DOGDAYS- Nosferatu and Otis

t’s been a while since I shared a prominent pet appreciation post.
Time to squeeze in a brief celebration of Nosferatu the dachshund and Otis, a Basset Fauve de Bretagne...the lucky dogs that share a perfectly pink Brighton house with Nick and Susie Cave.

In one of his treasured letters from the simply magical Red Hand Files, Nick Cave shares:
”[…]we have two family dogs.
A gentle moony dog with sad eyes and cancer called Otis and a psychotic little dachshund called Nosferatu, whose one great enterprise in life is to bite me.
I think it is safe to say that I love these dogs considerably more than they love me. They are devoted to my wife and guard her from me with their lives.”

⁣He later adds lovingly:
”A final note on the dogs – my wife, Susie, is devoted to them and it would be fair to say she shows more understanding and empathy for the animal world than she does for the human world.
Susie can look into the berserk eyes of Nosferatu and just melt him. She is a dog-whisper.
She has the same effect on me.
She is a husband-whisperer.”

-RHF issue # 2, September 2018

Hmmm, I think one could say that Nick Cave is a bit of Esther-whisperer, because this just made me melt as well.
xez

* All photography from @susiecaveofficial Instagram, except photo nr. 3, a wonderful picture by @davidtibet_current93 🙏

RARE PEARLS OF GIFTED INSPIRATION- MARY OLIVER / “WILD GEESE”

Last week I briefly shared my feelings on inspiration and my fascination with those “rare pearls” that some artists experience as if they were gifted to them. Songs or poems that felt like they just came, all they had to do was write them down.⁣

“Wild Geese” is one of these gems, which originally started as an exercise in technique but once Mary Oliver started writing, it was the poem and it never changed.⁣
In an “On Being” interview with the brilliant Krista Tippett, she adds:⁣
“It was there in me. ⁣
Yes. ⁣
Once I heard those geese and said that line about anguish — and where that came from, I don’t know. ⁣
I’d say that’s one of the poems that…that just came.”

Original audio of Mary Oliver reading the poem, which I combined with footage from the 1973 film ‘The Flight of the Snow Geese’ by Jen and Des Bartlett.⁣

⁣WILD GEESE⁣
You do not have to be good.⁣
You do not have to walk on your knees⁣
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.⁣
You only have to let the soft animal of your body⁣
love what it loves.⁣
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.⁣
Meanwhile the world goes on.⁣
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain⁣
are moving across the landscapes,⁣
over the prairies and the deep trees,⁣
the mountains and the rivers.⁣
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,⁣
are heading home again.⁣
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,⁣
the world offers itself to your imagination,⁣
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -⁣
over and over announcing your place⁣
in the family of things.⁣
- Mary Oliver

I truly love this poem, it feels like a meditation on wholeness and I am grateful that it exists.⁣

xez

Silly Symphonies - Skeleton Friends

The other day, I locked myself up and rewatched old Silly Symphonies episodes.

The skeleton friends must be my favourites and I love both the 1929 (first Silly Symphonies ever!) as the 1937 version🖤

Just wanted to share a snippet of them with you and hope they make you smile as well.
xez

ON YAYOI KUSAMA's BIRTHDAY

Excerpt from the 1968 film ‘Kusama’s self-obliteration’ by Jud Yalkut, paired with music from Takashi Kokubo⁣.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the infinitely beautiful and inspiring Yayoi Kusama!⁣

Interview Footage from the ‘Advice to Young’ series by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in 2015.⁣ Camera by Yudai Maruyama Produced and edited by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen⁣.

⁣🔴 ADVICE:
Young people receive advice and guidance from others.⁣
I believe that advice shouldn’t come from others but that each person should gain a direction for oneself- by overcoming difficulty and a true direction will come from overcoming adversity.⁣
Everyone, think deeply, fight harder and obtain splendid direction for your life.⁣ I wish for you to gain guidance from your deep thinking and spread your ideas all over the world in order to establish a wonderful life and world.⁣
I think that it is very important.⁣
Let’s fight together for it.⁣
It is my strongest wish as an Artist.”⁣

Interview from the 2018 Kusama Infinity Movie, directed by Heather Lenz. Combined with photography of Yayoi Kusama at the age of ten in 1939, on the base of ‘My Flower Bed’ in 1965 and surrounded by sunflowers in 2000 for ‘Flower Obsession’

⁣🔴 FLOWERS:
“ It’s just like when I see the flowers, I see the flowers everywhere…and there are so many and I feel panicked and become so overwhelmed that I want to eat them all.”

Interview from the Kusama Infinity Movie, dir. by Heather Lenz in 2018 combined with footage from ‘Kusama’s self-obliteration’.

⁣🔴 ENERGY:
“The universe is full of nothing, ever-expanding and ever-destroying itself⁣.
Just like a drop that falls in water, I completely disappear in the universe.⁣
I seek the energy of life and I turn it into Art.”


Thank you, Miss Yayoi Kusama…
xez

Powerful Language

March 18th, 2021

Today started in a minor key, when the results of yesterday’s elections here in the Netherlands, started coming in and sinking in.
It saddens me deeply, that we have a political direction that keeps moving further to the right, driven by a language of dominance, oversimplification and othering.⁣

As I listened to the wisdom of the three people in this post, I thought about how aware we have to be of the power of words and wanted to share them with you.
Because as Ocean Vuong shares in the same interview from the above excerpt:⁣
“We often say ‘the future is in your hands.’
But I think the future is actually in your mouth.
You have to articulate the world you want to live in, first. “

1. OCEAN VUONG
Ocean Vuong’s words from the stellar podcast On Being with Krista Tippet, recorded in March 2020. Paired with footage of Ocean Vuong by the MacArthur Foundation.⁣

2. MAYA ANGELOU
Dr. Maya Angelou, poet, actress, author, civil rights activist and professor in a snippet from her January 2011 appearance on Oprah's Master Class/OWN⁣

3. ELI WIESEL
”Never let anyone be humiliated in your presence”- footage from the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech of Eli Wiesel- author, professor, political activist and Holocaust survivor ⁣

May we listen and consider.
xez

RARE PEARLS OF GIFTED INSPIRATION I - Townes van Zandt / "If you needed me"

I used to believe that creativity and inspiration is something that is supposed to “happen” to you. Therefore, whenever creation didn’t come effortlessly, I told myself it was most likely due to a lack of talent.
Then I started to read more by creators I deeply admire, people like Nick Cave or Patti Smith, that explained that creativity is also like labour. You have to do the work, sit and be available...again and again. Listening to these words, gave me just that little bit of extra space to trust the process sometimes.

And yet- there is also simply MAGIC out there....songs or poems about which the writer has shared that they felt like the piece was ‘given’ to them- all they needed to do was write it down.
I would like to share a few of those rare pearls that are important to me personally and this is the first, “If you needed me” by Townes van Zandt.

Townes was staying with Guy and Susanna Clark when they all got the flu. As Townes describes in this recording from “Austin Pickers”, the song then came to him in a fever dream about being a folksinger that actually played this song.

He woke up, wrote down the verses in the middle of the night and went right back to sleep. 
The next morning he woke up, picked up a guitar and played it through.
It has never changed.

In a later interview Townes shared:
“The subconscious must be writing songs all the time. I’ve heard a lot of songwriters express the same feeling, that the song came from elsewhere.
It came through me.
The song was there.
I’ve had that feeling with certain other songs, Guy Clark songs or Bob Dylan songs. John Prine songs.
I feel, “Man, why didn’t I write that? That song was out there and I didn’t get it.”
You get that feeling the first time you hear it: “Man, that song was in me, too!””


Thank you Townes van Zandt, for writing the most beautiful songs to guide, comfort and move me.
xez

I Am Somebody

It’s forty-nine years ago, in February of 1972, that Reverend Jesse Jackson recited this poem with a group of kids on the stoop of 123 Sesame Street.
Its message about the individuality and significance of ALL people however, has not aged since:

⁣I may be Young
but I am
Somebody.
I may be on Welfare
but I am
Somebody.
I may be on Small
but I am
Somebody.
I may make a Mistake
but I am
Somebody!
My clothes are different,
My face is different,
My hair is different,
but I am
Somebody.
I am black, brown, white.
I speak a different language.
But I must be respected,
protected,
never rejected.
I am God’s child.
⁣I am
Somebody!”

Sesame Street Footage from Episode 0402, aired May 1972

‘I Am - Somebody’ was written in the 1950s by Reverend William Holmes Borders Sr., an African American minister and civil rights leader.⁣
It was popularised and adapted by Reverend Jackson and kept evolving over the years.⁣

Set photos of Rev. Jesse Jackson, EP Jon Stone and the group of children- ©Children's Television Workshop/Everett Collection

xez

Basquiat on my Mind

‘I am what I am what I am.’
Basquiat has been on my mind.

There is so little existing interview material of the brilliant, beautiful Jean-Michel Basquiat and the footage I did see, moved and frustrated me…

His silence following questions that are impossible to answer, the physical reaction to being misunderstood and also, the warmth, joy and sensitivity in his eyes when talking to a beloved friend.

From a 1985 interview with Geoff Dunlop andSandy Nairne for the UK Television series ‘State of the Art’.

Footage from a 1981 interview by Marc H. Miller for ‘ART/new york’ in Basquiat’s SOHO studio on Crosby street.

A 1986 conversation with Jean-Michel’s friend Tamra Davis, from her documentary ‘The Radiant Child’.

It’s the words we don’t hear which are the ones that  seem to linger most and this reminded me of what Basqiat once said about his art:
“I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.” 

In 1993, Sara Jane Boyers created a children’s book by pairing an empowering poem by Dr. Maya Angelou with Basquiat’s art.
The poem “Life doesn’t Frighten Me” was written “for all children who whistle in the dark and who refuse to admit that they’re frightened out of their wits” .
I have combined imagery of the book with original audio of Maya Angelou reading her own words here:

Thank you Dr. Maya Angelou, for the wisdom you left us with and oh how I wish, wish that you would have had a magic charm, Jean-Michel.

xez

David Lynch and the Woodies

In a 2017 interview with the UK Telegraph, ⁣David Lynch shared, how he once rescued five Woody Woodpecker dolls from a petrol station in 1981:
"I screech on the brakes, I do a U-turn, go back and I buy them and I save their lives.
I named them Chucko, Buster, Pete, Bob and Dan and they were my boys and they were in my office.
They were my dear friends for a while but certain traits started coming out and they became not so nice."
Then, looking straight ahead, he added with a grim finality:
“They are not in my life anymore."

The Woodies were still in Lynch’s life when an Eraserhead trailer was made for the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles in ‘82, during which Lynch expressed their wisdom as following:⁣
⁣“These guys arent just a bunch of goofballs, they know that there is plenty of suffering in the world.
They spent many years with little iron hooks in their backs up on Sunset Boulevard.
But they tell me, that there’s this all pervading happiness underneath everything- and the more time I spend with them, the more I believe it”.

Trailer produced in 1982 by Douglas Brian Martin and Steven M. Martin, cinematography by Frederick Elmes.

Most likely, we will never know what happened to break up this extraordinary friendship...but I think about it often.⁣

A very happy birthday to the wonderful Mister David Lynch!⁣

Photography:
Lynch, with a few of his boys in the background, photographer unknown
David Lynch at Universal Studios in 1981, photographer unknown
xez

Happy New Year - The Music Crept By us

THE MUSIC CREPT BY US

I would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former SS monsters
However since it is
New Year’s Eve
and I have lip cancer
I will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance
- Leonard Cohen
from ‘Flowers For Hitler’

Happy New Year, here’s to more dancing in 2021.
Because, to quote the wonderful Gregory Orr:
If we're not supposed to dance, why all this music?
xez

THE SUNDAY DICTIONARY / THAT'S WHAT HE SAID- BRUCE LEE

A thread running through the past few weeks has been trying to keep my mind open and my anxiety comforted.⁣.. This made me think of wise words spoken by Bruce Lee in a 1971 interview with Pierre Berton.⁣
Here, in his only preserved English speaking TV interview, Lee shared his thoughts about style, expression, growth and humanity.⁣

Bruce Lee, who had to actually slow down his moves in order for film cameras to be able to capture them, is a martial arts legend.⁣
He was also a brilliant philosopher, who constantly gathered his thoughts, reflections, goals and affirmations in beautifully written journals.⁣
And his holistic thinking mind is an inspiration on days when mine threatens to close.⁣

So tonight, I listen to Bruce Lee sharing variations of his famous water metaphor for the philosophy of Gung Fu and realise...that I too,
am just a human being
in this family
under
the
sky.⁣

”Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water.
Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.
You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or creep or drip or CRASH.
Be water, my friend.”

Thank you Mister Lee, I’m so sad you had to leave this early.⁣

crystallisation
/ˌkrɪs.təl.aɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/⁣
1. The process of turning into crystals⁣
2. A process in which thoughts or opinions become clear and fixed.⁣

xez

Excerpts from Bruce Lee’s journals, found on the stellar Brain Pickings website, click to enlarge.

Clip from the series Longstreet, with James Franciscus.⁣

1964 Footage of the casting for the Green Hornet (colourised by Color History)⁣

Jackie Chan confessing to “Best Story Ever” how he exaggerated an accidental injury on the set of Enter the Dragon, just so Bruce Lee would comfort him longer ♥️

EAMES DREAMS

Of course I love the brilliant design work by Ray and Charles Eames…but what I adore even more, is the toys they created.

The Eameses shared a firm belief in the importance of play, stimulating young creativity and the philosophy to “take your pleasure seriously.”
They also explored architectural challenges of structure and materials through toy creation, like the well known Elephant- constructed to experiment with moulding plywood into compound curves.

Pundy, the son of photographer and graphic artist Herbert Matter, testing out the Eames Elephant prototype © Eames Office LLC.

The first toys they designed for mass production, were large and colourful animal masks that began as props used in exhibitions, photographs and theatrical skits with friends.

Colour Photographs: Toy Masks prototypes, 1950 © Eames Office LLC / B&W Photographs by Allan Grant for LIFE Magazine, 1951

These masks are my absolute Eames favourites, so it gave me a little jolt of excitement to discover Roosje van Donselaar’s work for VitraHaus!
Roosje created small editions of unique and handmade clay ‘Facials’, inspired by the original Eames’ Toy Masks.

Special ‘Facials’ for the VitraHaus, ©Roosje van Donselaar

Special ‘Facials’ for the VitraHaus, ©Roosje van Donselaar

Such wonderful work and a lovely reminder to remain playful and curious!
xez

Playful moments between Ray and Charles Eames, all photographs © Eames Office LLC , click to enlarge.


PS: You can create your own paper Eames Elephant with this template here

THE SUNDAY DICTIONARY / That's what he said- Lou Reed

 Lou Reed never wanted to answer any personal questions by the media, everything he wanted to say was already contained within his music.
And music is what he offered to talk about.⁣
He once called journalists “the lowest form of life” and had little tolerance for ‘dumb questions or lazy subjects’- as illustrated by the following interview snippets from 1974 and 1975.

Photography by Mick Rock
Video: Lou Reed in Australia, 1974

Photography by Dustin Pittman
Video: Lou Reed in Australia, 1975

However, in the last interview he ever gave, a conversation with director Farida Khelfa a mere month before his passing, he opened up about what sound meant to him.:

Photograph by Grant Cornett
Video: Lou Reed interviewed by Farida Khelfa for Parrot, 2013.

“I’m very emotionally affected by sound. 
Sounds are the inexplicable.[…]
Sound is like light, what is light?
Or what is sound?
Sound is more than just noise and ordered sound is music.
My life is music.
The first memory of sounds would have to be your mother’s heartbeat, for all of us.[…]
You grow up, from when you’re a peanut, listening to rhythm.[…]
But then there are nature sounds…
The sound of the wind.
The sound of Love…”

Thank you Lou Reed- for doing what you loved, for making me forget myself and for being someone good.⁣

sound /saʊnd/
1.
Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.⁣
2. Sound produced by continuous and regular vibrations, as opposed to noise.⁣

⁣xez

THE SUNDAY DICTIONARY / That's what she said- Björk

Young Björk sharing thoughts on gender stereotyping, from a 1994 interview for Spanish Television.

Photograph by Juergen Teller

"Men didn’t before have to worry about this.
They can be silly, fat, funny, intelligent, hardcore, sensual, all those different things, philosophical.
But with women they always have to be feminine.
Feminine, feminine.
And what I like most, is not for everyone to say ‘this is the Age of Women’ or whatever, I think this is bullshit, you know.
I just like to see women who can be characters and can be themselves.
Number 1,2 and 3 they are what they are and number...10- yes, they
happen to be women. In the same way that you happen to be Spanish and I happen to be Icelandic.”

Thank you Björk Guðmundsdóttir, for being such a bright guiding light for over thirty years- a creative force that never ceases questioning, reinventing, collaborating and inspiring.
And for pronouncing “hardcore” the way you do.

character[ kar-ik-ter ]
1.
the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing.
2. one such feature or trait; characteristic.
3. moral or ethical quality

xez

THE SUNDAY DICTIONARY / That's what he said- Muhammad Ali

This week, I’ve been whispering poetic Muhammad Ali trash talk to myself on a regular basis.⁣

Although Ali was dyslexic, he was constantly exploring with language- from creating short and metaphor filled rhyme to mock his boxing opponents, to a moving tribute for the black victims of the 1971 Attica prison massacre, or by sharing one of the shortest poems ever written (see below).

Photograph by Gordon Parks

Transcript:
That's when little Cassius Clay from Louisville, Kentucky, came up to stop Sonny Liston.
The man who annihilated Floyd Patterson twice.
HE WAS GONNA KILL ME!
But he hit harder than George. His reach is longer than George's. He's a better boxer than George.
And I'm better now than I was when you saw that 22-years old undeveloped kid running from Sonny Liston.
I'm experienced now, professional. Jaws been broke, been knocked down a couple of times, I'm bad! 
Been chopping trees. I done something new for this fight.
I done wrestled with an alligator. That's right. I have wrestled with an alligator.
I done tussled with a whale.
I done handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail.
That's bad!
Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick! I'm so mean I make medicine sick!
Bad, fast! Fast! Fast!
Last night I cut the light off in my bedroom, hit the switch and was in the bed before the room was dark.
And you George Foreman, all you chumps are going to bow when I whup him.
All of ya. I know you've got him.
I know you've got him picked.
But the man's in trouble.
I'm going to show you how great I am!”

⁣These rap like rhymes that traveled through time made me smile, perhaps they even made me feel a little stronger.⁣
Thank you, Mister Ali.⁣

Great //ɡreɪt/
1. of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above average.⁣
2. of ability, quality, or eminence considerably above average.⁣

xez

Photograph by Gordon Parks