Paul Dodd charcoal drawing entitled “Still From Passion Of St Joan 01” 2012
I do most of my music listening in the basement, shuffling a shared library from a hard drive in another part of the house while I draw or paint. When something comes along that really draws me in I put five stars on it and then add it to my “Favorites” playlist in iTunes. Occasionally I will shuffle the “Favorites” playlist and you would think that would be the ultimate but it’s not nearly as much fun as throwing fate to the wind, shuffling the entire library and running across beautiful surprises.
I was working away the other night, frustrated at not being able to get a gesture down, when I thought, almost aloud, “I wish I could see what I’m trying to draw.” And then I laughed aloud. This is really the game, learning to see. The drawing part is a cinch.
Exotic Dancers signage on wall next to Tala Vera on State Street in downtown Rochester, New York
I miss “Jenks and Jones” and Shep’s Paradise” and the old school R&B lounges on Rochester’s west side. Those days are not coming back but the urban pioneers over at Tala Vera on State Street are doing their best to update the concept. They have an ideal back room for music with a piano, a built in sound system and a red curtain behind the stage. We heard a fantastic trio called “10 to the 32nd Kelvin” there last night while they recorded the night for a live album. Bass player, Kevin Ray, stood center stage as well he should, a equally fluid melodic and rythmic player, with Frank Lacy on Trombone and Andrew Drury on drums. My favorite passages were when the horn player accompanied the drummer on percussion. All the better to feature my favorite instrument, the upright bass.
This part of the city is on the upswing but progress slow. I know the strip club next door is gone and the ghosts remain but I couldn’t tell whether “Tajze Wine and R&B Lounge” (with a bullet hole through the glass right under the “a” in “and”) was coming or going. We drove home during their break and were able to catch the second set on a live video feed from Tala Vera’s site.
We stopped by my parent’s place to visit on Mother’s Day and went out for a walk in nearby Ellison Park. We ran into Dee Dee and her dog. She told us she had been here every day for three years now. She said she imagined my parents’ neighborhood as an ideal place to live, so close to the park. Little did she know my parents moved there to be close to the park and then were both chased out by dogs whose owners let them run off leash despite the signs that state “Dogs Must Be On Leash.” We must have seen fifty or so dogs running free. Apparently Parks Director, Larry Staub, does not work on Mothers Day.
A log cabin in the park called Fort Schuyler, a 1938 recreation of the 1721 trading post where Senecas and the French swapped for furs, has the smallest windows I have ever seen on a building, maybe just big enough to shoot an arrow through. That’s one of the windows on the far right of the photo above. I took a flash picture of the pitch black inside and came up with the shot you see when you click on the photo. I had an urge to post a nasty photo after Angel Corpus Christi gave me this shout-out and this blow-up fits the bill.
My brothers and sisters and their families came and went yesterday and eight of us wound up down at Vic & Irv’s for dinner. We tried squeezing in one booth but split up when an adjacent booth opened. My mom and I each had a vanilla shake and split an order of onion rings. Vic & Irv’s changed management over the winter and was closed for a bit but Lynn is still behind the grill and I’m happy to say the food is every bit as good as ever.
Shrubs shaped like animals near Mercy High School in Rochester, New York
My aunt and uncle live in Niagara Falls so I don’t see them that often but I did last week at another funeral. Their son worked for the tourism board there for a while and I wondered what my uncle thought about the upcoming Nik Wallenda tightrope walk over the Falls. I was thinking the circus like event would be good for the tourist trade on the struggling New York but my uncle said the morality of the whole thing really bothered him and he wasn’t even going to watch it. I was really struck by his answer and my own ever shifting moral line.
Sam Patch, the “The Yankee Leaper,” achieved nationwide fame when he jumped into the Niagara River near the base of the Falls in 1829. He made his last jump in Rochester on Friday the 13th in November of that same year from a 25-foot high platform over the 100 foot High Falls of the Genesee River. 8,000 people watched him land with a loud impact and never surface. His frozen body was found downriver in Charlotte the next Spring. Local ministers and newspapers were quick to blame the crowd for urging him to jump, and put the guilt of his death on them
Robin egg on the trail in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, NY
I couldn’t get my Nikon to focus on this Robin egg. Of course I was in “Auto” mode so I can’t really complain. The camera does have a manual focus but that would take me ten minutes to figure out. Imagine how difficult it would be for an auto focus mechanism to find a surface on the egg on which to focus.
I occasionally buy the organic eggs at Wegmans. They clearly taste better than the regular Wegman’s eggs but at almost four times the price they are a real luxury item. And I don’t like the little red Wegmans logo stamped on top of each of the brown eggs. The packaging is bad enough but it really bugs me when they put their mark right on the produce.
Logo on door of old police station in Penn Yan, New York
A call on our home line from “FOB NY” got us out of bed this morning. Even though that line is on the “National Do Not Call Registry the cops get an exception for their extortion-tinged cold calls.
We borrowed my fathers car because ours is in the shop. He keeps his radio tuned 90.1, the jazz station, so we left it there and heard Pharaoh Sanders’ “Astral Traveling” on the way home. First song I heard back home was Sun Ra’s “We Travel the Spaceways.” I doubt that “Support the Police” sticker they would have given me if I had donated would do me any good in these worlds.
My favorite artist/philosopher, Robert Irwin, is deep into the ponies. Peggi and I usually tune into the Kentucky Derby because it marks the anniversary of our first date when we traveled to Louisville in the back of Steve Hoy‘s van and watched Secretariat win. The derby is one of my favorite sporting events because it only lasts two minutes.
Yesterday’s winner, “I’ll Have Another”, is owned by the former philosophy teacher, Paul Reddam. In the winners’ circle he was asked to quote one of his favorite philosophers and he chose this one form Ludwig Wittgenstein. “After all the philosophical problems have been solved, nothing of importance will have been accomplished.”
Purple kids’ car at Sea Breeze amusement Park in Rochester, NY
I get sick on rides that go around on circles so my favorite attraction at amusement parks is the kids’ cars. They seat two and you have to be tiny to fit in. The steering wheel spins around but does no control the car in any way and the kids don’t even care.
We stopped down to Sea Breeze Amusement Park for number 27 of the Rochester Institute of Technology “Big Shots“, pictures made at night using either hand-held electronic flash units or flashlights. Volunteers were instructed to show up at eight and wear black. That was pretty easy because all our clothes are black. The organizers effortlessly divided thousands of people into small groups and assigned them trees or rides to illuminate. We had to keep moving so our bodies weren’t captured in the long exposure. I used the flash on camera to help light this purple T-Bird.
NEXUS Percussion Ensemble at Parkleigh Pharmacy with the Eastman School of Music’s John Beck sitting in (on far left)
The Percussion Rochester festival has popped up in Parkleigh Pharmacy. We used to buy the New York Times here on Sunday mornings when we lived in the Park Avenue area. It is no longer a pharmacy and has morphed into a high end trinket shop. My sister works here and I was hoping to see her but she had finished her shift and was out waking the dog by the time the NEXUS Percussion Ensemble started playing in the Mckenzie Childs section of the store. That’s Steve Gadd’s (Kate Bush, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Joe Cocker, Chick Corea, Eric Clapton, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Jon Bon Jovi, Chet Baker, Paul Desmond, The Bee Gees) drum teacher, John Beck, the longtime Eastman School of Music faculty member and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra percussionist on the far right. Peter Erskine performs music from Weather Report tonight.
Two geese on lake in Durand Eastman Park, Rochester, New York
I check the temperature in seven locations with my iPod weather app. Rochester (where we live), Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla (where we traveled), New York, LA, San Francisco, Paradox NY (where we have friends) and Huntsville, Canada (where we camped last year). It is not often the case that Rochester is the warmest but today it is. So there.
Metal detector dude on Durand Eastman beach in Rochester New York
I work under the premise that it is possible to become a better artist by looking at Beckmann and Guston and Matisse and Rouault and Bruegal. And by extension it is possible to become a better musician by listening to Sun Ra, Miles, Ornette and Dolphy even though I never practice. I may be deluding myself but it is a heck of a ride.
The old world image of the parish priest as someone who you saw on the street and not just behind the alter, someone who came in to your home and laughed, who brought you books that didn’t have anything to do with religion but most of all someone who your parents respected and turned to for guidence when they wrestled with bone-headed dogma, manifested itself in “Bill” Shannon, as my parents called him. A life long academic as well as a counselor, he championed the work of the in-house rebel and Trappist monk Thomas Merton who showed how we can practice true contemplation in everyday life.
Father Shannon died over the weekend, the day after the old feast day of Saint Paul of the Cross, the Italian mystic and my namesake because I was born on that day. I say “old” feast day because the last pope named so many new saints, more than all of the popes in history combined, that he had to rearrange the calendar to work in his new rotation. I still have the relic of Saint Paul, a tiny charred chip of something, that Father Shannon bought for me on a trip to Italy. When late night conversations turn to religion I dig it out and proudly show it off. I understand he truly believed the church could change so he worked within toward that effort. I hope he was right.
When we were in Spain years ago we did a bit of the famous Camino de Santiago, a religious pilgramage across the top part of of the country. We did our stretch in a rented car, passing hundreds of people who were doing it the old fashioned way on foot. I felt the same guilty twinge this weekend when we drove down the east side of Seneca Lake and then back up the western side. The Seneca7 relay race was the same day so we passed runners, each from a group of 7, as they ran the 77.7 circumference of the lake in the same direction as us.
The exaggerated gestures of German Expressionism are some of the most exciting art of all time so I planned to celebrate my birthday surrounded by works from the “Age of Discontent” at the Johnson Museum on Cornell’s campus. Max Beckmann, Erich Heckel, Ernst Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff are all there but Beckmann steals the show here with his intense, jam-packed compositions of people at home, in concert halls, taverns, strip clubs and opium dens. And how about this chimney sweep?
An added bonus at the Johnson is the “Witness: 20th-Century Photographic Images from the Collection of Gary and Ellen Davis” show with Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and a disturbing “Bravo 20” photo of a bomb crater by Richard Misrach. Bravo 20 was the name the U.S. Navy gave their illegal bombing exercises in the American west on a site the Native Americans called the “Source of Creation.” Coming back from Ithaca you pass 9,500-acres of land between Seneca and Cayuga lakes, the old “Seneca Ordnance Depot”, that is still fenced in and rather imposing except for the beautiful white deer and I couldn’t help but think of Misrach’s photo.
The Finger Lakes region is gods’ country, a wild mix of Indian reservations, Mennonite communities, mobil homes, luxurious second homes ringing the lakes and hundreds of vineyards catering to the stretch limo hoards. We whizzed by a sign mounted on someone’s mailbox that read “God’s Judgement Will Come” and then passed under a giant electronic sign on the NYS thruway that read, ” No Texting While Driving.” Peggi said, “Didn’t New York State just text us?”
Side of yellow wooden building on Goodman Street in Rochester, New York
Vinyl does sound better even when it’s an mp3 file made from a 45 from 1967 and especially when the song is by The Creation.
In my reading the newest release from MX-80’s Bruce Anderson and Rich Stim, the heroic “Bar Stool Walker” nods a few times to Rochester’s Margaret Explosion. The music is lyric free, there are songs called “Happy Hour“, a video shot on the Golden Gate Bridge and “Tall Boy” and they have a clumsy drummer.
Bar Stool Walker is a multilayered project and I can’t say for sure that this is the case but we haven’t found any sax in there yet. Rich Stim taught Peggi to play sax. Her first song was “Hava Nagila.”
Rich Stim wrote a popular Personal Effects song, “So Hard.”
Many of the songs on Bar Stool Walker are already fully realized videos but it looks like we will have to wait a bit for the luscious Beach Boy cover “The Warmth of the Sun.” Happy Hour Calcutta Cutaway Smoky The Unsuspected Major Pipe The Bridge Paper Hat Hodaddy Humanoid Tall Boy The Warmth of the Sun Bar Stool Walker
Loading docks on Mushroom Boulevard in Rochester, New York
The Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky, defines filmmaking as sculpting In time. “The Sacrifice” is a magnificent sculpture. We spent three nights with the movie, watching it and the extras a few times. Tarkovsky says an artist doesn’t look for a subject, “the subject grows within the artist.” This film is so beautiful that it hardly matters that the story is about Armageddon.
Paul Dodd “Model from Crime Page 24” 2012 Charcoal on paper
Police find eye witness information some of the least reliable. People see what they want to see or what they have been taught to see rather than what is there. We lose our ability to see at a very early age. The peak period for most kids’ art is around age five. Relearning to see is huge project but worth pursuing.
One of our neighbors still has their Irish flag up from Saint Patricks Day and some others fly a Puerto Rican flag but I had never seen a 9-11 flag until I spotted this one flying under an American flag on Culver Road yesterday. I googled “9-11 flag” online and didn’t see anything like it so maybe it’s homemade. The towers are kind of short. My mom made a peace flag back in the sixties and we flew it out front until someone stole it. We always suspected it was the youngest son of one of the neighbors. His mom had called my mom and asked “How dare you fly a peace flag when my (oldest) son is fighting in Viet Nam?” Patriotism comes in all stripes.
Peggi was telling me she stopped at a light behind a pickup with two NRA stickers in the window and a bumper sticker that read, “If the earth is your mother I walk on your mother.” That goes beyond patriotism’s borders. As the light turned he blew smoke from his cigarette out the window.
Coming back from the Margaret Explosion gig at High Falls last night we pulled up next to a car that was cranking’ the tunes. I looked over and it was white haired dude with a baseball cap on and he was bobbing his whole body with the music. I rolled down my window to hear what he was playing and it was Ozzie “goin’ off the rails on the crazy train.”
Paul Dodd “Model from Crime Page 24” 2012 Charcoal on paper
I spent most of the day filling out a form for the Arts & Cultural Council’s Member Showcase, a juried art show scheduled for August. Picking three pieces that I like is one thing but picking three pieces that I think the judges might like is another and then the one page biography/ artist statement is really tough. I don’t do artspeak so I usually try to skip that stage because my explanations sound so obvious and redundant but the artist statement was “mandatory” for this show.
Although I like this guy with the wild hair I decided not to enter him. I’ll enter him in a show where artists statements are not allowed.
Here’s Pete LaBonne’s track “Artist Statement” from his Earring Records cd entitled “Glob”.
Abbots Frozen Custard on the corner of Culver and East Ridge Road in Rochester, New York
The corner of East Ridge and Culver is certainly prime real estate so it is sort of surprising to see local favorite, Abbot’s Custard, holding down a quadrant with Sunoco, Walgreens and Culver Ridge Plaza. Especially considering the place is closed for five months of the year. I’m thinking they’re holding out for the big bucks when the real estate market returns.
I was still in my pajamas when my neighbor, Rick, called to ask if I would come over and take a picture of him and Patty Larkin before Patty hit the road. She played a house concert there last night and we went to this one. One of her songs with the line “traveling alone is a wonderful thing” stuck with me. She sampled a four note progression on electric guitar and then played on top of it. The guy sitting next to us leaned over and said “this sounds like Margaret Explosion”. Mostly she plays acoustic guitar and is a strong rhythm player, so strong I couldn’t hear what she was singing about and I suspect that is what people like about her. She was kind shy and had a funny smile, kinda like the drummer in The Incredible Casuals. I liked her.
