Ebony Fashion Fair Show at Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York
All the big names were represented at the MAG’s Ebony Fashion Fair Show. Mostly male fashion designers, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta, Stephen Burrows, Patrick Kelly, Valentino, Alexander McQueen with their fabulous creations for women and a few fabulous women like Vivian Westwood. We were there for the opening and I found the people in the crowd more interesting than the dresses. Actually I was most intrigued by the mannequins. I’d like take some of those home and use them as models for drawings.
“She’s a model and she’s looking good
I’d like to take her home that’s understood” Kraftwerk
We bought a new light, a floor lamp to stand in the corner over our drawing table and pretty much light up the whole room when we need it. I had a homemade rack for cassettes under the table and it just looked ridiculous with the new lamp. And when was the last time anyone but a hipster listened to a cassette? Well, today! We got into it, Playette, a mix tape from ’84, my recording of Talking Heads from the Village Gate as a threesome in ’77. It’s all stuff that doesn’t exist in any other format unless that Roir Stuff eventually went digital. Even Pete LaBonne has gone digital.
I put all the tapes in a box and we’ll probably never listen to them again. I was intrigued by one labeled “10 Commandments” from 1985, the same year as the video above. 10 Commandments opened for Personal Effects at Scorgies. and the band was us, Personal Effects, doing other bands’ material. So I kept that one out for a future listen. Funny thing, Taana Gardner’s “Heartbeat” was not in the set. Now you know this just don’t make no kinda sense.
Here’s the 10 Commandments’ 1985 set list: “Heaven” – Talking Heads “What Goes On” – VU “Connection” – Stones “End Of The World” – Skeeter Davis “Big Bottom” – Spinal Tap “More Than Good” – MX-80 “Sex Machine” – JB “Maggot Brain” – Funkadelics “She Belongs To Me” – Dylan “It Came Out Of The Sky” – CCR “FunTime” – Iggy
Man with camera on Lake Ontario, Rochester, New York
You have to keep a close eye on Lake Ontario. It looks different every time you check in on it. The upcoming warm weather is going to wreck the sculpture garden, nature’s installation, so you better stop down soon.
We were running out the door this morning, to meet with the lawyers that are handling my parents’ estate, and I had my jacket in my hand. I didn’t take the time to put it on in the house. I was too busy reading the paper. The zipper in my jacket got caught near the bottom of the door to our house and I couldn’t free it. I couldn’t open the door either and the key wouldn’t turn the lock. I tried ramming the door with my shoulder. That didn’t work either so we left. I had a hat on but no jacket in the middle of winter.
But that’s another thing. What kind of a winter is this? Imagine if you were on the high school cross-country ski team. They’ve had one week to ski. In that week I did notice that cross-country is a co-ed sport. I should have figured that out in high school.
We had lunch at Joe Bean. Ran into Fireball Jr. and Linda from Parkleigh. I was still running around without a coat. We stopped in to see my mom in her new digs and signed a contract for her room and board. When we got home I went down to Jared’s place and borrowed a pry bar to pop the door open and free my jacket.
In the dorms back at IU we used to “penny” people in their rooms. We’d lean on the closed door and push pennies into the space between the door and the door jam. Guys would be locked in for hours. Peggi and I were essentially pennied out of our house.
Snow on bridge grate in Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, New York
Is there a Tinsel Town in every city? Ours is on Buffalo Road, about half way to Buffalo in Gates. Tonight, for one night only, they were showing “Florence and the Uffizi Gallery.” Their Renaissance masterpieces include Michelangelo’s David, Leonardo’s Annunciation, Birth of Venus by Botticelli and the Shield of Medusa by Caravaggio so we had to go.
The good parts, the long closeups of the paintings and sculptures were sensational. The bad parts, well, “Quince Jam”s” YouTube review says it better than I can. “The music is appalling, suitable only for a Hollywood panshot around the Grand Canyon. Totally inappropriate for this film and FAR too loud and overblown. And the dreadful actor playing the ridiculous concept of being one of the Medici. Only go with earplugs and prepare to shut your eyes while he hams it up as an ACTOR in his leather trousers.”
Yellow fish in tank at the Friendly Home in Rochester, New York
As of this afternoon my mom is living in the Rochester Home for the Friendless. At least that is what it was once called. Founded in 1849 as the Rochester Association for the Relief of Homeless and Friendless Females, the organization eventually outgrew its location in an old tavern on the corner of East and Alexander. In 1918 they changed their name to the Rochester Friendly Home, moved further east on East Avenue and began to accept married couples and single men as well as women. It is a skilled nursing facility and perfect for my mom’s needs. I really believe this but once we got my mom in the car it took a really hard sell on the drive out there. By the time we left I think she was in the groove.
Orange cone on golf/ski course at Durand Eastman in Rochester, New York
I don’t have a photos of these two scenes but I will do my best to describe them. The settings for both are the same little room, the computer room, at my mom’s apartment building. Two days ago I walked by and two grey-haired people, one man, one woman, were sitting in front of the two Windows machines. Both were looking intently at the monitors playing Solitare. The next day the same woman was alone in the room playing Solitare. At least it looked like she was playing Solitare before she nodded off.
We ran into a guy on the golf course today. It was too warm for the woods. The packed down, well travelled paths on the golf course are still skiable when the temperature gets in the upper thirties. Anyway we were stopped, just kinda looking around, he stopped and said hi. After some small talk he asked why we looked so familiar. “Did you play in a band?” Peggi said, “We still do. Margaret Explosion.” “No,’ he said, Personal Effects.” Peggi said, “That was like thirty some years ago.”
Personal Effects “It’s Different Out There” on Earring Records 1985 EAR 3
Personal Effects – “Nothing Lasts Forever”1 Comment
The most efficient way to to store stuff is digitally. After that there is flat filing cabinets. I put my father’s old cabinet in my studio and that set off a chain reaction of purging to make space for the new. Out with a pile of paintings and older work, sifting through piles of junk and then into the closets where we found boxes of 4D Advertising samples. All to the trash. Now, what about this box of teeth molds that our former neighbor, Leo, an orthodontist who often worked out of his house, left in his basement when he passed? I took a photo and thought about Leo.
Phil Marshall has a rubber soul. We are friends and have played together but I was not aware of his Beatle affinity. We recently donated to his Indiegogo CD project. Our level entitles us to have Phil as a guest on a podcast. Our promo copy of the cd arrived in two versions, “Scatterbed,” fleshed out tracks with guest musicians, and “Scatterbed Sleeper,” basic tracks of guitar and voice performed simultaneously, described as “the album in its rawest and most immediate form.” Both are produced by Chris Zajkowski and they sound fantastic.
While in hospice my dad occupied a scatterbed at St. John’s. He filled an open bed on the fifth floor next door to long-time nursing home residents, wanderers and people who talk non-stop in non-sequiturs. This is David Greenberger Duplex Planet territory. We intended to engage Phil to play music for my father while he was there, a few Johnny Mercer songs between the madness, but it never happened. Phil is a professional music therapist, what must be a heroic profession. “Scatterbed” arrived two weeks after my dad’s passing and Phil’s self described “reflection on loss, grief, faith and the lack thereof” resonated big time.
Our listening session began with “Sleeper,” the basic tracks. The first song, “Heaven is Waiting,” made me cry. As rich as Gershwin or Nilsson. The rhythm guitar in the next song, “Black Ice,” immediately called to mind Beefheart’s, “Harry Irene.” “In the final instant, Beyond all love and fear, Is there a perfect moment, When everything is clear?” “Faith,” which is inevitably called into play in the final hours meets a worthy opponent. “Faith, I doubt, is true, Faith, in love I do believe.” “Ebb And Flow’s” innocence echoes the Velvet Underground’s “After Hours” as it looks death in the eye. “Surrender it all to ebb and flow.” I’m quoting the lyrics here but, more importantly, Phil’s gorgeous melodies get under your skin and stay there.
Our session was interrupted so we started over the next day. “Sleeper” to “Scatterbed” full blown. I found myself thinking not only of my father but our departed painting teacher who also left a huge hole a few months back. We let a week go by and played the two in reverse order. “Sleeper” speaks more clearly, more directly and I am thankful to have a copy. For me the ideal transition from “Sleeper” to “Scatterbed” would have gone more raw, more fragile and more vulnerable. But then, Stella, our eighteen year old cat is in hospice as I write this.
Snow covered path around Eastman Lake in Rochester, New York
OK, so this will be an abbreviated winter. In short spurts it feels like any other winter. The cross country ski conditions the last three days have been near perfect. We skied from our front door to the lake and came back along the western shore of Eastman Lake. That path, a favorite with birders, is so close to the water, parts of it are often under water, especially when the beavers have been active. And it gets so much sun the snow melts quickly. The day after a fresh snow though is always nice and today was especially nice.
Gary Pudup, a former sheriff and head of the local ACLU chapter, is very active in New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. When he ran for office we tried to support him by posting a NYAGV sign on the road behind our house. Someone stole it in the first week. Gary lost his race but we are still friends. He and his wife come to every Margaret Explosion performance.
Last night the Little Theater screened “No Control,” a documentary about gun violence, and Gary brought in the head of the statewide group and a photo journalist for a discussion. Joe Quint’s photos were really powerful. “No Control,” the movie, was a little messy. They contrasted an anti-gun artist with a pro-gun, freedom loving, Cody Wilson, who was busted for making the downloadable plans for a 3D printer gun, “The Liberator.” I didn’t care for the artwork and was kind of drawn into Cody’s open source argument.
This year everything is different. We waited until January 18th for the first significant snowfall. Significant as in enough to cross country ski on. And we had to wait until the end of the day for sufficient accumulation. The moon was visible, the conditions were perfect and Durand’s most fragrant witch hazel, the one that normally blossoms at the end of February, was in full bloom.
David Bowie poster on East Avenue in Rochester, New York
A photo in this morning’s paper of a spunky Irene Gossin speaking in 1970 about environmental issues in front of a map of Irondequoit Bay caught my eye. She is in her nineties and went on to become Penfield Town Supervisor. The article rattled off all the issues she fought against over the years, some of them the same issues my father battled.
They described the home she and her husband built – three acres of land at the edge of a high bluff with a sweeping view of Irondequoit Creek and the wetlands that surround it. The article described the “home’s clean lines, open plan and careful situation in a copse of trees atop the bluff, concepts that Gossin said were meant to echo Frank Lloyd Wright, embraced the home’s location and, perhaps, helped inspire Gossin’s ardent defense of the wetlands so close at hand.”
I stopped right there. This must be a Don Hershey house. Sure enough Peggi found it in her database but we had no address. We have no pictures on the site and of course she is an original owner so there are no real estate photos online. We headed out to track down the house and spent the better part of the afternoon driving around. It took us to a neighborhood we had never really explored with dramatic views of Irondequoit Bay. We were essentially east of Tryon Park, south of the bay, west of Creek Street and north of the old Browncroft Boulevard.
I like to think Don Hershey’s design of the house fit Irene like a glove and she in turn was inspired to defend the beauty that surrounded her whole life.
Audio-Visual performance at Axom Gallery in Rochester, New York
Remember AV Club? Probably not. Nerdy high school kids messing with video so the picture flickered or maybe even manipulating the picture with the audio signal. No idea how you do that but they figured it out. These same kids had a completely different notion of music too. Not so much melody, harmony and rhythm but more blips and sampled noise with feedback. The kind of stuff you’d watch and listen to late at night with some incense burning and recreational drugs.
Axom Gallery last night featured visual art by John Lake, tiled black and white print-outs of a young man in the water, along with experimental music performances by City Harvest Black, Licker, Mike Shiflet and Joe + N. Not sure who we caught but it was completely engaging. There are more of these types than you would imagine. It was one of the biggest crowds I’ve seen at the gallery.
There was beer there too but I was too full to have one. We had eaten dinner at Atlas Eats where they were doing something they called “American Melting Pot. “Cured Salmon Pastrami Style with Creamer potatoes, Homemade 1,000 Island dressing and Rye Caraway Crumbs, Winter Vegetable Puree with Roasted Beets, Quark and Pommes Allumettes and Seared Scallops in Kimchee Butter with Braised Escarole and Cracklings. They could have stopped right there but there two more courses. One included a delicious, over-easy quail egg and that was nice. I can’t eat that much but I did. And it’s not so much the bloated feeling that bums me out it’s more the dread I feel with the excess of it all. And dessert just has a way of spoiling a perfectly good meal.
Yoga class was back after a holiday recess. We worked the lower back today, mostly trying to undue damage we do just walking around in a gravity bound atmosphere. At the end of class Jeffery reminded us we are building awareness with our practice. I like that.
It is always an adventure going to the vet with Stella. For starters, she usually pees on me as I carry her toward the car. She is especially sensitive. She only comes out of the bedroom for a carefully selected group of people. A few neighbors, a few friends, a few family members. Everybody else spooks her. And it has nothing to do with being loud or quiet. She has her own criteria and I would say she has good taste.
We have had a lot of cats. Tori and Sadie and Gato came from Bloomington. Nellie, Nino, Fay and Ornette all came from Lollipop Farm. Stella came from under the porch of Rick Howk’s house in the city. Her mom was all white but mangy. Stella was the pick of the litter.
She is the first cat that we have ever had that didn’t spend most of its time outdoors. She is just too delicate. We could tell that right away so we kept her in. Curiously, she meows at the door when I wake up and goes out for just a minute while I get the paper. She nibbles on the grass near the door and she sometimes throws it up once she is back inside. We have mice in our house but she has never been interested. She is terrified of the vacuum cleaner.
She is the sweetest cat we have ever had but she is almost eighteen years old and it may be time to go. We don’t plan to do anything heroic, we just want to keep her comfortable while we can.
My father gave me a Kodak Instamatic in 1969. It was my first camera. Left to right, top to bottom, my mother, my brothers John and Fran, my friend Brad Fox, Joey Occhipinti with the soccer ball, another Occhipinti with the basketball, my friend Dave Mahoney, and three neighborhood kids with toy guns. Tim Meisenzahl, at the bottom right, was dad’s financial advisor. I think my dad actually started with Tim’s dad. They lived across the street from us when I took this photo. I have to bring my dad’s death certificate out to Tim tomorrow and settle an account he had with Wells Fargo.
“Hitchcock/Truffaut” played to a packed House at the Dryden Theater last weekend. The 2015 movie based on the the 1962 week-long interview François Truffaut conducted with Hitchcock. That interview, the greatest cinema lesson of all time, became a book, a “bible” to filmmakers. The movie is footage from the interview. footage from Hitchcock movies along with commentary from Martin Scorsese, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader and, of course, Peter Bogdanovich. The Hitchcock quotes are mint. “Logic is dull.”
Tree at the end of Hoffman Road in Rochester, New York
Yes, I like putting something that looks like the subject in the middle of the frame when I take a photo. Not off to one side, right in the clumsy middle. I like emphasizing the space the so called subject occupies. I’m not so interested in drawing you in any further but it is nice when you have that option. A photo of this spot would be ordinary in the Spring or Summer. The Winter palette makes this a wonder.
Saturday evening mass on tv from St Ann’s Chapel, Rochester, NY
Things are definitely not the same at my mom’s. My father’s absence permeates every corner of her place. We picked up her mail on the way in, a stack of sympathy cards, and my mom read them all a few times. In her cousin, Suzanne’s, card was another card announcing that a mass would be be said in my father’s name on February 26th at Saint Louis Church.
My mom flicks between American Movie Classics, Turner Classic Movies and the Hallmark station but none of them was doing it for her so we watched the Saturday evening mass that was being broadcast from the chapel in the high rise next door. I guess the broadcast counts as a mass of obligation these days. The pews were filled but only a janitor remained, picking up the flower petals, when I took this shot.
The aide ordered salmon for my mom and when it was delivered we left to have dinner with our friends, Jeff and Mary Kaye. Jeff grilled tuna they bought from a fish buying club in a wasabi sauce. It’s the middle of January and we had fresh kale and brussels sprouts from their garden! Jeff drizzled that with with some fresh squeezed lemon juice. The third-rate of a perfect triangle was the potato kugel he made with last week’s NYT recipe. Mary Kaye trumped Jeff’s efforts with a homemade orange sorbet.
Of course the conversation is the best part of any meal. I’m still digesting it long after the food has passed. I made a crack about someone seeing a shrink and Jeff said the word should be “expander.” And only then did I realize my friend, the therapist, was practicing his craft, something he has perfected, as a non-billable gift to us.
I brought a short stack of my father’s cds home last night, ripped them and brought them back today. We listened while we ripped. “The Lyrical Stan Getz,” “Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk,” Joe Williams “Having The Blues Under A European Sky,” a live Oscar Peterson Trio cd and another collection, two Duke Ellingtion compilations and three Bill Evans cds, one live, a collection and one with Stan Getz. I know I told my dad that Scott LaFaro used to play with Bill Evans. There was a poster of Scott right near the regular table that my dad’s Kodak buddies sat at for twenty four years. Scott LaFaro was in the owner, Nick Massa’s, high school class. These recordings made for an enjoyable evening.
In our local paper the other day one of the questions to the computer guy was from someone who took advantage of the free three months of Apple streaming and then forgot to cancel so they were being billed ten bucks a month by Apple. They wanted to know how to go about canceling. You wouldn’t think you had to be a computer expert to figure that out but Nick Francesco addressed it. The reason it caught my eye is that I, too, never canceled. I haven’t had time to stream but I do plan to check it out before canceling.
We stopped by Martin’s place on New Year’s Eve and he was streaming some JB for his lady friends. He had the place hopping but he told me it was hard to create a Apple streaming dance playlist without having the albums to look at while you’re choosing.
Four bucks in woods near Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, New York
We startled this group of bucks. There were five of them sleeping in a cluster and one ran out of my picture frame. It is, of course, rutting season but these racks are all fairly small. Young bucks do not normally challenge mature large ones. They fear the more mature bucks and avoid the dominant deer’s territory. We’ve seen some epic, knock down, cinematic fights between two mature males. They’re every bit as dramatic as a Quentin Tarantino movie.
My life has felt like a movie in the last few months. Neither all good or bad but as dramatic as one of those buck battles in the woods. We saw “Carol” last night, a slow burn of a love affair but not much of a movie, at least compared to other Patricia Highsmith penned marvels like “Strangers On A Train” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley. We plan to tackle “The Hateful Eight” next.
It sometimes takes a giant interruption to crystallize your thinking. Prolonged concentration is hardly ever productive. Margaret Explosion often has its best nights when we are either exhausted or completely overwhelmed with life’s complications. You can’t force possibilities. You can only open yourself up to them.
So here I am in my studio for the first time in months. The mattress my brother slept on when he was in town is still sprawled out on the floor. A series of paintings, half of them unfinished, line the walls. A short stack of them sits on the floor. The still life of old bottles that I shot to show my father is still staged theatricly on a piece of white panel board. I could paint them for the rest of my life the way Georgio Morandi did. On my work table I have about twenty sheets of purple, hand-made paper that Roy Sowers gave me. I forget what I was going do with them.
There’s a newspaper clipping of Vladimir Putan shaking Bashar al Assad’s hand, two distinctly different body types and postures in an animated pose. There’s a small notebook with scattered thoughts, overheard snippets of conversion and abstract sketches. A good starting point for something. And of course the most recent Crimestoppers page is waiting for me. A package of black construction paper sits next to a bowl of pink ribbons that we found on trees in the woods. It occurs to me that those two things could work together. There’s the big charcoal drawing on my easel. Can I pick up where I left off? And then I’m looking at this weathered wooden end to an old lobster trap that I found along the coast in Maine. The nail holes in the barn shaped board are surrounded by rust. It’s beautiful just the way it is.
