Direct link to Tribute to Alain Bashung (1 hr radio show, free to download)

In a gentle, adoring and informative tribute, the poet Laura Tattoo brings the music of Alain Bashung alive to an English audience. To commemorate the genius of Alain Bashung, Laura dj'd a radio show one year after his death. She plays his music, covering a span of years and styles. She includes translations of his lyrics, and a little biography, particularly his latter years. The show is one hour, and aired on March 14, 2010 on Coast Community Radio. It is a moving tribute to a great singer.

Laura has dedicated a website to the music of Alain Bashung and is translating all of his song lyrics from French into English so that the English-speaking world may come to understand this great French musician better. Her website is called, Bashung in English: English translations of the songs of Alain Bashung, France's greatest rocker."

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(I recorded the show for Laura on Sunday night, and uploaded it to the Internet Archives.)

direct link: Three White Images. (Watch at 1080p -you'll be given this option once you press play- and full-screen - the resolution YouTube offers is excellent.)


Three White Images

...................................................................dark, quiet, stillness of the night
Tonight on my walk I came across three white images that
caught my heart. Should I carry a camera, or would that
undo what memory does? 
...................................................................images of the inner
...................................................................soul
...................................................................remembering

And what I mean is writing about the images in the cryptic
...................................................................criss-crossing of white branches
ways I do in my poetry contains a way for me
...................................................................against the white grate
to remember those images in an almost dream-like way
....................................................................an elephant in a yard, white,
that raw video footage might not
...................................................................full-sized, the Hindu Airavata who
...................................................................upholds the
...................................................................worlds

So I have a camera I resist using.

...................................................................the branches walk with us
Sometimes the photographs become the memories of the
...................................................................their lines against the dark sky
past and you forget what wasn't there. I find it strange
to look at photographs of my childhood, for instance, since
...................................................................cross-walks, roar of air
they are removed from what I remember. In that way
...................................................................we are alone in the night
I'd prefer to write of what I see than take a picture of it. But
...................................................................lights, unknown
the camera is glamourous, an amazing contraption,
...................................................................memories
and images can be shared, and so we take a lot of
...................................................................Tibetan prayer flags criss-crossing
...................................................................a yard
photographs of ourselves and our world. So I think
...................................................................devotionals, offerings, requests
...................................................................a peace tree 
both, remembering through writing, that way, and the
...................................................................where the wind moves
...................................................................pieces of woven material 
image, even if the image wouldn't look to someone else the
way I compose it.
...................................................................lanterns of love

...................................................................and then I lifted myself
...................................................................and it was bright

Three white images that caught my heart-
........a white elephant,
................prayer flags,
........................a white birch tree. 

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Music from BertycoX's "Light of Abysses", go and listen to the whole track, from an album of two songs, beautiful.

The line spacing isn't my formatting, in which the italicized lines are deeply indented in a staggered way, I have done an indent with white dots - hopefully it's readable given the site's html restrictions.

This videopoem was inspired by a question I sent out on Facebook on March 3rd. The question is the first stanza (non-italicized) to which there were many responses from artists for whom taking images of the world in their motions to and fro are an important part of their oeuvre, Richard Kattman, Elissa Malcohn, Kim Walker, Sandra Machado, and Irena Strzinar, and I'd like to thank them. I went back a few evenings later with my video camera and shot the footage and edited during a day and a half marathon.

One of the issues I have with videotaping is camera shake, and as soon as I can afford it, I'll buy iLife and pull my videos in there to remove camera shake and then take them into Final Cut Express to edit them. It'll be far cheaper than an add-on, if such a thing is to be found for FCE. In this video I slowed the footage of the branches to half speed which helped considerably, and then geared the words to accepting that hand-held quality.

Also, in this video I am excited to see a discovery of ways to continue my aim of creating art with 'multiple voices,' 'multiple styles,' multiplicities. Although this video is now posted at YouTube, and I won't remove it, I think I have figured out how to get Garageband to save each voice in a left or right pan. If I get it right and it works, I'll upload the video elsewhere and see if the left/right stereo split of the voices is maintained in a posting. That'll be cool!

One voice is a conversation about doing the video, what memory is --if memories that are written are a better representation of the memories we hold than photographs might be, that photographs of a time period might even supplant our own memories from then-- and perhaps is the voice of ruminations. The other voice speaks poetry. A poetry that dances off the ruminations, echoes, and transcends it.

I am happy with this video and feel I've come far in my self-taught videopoetical route; if it doesn't quite work for you, read along with the film and see if that helps, and remember that I'm still learning and will get better at this.

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Guy W. wrote a comment that I liked - he raised good questions, his response was sensitive to the work and yet expressed his difficulties with the style of aural presentation - and he gave me permission to include it here:

"Very captivating multi-media concept.
Maybe I'm just not good a multi-tasking, but with both poems being read simultaneously, I couldn't hear either one, so I had to scroll away from the video to read the lyrics. Perhaps if the audio stanzas were spaced instead of directly on top of one another.

I might have misinterpreted, but one poem seemed to argue against the existence of the video. Perhaps if all the lyrics were in the video.

I would like to have heard how the commonality of whiteness of the images unified them in your mind."

And so I had to reveal, O to reveal, and said, "Have you heard of double-induction subliminal hypnosis tapes? That is a technique I've transposed to my poetry. Yes, it is supposed to undo the logic of the mind so that a deeper listening can emerge. I have included the text, which isn't ever included with tapes in that style.

And you are absolutely right... one voice does argue against the use of images to accompany memory. Sometimes the photos can become the memory, supplant it so to speak, and one forgets the actual time or the real flavour of it, or how one felt...

The commonality was that I saw all three on a walk one night and all three images struck me with their poetic quality. Though I understand what you mean, and perhaps could put something to that effect in the written transcription that accompanies the videopoem.

Also, I've also been listening to Laurie Anderson lately - O Superman - and feel like experimenting a little with various soundscapes... I even was daring enough to add sound effects to the voice, a little echo here, a little reverberation there :))"
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Postcript, June 13, 2010: Take a look at Loftus' work on memory: http://www.slate.com/id/2256089/pagenum/all/

A video still (some filters added to it, can't remember what but I didn't use them in the video itself), the video will appear later today, saving it now, upload to YouTube hopefully in the morning before I go out...

Yum, delicious. ♡Birthdays! On Thursday night, there were only 5 of us, my brother and his children couldn't make it. My daughter and I made a large but very light cheesecake. One slice left the next morning, which I took a photograph of so *you* can have a piece too, and join us in our small and quiet celebration. ♥♥


♡All sweet wishes fill my starflower shining basket of solar years! ♡Thank you!♡ ☼☆☆☆☆

direct link to YouTube video: Horn-honking street-cheering Toronto celebrates Olympic Gold


Canada makes Olympic history.

As soon as the last overtime gold goal was scored,
people piled out of taverns, their homes, cheering.

now-
for us on home soil.



The streets of Toronto explode into a Winter party.

A whole country berserk with celebration.

Momentarily I became soft, not soft exactly but like glass become thick liquid, melting, memories of hot silica, pliable, and if you knew you could reach your hand through to the other side to Alice's Wonderland.

Through the glass; through the invisible world.

It didn't last; edges returned,
and I continued on.

From Untitled

A long, slow process, clearly. While I don't yet know who these people are, I'm getting to know them. In a way I like this as is, the whitely drawn figures on swish of black paint. But colour inevitably beckons. Now that I've learned how to post large images in small packets, you can better see what's there when you click to full screen. This image is an unbelievable 1496×1872 pixels and is only 292KB!

Steven Kenny, The Wing, 2005, oil on canvas, 40" x 30"


Ah, Icarus... what was he imagining? Rising and gliding like a bird, that he could fly to the fiery sun on his golden wings? Did he immolate himself for that vision, which trapped him in its promises, drew him on, puncturing his skin with the shafts of feathers like hypodermic needles filled with a distillation of fantasies that made him feel invincible, like a god?

When he flew, it was with night vision.

A poem on love in The Writer's Almanac this morning, coming from an extraordinary place of wisdom:

Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

"Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Reprinted by The Writer's Almanac with permission.

direct link: Maya Meditation 2012: The 13 Sacred Tones

Vibrational, healing sounds: Energy Medicine

I downloaded this album to my iPod some months ago but each time I listened I fell into a revery and slept, to return an hour and a half later when it had finished. Today I listened all the way through to the 8th track, 'Pulsar3aDim,Espacio,' where I drifted into a deeper state of consciousness, beyond memory, returning in the middle of the final sublime track.

For me, each track corresponds to a "chakra," wheels of energy, subtle body vortices in the esoteric anatomy. Each interlude is beautifully composed, a perfect understanding of this system. Every time I listen the depth and richness of Quetzalbwattio's work increases.

Each chakra, and the array of sounds from various musical instruments played are accurate as far as I understand their tonal aspects. This music moves the energy in each wheel of light, Muladhara, Swadhisthaha, Manipura, Anahata, Vishuddha, Ajna, and Sahasrara as the Kundalini rises, until radiating out into the aura, considered in some systems a chakra, and then, for this listener, in the last piece, into the massive and intimate universe itself.

For a long time I played only 'Pulsar1aDimension.Vida,' which I guess would correspond to the Heart Centre, Anahata. It's fantastic. Though tonight, listening closely to 'MatizAutoexistente,' my 'third eye' was 'opened' by the phenomenal energetic serpent of blue crackling energy undulating through my brain and cracking the pineal gland wide open so that I could 'see in the dark.' So to speak! :grins:

While I don't know the Mayan system to which the title refers, I find the Sanskrit 'chakras' (found in Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist and Chinese descriptions of the energy body) work here too. Listen on headphones. This is a beautiful, healing album of vibrational energies.

Beautiful work, Quetzalbwattio.
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I wrote this review last night, though I am now listening upright at my computer in the morning and not meditating and dipping in and out of revery, and I understand that it's not necessarily an 'orderly' progression, this Kundalini rising in Maya Meditations, but rather like we are, a complex interweaving of energies, and it is in the totality of the matrix that the vibrational healing occurs.