Oh Life, where Art is Heaven, Tho’ hollow seems the game Yet days do come; And nights, as one; On Earth, are we yet in Heaven? Eat we, each day, our daily bread. And forgive our own mistakes, As we forgive the mistakes of others. May we forbear from Evil; And avoid foolish Council. For this is our World, Our Hour, and our Story, For these fleeting moments. Okay.
I wrote a first draft of the above a while back (buried deep in this old post). And said I’d prob’ revise it, and certainly print and recite it.
Well, today I’ve finally made good on the first part of that.
The revisions are all very minor. And certain bits still irk me a little. For example, ending on ‘Okay’, rather than ‘Amen’. But I like the basic idea.
And I think I’ll get it printed, a few times, in a bespoke font of my own creation (maybe hand lettered?). With some nice decorative elements; borders, perhaps? Or illuminations?
I’m ‘friends’ with Joni Mitchell ‘official’, on Facebook. A recent post from her concerns a re-release of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter. I had the temerity to say, in a comment on the post, that I much prefer the original cover.
And, no surprise, some pious person has taken a potshot, referring to the original cover as a ‘racist caricature’. Oh dear, humanity may well be screwed, if we’re all really that dim witted.
The ‘safe’/neutered modern replacement.
The replacement cover image is taken from photo sessions for the Dog Eat Dog album cover, when Joni, by now with Larry Klein, was going all ‘80s: perm, power dressing suit style garb, and lyrics railing against the Reaganomic (or Thatcherite, here in the UK) cultural drift.
To use such an image is to Bowdlerise and misrepresent the people and the times that produced the wonderful music of Don Juan.
It is, ironically, a triumph for the kind of shallow lying pop culture Joni bemoans on Dog Eat Dog. It is populist simplicity airbrushing over messy history, to make it conform with modern ideas/ideals. And to make money, of course. That justifies all.
It’s a form of Capitalo-Stalinism, pretending to be morally sound.
Get Out Of The Kitchen, Joni Mitchell.
This article, about Joni and Don Alias, is interesting… And there’s a very interesting story about the painting shown above. Joni painted Don… with an erection!* He felt uncomfortable about this, and requested she remove it (not his actual willy, but the painted one… um, she hadn’t painted his…this could get weird). So she did.
It was Joni’s choice to ‘black up‘, as the character ‘Art Nouveau’, for the cover of Don Juan. More on this shortly.
But if the history re-writers want to be properly thorough, they should change Don Juan, in the title, as well, while they’re at it. He was, after all, probably a fiction, of Carlos Castaneda’s imagining. A ‘racist caricature’, by the terms of this genuine ‘PC gone mad’.
Art Nouveau, Henry Diltz, 1976.
The genesis of Art Nouveau may be revealed here, in an intriguing BBC News piece. That’s definitely worth a read.
Meanwhile, back to now; the madhouse that is America under Trump will be keen – ‘manifest density’, and all that – to export their moral superiority, no doubt. The kind that floods the world with porn, but won’t allow an erect penis to be seen in any other way than covertly, in furtive shame.
But violence? They’ll deregulate violence, both real and imaginary, such that this sort of thing (see below) becomes a laudable comic romp, sanctified by its economic success:
Terrifier, a gorenography franchise wet dream.
The virile member? No way. The pornography of violence, yes please!
One of the most grotesque ironies in this vomiting forth of simplicity, ignorance and subterfuge, is how the so-called ‘woke’ agenda has been embraced by the ultra-capitalist machinery of advertising. Such that we’re drowning in a tsunami of smiling mixed-race couples, or under/over-represented minorities.
The effect – driven not by a quest to improve the world, but the urge to create yet more sales/wealth – is often not to promote tolerance and understanding, but to stoke petty discontents into smouldering hatreds.
Art Nouveau at Lee Sklar’s Halloween party, 1976, Henry Diltz.
But back to Joni, and Don Juan. I think it’s tragic that her inspired cover artwork has been vandalised by the myopic execs of current times.
Unholy shit… what’s he/she saying?
This second image of Art Nouveau must be causing apoplexy across the whole spectrum. What’s that he/she is saying? Holy Baby Jesu with a Kalshnikov! Maybe the execs could rescue it all with an appeal to ‘trans-rights’?
To boil the whole debacle down into suitably facile contemporary parlance… FFS!
Fabulous art by Joni.
FOOTNOTE – Execs Censoring Artists!?
The sidewalk is a history book And a circus Dangerous clowns Balancing dreadful and wonderful perceptions They have been handed Day by day Generations on down
The above are a few lines from Joni’s lyrics to Charlie Mingus’ ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’. Are the kind of folk who changed her record cover going to take a hatchet to her lyrics? Are penny-pinching dullards to censure/censor the poetic insights of artists!?
I want to design and print an Xmas or Yule card this year. And I want to pay homage to the design genius of Steinweiss, in doing so.
I thought about simply plagiarising one of his designs. But that just won’t do! Steal, yes. Borrow? Hmmm…
Anyway, today is the day to get started. Before I do, however, I’ll gather some influence type material here.
Another artist that springs to mind, as an influence, is Gene ‘The Cat’ Deitch. I did nick an image of his one Xmas, many moons ago.
I also just found a very interesting page on a blog, about Deitch and Father Christmas. Check that out here. I hadn’t realised Gene passed, aged 95, in 2020, in his beloved Prague.
Deitch is best known to me for his Jazz fan character ‘The Cat’. But he’s best known to the world at large for his work on Tom & Jerry and Popeye cartoons. RIP, maestro.
Carter McLean has one of these Heritage Green Luddies. And, boy, can he make them sing! I loves my greens, as those who know me, should know.
Gear lust mounts…
Most places listing these say they’re out of stock. And those claiming to have them say that they have a very long pre-order period.
But they’re out of my budget, as things stand.
And on top of all that, they cost an absolute bomb. $3-4 K, or more. Phew!!!
Tony Williams, looking super cool.
The above image has ‘owt to do with the Ludwig theme of the post. It’s just another nice thing to consider, as I feel my drummer mojo, possibly, returning?
Listened to all three whilst out and about today. I had Mr. Magic on vinyl, originally. Not sure if I’ve still got it or not? I’ve been selling quite a bit of vinyl in the last year or so.
He used to be that my favourite track was the title track. Written by percussionist Ralph MacDonald. But listening to the album today, it’s pretty damn good all the way through. And that cover!
Beyond the Missouri sky isn’t necessarily the best choice of CD for listening to whilst driving. I had to crank it up pretty loud, in order to hear the base clearly. And when it’s Charlie Haden… C’mon!
Little jobs like these are admittedly very small, and possibly quite dull. But getting them done is always satisfying.
New live bulbs.
Getting the bulbs out was not easy. They are located very tight under the metal engine frame, and require a twist’n’pull manoeuvre to get them out.
Ouch!
Halfords wanted £20 to fit them. After thinking about giving up and letting them do it, I decided, dammit… I’ll do it! I saved myself twenty quid. But it cost a little in blood!
The real difference will obviously be in the dark. Where before I was unsure if they were working, hopefully now I can transition (oo-er) from light to dark and viscount-versace more safely and gracefully.
I also checked my reversing lights. They’re working, the Halfords dude says. Hmmm!? I’m tempted to augment them somehow. Like a Trump voting MAGA twat, they just ain’t bright enough.
Teresa and I are listening to this fabulous series, again. I/we have listened to it many, many, many times. And, like the Tolkienian source, I/we never weary of it.
Gandalf, Bilbo and Frodo.
Michael Horden, John leMesurier and Ian Holm, pictured during the production of this evergreen classic. I’d love to find/read the full contents of the article pictured below:
A magazine spread (Radio Times?) about the production.
I’ve also been reading random bits of Brian Sibley’s various blogs today. Fascinating!
I even wrote Sibley an email, to thank him for his part in bringing this wonderful project into being, and to inquire as to some of Stephen Oliver’s terrific music.
NB – The is an ancient archival review, written many years ago, prob’ for Amazon UK. I’m trying to get as much of that old content up on here as I can.
I love Dickens: great fun to read, emotionally engaging, and mixing forays into social realism with ripping good yarns.
Okay, so his social realism isn’t always award winning documentary grade, and his characterisations are very stagey, his heroes and villains being rather like the ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ of childhood. And he’s so very sentimental.
But, heck, he’s nonetheless a great and engaging writer. You’d have to have quite a cold hard Scrooge-like heart not to love him! There’s only one thing I noted with less keenness, and that was the style of his writing for ‘yokel-speak’.
Modern writers have made great advances with use of the vernacular. But, as with much Dickens, Hard Times moved me to tears… corn-ball that I am! And, at the price I paid for it* – £2! – it was a no-brainer.
*That was a stand alone paperback purchase. We now also have it as part of a multi-volume hardback complete edition!
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thomson was gunned down, in the early hours of Sept’ 4th, 2024, in New York. A suspect, 26 year old Luigi Mangione, was arrested, on Dec’ 9th, in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
It’s way too early to say very much about all of this, esp’ as someone looking on from afar, with very little info’ at my disposal (and growing increasingly sceptical about truth in a world – and coming from a Society – that allows folk like Trump into high office).
But it obviously touches on all kinds of issues that one can think and talk about.
Brian Thomson.
Personally I feel that if we’re going to have to live in complex modern societies, then basic healthcare, along the lines of how the NHS was supposed to be when it was founded, ought to be part of what ‘The State’ provides.
The American system is clearly terrible on many levels. And it’s surprising this sort of thing – super-rich CEOs being hunted down and assassinated – isn’t happening far more often. Such people are, after all, getting incredibly rich off money people are, or so they are lead to believe, ‘investing’ in their own healthcare.
Luigi Mangione.
I’ve read online that Luigi Mangione was ‘fingered’, so to speak, by a McDonalds employee (and poss’ also a friend, or associate?). It’s also been alleged that he had a 3-D printed gun and suppressor, and was using the same fake ID he (or the suspect/killer) had used in NY.*
One of the things that occurs to me, however, is just how murky all this shit can be. A guy was arrested in connection with an attempted shooting of Trump, at one of his golf resorts. I read that someone else, someone merely connected to the alleged shooter, in that incident was subsequently ‘found’ to have loads of kiddie-porn on various devices.
I’m not one who likes or wants to fall prey to conspiracy theories. But one has to wonder whether the powers that be aren’t free to manufacture patsies, as they please.
Whether Mangione is the perpetrator is yet to proven. But it’s long been a known fact that many people die, who might’ve lived, under the current ultra-capitalist model pursued in the US.
Are all those lost and blighted lives worth nothing? Are the many just supposed to suffer in silence, grist to the mill for the pleasures and indulgences of the Fat Cats?
When Society not only fails to curtail blatant profiteering and greed, but rewards and encourages it, is it any surprise that those bearing the most onerous costs might think how they could seek some kind of redress? Somehow call the Pimp/Overseer/Exploiter class to account?
It turns out Mangione is from a very wealthy privileged background. It’s also alleged that he has back pain. If even one of the wealthy is so disgusted at how US ‘healthcare’ is run, as to take to hunting CEOs, imagine how vast are the untapped reservoirs of rage lower down the food chain?
The above image captures how I feel, when in bed/asleep. And, in all honesty, how I want to be this entire Winter. I have zero motivation/energy. I suspect I’m undergoing some form of depression. I don’t appear to have the will to do anything beyond eat, sleep and work. Can’t even summon the energy to read at present!
