The Cultural Coalition will be presenting a very special performance Cabaret dealing with the theme of Dia de Los Muertos through music, dance, storytelling and spoken word as part of the ALAC Theater Festival at the Herberger Theater, downtown Phoenix.
It should be a great performance! Featuring Liliana de Leon, Stella Pope Duarte, Peter Torsiello, Michelle Ceballos and Open Dance, Zarco Guerrero and more…
Well this is a different year. More then any other time in my life I am so aware of how much I need to stay focus and pay attention to everything. It’s the everything that is the problem and presents an impossibility. There is so much of everything. Solution, make your everything smaller and hope no one notices. 
October 20th, The Kawambe-Omowale African Drum & Dance Theatre, a Phoenix, Arizona-based performing arts company, celebrating more than 20 years in the Valley of the Sun!
Can some explain why we are bombarded with information that neither educates or propels our vision. We are served up the same old same oh stuff. We pay for things that are free and feel good about it. We love people who apologize, we adore them when they go to jail and we hate them when they get out. We feel we have made a contribution when a nobody (meaning nobody we know) wins A.I., cause we phoned in our vote (also not free).
Currently there are about 90 people running for President of the United States and all are asked beauty contest questions, and you can see their eyes search for the answer that Paris Hilton would give, cause that would certainly be the right answer.
If we need to be entertained, go to a play, see a good movie, go to a museum or a little league game but don’t watch the news, cause it’s not new or free.
When something is just right the first time you see or hear it, can it be attributed to formula or technique? Usually not. It is obviously something that can’t be learned just by taking classes or mingling with masters.
Recently I watched for the third or fourth time Gorillaz: Demon Days Live in Harlem and think a certain type of magic had to take place in order Albarn to pull this off. I know it is well produced and staged, but so are so many things that don’t work and are far from being magical. How does the magic happen. For something to be important and seen as a contribution it has to not be before or after its’ time.
It has to have an enduring beat, something that time can’t dull, like “Little Rooty Tooty”
So it is for me with the Paintings of Hopper. There is Poetry in his paintings. Old style rap, you can see and feel the “Rhythm”
There will be lots written today about John Lennon, his importance etc. I recall the day because it was one of my worst days. I was in bed sick, couldn’t walk and thinking, rather more like promising myself, that I would stop fooling myself. I hated pretending to be a “business man”. The randomness of Lennon’s death was a kind of wake up alarm. 
I hit the snooze button.
A day or two later when I could walk a little, my kid had this great idea and asked if I would limp down to her school and teach drawing to her 6 grade class. I had never done this before, but it connected for me. The alarm was still ringing.
I hit the snooze button.
There were tons of alarms and clues and eventually I woke up. Sure sometimes I think about the time I wasted not painting, being around artist. Those feelings quickly fade as soon as I pick up a brush.
Thanks Kid.
Last night the Rolling Stones played to another packed crowd out in Glendale Arizona. It looked like some of the fans needed to be assisted in order to get to the concert and there were others that could easily have been Mick Jagger’s great great grand children. In a recent book about the Beatles, John Lennon supposedly wanted to be the Rolling Stones. I wonder what he would think about the Cirque Du Soleil-Love Las Vegas which is really a must see for me. I remember when the Brits arrived, almost everyone believed that it would last a few days maybe a couple of weeks.
In one Karl Zipser recent post he discuses the difficulty that artist face and wonders why with all the money being spent on art that artist still seem to have a hell of a time. I don’t think I will ever understand why things go the way that they do, but there are three questions that Zipser suggest that he/we ask ourselves every day.
And now for something different. Long time ago I worked for a department store and I got to meet H. ( I don’t remember the first name) Sondheim, Stephen’s dad, who was a coat/suit manufacturer and all of us were very proud of Stephen. Most of us had never met him, but didn’t seem to matter. “West Side Story” had just become a huge hit. For some silly reason I’ve always felt like I had some exclusive ownership of “Somewhere”, as if I was among a very small group of people on the planet who knew about this song. On the “Sing Me Back Home” Album by the New Orleans Social Club there is a version of “Somewhere” which is perfectly placed.
I was telling a friend yesterday, that I have not painting a live model in such a look time, that it was like being 16 years old, with the keys to your father car, a false ID and a date with an 18 year girl. It’s a plan to create something bad and I did. Thats to say I wasn’t happy with what I painted.
This morning a friend turned me on to Chris Bliss
and I smiled and felt very pleased with myself. (Don’t know why, but who cares)
