Closet leg of The Tiny Tour up on Birdinsnow

Check out the closet leg of the Tiny Tour up on birdinsnow.com today. It features Eric Baus, Ish Klein, and me.

Mariah Carey - Say Somethin'

孔雀舞 - Peacock Dance

Awe seen in blue and yellow

manic/depression

Jeff Mangum, "Holland, 1945"

The dialogue here of sounds in Mangum's performance is more than simple duende as we have come to know it (is duende ever simple?), but instead is what EB always talks about in terms of the split of a voice (is this what you mean EB?) into something that is more an authentic self than a voice all whole, in its more mundane and everyday parts. I know it is in this splitting sound in Mangum that rises the song into oblivion (or takes it from there for us––which is the same difference). Jay-Z (below) has the split too, but it is more in his beat than in his voice.

Jay-Z, "Lost One"

May 30th, people! Get ready!

The best movie ever made will be out on May 30th, 2008. If you need me on that day, you can find me at your local cineplex, bawling my eyes out, laughing and yuckin' it up, taking notes on Julianne Moore's exact shade of hair color, sketching her outfits, and writing an entire book of poems about this movie. If you call to ask me a question on this day, my only answer to you will be "why." So, get your glad bags on and get ready for this movie, cause the world is not ready for a movie such as this one, but I am hoping that you are.

More sadness and longing from Camilla Schofield (or what we have all come to expect from her)

Milla, I really like your drawings from yesterday:





Could you draw these people sometime: Spiritual Love?

(Check out more of Camilla Schofield's One Doodle Every Day project here.)

Madonna Material Girl

The Magnetic Fields - All You Ever Do Is Walk Away

Love is Like a Bottle of Gin

Albert Camus in Algeria

Fear Not
(James Hampton)

Poor man's vision
Sleeping in a garage
Message revealed
Fear not

Where there is no vision
People perish

Throne of the third heaven
This is love
Fear not

Quiet men often keep secrets
Timing is everything

Pieces left
Pieces right
Holy ordinary
Fear not

Junk revelation
Tinfoil miracle
State of eternity

Where there is no vision
People perish

--Jones Purcell

Louise Nevelson with Hilton Kramer at The Guggenheim

"If the artist feels he must do everything it's folk art."

"The recognition of what you see is as important as what you do."

Staggering and horrible, but in the horror lies the how

For a school project, my friend Quinn found the statistics below about Philadelphia public schools. In 2007:

119 schools have no vocal music teacher (44% of the district's schools)
109 schools (41%) lack an art teacher

That's just Philadelphia and these numbers are on the rise.

Education itself, as an idea, has been on my mind for a few years now. And I just keep wondering: What is the purpose of our educational system these days? How are we educating anybody when we cut arts funding? Who and how are we educating anyone in our current system? I still believe that equal access to quality education is the key to a just society and the arts are key to a healthy educational system (for a whole host of reasons to innumerable to mention here.) So, it always follows for me that access to the arts for everyone is the key to a just society. It's plain and simple. We need to get back to this reality somehow. How is the question. Will I try to figure out this how? Yes, yes I will, I will try. Will you try to help me? I hope so. I need your help, now more than ever.

In the horror of anything, we can find the how. If we face the horror, we will find the how, as complex and mighty as it is to the horror. That is the truth. Do you want to live in a world where people have no idea what art is? Do you want to leave behind a world where people have no way to validate what they instinctively make (art) as worthwhile, as worthy as any endeavor? Artists, I am talking to you. Your art will mean nothing if we do not begin to train again the young artists in our schools today. You were young once, too. You went to school at some point. Do you remember the first teacher who made you feel like making art was important? For 41% of the schools in Philadelphia, hundreds, probably thousands, of students will never know what that’s like if we don’t try to take some action now.

I don’t know what the how is, but I do know to get there we need to face the fact that there is a problem. It seems like a lot of policymakers don't think there is a problem, but there is one. And action to take? Maybe just a real conversation among artists would be a start. I don't think that I am starting that conversation very well here, but maybe you can start some conversations among yourselves, and that would be a start, a good start. I would like that a lot.

A few months ago, I watched some kids make the encaustic pieces below in a Philadelphia school. My favorite is the joker one, cause while the boy was making it, he was looking at his favorite playing card, The Joker, dredged up from deep inside his pocket. The Imagination was with him then. I know The Imagination pretty well myself. It has been my friend since I was a young girl in a public school art class. I'm so glad this particularly wonderful boy has made friends with The Imagination early on. It is never too early to go to the other side. The other side is where real learning occurs. And learning, real learning––that's the point of everything.

Here's The Joker, seen in wax:

Gnarls Barkley - Run

Gwen Stefani- 4 in the morning

I love when glamorous people are sad.

Bob Dylan - Shelter From The Storm (1976 Hard Rain)

Juvenile - Back That Ass Up