Happy Holidays from the Strange Light Cafe

It Might Be Important

It’s the day before Thanksgiving. There is a ice storm outside, but it is warm in cozy in my room as I eat popcorn. Tomorrow I will have my first Thanksgiving dinner with Diva’s entire family -- my new family. Diva has been telling me for two weeks not to be nervous, “Just be yourself... just be yourself.” It is her mantra. It the past her ex-boy friends tried to put on airs and her family saw right through them. They just want people to be what they are -- and that is enough. I love them already.

A moment ago I was going through my notebook of drawings I have been doing to illustrate this blog. There was one that didn’t work out, I ripped it out of the book and was ready to crumple it up. I heard a voice scream, “Save that, it might be important.”

It was Diva, she wasn’t with me, but I head her voice inside my head. I stopped since I knew she was right, she always is. Just ask her, she will tell you as much. I once had all my old paintings tossed in a corner of my apartment, I gave some away the last time I moved and don’t look at the others. A few months ago she looked at them and insisted I enter two of them in an art exhibition here in Minnesota. I humored her. One painting won best in show, the other best realistic acrylic painting. Alright, she was right -- they weren’t as worthless as I thought. I can be a very hard critic when it comes to my own work.

I often do a lot of rough sketches until I get a design I like. I toss everything away and keep just the finished work. Diva pointed out that I shouldn’t since those might be important someday. It is funny, I am crazy about seeing artist’s early sketches or hearing the rough demos of songwriters -- yet I don’t treat my own work with that respect. Diva maybe right. Maybe? IS right. If I don’t treat myself and my work with respect why should I expect anyone else to?

I started a notebook a few months back where I save all of my early sketches. I will save this bad one too. For personal reasons I now think of them as my journal. They are one of the ways I talk to myself and work out emotional problems. Sarah Mclachlan once said she writes songs as a way of finding a place for something that is troubling her. It is a kind of therapy or exorcism.

I am also starting to feel this is my road forward, my place in this world. I strongly believe what Bob Dylan said that if you create it should be something that only you could create. Looking at my old paintings I don’t think that they are brimming with me. Looking at my new drawings they reflect a certain Vincent-ness. They are playful, silly, warm and looking at often serious things in a off-kilter, hopefully disarming way. They are very Vincent. I don’t look at them the way I look at my old paintings and begin to tear them apart: that hand isn’t right, that chin isn’t perfect. No, when I look at my new drawings I find myself smiling and nodding. Yeah, that is what I was feeling -- that’s me. And that is enough.

The Secret World of Teddy Bears

A child pointing his toy gun at his teddy bear. A naked woman on a couch with a similar toy. A German soldier in a trench cuddling his Ttddy bear. The world is full of Teddy bears and their small but reassuring warmth. We all need a teddy bear of some sort. There was an exhibition of photos of people and their teddy bears entitled “Partners (The Teddy Bear Project) in Munich in late 2003. The Canadian artist Ydessa Hendele hung them from ceiling to wall and in cases -- thousands of pictures from the innocent to vulgar and the funny to the grim.

At the end of the exhibition is one last room. It at first seems to be an empty room with just white walls. And then you notice a man kneeling in the middle of the floor, facing away from you. You go around to see what he is doing. It is a lifelike statue of Hitler, and it is then that it hits you: the show wasn’t about teddy bears at all. The exhibition was titled “Partners” because it was about the Jewish people and the German People before WW II. Looking around, the only way out is the way you came in. You return past all the photos you have just been smiling and pointing and chuckling at. They are now grim and frightening. The innocence is completely gone. Who were the soldiers, their families and kids and who are children of the gas chamber? With nothing but a teddy bear and a smile it is impossible to tell -- and that is a very unsettling glimpse into the playtime at the house of good and evil.

“Ydessa, The Bears and Ect” a film by Agnes Varda, French 2004

The Missing Parts of Great Songs Quiz

The Song Verse on the Back of a Milk Carton

If you were a songwriter in the first half of the twentieth century part of your songs have gone missing since you wrote them. Here is an example I found on a crushed milk carton in my mind just yesterday -- next to my own bad verse and “Lost in Space” reruns. I have heard this song all my life but I have never heard this part. Now I can‘t get it out of my freaking head. So I decided to torture you too:

When all the world
Is a hopeless jumble
And the raindrops tumble
All around

Heaven opens a magic lane
When all the clouds
Darken up the skyway
There’s a rainbow highway
To be found

Leading from your window pain
To a place behind the sun
Just a step beyond the rain...


What song is that from? You know it, really. No luck? Okay how about the next lines of the song:

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.

Ohhh, Judy, bluebirds, Toto, a tin man in need of a heart and a gay lion who wants it rough. You know it now, right? But that first bit wasn’t in the movie. No, it wasn't, but those are Yip Harburg’s lyrics for the first part of the song.

Here is another song, and it’s missing bit, professor music:

This day and age we are living in
Gives cause for apprehension
With speed and new invention
And things like third dimension

Yet we grow a trifle weary
For Mr. Einstein’s theory
So we must get down to earth at times
Relax, relieve the tension

No matter what the progress
Or what may yet be proved
The simple facts of life as such
They can not be removed...

What is the song? Nothing again -- right, unless you are Michael Feinstein or have all of his records, which I do. Here are the next lines -- and they will really help a lot:

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by...

Wait, you know it now: Bogart, that unhealthy bar full of second-hand smoke, Bergman, Casablanca and Nazis. Ah, Nazis -- nothing is more romantic than Nazis. But that wasn’t in the movie either. Nope, it wasn’t, but that is how the uncut song goes. So what gives? Why have big hunks of our favorite songs gone missing?

Well, first why were those bits written in the first place? Most of the standards were written for Broadway musicals. At the time, the songwriters were worried that if someone was in a normal conversation on stage and the next moment they were singing their hearts out, people in the audience would find it funny or jarring. To make the transition from talking to singing smoother, the songwriter would compose an introduction to the song that was meant to be half-sung, half-spoken so that the audience would be eased into the song.

That was great for the stage, where most of the standards were introduced, but soon radio and records came along. On those, time is at a premium. If they don’t skip to the good part right away, people would turn the knob and artists wouldn’t make any money. So that half-talked, half-sung opening was often dropped for records. Interestingly enough, “Over the Rainbow” was written not for the stage but for a movie, yet Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen still wrote an intro -- that was not used, which is a clue to why the introduction disappeared from even the musical by the forties.

Musicals had gone from being a musical review (where any song would do at any part of the play) to an integrated musical (where the song actually moved the story along and the songs were not interchangeable). You couldn’t have the cowboys in Oklahoma sing “We’re off to see the wizard,” unless you were going for a big laugh. With the musicals being tighter, and the songs part of the plot, it seemed natural for Dorothy to lean against a haystack and wish for a better place (no transition necessary). I mean, wouldn't you? Look at that awful black and white barnyard, it probably reeks of movie cow poop. And monochromatic crap is the worst kind, trust me, I know. I have been on the wrong side of that rainbow.

That said, there are two nuggets I hope never appear on a musical milk carton. They are intros as good as the songs themselves. They are amazing. The first one is so good that Frank Sinatra recorded it all by itself without the song it was meant to introduce. Which is saying a lot, since the song is Hoagy Carmichael’s standard “Stardust”. Here is just the introduction. Carmichael's lyricist, Mitchell Parish, creates a dream-like word painting that really does stand on it‘s own:

And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we’re apart

You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by...

Here is another intro I love from the song “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry”:

The torch I carry is handsome
It’s worth it heartache in ransom
And when the twilight steals
I know how the lady in the harbor feels

A better expression of unrequited love you will never find.

Rapture and Sleep

It is almost midnight and I should be in bed -- but the hardest battle of the day awaits me: what do I listen to in bed? It is meditation for me -- it is freedom -- and it is a freaking hard decision.

Do I listen to something new someone sent me? If I hate it, I will lie awake plotting my revenge on the artist, the person who recommended them to me and that entire gender of music. Jewel’s music usually puts me to sleep so you’d think her lullaby CD would be perfect -- nope. Why? Yodeling. My inner child now needs therapy. Yet I just requested her latest CD AND her country CD from my library. I liked her first CD (Pieces of You) from bloody 1994 -- I am an optimist. Maybe her next one won’t suck.

Tonight I must choose wiser. Jill Sobule? I know her and she doesn't yodel. Good start. Before I met her, she seemed like a friend. She is now one of my favorite bipeds and my favorite songwriter. Pete Townsend? There is something so warm, yet unsentimental about his work, solo and with the Who that shines more and more in my mind. George Gershwin? His sense of longing reflects my own restlessness. Mozart? He is deceptively simple and full of wit. You mutter that he didn't laugh like he does in the movie Amadeus -- not really. You haven’t really listened to his music, it is full of laughter. Brian Wilson will make me cry and smile. Debussy will make me dream. Rodgers and Hart will make me laugh at the crap we do for love. Sinatra in the wee small hours of the morning is a lonely yet lovely walk.

You see my problem -- I am in love with so much music and a little fickle. I am a stalker fan of a hundred composers with new ones being added all the time. My collection is full of strange lights and I don’t know which one to fly to tonight. Which emotional world do I fuse with my own dreams and find the rapture that will quiet my over active mind? I may never get to bed at this rate.

No, This Is Dreaming

I was watching the Ken Burn’s documentary Jazz (2000) and one moment caught my attention:

Man: Where did you get your ideas from?

Duke Ellington: Ideas? I got a million dreams. That’s all I do is dream -- all the time.

Man: I thought you played piano.

Duke Ellington: No, this isn’t piano -- this is dreaming.

The Stocking

We all get discouraged. It is easy to ask if we are doing any good in this world. Is the light we are giving off providing anyone with warmth, joy or solace? A few nights ago I went to a concert by Tami Briggs. She is a talented harpist living in Minnesota and is licensed to provide hospitals, nursing homes and hospices with musical therapy.

Her decision to do so took courage. In the past, whenever she went into a hospital she fainted straight away. Luckily her first hospital gig was in an emergency room -- and she was reassured by the staff that if she was going to faint, that was the best place to do it.

Tami told amazing stories of the connections she has made over the years. They were all beautiful but one hit me more than any other. It was about a stocking. She held it up. It didn’t appear to be much, in fact when Tami got it, lost in a host of other gifts, she thought nothing of it: a plain Christmas stocking with lace around the top.

The next day she was going through her gifts and noticed a piece of paper in it. It was from the mother of a woman who had received a heart/lung transplant. Tami visited the woman three times in the hospital and played for her. Sadly, infection set it and the woman lost her fight.

The stocking that Tami had received was made from the woman’s favorite robe. It was a robe that reminded her mother of better times -- the laughter and warmth her daughter had given the world. The mother carefully cut it up and made stockings for those her daughter loved the most. It was a way of making sure that the daughter’s spirit continued to glow.

The night Tami opened the present, she hadn’t really received it (she was tired and not in the moment) but that morning she got it. Everyone who heard Tami in that auditorium got the gift too. I did. I cried. A Christmas stocking now reminds me what music means to people in the worst moments of their life -- and of that woman. Stockings are now full of loss, stars and rebirth. It reminds me of the amazing connections we can make everyday.

Tami Briggs
http://www.musicalreflections.com/

When it Rains...

A Child’s Halloween in Wails

I was a Woolworth ghoul. Each year, as a kid, my mom would take me to the Woolworth store and get me a treat (a candy wax harmonica I would almost play before devouring). Next she let me pick out my favorite monster mask -- kind of how I imagine a normal kid got to pick out a puppy. Sometimes I was a werewolf, other years Frankenstein's monster. They were my heroes -- and for one day a year I could look like a freak and not be teased. It didn’t matter that my hair wasn’t combed under the mask. Sure it was sweaty, it smelled like my face had been shoved into the vinyl dashboard of a 57 Buick and I couldn’t see crap -- but I was a happy freak.

I wore it to school with pride and sat next to the normal, lame kids -- you know, the ones without imagination -- like the chick who dressed as Pippi Longstocking -- AGAIN. Wow, pipe cleaners in her hair and a couple of fake freckles -- good costume, Sally. She wore in every year until she was like forty: the costume had gone from cute to genuinely disturbing.

In Jr, High a trauma happen that stopped me from ever wanting to dress up again. The principle decided to throw a Halloween party. At that age I was becoming an artsy-fartsy rebel and thought it was really stupid being humiliated to dress up like a little kid and parade around for the amusement of the teachers. So I didn’t dress the hell up. Well, they have ways in prison camps of breaking the hardest spirit: no costume, no party. The rebels like myself, who refused to play their game, had to sit in a cold room for the two hours that the normal kids (who had caved in) were off partying. Ironic: the people who were freaks 24/7 couldn’t go to the party celebrating THEIR holiday. It was only the one-day-a-year fake freaks who could go.

I didn’t want to dress up ever again. I would never go to a Halloween party ever. In my twisted teenage mind it was as if I was black and Halloween parties were minstrel shows to make fun of MY people. Those people in masks weren’t real freaks, like me -- they were insulting cartoons of my heroes and my culture. We had a Christmas party that year and I have often wondered, did the same brains responsible for the Halloween party rules have a special room for the Jewish, Muslim and Atheist kids while we celebrated the spirit of old Saint Nick? You can see why they put me in a “special” room to protect the normal kids. My questions have always gotten me in trouble. They still do.

This year Diva told me I had to dress up and go with her to a Halloween party. I didn’t hesitate, of coursed I’d go. Love prunes the dead branches of our lives.

After a few false starts I decided to choose the German expressionist movie The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. I would not be the good doctor. I would be the murderess thing in his box. As I applied the white and black make-up I felt free. I didn’t look like me. When Diva showed up, she was genuinely freaked out. I decided not to wear my glasses as we went from place to place since it destroyed the effect. We had a blast at our first two stops. It was getting rather late and Diva wanted to drop by a party thrown by someone from school that she hardly knew. The person gave her the address but no directions.

In Rochester street house numbers are a joke. 1223 6th Ave may be in front of you and you are looking for 1224 6th Ave. That is probably twenty miles away: a suspicious tar paper shack in the country where people have entered and have never been seen again.

Diva was bound and determine to find the Gein residence so we could burst in the door and be bludgeoned to death. I was game and all, but realized that without my glasses, I was getting motion sickness. As we spun around corner after corner, all I saw were blurry lights like someone was swinging a Christmas tree around me while spinning my chair. I kept burping and trying not to lose it. After a half an hour, Diva said she needed gas.

As she got out, she said. “And I’ll ask for directions!”

“No -- burp -- gurgle -- I think I’m going to be sick!!”

We went straight home, I took a shower, got the makeup off and tried to settle my stomach. If the night had gone flawlessly it wouldn’t have been me, now would it? The way it ended was so Vincent. I later found out that Diva’s favorite holiday is also Halloween -- but because of some traumas of her own, she hadn’t celebrated it in years either. Despite the whirling sensation and all, we got it back that night. Freaks in love is a wonderful thing.

Morning Has Broken

I remember sitting out on the playground on the last day of Elementary School. Summer vacation was a day away. Next year we would be in Jr. High. They threw us an ice cream social, and I reminisced with my buddy, Todd Johnson. We sat by a puddle, shaded by an oak tree. It had been a rainy year, so the puddle had been there forever -- allowing evolution to begin. Weird things were growing in it, to us they were sea monsters -- and amazing. Across the street was a turkey farm, and being really hot, the place reeked of wet feathers and bird crap. There was the muffled “gobble, gobble” from panting, angry turkeys.

It was the seventies and we dreamed of what the far off 21st century would be like. Had we really known what we were in for, we would have tossed ourselves face first into the muddy puddle and let the monsters eat us.

The other thing I remember from that last year of school was “Morning Has Broken.” I was in choir and it was one of the two songs we sang. The other was “Tie a Yellow Ribbon.” Even then I hated that song, but I loved “Morning Has Broken.” It was magical. Slides of flowers, rain and birds glowed on the screen as we sang it in the dark, sweltering gym. It still gives me chills to hear the song after all these years.

The idea that every morning is as holy and magical as the first morning is something I need to be reminded of. There are days I get in a black mood. I hear this song and think, “I’m alive. And that is a little miracle right there, dummy. Listen to a bird. Look at a flower and know it for what it is: a miracle. Life is a jewel. Enjoy that treasure everyday -- one day it will be gone.”

Not only do the lyrics moved me, but I love the way the piano part ripples like sunlight pouring through a thick canopy of leaves -- giving a speckled effect on the dark ground below. I recently heard Cat Steven’s (now Yusuf Islam) original demo of the old hymn and was struck by how empty if sounded; just Cat singing, accompanied by his guitar. The piano, in the final version of Cat’s hit, really did add something. It was played by “Yes” keyboard player Rick Wakeman. Cat Stevens had promised Rick ten pounds if he played a little something at the beginning middle and end of the song. Wakeman didn’t get credit on the album nor did he get the ten pounds. And, frankly, he’s still pissed.

All that doesn’t matter, it created one of the most beautiful, honestly uplifting songs I have ever heard. The fact that Cat screwed Rick doesn't take away from that. When I hear this song I am transported to a magical first holy morning, a blackbird waking, the first golden light of the sun, dew glistening upon an emerald blade of grass and Rick Wakeman, hunched up in the fetal position, crying like a baby. I glow and smile, knowing the mystery and magic of life. You see, I have always hated “Yes” and every dork in that lame, pretentious group. Yes, God is good. She sees the fall of every sparrow and hears the whining of every idiot.


“Morning Has Broken”
Words: Eleanor Farjeon
Music: traditional Gaelic tune known as "Bunessan"

Morning has broken, like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven.
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning.
Born of the one light Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise every morning;
God's recreation of the new day.

Morning has broken, like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.

The Video

Winter Is In

Happy Thanksgiving!

Land of Nod

The Land Of Nod

by Robert Louis Stevenson

From Breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.
All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do--
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.
The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.
Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

Another song from Natalie Merchant’s song cycle Leave Your Sleep, this time it is the“Land of Nod” based on a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson..

Leave your Sleep at:
http://www.nataliemerchant.com/

or
http://www.nonesuch.com/

17 Ways to Avoid Depression Relapse

My friend Tippy posted something I thought was very important, “17 Ways to Avoid Depression Relapse,” from Health.com by Kristin Koch. (By the way, I just found out that November 20 is National Survivors of Suicide Day.)

1. Staying healthy
Recovering from depression is a long and difficult journey.Unfortunately, 50% of people who have one major episode of depression will relapse, and the likelihood goes up if you’ve had more than one episode, says Eve A. Wood, MD, medical director of the Eating Disorder Center of Denver and author of 10 Steps to Take Charge of Your Emotional Life. Your relapse risk can vary, depending on the severity of your symptoms and family history.The good news is that there are some steps that may help you avoid depression relapse.

2. Don’t take on too much
While staying busy isn’t a problem, doing too much, too soon could be.Feeling overwhelmed creates stress, and stress is a risk factor for depression, says Nancy Irwin, PsyD, author of You-Turn: Changing Direction in Midlife. What’s more, stressful experiences can make the symptoms of anxiety and depression additionally severe.“Thwart stress by creating balance and knowing your limits,” Irwin says. “If you are prone to depression, this is your responsibility—just like brushing your teeth or obeying the speed limits.

For the rest please follow the link.
17 Ways to Avoid Depression Relapse

National Survivors of Suicide Day

Bleezer’s Ice-cream

I will be spotlighting songs from Natalie Merchant’s song cycle Leave Your Sleep. First up “Bleezer’s Ice-cream” based on a poem by Jack Prelutsky. It is yummy.

Here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7b0UqwuF84

Get a heaping helping of Leave your Sleep at:

http://www.nataliemerchant.com/

or
http://www.nonesuch.com/

Shine Award 2010

The Shine Award 2010: Recognizing this year’s outstanding achievement in creativity. To celebrate a work that reminded us what it is to be human and shows us a new way to see the world.

This year’s winner is Natalie Merchant’s song cycle Leave Your Sleep


It is the holy grail for popular musicians: to cross to the other side of the tracks to work in the classical music field -- to create a timeless work of art that will sit in the bin next to Mozart and Bach. But those are some mean streets and, really, only George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers have any street cred in Wolfgang’s hood. That is until this year. Submitted for your approval: Natalie Merchant’s song cycle Leave Your Sleep

Leave Your Sleep is the most exhilarating CD I have heard in a decade. Natalie has taken poems from around the world celebrating a child’s imagination and set them to her playful, compelling music. They are 26 dreams. 26 worlds of dance, exuberance and charm. The musical styles are so varied from song to song that it reminded me of the Beatle’s White Album or the Clash’s London Calling. That stunning variety of styles, from blues to Irish to country to classical, heighten the sense of magic and adventure for me. Her dark, cello-like voice engages me to play. Luckily, she wisely resists the temptation to use a full orchestra on most songs. These are small, tender moments that need the light of only a few instruments to illuminate them.

My favorite song as a child was “It’s a Small World (After All)” the theme for the Disney ride. At six I wore my parents out by demanding to go through that ride over and over. Scenes of children playing from all over the world past by this child's eyes and that song was the key that transported me. Even to this day it has the magic to do so. As I was lying in bed listening to this double CD, I was six again -- full of the joy that only a child with endless energy and enthusiasm can muster. Some part of my mind never really grew up -- I guess that is why I became an artist. Well, I didn’t choose it, it chose me. Besides, it sounds better than saying, “Me play now.” But it is really the same thing -- my finger-paints are just a little more expensive and my mother’s fringe is now the internet or an exhibit opening.

This isn’t a lullaby CD to toss at the kids to keep them quiet. This is the key to another world: the world of a child’s imagination and endless creativity. There is no dust or pretension in a child's longing. This is the soundtrack to my forgotten dreams -- dreams that filled me with wonder again.

“I willed into being this parade of witches and fearless girls, blind men and elephants, giants and sailors and gypsies, floating churches, dancing bears, circus ponies, a Chinese princess and a janitor’s boy, and so many others. I tried to show her [my daughter] that speech could be the most delightful toy in her possession...” -- Natalie Merchant, January 2010


Discover Leave Your Sleep at:

http://www.nataliemerchant.com/
or
http://www.nonesuch.com/

poster

Coffee with Jill Sobule

Sarah, Underdog and Jilly Sue

My friend, Underdog Victorious, just returned from New York City -- she had the time of her life. (And thank you again Tami for making it possible.) Underdog had coffee with the Strange Light Cafe's patron saint, Jill Sobule. Earlier, Underdog was fed pineapple by punk cabaret artist Amanda Palmer. All the gory details in the near future. New York and Boston will never be the same -- and neither will Underdog Victorious.

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Cool paintings

Underdog, AFP -- and jazz hands

Update on "Singing in the Dark"

I just received an Email from Susan McKeown:

“Dear Vincent,

It's a bit hectic here this week as I draw all these threads together to launch the album and tour. In the midst of it I passed the $7,500 mark on Wednesday and backers are still signing up, so I'm thrilled that so many people are being reached and have come to help. Thank you so much for helping to spread the word...

Best,

Susan”

She would still love the help. And thank you for supporting her dream!

Vincent

The Path in Autumn

Last week Diva took me to Quarry Hill Nature Center. We often go there when we are down: the butterfly garden, the birds fluttering about, the water shimmering on the pond. It is a Manet painting come to life. It is like that place in my head I go to when I want to create.

We went somewhere different this time. A place I hadn’t been since I was a child, as part of a class trip, and had since forgotten that it even existed: an abandon grave yard hidden in one corner of the nature reserve. At first it didn’t look like a cemetery. It looked like an ordinary field on the side of a hill. Reading the sign at the entrance, I realized over 2,000 bodies were under our feet.

Cemeteries have never affected me that much -- all my relatives chose cremation. Their ashes were scattered in the north woods of Minnesota. Knowing they are where they wanted to be gives me solace. There was no solace here. It just unnerved me and left me shaken.

I haven’t really written or drawn in a week because of it. So many feelings were flapping in my mind like a skull full of sparrows. I wanted to say something profound but there was just too much in my head. What was each person’s story? What was the life each had led until they were dumped in this field? If I had lived a hundred years ago -- would I have been committed to the state hospital and be lying in an unmarked grave right now -- right here? Would my life have amounted to no more than that? I was overwhelmed and numb.

In the end, I just decided to say what I felt and hoped that is enough. I felt the way a soldier who fought at Gettysburg must have felt visiting the cemetery of their departed comrades. After all, these were soldiers in a war -- a war for understanding and acceptance for people like Diva and I: the mentally ill.

That war is far from over. At my feet were thousands that died in a very bad place: a place they once called an insane asylum. We don’t call it that anymore. We want too forget that we ever treated humans that way. We did. Only fifty or so of their graves are even marked. This is my Gettysburg. This is hallowed ground.

Diva looked at me and whispered, “When I die, bury me here.”

I understood, perhaps for the first time in my life, we are soldiers too. And we are only part way up the hill.

Vincent




http://www.qhnc.org/about.html

It All Sounds Like Chuck

Back in high school there was an artist in my class that I looked up to. His name was Andy and he was stunningly talented. He loved the music of the “rock group” Yes, which I never really got -- still don’t. I loved Neil Young, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, ELO and Supertramp. Whenever I played him any of my music, Andy would shake his head and say it all sounded like Chuck Berry in way that made me feel ashamed -- made me feel common. Thank God I never played him any of my Olivia Newton-John records.

Fast forward thirty years, Diva played me the movie Cadillac Records about Chess records and the birth of rock and roll. Sure, one can argue the point, but whenever I go round and round with someone on this -- it keeps coming back to Chuck. This guy picked up a guitar, put blues and country together, and invented rock and roll. He walked into Chess records, cut some tracks and duck-walked across the stage: segregation began to crumble, women of all races swooned as men (and women) started to play guitar just like that. I don’t care who you slap down on the table (from Louis Jordan to Little Richard) to trump me on this -- they didn’t have a guitar on their record that sounded like THAT. Nobody did. Now everybody does.

My friend was right -- it all sounds like Chuck. Andy saw a hick from the deep south walking out of a tarpaper shack with a guitar in a gunny sack. I see a gentleman who change the world as much as Bach or Beethoven.


Here is Chuck’s Ninth Symphony:

“Johnny B. Goode”
by Chuck Berry

Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
He never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar like a-ringing a bell

{Refrain}
Go go Johnny go, go
Go Johnny go, go
Go Johnny go, go
Johnny B. Goode

He used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack
And sit beneath the trees by the railroad track
Old engineers would see him sitting in the shade
Strummin' to the rhythm that the drivers made
People passing by would stop and say
Oh, my how that little country boy could play

{Refrain}

His mother told him, "Someday you will be a man
And you will be the leader of a big old band
Many people coming from miles around
To hear you play your music when the sun go down
Maybe some day your name'll be in lights
Saying Johnny B. Goode tonight

{Refrain}


Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEq62iQo0eU

Singing in the Dark

This week I received a sweet E-mail from Dublin singer/songwriter Susan McKeown telling me how much she loved my blog. She also sent me an MP3 of her new song “A Woman Like That” (with lyrics based on the Anne Sexton poem “Her Kind”). The compelling song was a wonderful surprise. I have been looking forward to hearing her upcoming album, Singing in the Dark, ever since I read an interview with her in the Spring 2010 issue of NAMI Advocate.

The passion behind the album is something near and dear to our hearts here at the Strange Light Cafe: understanding madness and creativity. The lyrics are from poets of the last thousand years who were writing through the lens of depression, mania or substance abuse.

Susan has financed the album on her own so far, a true labor of love, but she needs our help to finish. Please go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597578099/singing-in-the-dark and learn what you can do. If you help, you could receive signed advance copies, extra tracks, tickets to her show, attend meet and greets or even suggest your own reward.

Your assistance is needed, not only to finish the album -- but to give it a proper release and to make sure it is heard. Help Susan complete her dream. Together we shine.

Vincent


Below is the Anne Sexton poem that the song “A Woman Like That (Her Kind)” is based on and a link to the video.

“A Woman Like That (Her Kind)”
Lyrics: Anne Sexton
Music: Lisa Gutkin

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597578099/singing-in-the-dark

Daniel Johnson is Alive and Well... and Living in Texas

At the beginning and the end of the great documentary “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” the artist/songwriter is seen as a ghost. The producer points out (via his commentary on the DVD ) that that was intentional, since Johnston is a ghost of what he once was. He certainly knows Daniel better than I (having spent two years with him making the film) but I am in awe of the two Daniels in the film.

The first Daniel was a sweet, scrawny McDonald’s employee with endless charm. He recorded amazing album after album on a cheap cassette recorder and handed them out to anyone who would listen in Austin Texas during the early 80’s. He slyly conned his way on to MTV when they came to town and stole the show. But something went wrong just as the door to stardom was opening.

A friend and the editor of the Austin Chronicle, Louis Black, was pulled out of bed on Christmas of 1985 and brought to see Daniel in the middle of the local river -- and a mental breakdown. Louis remember the aftermath the way one would recall a jumbo jet crashing into their toddler’s wading pool on the veranda:

“All great artist are crazy -- but there is a difference between the abstract artist being crazy and this person doing damage to you or to himself... here was a real sick person... we did the most pedestrian thing possible -- we committed him.

“If I was around with Van Gogh -- I’ve always had contempt for the people who didn’t understand genius -- and here I am being given my shot and what I was saying, ‘Please put him in the hospital. We don’t wanna have to deal with him. We don’t know what to do.’”

Another friend of Johnston, Jeff Tartakov, recalls, “When I went to visit him in the hospital they wanted to know what my relationship with Daniel was. I had been working informally as his publicist, but -- ummm -- I needed to tell them something a little bit better than that and I assumed that Randy Kemper, after having been beaten over the head with a lead pipe, did not want to continue managing Daniel, so I said I was his manager.”

Jeff was tireless in sending out tape after tape to bands around the music world until over a 150 acts from Tom Waits to Beck had covered Johnston’s powerful and quirky songs. After all, Jeff’s client was simply unable to perform live due to his prior engagement. Johnston was once mistakenly discharged from Bellevue and showed up at the legendary birth place of punk rock, CBGBs. He was the opening act. They loved him.

That memorable week he also recorded with Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground, wandered around New York as his host (the band Sonic Youth) tried to find him. He was tossed on a bus for home, got off too early and caused an elderly lady to jump out her second story window. He was walking past her place and decided to help her by exorcising demons he decided were bothering her. Johnston wasn’t a legend when he went to New York, he was when he left.

And the other Johnston? The Johnston of today? The one who is a ghost of his former self? He now lives in Texas when he is not touring the world. But this time it is his wonderful music that leaves the audience speechless -- not his behavior. His unique art work has garnered shows from London to LA, selling for thousands of dollars. He may not be the angelic, playful kid (or a lit bomb rolled into an unsuspecting room) that he once was --- but his legendry wit is anything but phantom. He told an audience at the Sundance Festival just what he thought of “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” after a screening in 2005:

“As comedies go it is pretty funny: Daniel goes to jail, Daniel goes to the mental hospital, Daniel crashes a plane.

“I sure appreciate my parents -- when I ended up in a mental hospital because of my manic depression they let me live back at home at my age... they allow me to play piano but not too late at night... and dad doesn’t like it when I draw naked women.”

I am ashamed to admit it, I just heard Daniel Johnston’s music and have seen his art for the first time last week. It is as unpolished, real and charming as Daniel -- either Daniel.


You can see and hear more of Daniel Johnston at his site.

Walking the Cow

Just in case you think Daniel’s music is dark and serious enjoy “Walking the Cow” from his 1983 release, Hi, How Are You? It highlights his wicked senses of humor.

I dedicate this to my friend, An Introspective Mess.


Walking the Cow
By Daniel Johnston


Trying to remember,
But my feelings can’t know for sure.
Try to reach out
Bur it’s gone...

Lucky stars in your eyes...
I’m walking the cow...

I really don’t know how I came here...
I really don’t know why I’m stayin’ here...
Oh, oh, oh. I am walking the cow....

Lucky stars in your eyes...
I’m walking the cow...

Lucky stars in your eyes...
I’m walking the cow...

Tired to point my finger,
But the wind keep blowin’ me around
In circles... circles....

I really don’t know what I have to fear...
I really don’t know why I have to care...
Oh, oh, oh. I am walking the cow....
Lucky stars in your eyes...



Click Here For the Video

Daniel Johnston music is available here, from his site.

We Don’t Really Like What You Do

We Don’t Really Like What You Do --
We Don’t Think Anyone Ever Will

Rarely -- very rarely, I hear a song and have to sit down. I have to listen. And then I have to hear it again to see if it was real. After all, I have a vivid imagination and much of my life is just in my head. “The Story of an Artist” by Daniel Johnston is real. Every line digs deeper into the ground of truth until it uncovers exactly what I have been thinking all my life but could never put into words.

I played this song for Diva -- I had to. As each clot of truth dropped, I could see it in her face: she felt exactly as Daniel Johnston and I have felt, and still feel.

Songs can connect us with each other in a very deep way that nothing else can. It can make the lonely and the lost feel understood -- sometimes for the first time in their life.



"Story of an Artist"
by Daniel Johnston

Listen up and I'll tell a story
About an artist growing old
Some would try for fame and glory
Others aren't so bold

Everyone, and friends and family
Saying, "Hey! Get a job!"
"Why do you only do that only?
Why are you so odd?
We don't really like what you do.
We don't think anyone ever will.
It's a problem that you have,
And this problem's made you ill."

Listen up and I'll tell a story
About an artist growing old
Some would try for fame and glory
Others aren't so bold

The artist walks alone
Someone says behind his back,
"He's got his gall to call himself that!
He doesn't even know where he's at!"
The artist walks among the flowers
Appreciating the sun
He does this all his waking hours
But is it really so wrong?

They sit in front of their TV
Saying, "Hey! This is fun!"
And they laugh at the artist
Saying, "He doesn't know how to have fun."
The best things in life are truly free
Singing birds and laughing bees
"You've got me wrong", says he.
"The sun don't shine in your TV"

Listen up and I'll tell a story
About an artist growing old
Some would try for fame and glory
Others aren't so bold

Everyone, and friends and family
Saying, "Hey! Get a job!"
"Why do you only do that only?
Why are you so odd?
We don't really like what you do.
We don't think anyone ever will.
It's a problem that you have,
And this problem's made you ill."

Listen up and I'll tell a story
About an artist growing old.
Some would try for fame and glory
Others just like to watch the world.

For Video Click Here

Echoes of Winter

It is my greatest fear -- I wake up one day and the fire has gone out: I can no longer create. My dream has died. Superman has become Clark Kent forever. Creativity is a superpower after all, it allows me to fly. It allows me to go to worlds no one else even knows of. I am so happy when I create. Yet every now and then a monster attacks -- a thing called depression. Last week he tapped me on the shoulder.

You see, my inner world is a pond at the peak of spring. It is full of life, speckled sunlight and the smell of roses. Manet is my interior decorator -- most of the time... other times, without warning, I go to my lake and everything has changed. The water is frozen, the sunlight is gone, replaced with a gray, creepy light. There is no life. I am numb. I can not create in such a place, no one could. I just sit motionless. Lying on my couch, I watch movies and fall asleep. Food doesn’t taste good and everything is boring -- particularly me. I want to do something -- anything, but I can’t. It is winter in my head and I am ugly, lost and hopeless. Nothing will ever work out. I will never be happy again.


Going to work, everything feels odd and out of sync. I grab scraps of paper just in case an idea flutters by and I want to write it down. It does. Before I know it, I am in a flock of thoughts and I jot them down as quickly as I can: bright monarch plans, dragonfly darting ideas. I realize it is spring in my head again. My pond is buzzing with life and I am so excited -- a kid with a butterfly net trying to catch everything I see. I couldn’t be more alive.

My inner world only knows two seasons -- they come and go on a schedule I can not fathom. Luckily, there are far more springs than winters these days.

Warhol and I

Diva entered my paintings in a local art show, the results were surreal.



The program for the Art and Ability Exhibition.


This week started badly at the Strange Light Cafe. The dogs of depression and paranoia were eating at my self-esteem. I had to get up at six this morning, by the time I was done at the cafe -- I was tired, blue and feeling very small. Quickly, I grabbed a bite, made Diva tea and changed. Her photos were in an art exhibit starting tonight, so we raced through the horrible rush hour traffic, snotty drivers (bent on our self destruction) and road construction (designed to confuse). We thought we were late and scurried like confused Muppets toward the awards ceremony. Before rounding the last corner, I saw some amazing original Andy Warhol prints and slowed to gawk.

“Oh no!! Later!” Diva muttered and forced me around the corner.

It was a sizable venue. On the far wall, I spotted a canvas I had painted ages ago. (Diva had insisted I enter it in the show.) We walked about, chatted with the other artists and enjoyed their work. So many paintings -- so much talent, I was blown away. But finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I mean really, I hadn’t thought about the show all week. I was there for Diva, but I was suddenly curious -- did I win anything? With all this amazing art, I was trying not to think about it.

Sneaking over, I looked at the tag below my painting: Best in Show. The hell?! Turning, I saw a hundred chairs they had set up for the awards ceremony. On every chair was a program -- and on every cover was my painting. That forgotten painting that had hung like a dead pond in my apartment for so many years was now everywhere I looked. Crap. Worse, I had to swim that sea of my own making. You see, I had to sit down -- quickly. The rest was a blur.

I heard Diva talking to one of the judges and words like, “we were all blown away...” and “the amazing expressions...” were used. I don’t remember the award ceremony at all. I was there (I’m told) and I didn’t faint. Diva has pictures of me vertical and grinning like a dork. It looks like I enjoyed myself immensely -- sorry I missed it.



My paintings.


The next thing I remember, we were walking past the Warhols again as we were leaving. Diva stopped this time and remarked; “Do you realize your painting is hanging in the same building as Andy Warhol’s work?”

I didn’t faint -- in fact, I didn’t sleep all night.

Welcome to the Strange Light Cafe

Vincent Van Gogh, Beethoven, Eugene O'Neill, John Keats, Tolstoy, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Schumann all had mental illness. One in four American's will suffer from it during their lifetime. Yet I was afraid to admit that I had mental illness since there is a stigma attached to it. People, like life, can be hard.

I wish there was a place I could go, sit down and not feel I'm being judged. I'd love to hang out in a Bohemian cafe with Vincent Van Gogh and Sylvia Plath. They'd understand my problems and their conversation would be full of fire -- not weather and football scores. I feel more comfortable with other minds that aren't limited by main stream dreams. In my head there is a place as freewheeling as Dylan in Greenwich Village.

.

My artist's cafe of the mind is now open on the web. A place where artists with huge imaginations and minds unlimited can fly. Painters, writers, musicians, poets and dreamers -- welcome. It is always open mic night at the Strange Light Cafe. And our walls are always ready for another work of art.

If you want to share something (thoughts, dreams, songs, rants, poetry or art) with the world, the stage is ready.

Email it to me: vincentblackwod@yahoo.co.uk

Meet the Diva

Well, good morning everyone! Traffic on the net is expected to be at an all time high today because Vincent and Diva are live on line. I know what you’re thinking (if I am not, please tell me so.) You’re thinking, “Oh God, here is another voice, another text of that insanely happy woman…” who, yes, believe it or not likes it when someone says “Happy Monday!” Why? Because people actually react, no matter what they’re doing, when someone says, “Happy Monday,” whether it be “Oh God, I want to smack that person for saying that.” or “Well okay, or “Oh cool, another sarcastic person behind the Happy Monday!!” In few seconds were all connected. In a very odd and strange way, I like stuff that. Before I go off on this tangent… I know, I know… you’re already prejudging me.

Behind my pink keyboard and monitor, I am a 36 year old about to become 37. I love being 37. I am alive. I have so much more life to live and to contribute. O Captain, my Captain… Seize the Day… shout to the dead poet’s society!! Whoot! Whoot! For the love of humanities! Humanities is the study of looking at things like mental illness that is more than what we think it might mean or have been taught from TV, movies and news and, yes, our families. That is why I believing in this site so much. It is a positive place for anyone to go to whether you have a mental illness or not. If you want to see something in a different light… a strange light, we have that here with the help of my love, Vincent. He came up with the idea to have site where everyone could go and see mental illness in a positive light -- in a non-threatening and a kind, caring atmosphere. Can that exist? A non-threaten and a kind, caring atmosphere for mental illness? Low and behold, it can. My man… do you see me blushing with love!! Anyway, my man and I have created that place.

I am so tired of hearing about mental illness in the news. Why is it always the guy who commits a really bad crime that gets the media talking about mental illness? I have committed no crime. I just have mental illness. The media’s view of mental illness is crazy. Oh, another thing, we do not use the word crazy on our website. It is known fact that in order to change people’s vocabulary we need to start teaching.

Our new word is funky instead of crazy. I mean, when you call someone crazy people get all shook up about it… there are others who will call a person crazy. Well, that is their weakness, the rude m-ther F--kers! So if you’re gonna say crazy on this site, it can only be when you spot a stigma buster… I will go more into that later… We will have stigma buster page… in the future.

I have major depression, and you know my life is not all that bad. In fact, it was much worse when I was learning I had major depression. It was much worse before I knew I was like Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, “My whole life is a dark room. One big dark room.” But I will talk about that later. Right now I am going to show you photos that I took. I also do collage, oil painting, embellishing I am like the Renaissance man Leonardo Da Vinci, except I am woman. Vincent asked me to choose just three photos. I said, “Are you nuts, only three?” I mean, I love looking at all of my photographs so to narrow it down to just three is like asking Vincent to stop talking for a few minutes while we’re in the car doing errands (otherwise I’d get lost while caught up in the excitement of our wonderful conversations.) I love you, Vincent ….

So as promised here are “three” photographs I say three because I could not just choose three...

Shadows

Bees and flowers

Bird Flying

Shadows

Sunflowers

Fair colors flower

I will write more about what I think of each one when you get these and start posting them. A note from the diva then again it’s never just a note!