she dreamed of having my opportunity and I hung out at her joint. With very good grades and a horse bet she got into the Ivy League and I went to a small American College in Switzerland. She met a man who was part of the stately homes of England and I didn't. The man's name is David Milligan and I so admired him and just really liked him. He left his background and married a not so regal Jewish girl from Queens whose father drove a truck for The Daily News and spent a lot of time at the horse tracks. I do remember him (the father) telling me, "if you want to meet a man who reads, go to the library, if you want to meet a man who drinks, go to the bar". Sound advice that didn't need ten years of University study. Anyway my friend took a Blanche Dubois bath and became Lady Milligan and we lost touch eventually, though there are endless stories of the Milligan purchase of a home here in NYC and their renting of a floor to Tiny Dancer of Elton John fame.
So I befriended Dave Milligan on Rock and Roll Tribe the site where I found him, began writing little notes which he kindly responded to, post way too many pictures of ridiculous penguins on his page, this amuses me and listened to his music, which I was blown away by, the originality, the skill and joy of it all, so I asked him to make a band page at Scrub Radio, an Internet Indy station I'm very involved with and to join the chat room there. Now Dave and his band and others he supports through his small Indy label, Sitting Target Music, have become darlings of the station and Dave a regular chatter...and he's not all about music. He's a husband and father who works hard to provide for his family and a supporter of the arts. I knew it was a good name.
The Penguin Party's CD's are available at
www.thepenguinparty.co.uk and www.sittingtarget.net
On January 7th of this year while dangling about yet another music networking site I saw a man named Dave Milligan make a page. A few things attracted me to click the button and 'check him out', The name of his main band, The Penguin Party, the words he wrote, "It's all about music. That's all I do. All the time. Help!" and his name, Dave Milligan.
While growing up in Queens, New York I met a gal in Junior High School who I became inseparable from. I come from a very educated middle class background and though I truly admired where she came from, a lack of formal education but parents of unequaled integrity, she didn't. So she dreamed of having my opportunity and I hung out at her joint. With very good grades and a horse bet she got into the Ivy League and I went to a small American College in Switzerland. She met a man who was part of the stately homes of England and I didn't. The man's name is David Milligan and I so admired him and just really liked him. He left his background and married a not so regal Jewish girl from Queens whose father drove a truck for The Daily News and spent a lot of time at the horse tracks. I do remember him (the father) telling me, "if you want to meet a man who reads, go to the library, if you want to meet a man who drinks, go to the bar". Sound advice that didn't need ten years of University study. Anyway my friend took a Blanche Dubois bath and became Lady Milligan and we lost touch eventually, though there are endless stories of the Milligan purchase of a home here in NYC and their renting of a floor to Tiny Dancer of Elton John fame.
So I befriended Dave Milligan on Rock and Roll Tribe the site where I found him, began writing little notes which he kindly responded to, post way too many pictures of ridiculous penguins on his page, this amuses me and listened to his music, which I was blown away by, the originality, the skill and joy of it all, so I asked him to make a band page at Scrub Radio, an Internet Indy station I'm very involved with and to join the chat room there. Now Dave and his band and others he supports through his small Indy label, Sitting Target Music, have become darlings of the station and Dave a regular chatter...and he's not all about music. He's a husband and father who works hard to provide for his family and a supporter of the arts. I knew it was a good name.
The Penguin Party's CD's are available at
www.thepenguinparty.co.uk and www.sittingtarget.net
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