Post-It Doodles No. 5

I haven't forgotten these.

Still doing them.

Hesse

Like a wallflower he stayed in the background waiting for someone to fetch him, someone more courageous and stronger than himself to tear him away and force him into happiness.

***

Hans thought about nothing but Heilner for the rest of the afternoon. What an odd fellow! Hans' worries and desires simply did not exist for him. He had thoughts and words of his own, he lived a richer and freer life, suffered strange ailments and seemed to despise everything around him. He understood the beauty of the ancient columns and the walls. And he practiced the mysterious and unusual art of mirroring his soul in verse and of constructing a semblance of life for himself out of his imagination. He was quick and untamable and had more fun in a day than Hans in an entire year. He was melancholy and seemed to relish his own sadness like an unusual condition, alien and delicious.

from "Beneath The Wheel"

Hermann Hesse is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

No Cure! (well, not for a while anyway)

The Cure have pulled the plug on all North American tour dates for Sept/Oct., so if you got 'em, either hold on to it or get a refund.

It seems time is needed to finish up their new double album and want to include some new numbers to the set. I for one won't mind if it was all classic Cure songs. Details on their official site. Besides the recent Greatest Hits CD, the last Cure album I bought was Wild Mood Swings.

Well, I don't have anything more to add. So here's a set list of songs that they performed the very first time I saw them back in November 1, 1985 at Radio City Music Hall. The very next evening we went to see Simple Minds on the same stage with Shriekback opening. Remember them? They had that one hit called Nemesis. What I liked about this Cure Show was that they didn't have an opening band and there were no stage props or anything. They just came out and played. Very loud, from what I remember.

• baby screams
• play for today
• kyoto song
• primary
• hanging garden
• cold
• a night like this
• inbetween days
• let's go to bed
• the walk
• push
• screw
• one hundred years
• a forest
• sinking
• six different ways
• charlotte sometimes
• three imaginary boys
• boys don't cry
• 10:15 saturday night
• killing an arab
• do you wanna touch

I got it from this site here.

The last time I saw them was in the mid 90s. It was actually a freebie. The company I worked for owned a box at the venue and agreed to give us some tickets for the show. Fun, but annoying because we were sharing the box with a bunch of idiots who weren't fans and were just there to be at the box and hang out and drink beer. The show was fantastic though.

Here's a pretty decent live version of "A Forest." off of 17 Seconds.



I think the most listened to of all Cure albums for me were 17 Seconds and Faith. And after that, probably Pornography. No surprising as they were really mellow and downbeat apart from a few numbers like Play for Today and Primary. The two were so much alike that they combined them both together and released it as a double LP called "Happily Ever After."

I guess I did have more to add.

Moz - Fall tour

Looks like Moz will be returning to NYC for some fall dates. And this time, he's playing at the smaller venues. In NYC it will be the Hammerstein Ballroom. And it won't be for just the one evening. He'll be doing shows for five nights (October 22-28). They are also offering season tickets for $200 which means you get to go in first and take your place right in front of the stage. I'll probably go for one of the nights. Los Angeles fans will get to pick from one of ten evenings he'll be playing at the Palladium. Imagine the price of the season tickets for THAT one. Got to True To You for the full deal.

The Cure have postponed their September 23 show at Madison Square Garden.

Illustration Friday - Visitors

Thoughts, emotions and identity are like visitors in our minds making us what we can be at any moment in our lives. Making us into the unique individual that we all are. Some visitors seem to take up permanent residency in our minds. Usually not the good kind. But there's always a vacancy for the good thought visitors in my mind. In the end, it's all good as long as we recognize them and deal with them without harm to ourselves or others. And here's to all the good visitors of this blog. Enjoy your stay.

Shoes

OK, I cracked up watching this promo from VH1's "I Hate My 30s" show.

It's on tonight at 10:30.

Quick Fashion sketch

Just a quick fashion sketch I did tonight from an old magazine I had on hand.

Art or lack of it

Art, what can I say? I regret not keeping up in practice and I hope all the money I spent this weekend at Blick Art Materials will not go to waste. And that includes the books at Barnes & Noble.

My intention was to buy just the two items. A Moleskine sketch book and a suitable pen.

Then I saw all these things.

So in addition to the above, I bought a set of 48 Prismacolor pencils. A set of Prismacolor ink pens. A set of Speedball sketching quill/nib set with some India Ink. Some paper and a couple of other small items.

I already have some Rembrandt soft pastels and a set of Cotman watercolors. So I'm pretty much set with all sorts of media to inspire and create.

Now if I can just jump in with some confidence, things would flow through. However, I'm having some problems in that department at the moment and I'm feeling a bit discouraged which is why I've had a lack in posting to the blog.

But I'm working on it. I did want to sign up for a pen and ink drawing course at the Visual Arts college but it was just too expensive for me at the moment. And it seemed like the perfect course to take at the moment since I'm feeling a bit fired up about doing some of this art. It starts next month and maybe something may just happen where I'm able to do it.

*Picture taken from the Blick website.

Inspire Me Thursday - "Dear Diary"

I came upon the website of Inspire Me Thursday while looking at art blogs and it inspired me to post this. The topic was "Dear Diary" and I thought since I have so many journals, I figured I could find something art-related.

It is a self-portrait of me as I remembered and saw myself in New York City. The 90s were a pretty tough time for me. Living in a place I didn't want to live. Friends moving away and having my fill of meeting a lot people that reassured my faith in not trusting or getting too close to people and off course family life was no better.

It took seven years after that entry to finally to get my crap together and leave.

Thank you to the people at Inspire Me Thursday!

New Track: "Voyager"

New track from Gravity & Fusion titled "Voyager."

Basically, I just turned on my equipment and hit the global record button and went with it. I did not use a sequencer and all sounds are from the Roland Juno.

I actually felt it to be a little incomplete, but try as I may, I did not find anything more to add to it. The entire piece contains just five tracks. But I feel I have made the point of using less. Space is VERY empty!

The inspiration for this piece is Voyager's travels out into space. It's travels to the planets and beyond. I think the end of the piece suggests that after Voyager leaves the edges of our outer solar system, it enters deep space where it's mostly empty. And so the single note lingers for a while until the piece is finished.

I hope you enjoy it.

Link to SendSpace: Voyager

In the sun, it's for everyone!

Things getting you down? You should go to the child within or the teenager within and think of those things that made you happy. I went to a place in time where despite some problems, things were a little carefree and I had certain things to keep me company namely, the above woman you see above. I'm so glad that I meet more people today who are fans like myself. When I was a teen, I felt I was the only one. I was labeled a freak of sorts for obsessing over such a band. And if there ever was another, I never met him/her. At Junior High, it was all KISS, Zeppelin and disco kids. Despite the fact that Blondie's biggest hit was a disco song, I still had the words DISCO SUCKS written on my notebook.

So summertime was all about getting a few bucks somehow, and shopping for magazines (anything with Debbie), comics and staying up late to catch whatever weird movies were shown on TV, most of them being Japanese Monster movies which by the way Blondie paid homage to in their first album with the song "The Attack of The Giant Ants."

Lyrics:

Giant ants from space snuff the human race
Then they eat your face, never leave a trace
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la
They shoot fire all around. Tokyo burns down
Everybody drowns. The moon falls on the ground
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la

They can't be stopped at all. The buildings start to fall
Soldiers shoot all day and then they run away
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la

The world is holocaust. Everything is lost
Mankind is destroyed. Sprinkled in the void
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la

Giant ants from space waste the human race
Then they eat your face, never leave a trace
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la

Side note - I have a tape version of that first album and though the album was self titled, my tape did have one. It was called "Waiting." I might have something rare there!

And in memory of summers long gone and in which are so emblazoned in my memory, here are the lyrics to "In The Sun."

Surf's up!
In the sun, I'm waiting for the day
Having fun, in warm far away
Moonlight nights, water seems so clear
Ooh city lights while I'm still waiting here

In the sun, it's for everyone
In the sun, were gonna have some fun
In the sun, were gonna shoot the tube
I'll do it for you, my paka lola luau love

New York isle is covered by grey
Concrete piles, blues play my way
Tropic haze, pineapple sky
Perfect wave, hurricane eye

In the sun, it's for everyone
In the sun, were gonna have some fun
In the sun, were gonna shoot the tube
I'll do it for you, my paka lola luau love

In the sun, it's for everyone
In the sun, were gonna have some fun
In the sun, were gonna shoot the tube
I'll do it for you, my paka lola luau love

Where is my wave?
Where is my wave?

Wow! Chrissie Hynde, Debbie and Siouxsie all together in one room!

Speaking of comics of which I'll be exploring this weekend (I'm going for those back issues of anything from, maybe, Detective Comics from the late 70s to early 80s. I just want to see those GRIT adds!) This particular comic pictured above (I know that's a DVD cover, but the comic is of same) was a prized possession until someone came over my apartment once when I was living in Arizona and asked to borrow it. And never returned it or even offered to do so! I won't mention any names, but he is a personal friend of Debbie & Chris. I should mention his name though so when he Googles his ass, he'll come upon this and get a hint. Dude, I want it back! You flake! Ah, at least I know it has a good home. Or something.

This is not a love song

I'm having such a day of it. And It's not even half-way through. I'm trying to hang in there but I'm caught on a wave of despair. DESPAIR I tell you!

I nearly sobbed this morning (OK, well, I actually sobbed. OK???). I can't say exactly what triggered it, but you know it was probably building up all this time and overspilled.

Someone reading this is saying "Get over it, V!"

No, I won't. Can you please try to understand me?

I'm tired of flakes, phonies and bullies!

Am I ever that person? I'm going to go out on a limb and say no. I react to flakes, phonies and bullies. So if my reaction to them makes me look like a flake, phony or a bully, well, they have only themselves to blame for it.

It's tough in New York to make friends. A lot of people think because so many people live here, that it's easy to get on with people. But understand that 90% are, yes, you guessed it:

FLAKES, PHONIES AND BULLIES!

I'm tired.
I'm so very tired
And I'm feeling very sick and ill today.

But I'm still fond of you.