Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.*

Music House by Valerie Walsh

Some of you may remember this post at Writerquake last October because the artwork featured was a big favorite. You probably won't click on the link so I'm going to reprint most of the post here because it's rather key to understanding how special what I have to share with you really is:

 . . . I've refreshed my mind tonight by looking at art and photography online. Of all genres, many appealed to me for different reasons.....this one especially for its expressive charm. I just love it, not only because it describes the houses of my childhood - but because it is a powerful reminder that I have still not taken violin lessons. I bought my violin two years ago after taking a fiddle workshop for adults conducted during our town's arts festival. It was taught by a classical violin teacher who has been with our school system for decades, and by a free-wheeling New Orleans-style fiddler (he calls his style "swamp rock"). They wondered: would this work? ...offering at a small price a five-night course for adults with little or no violin experience, and have them playing a song together at the end of the week? Well, it did work. It was one of the best times I've had in a decade and I consulted the classical teacher about the appropriate beginners violin to purchase, not expensive but not tacky either. We were all set for lessons when her elderly mother grew ill, and time went by that turned into years.

I was meant to find this artwork tonight. Because my silent violin is waiting for me.

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Willow inspects Valerie's package, as if she knows the painting inside has a cat in the window. 
Note the little apricot-colored spot on top of Willow's head. It is her kiss-dot.

"Music House" -- a magical print by Valerie Walsh -- now graces a special spot in my home because she sent it to me as a gift after finding that I linked to her in that post of mine! She emailed me and said that she'd like to send me the print.......would I email her my address? I was absolutely thrilled and responded that I would treasure the print. When she wrote again saying that she was making a frame and that it would take a bit to dry due to the damp weather there I was practically dumbstruck by what she was offering to me. Amazing!


Here's the thing: we bloggers use the art and photography of others in many of our posts to enhance our words and to make our posts more visually appealing. I know I'm not alone in feeling special delight when I find just the right image to further evoke the meaning or message behind a particular post. That's what happened when I discovered "Music House" by Valerie Walsh. Where most artists and photographers will never personally get in touch with us as Val did in this case (I have received heartfelt thank you messages from three videographers in the past after posting their work here) we just don't know how featuring and giving credit to their work might please them. And neither we nor the artists may ever know how important one of their creations might be for a reader(s) of our blogs. There is a ripple effect -- seen/invisible, desired/unbidden -- in every act: physical, mental, and virtual.

That ripple effect is evidenced in an ironic connection to blogging and the way I found Valerie's art at an online image site in October. Karen Jasper (she of Blogland Lane fame and another blogging friend of mine) and Val are great friends. In fact, Valerie did the cover art for Karen's new book and she wrote that it was her favorite gift in 2009 (see KJ's blog sidebar for more info about her book ) .........


I will close this post with a marvelous music video featuring the art of Valerie Walsh.......my muse and my pal. Thank you for your special gift to me, Val, and for touching so many people with your wondrous art.


www.VeryHelpfulSongs.com -- music
www.ValerieGallerie.com -- artwork
©2008 David Tobocman



*Title quote by George Jean Nathan, drama critic (1881-1958)

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Old Postcard Wednesday--The New Century 2000 Palmer/Wirfs & Associates Antiques Events

Palmer/Wirfs & Associates' website celebrates the company's status as having America's Largest Antique & Collectible Shows. That was news to me, in spite of my close proximity to Portland. I also do not know how my mother came to have this particular postcard in her desk in 2000, the year she died. My guess is that she thought it would be interesting to have some of her parents' antiques evaluated. None of those items were ever appraised and now that I own half of them I'm going to tuck this information away for possible future reference. I'm not in any way a collector or expert of antiques, but it seems to me that having antiques appraised during a recession would bring different results than having appraisals done during a vibrant economy. Maybe an evaluation would be more realistic during a poor economy, but selling your stuff during a recession would have to net you less than if you waited for better times when just about everything would be inflated in value.

Of the venues listed on this postcard for antique shows back in 2000 I have been inside three of them: Portland Expo--where a boring date took me to see a boat show in the late 1980s, The Cow Palace in San Francisco--where in the mid 1970s the ex- and I saw the Paul McCartney and Wings show from backstage because the ex's brother was a roadie for Paul, and The Tacoma Dome--where, somewhat ironically, Michael my husband and I saw Paul McCartney's Back in the U.S. concert in 2002.

I've never been to an antiques show, although I've been in antiques shops in several cities. Quite frankly, living around the antiques that I have inherited (yes, I have an emotional attachment to them) makes me disinclined to want to ever attend an antiques show. I'm still dying to get inside the Ikea store in Portland, and from what I see on the website and from scenes in the captivating movie 500 Days of Summer, Ikea is about as far as you can get from the world of antiques.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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the bearable lightness of being

Disclosure:  It is unlikely that any of you saw this video posted at my other blog last March.....but if so and this looks familiar, well, then that would be why!


I thought about this amazing piece today while considering how light I feel at the beginning of this new year. Not weightless, but unburdened of much of the psychological stuff that weighed me down by the end of 2009.

At the heart of this day was a sense of lightness and freedom. I loved it.

the heart of today

 
Time by LynseySteinberg


In keeping with what I wrote in my previous post, and in light of the fact that today was a day that swept me along with the hours so there were few pauses for thought, and because I am going to endeavor to change my waking/sleeping cycle that has actually gotten out of hand and is negatively impacting my life......for those reasons and more I am going to shut off the computer earlier tonight than I have for months, a year, maybe more than a year.

I've already settled the dogs into their orthopedic beds in the laundry room and given them each a short massage. Michael is asleep. The kitties will probably settle down when I do, provided I first get down on the living room floor with the Cat Dancer toy that they expect to play with every night.

So I am not allowing myself to read the interesting posts that perch so tantalizingly in my sidebar and in my blog reading list. With apologies to you I will save them for another day. Instead, I am going to sit on my meditation pillow in front of the Christmas tree, that is still fresh and beautiful and twinkling for me a few more nights, and there I will attend to the concept that came to me yesterday. Although I have an idea what the answer is already, I will sit quietly to come to know the heart of this day that has nearly passed.

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looking for the heart of the first saturday night in 2010

Tokyo at Night by Day Seriani


This is one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite artists. It is also one of my favorite songs to sing. I thought of it hours ago and cannot get it out of my mind now.

A quasi-New Year's Resolution came to be as a result of my focus on this song, that being this:

I am going to look for the Heart of every day in 2010. 

The heart of some days might open easily, like gifts. It's possible I may simply stumble onto the heart of other days. More often, I suspect, meditation will lead to the source. Sometimes barrelin' down the boulevard, or the freeway, or the stretch of lonely road is the best way to blur out everything until the Heart of one thing appears and I have no reason to think that this would not apply to certain days.

Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night

-by Tom Waits

Well you gassed her up
Behind the wheel
With your arm around your sweet one
In your Oldsmobile
Barrelin' down the boulevard
You're looking for the heart of Saturday night

And you got paid on Friday
And your pockets are jinglin'
And you see the lights
You get all tinglin' cause you're cruisin' with a 6
And you're looking for the heart of Saturday night

Then you comb your hair
Shave your face
Tryin' to wipe out ev'ry trace
All the other days
In the week you know that this'll be the Saturday
You're reachin' your peak

Stoppin' on the red
You're goin' on the green
'Cause tonight'll be like nothin'
You've ever seen
And you're barrelin' down the boulevard
Lookin' for the heart of Saturday night

Tell me is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin
Is it the barmaid that's smilin' from the corner of her eye?
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.

Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
'Cause you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
And now you're stumblin'
You're stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night

Well you gassed her up
And you're behind the wheel
With your arm around your sweet one
In your Oldsmobile
Barrellin' down the boulevard,
You're lookin' for the heart of Saturday night

Is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin
And the barmaid is smilin' from the corner of her eye
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.

Makes it kind of special down in the core
And you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
It's found you stumblin'
Stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night
And you're stumblin'
Stumblin onto the heart of Saturday night



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