look at the light

Today was a super warm 95 degree’er. Tonight, all humid and the heat is sticking. Around 10:30 p.m., Franny and I went outside to enjoy this ev’ning warmth. Lightning bugs. What a show. I could look up why and how on Wiki…whatnot but I don’ want to. I love it. Its a solar flare of my human heart to see these lil guys tonight.

As a kid, we’d catch them and stick them in a jar. Maybe, sometimes we’d smush them to see what gives. Some of us would feel guilty, and a little sad. Never getting any closer to finding out the truth about how and why they light their lights. They don’t go way up so we confuse them for stars or planes; they stick close to the ground. Bumbling around for clumsy fingers to grab them and explore. They offer themselves as little tiny mystery’s every summer. Little summertime martyrs.

Earlier this evening, I was in the studio doing Dovetail duty, and Franny came walking in thru the dog door like nothing. She’s got some gnarly hairs, all matty and thick. Her eyebrows are bushy. She walks up to me (its darkish because I’m coating screens for printing) with a glowing ember in her eyebrow. I instinctivley grab her head and tug the ember, only to find that its a lightning bug caught in her furry brow. I’d already tugged on it and instead of it burning my fingers it left a mustardy glow; in my head and my heart, I was (like a snapped finger, now and gone) taken back to that little kid grabbing the buggers in my sweaty summery hands. Franny had been out there, doing what? but she brought one in to show.

Of course in these times, I have to run, grab the camera and take a picture. I have to share. You can hardly see it but I put an arrow showing the glow.

Later, I saw this Mos Def video and was glad to see the simplicity and complexity in it that felt a little bit like it matched the earlier experience. Little wings ‘look at what the light did now’ was in my head as I sat down to finish watching the Tigers game and write this, but Mos Def does it. I have to say, I really don’t like that “white people like” blog/book whatever. Its funny for its trueness, but its racist and it makes me think twice about liking stuff when I don’t care who’s black or white or what. I was in NYC with my brother and Gene a long time ago and saw Mos Def on the street. He was wearing some real nicely polished pointy brown shoes.

Mos Def – “Casa Bey” from Downtown Music on Vimeo.

candie

I saw these candy cigarettes at the gas station a while back. I remember getting them when I was small but I thought they’d been banned. If the FDA gets to control real cigs they should def. be getting these under control too. And look what else, these lil’ hot dogs! Gum that’s shaped and masterfully colored to look like real Lil’ weinies. Sadly, they had no true hot dog flavor.

Speaking of flavor, Will Oldham was back in Lexington this Saturday at a place called the Red Mile (a harness racing track) and the show was in the “round barn”. A sign on the barn it said “standard bred” instead of what we’re used to seeing all over, “thoroughbred”.

Bachelorette, another Drag City band, opened up for them. They (she) are from New Z. and sounded nice. As the bands were making a transition, people from the crowd were wanting to walk behind the stage (closed off by two round tables). People kept walking thru the gaps and the notorious bassist from Chicago, Josh Abrams, got caught up in traffic control. He was in bared feet and had his hands full of one of the tables that started to collapse. He was getting frustrated and waving people off but they kept coming and the table kept sliding down (the legs were folding in on themselves and on Mr. Abrams own legs). I got up to help him out and just as I had a grip he looked at me with a disgusted look of failure and left. I set the table up alone and felt a sense of disappointment. All that struggle to then just bolt.

Bonnie Billy was in rare form. It was the last show of a big tour of 75 shows or something and he was like a kid on the last day of camp. He didn’t want to say goodbye to his good friends (the band). He was in such good spirits that he just kept on going. At one point he asked the crowd if we were still alright, he said he didn’t want it to end and went back to the back of the stage and grabbed his little tote bag. He unpiled his stuff onto the stage and pulled out a dirty looking pair of khaki pants. He dug into the pocket and pulled out a wad of money and handed it to a guy in the front saying “give this to the bar, everybody get a drink on me, get comfortable”. In all my days I never seen that.

Best of all Jim White was on drums. Windmilling his snare shots and smashing the crash with a black-socked foot.

gonz

Here’s a nice 4 star video of “a day in the life” of gonz.

Hydrate

I posted yesterday and erased it because it was too bleak. I was in a blue mood and don’t feel that way now. Its this blogging–I start feeling bad for not writing here and decide to just put something down for the sake of putting it down. So I woke up this morning and decided to self-edit.

I went to Wolf Eyes on Friday night and it was a nice little sonic experience. I say “little” because it wasn’t exactly what my doctor had ordered, but close enough for it being here in town. One fun thing about the show is that they were heading to the town of my origin (Toledo) the next night and then to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit on the 18th to open for Black Dice (careful, the video below may make you dizzy, sick and you might have a small seizure)

What the doctor did order was some Sunn O))), live and in the flesh, but we’ll settle for live Wolfies and recorded Sunn. They give a good explanation of their latest release (Monoliths & Dimensions) “We took an approach concentrating on more of allusion toward the timbre of feedback and the instruments involved, so the piece is really illusory, beautiful and not entirely linear…That said it’s probably the most musical piece we’ve done & also the heaviest, powerful and most abstract set of chords we’ve laid to tape.”

The “doctor” is my unsatisfied mind. Dovetail is feeling the recession a bit, but we’re convinced that the show in Philly this summer will right the ship. But beyond that, is Dovetail scratching the itch that always gets itchy after a bump? Well we’re thinking about staying the course but also about what new directions to take to “keep it fresh”, but not just fresh–make it, ugh, deeper?, better. Things can pretty much always be better. We just don’t want to rest and gather the moss. The sonic booms of some loud, live music helps clear the moss.

Another way of clearing out the cobwebs is to go fast:

On a skateboard or a motorcycle. This is Jason Lee’s commissioned Falcon. He had Ian Barry build him one of the coolest looking bikes I’ve seen. I like Jason Lee as a skater, I’ve seen him act a little, but he’s always been a skater in my mind. I found out about Barry and this Falcon in the latest Garage. The editor starts out the magazine with a letter in which he says something like “I’ve always seen the world as full of those who can weld and those who can’t” and that basically if you can’t weld, you might as well lay down now.

But, he forgot to mention that “weld” could be substituted for “do”. DO anything you want, do it well, get satisfaction from it. If you act (like J. Lee) it affords you the dollars to pay people like Ian to earn a living “doing” what he loves (welding). Without the actor to pay, the welder has a lot of welded stuff laying around which is only “cool” stuff if he also has food in his belly. Admittedly, Ian Barry looks “cooler” in this scene than Jason Lee because he’s the “doer” here. But that’s not fair to all that Jason has done.

Jason Jesse (a completely different ex pro skater) does it all though, so what happens to all this theorizing of “cool”? A satisfied mind, he doesn’t have. He is cool though:

But, mercy. So much about “doing”. And “cool”. I gots to hold on to “Being”. And being with a satisfied mind. Usually that comes from giving and putting aside self for the sake of others.

toot

I’ve not been in the mood for writing for some time. The weather had been super springy (rainy) which is nice, but it has moved my thoughts and actions toward the planning (planting) side of things and not so much the doing (blooming). The sun is out now.

I get down on myself when I don’t feel like I’m being as productive as I think I should be but, I look at the natural cycle and learn that its got to rain if things are going to grow. Not everyone gets to reap all the time, the sowing is important too.

We are proud to be in a new shop here in Lexington, Commotion. She started as a shop for handmade and “eclectic” goods, but as the economy did what it did, she started selling riding clothes on consignment as well. Which is cool considering how many people are having to close up shop these days with no alternatives.

The only other update I can sqeeze out is this blurt in the new American Craft Magazine:

I’ll try to make these posts more interesting as the days grow into summer, thanks for the visit.

“popcorn”

This fella’s name was Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton. He was Tennessee Moonshiner and he was pretty well known. I was researching moonshining and moonshine history yesterday and he came up as the premier example (I was hoping for a KY shiner, but he doesn’t dissapoint). There is a documentary that looks good and tons of articles, blogs and opinions on him out there. It turns out he’d been convicted recently and was supposed to go to prison for 18 months but he was sick and didn’t want to die in jail so he killed himself in March.

Have a look at that lush Appalachian landscape:

a simple popcorn machine

mine that dove

Saturday was the Kentucky Derby and, yes, we were in the celebrity box with big hats on. We were sipping mint juleps and eating derby pie. I says, “I’m not a betting man, but I’m going to put down a few dollars on a haus, just so we can cheer for somthing”. I excuse myself from the company folks.

I look at the sheet and see “Mine that Bird” and think “well this is a business expense, we are here entertaining clients, I may as well choose the horse that has some word (bird) reference to Dovetail, maybe we’ll get lucky”.

I put $97 down on Mine that Bird. Er, no I didn’t.

We didn’t go, we watched it on T.V. We don’t have clients and didn’t wear hats. We did eat a tiny derby pie, some bourbon balls, and drank down some minty juleps. But we did no betty.

Somebody did order a “freedom” mug this weekend from Hawaii. That lucky mug gets to live in HI and hug some Kona on the beach.

dirty drive

These guys called “drive by press” stopped by Lexington yesterday. It was an interesting idea, a press in the back of a van, printing t-shirts of their woodblocks. Maybe I’m older now and not so impressed with t-shirt designs because its been done so very much (I think it’d be more interesting to put the prints to paper and put more vision in the print) but it was still cool to see these guys doing a unique thing.

Their website doesn’t do “justice” to their, I guess its new, vision. They go to all the print conventions and get donations from whoever wants to give a print. They claim “the largest contemporary print collection in the world” because they have thousands from all over, in all styles and methods. It was cool to see so many prints, from so many people, on the road. The problem was the guy just jibber-jabbered on about how cool it was, what they were doing, and how hard it was on the road, and how all these people were his friends and how its o.k to be a d and d nerd…

He wouldn’t stop and, like at a concert where the musician thinks we came for stand-up, it didn’t help his cause (the only exception, in my experience, is The Dirty Three, Warren Ellis’ intros actually enhance the product you went to see/hear((i remember seeing them back in Chicago in the 90’s an he e’n spit into the air and caught it in his mouth and kep on playin’)), not to mention Jim Whites drums. Mick Turners guitar is top notch too! ooh!). This talking about the dubious dirty three has rekindled my interest… I know blogs are usually a drag precisley for this reason–train of thought rambles with no edits. BUT. I turn this into a post from Kentucky about the drive by press and how too much talking about nothing can 1) hurt your product 2) help your product or 3) be a blog.

Latest Hero (5 minutes old)

Design, not all mine

I’ve mentioned it earlier, I’m taking an etching class at the University of Kentucky which is just down the street. Being enrolled in a class means that I am a University of Kentucky student which means I get all the emails about tuition costs rising, new coaches, and T-shirt design competitions.

Coach Kalman

I like that designers have the challenge to create something from their experience and taste but with the restrictions and guidelines of the client. Usually, there is a process of: design, critique, design, critique… sometimes on and on. Watch Mad Men and you get the feeling that if your “good” you’ll sell them on the first go, but that’s not typical. It was true for Tibor Kalman (at least one time), when he told the client he wasn’t going to show them his design until they approved it first. He demanded their trust (which is also not typical). He was at the top.

I thought I might as well submit a design for the UK contest. You get $500 dollars, season basketball tickets and “the satisfaction of seeing your shirt all over campus”. One of the main things that baby designers do that doesn’t work is that they use not only one crappy type face, but usually multiple different crappy type faces and add to the mess with bad “kerning“. I figured if I could use a decent font, a UK logo and have a strong, generic and unifying statement plus some graphic nostalgia, I might have a shot.

The design was to be for a royal blue tee-shirt and could have a front and back. If any logos were used, the University had the right to manipulate it (also, a multitude of other fine print that I didn’t read). You sign your rights over and that’s it.

A couple of days ago I was called in to verify my design and sign over some more rights. Normally I’d be more cautious, but this is an internal student affair, I’m guessing the University isn’t trying to screw anyone. They also told me that I’m one of 5 finalists.

This is fun because being a finalist is always fun, and $500 is also fun, and the design was hardly my “pièce de résistance“, but that makes it all the more fun–nothing to lose, not even pride. But, remember the client? They want changes and you feel like your chipping away from your original vision and getting crankier and crankier at each revision? Also, remember all the fine print? Last night I got another of those emails telling me to “vote now” for the tee of my choice. I go to the page to see my little orphan in the line-up and, huh?

You grew up? Are you wearing make-up? Did you get into an accident?

Lucky for me, I think the changes are fine (again, I’m free) and maybe even beneficial. Its the only one of the 5 to be on a grey (?) tee shirt. I like that alright. They switched my front to my back. Alright again. They changed the typeface to 2 or maybe even 3. One of which is absolutly terrible (the “smashed” or “distressed” look) but, strangely it works ok. And the spacing/placement are all wackie but, again. The less it looks like me, the better the chance the student body will like it.

KY belly

Yes, back in KY for almost a whole week now. Its fun to go away, especially to a place as exciting as NYC, and drop into a fantasy life of a different bed, a different mode of transportation, and a different structure to the day. To get lost and then, to find yourself again in the old way, home again, with a few subtle changes of mind.

What’s changed is not huge, but for me this week NYC has been a bigger influence than NYE. I never really made new years resolutions because I never really felt like Jan. 1 was a new year. It’s always been summer for me and I can’t wait to shed this iceburgian skin of winter.

Here’s the reveiw of the “Generational” show mentioned above (or below). Earlier.