Coming Up

 

You get lucky if you work hard enough

Well, if you point a video camera at something long enough, you eventually get lucky. The wind wasn't blowing. The train only sounded its whistle once. The sound guy helped me to get some footage of my audience. And I wasn't too off key. I did two sets that day and took a nap in the car in the parking lot in between. And drove home through the forest fire north of Santa Barbara that night. Got in at 4:00 am. What the hoot. None of us is getting any younger.

The Latest

Where I'll Be

The Paintings

First oil finished in eight years. 5 x 4 Inspired by my youngest dance group when she was in high school, eight years ago. (About when it was started)

There is a theme here. This painting I started just before she was born, and took seven years to complete, about the time she was in 2nd grade. So, this painting completes the cycle, eight years of when she started leaving home, until she really did. (Don't read too much Freud into this, the painting has always been a very hard thing to do, too much SuperEgo involved) Actually, it was mostly because of a very very busy life. 

Knowing too much too soon

au·to·di·dactˌôdōˈdīdakt/
noun
a self-taught person.
Do you know how hard, how easy this is? I'm watching my relatives and friends home school their kids. Having done it on my own, forever, for myself, I wanted to make sure my kids had the skills NOT to do it on their own. I taught myself computer and accounting skills and then created a fictitious Bachelors degree to get jobs. And then when they could check, had to disappear any reference to a degree. There are major steps you miss in doing this. My music is a case in point. I am succeeding on the basis of a decent singing voice and a very high ability to pick really quick, the rest of it, theory, sense of everything I'm only now trying to learn. The same applies to everything. If you home school, you are robbing them of how to schmooze, how to understand how to succeed in the real world out there. You are robbing them of theory, the way society thinks it should be done. For what reason? To protect them from what? You have to arm them. Having stumbled my way through life, being really smart and really stupid simultaneously, I really wish there had been someone to say: here is the path- take it.
Perhaps there was, but I didn't hear anyone say that. My kids heard me say it.

"On!"

I think I've found "on." It makes money fall magically into my banjo case. I can see if you are a younger person, it might lead you to drug dependence. Some moments will never be "on." But you know the difference. These folks throwing money at me think I'm really good. You and I know better, but we are not going to tell them.