Music Shivers, Olympics & Art

Today is Monday February Twenty Second Two Thousand Ten. I don't really have a case of the Mondays but I can think of quite a few other things I'd rather be doing than working the salt mines of CHB. I always get this way a few weeks before I go on vaca and I have a pant load of work to accomplish before I leave. Of course its all stuff that I could have done the previous couple of weeks but who in their right mind would want to do something BEFORE it is due. I am a little frightened of people who do shit like that, my girlie at CSC was like that. If a paper was due on Monday she would have it finished and ready for final edits on Saturday. Its probably good that she is home schooling her kids now as it gives her something to do with her time. She is the one who always wanted to be a nurse and then when she worked in the industry for a few years found out she didn't like it so she got married and started having children. She is up to the fourth now and I am damn glad that they aren't mine. I do want children but an acceptable number to me is two and they better damn well go to school with all the other kids in town.

I was listening to my iFraud at the gym this morning and I got the total body shivers when a tune by Fareed Haque came on. There are not many tunes that do that to me but Fareed's are one of them. He is the git player for Garaj Mahal and his solo effort is the nuts. The bees knees even. What does that really mean ? Do bees have knees or is it just some kitchy fifties expression that I heard somewhere. Anyway, I am sweating away and Fareed starts on the poddy and this giant shiver starts at the base of my head and goes straight down my spine to my knees and peters out around my ankles. I have never had a drug give me that with the exception of some really good MDMA we had in ninety eight and the shiver doesn't give you that post trip depression. Thats the power of music to me, the first band to so that was the Grateful Dead because previous to that band I was listening to thrash and thats not really shivery type music. More on this later.

So the USA Olympic team beat the pants of the Canadians yesterday. They were talking so much shit and one drunken fan said something about it being their national sport. I don't think thats right, I think Lacrosse is their national sport but its still awesome that we beat them. I don't know if this means we have to play them again but now that the Russians are nice we have to pick someone to be the villain in hockey to what not our neighbors to the north? The problem is that I know quite a few Canadians and they are all super cool. I will never forget the french Canadians I met up in VT at a reggae show. We had run out of rolling papers and cigarettes and these frenchies next to us had "rollies" which were hand rolled ciggys. This was quite a few years before hand rolled ciggys were hip so no of us had ever run into these type of things before. Oh, they also had more beer than I had ever seen before. There were only three guys but they must have had upwards of fifty cases of beer for the weekend. They were trying to sell them on the lot but since they didn't really speak english that well and were super hammered business was bad. My friend and I gladly stepped in and sold all but their special canadia beers in a few hours. I figured we were just doing our part for US/Quebec relations.

I have made the decision to commission an artist to produce a mosaic of something. I saw one of her creations hanging at the Yawkey Foundation area and thought it was pretty cool and wanted one of my own. Her website looks like it was made by a preshcooler ten years ago so I sent her an email asking if she had any of her work in a gallery or a show. She responded by explaining that she really doesn't go that route and the majority of her work are commissions. Thats all fine and dandy but what sort of subject am I looking for ? I'd love to have one of my dog Alex but would that be too hokey or should I come up with something better. I am after all going to be paying someone to create something but I want it to be interesting to others besides myself. I have a pretty cool art collection so far and a couple of the pieces are worth some dough. I like to collect stuff that isn't what the artist is known for. For instance I have a beach landscape by a marine artist and a beach/moon scene by a a photog known for her photojournalism. I threw it out there on fabo to see what people think about it and I will probably ask the parental units their thoughts on the matter.

I consider myself very lucky, not only because I am sober but for the culture in which I was raised. My mom can be snooty but she does have good taste and I hope that some of that has been learned by myself. My appreciation for art and music def came from my folks and is an important part of my life. I mentioned earlier how certain music can give me the shivers and art can be like that as well. I have gotten goosebumps in museums and galleries before and its an awesome experience. I remember being in the Picasso museum in Barcelona and feeling that way for most of the time I spent inside there. Picasso to me is an excellent example of an artist learning about his craft and changing things up as he matured. To look at his work from his lifetime it is very easy to see how his method changed as he had more life experience to reach from. Granted he is one of the best known artists of the modern age but I think he is an excellent example of how not to get stuck in a rut artistically. I have not tried to do anything while sober yet and I look forward to producing some more work in the next couple of years. My own art while important is not the end all of my being and not so important as to say cut my ear off over. It something that will always be within me and something I intend to do once my life settles down a bit. If I am ever in the market to purchase my own home I will def take into consideration a space for a sculpture studio and Raku firing pit.