as the year ends, notes on nostalgia.
(most of the images in this post come from a self-imposed photo challenge, a couple years old now. though the north carolina mountain village called blowing rock has changed a lot since my childhood here, these snapshots are of things that remain exactly as i recall them, unchanged since my boyhood in the mid-1970’s.) Continue reading ho ho homecoming (one)
conversation stoppers: things to say to those who wander by while you’re painting
“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”-vincent van gogh/ “Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.”- friedrich nietzsche/ “Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.”- wassily kandinsky/“I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”- vincent van gogh/ “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.”- henry ford/ “If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.”- honore de balzac/ “The devil is not as black as he is painted.”- dante alighieri /“Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint.” – banksy/ “I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.”- charles baudelaire/ Continue reading the life-changing magic of. . . (three)
yesterday we were out walking around the inman park neighborhood looking at house paint for a house i barely know, the taylor house in winston-salem, a house i’ve driven past once, yet have never entered, and i was thinking about life and living in the face of death and dying.
what’s say we circle back, once or twice more around the block. Continue reading the life-changing magic of. . . (two)
i got the call last night, from a private client, one who shall remain, for reasons soon clear, not only nameless, but absent any identifying detail. i take his calls any time, any place, as my service to him is the essence of time-sensitive.
‘mom isn’t doing well,’ he said. ‘she’s lost a lot of weight.’
‘what are your holiday travel plans?’ he asked.
i assured him that no matter where i was in the coming ten days, i’d fly back to atlanta the moment he needed me to. Continue reading the life-changing magic of. . . (one)
what’s wrong with this picture? blue. a martini shouldn’t be blue. your bar doesn’t need to stock curaçao because tidibowl.
on the plus side, commander’s palace is one of several old-school new orleans restaurants to encourage a now-rare pleasure, one that in my lifetime has gone from standard to illicit. i speak, of course, of day-drinking. Continue reading drinking problems (two)
first (and firmly): my habit is to relabel ‘problems’ as ‘opportunities’, but in the realm of alcohol, that doesn’t work. the surest way to know you have a drinking problem is that you seek drinking opportunities. if that’s you, then click on elsewhere; our premise today is that while measured drinking is convivial, being a drunk is loathsome.
first boundary in place, we can look at drinking as part of a healthy and happy life. a tot, a snort, a dram– no matter what you call it (and after sex and money, alcohol has prompted more slang than any other human realm) having a drink is a pleasure. the best way to increase that pleasure is not through greater intake, but with more care, consideration, and confidence. here are some lessons for the bar. . . Continue reading drinking problems (one)
the dennis severs house is rich and layered, a great fat cake of visual detail, of dense narrative, decades in the making, overwhelming by design. david hockney called the experience of it ‘one of the world’s great operas’. for concentrated passion and sensory intensity, for high rococo-cuckoo, operatic seems about right.
the house is jam-packed, not only with objects, but also with object lessons. naming and claiming those lessons, in the face of such ‘too-much-ness’, is a tall order. luckily, i know how to tackle a cake: let’s take just one slice, and learn from dennis severs as host.
in yesterday’s post i tiptoed up to a dangerous edge, a place i’ve no business going: into the realm of art theory and criticism. i realized that rather than conveying my experience with dennis severs and searching it for lessons, i verged on analysis and jargon. so, before going further, a paragraph or two, mainly for self-reference, about intent. how do i mean to use this space, and what claim have i on your attention? Continue reading when you get lost: first, stop and look around
dennis severs: what have you done there on folgate street? your sublime, unsettling creation now survives you by some sixteen years.
dennis severs: you built a haunted house, peopled it with fictional ghosts, then found a way to cheat death and join them. is this trick unparalleled or is it the essence of art?
dennis severs: not only do i not know how to quit you, i hardly know where to begin. let’s start with bare facts:
Continue reading minding the gap (lessons from 18 folgate street)
the how and why of shopping; the where and when of it; who should shop (and who should not); retail etiquette, economics, logistics; all in the form of a list.
Continue reading london shop boy (adventures in retail)