Absolute Reverence

Please, only listen to this when you are prepared to take time for six minutes of absolute reverence.

Absolute reverence and attention to only the depths of your Soul.
That’s all I ask of you, my Friends.

Little Wing

I’m delving into my collection of feathers for my locv.  They’re to weave into her hair.  I looked first into my wooden cigar box that is filled with ultra-warm, downy, drifting, drift-away feathers.

You know.

The one that floats down smack dab in your path while you’re on your way somewhere. But you can’t stop because you’re late for work and you don’t have your camera anyway.  Still.   It makes you pause  .  .  .  .  .

Or the one that stops you in your tracks and pulls you right off of the path.  Makes you kneel down in the damp leaves to take a photo and everyone asks why your knees are wet.

Smile a secret smile and show them this:

There’s the smug one that you pass on your bike every day for a week.  Glimpsing it from the corner of your eye.  Stuck there on a brambly twig, reaching out from a hedgerow.  Knowing you can’t resist it.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, there are the ones that remind you that there are angels.

However, these were all a bit too fluffy for Turtle, who after all, swam and delved for mud and carried creatures on her back.

I decided to get out my special ‘reserve’ feathers.  I keep these in a satin lined box from Fortnum & Mason.  It is a wing I found somewhere, while I was out walking.  Its something I do.  Find wings.

These feathers represent the winged ones who helped to make the mud solid in the Muscogee creation story.

Remember where we left off?

“Everyone began to pile their land up together.  Soon there was much land, Ekvnv, being formed about.

Of all the creatures, Fuswv, the Birds, were closest to land.  They clambered up onto it.  Soaked to the bone, they stretched their wings out to dry.  As they flapped their wings upwards, they came to know flight.

Fuswv, the Birds, happy at finding themselves airborne, also desired to help.  With their wings, they dried the land.”

This fragment is from a version of the Muscogee creation story told by Emma Burney, a Black Creek of Jacksonville, Florida.  The entire story can be found in Creation Myths and Legends of the Creek Indians which I’m currently reading.

Little Wing

The feathers are so delicate, tiny and translucent.   Yet, I think that these feathers truly could dry the world.

fragile strength

What Jimi said:

“Well, that was one song on there we did a lot of sound on, you know.  We put the guitar through the Leslie speaker of an organ, and it sounds like jelly bread, you know . . . . . It’s based on a very, very simple American Indian style, you know, very simple.
I got the idea like, when we was in Monterey, and I just happened to . . .  just looking at everything around.  So I figured that I take everything I see around and put it maybe in the form of a girl maybe, something like that, you know, and call it ‘Little Wing’, in other words, just fly away.   Everybody really flying and they’s really in a nice mood, like the police and everybody was really great out there.  So I just took all these things an put them in one very, very small little matchbox, you know, into a girl and then do it.   It was very simple, you know.   That’s one of the very few ones I like.”

“When I’m sad, she comes to me
With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free
It’s alright she says it’s alright
Take anything you want from me,
Anything.”
-Jimi Hendrix, Little Wing, 1967

Urban Flow

I’m perusing my folders of urban photographs and found this video tucked away.  A hot summer day on the canals of Digbeth.

Hip to Be Square

We went to a party on Saturday night in which the theme was ‘Square’.  Steve went as a famous square in London.  I made his ensemble on Friday night, which consisted of a hat

Detail of hat

and a further clue . . . . .

Ship’s biscuit from the HMS Victory

Most people got it pretty quickly when Steve said he’s a London square.

Steve as Trafalgar Square a la Lord Admiral Nelson

Lord Admiral Nelson as Himself

I focussed on the food, of course.

Chocolate Battenberg Cake

After Eight Cupcakes

At the last minute, I decided on my rather obtuse costume: a square in major European city.

Rembrandtplein, Amsterdam

I wore a grey linen swing top over a long-sleeved black T-shirt and linen trousers with random squares of 4 brooches pinned to it.  The brooches are made from my photographs of Amsterdam printed onto silk.  Rembrantplein is around the corner from where I usually stay when I visit the city.  One of my artist friends said that my grey and black palette reminded her of Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro.  So it worked, after a fashion.

Michael Forever, Thirty Two, Houseboat & Vespa

I invited our hostess and birthday girl, performance artist and actress Lucy Patrick to choose a brooch for her birthday present.  She was dazzlingly arrayed in blue and white checks and a T-shirt with her age, squared, on it. 2704.

You can do the math.  Steve and I figured it out doing the ‘guess and check method’.

Some of the other guests -

I couldn’t resist.

Right-ee-o

OK, I’ll admit it.  I’m putting off the decorating.  We’re re-painting our flat, an activity that I initiated, but I get really bored with sanding, priming and painting the trim.  But I have been researching Pat Sullivan’s Felix the Cat.  He was the first animated character to draw cinema audiences (of adults) and was hugely popular in the 20′s, in fact more popular than the live silent movie stars and world leaders of the same era.

From 'Woos Whooppee'

Here’s Felix in Fairyland, a feature length cartoon from 1923.

There were also several popular songs written about him.  Paul Whiteman was the leader of dance bands in the 1920′s and produced recordings that were immensely successful, including Felix! Felix! Felix the Cat!

Felix, Felix, Felix the Cat,
Welcome, welcome, home to our flat.
You fascinate me with your funny meow;
I’ll feed you catnip and sweet milk from the cow.
Felix, Felix, in our backyard,
You can hang up your hat.
Make your pillow underneath a pussywillow,
Felix, Felix the Cat!

Recorded by Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra, 1928 with Bix Biederbecke on trumpet.

OK, back to my decorating.  As an incentive, I’ll be thinking of some more Felix the Cat stuff to blog about!

Runnin’ Down a Dream

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, 1977

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are my favourite rock band, ever since my big sister gave me a copy of their debut album in 1977 when I inherited her Pioneer stereo.  I was 14 and have grown up over the past 34 years  listening to their music.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 1976, album cover.

I was pretty excited when I saw an ad in The Guardian that they’d be playing at The Royal Albert Hall this June on their first UK tour in 20 years.  I had to work the day tickets went on sale, but I left Steve with strict instructions to get online and at the end of the phone at 9am.  He did his best, but tickets sold out in about 10 minutes.  I tried to be philosophical and not too bummed about it.  After all, I’d seen Tom and the boys at The Hollywood Bowl in the mid 1990′s and again in Raleigh, NC in 2002.  As a consolation prize, we bought Peter Bogdanovich’s excellent documentary on The Heartbreakers, “Runnin’ Down a Dream”.

We watched Part One and a week later, planned to watch Part Two.  I was on Facebook and decided to post the documentary trailer beforehand.  I found it on YouTube and somewhat cynically clicked the ‘On Tour 2012 Buy Tickets’ button.  It took me to the Official Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ website.  I trawled around in the Tour Dates area and saw that there was a show in Cork, Ireland on 6/8/2012.  I said “Whoa, they’re coming back in August!”  Steve said “Are you sure it’s not June 8th?”.  Ya see, I’m in the middle of two cultures and sometimes forget that the US and the UK transpose the month and day.

Anyhow, long story short, a Cork show had been added in June after their Dublin show.  Tickets went on sale the next day and we got ourselves two of ‘em! I’m officially stoked.

So we’re planning a road trip to Southern Ireland for our 2nd wedding anniversary.  Steve got a MP3 adaptor for his car cassette deck so we can spin Tom Petty tunes all the way.

Night Driver

‘Night Driver’ was the first one I played.  It’s one of my favourites from the Highway Companion album.