It has been over two years since my last post on the TLS website and there are many changes underway to reflect my shifting direction in my life, career, and passions. To paraphrase a quote I read recently:
“The best time to start a task is yesterday, the second-best time is RIGHT NOW.”
Here’s to right now.
Peace and Blessings,
Todd.
“I’m gonna say it’s all right to dream, but work at it — make it come to reality”…”It took 62 years for somebody to find me, but I thank God. Some people never get found.”
—Charles Bradley
On Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 the living embodiment of Soul and aural force of nature Charles Edward Bradley passed from this existence onto another spiritual plane (for a have no doubt of his transition amongst the Angels) after a long, private struggle with Cancer.
Bradley served as a link in the long, long chain of famous and unknown individuals expressing the African experience in America through song: from field songs to Gospel to Jazz to Blues to Rock n’ Roll to Soul music.
Watch him transform Black Sabbath’s Changes into a soul masterpiece and a fitting epitaph for a great artist who channeled his great pain into something beautiful.
The world is a little darker today, yet Heaven is a little brighter because of Brother Charles. He was, and is, one of the best and he will be missed.
Rest in Peace, Reside in Power.
“Inspiration is everywhere”
—Henri Matisse.
This summer I attended the “Matisse in the Studio” show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and what struck me most about the exhibit was Henri Matisse’s intense discipline and boundless creativity within his controlled, yet curated environment.
So for those who are waiting and searching for inspiration to visit—just get on with it!
“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of those Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.”
One of my favorite books of all time is Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: a complex, sprawling, and uncompromising rumination on race, class, and identity in Mid-Century America:
” I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids–and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
It is a book that reveals deeper levels and new revelations with each reading:
“Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass.”
Considered to be a seminal novel of the 20th century, it is a nightmarish journey of psychological angst and societal madness as told through the narrative of a nameless protagonist.
CODA: If you haven’t read the novel (or if you haven’t cracked it open since high school or college), I would highly recommend the experience:
“When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination–indeed, everything and anything except me.”
Two years ago, I wrote a feature for TLS about Emily McDowell’s straightforward and often humorous line of empathy cards borne out of her own battle at age 24 with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
This small, personal project has evolved into a larger, collaborative book, There is No Good Card for This (the title, inspired by the name of one of Emily’s cards) with Kelsey Crowe, Ph.D. to help individuals chart a meaningful course of action “when life is scary, awful, and unfair to people you love”.
Divided into three parts, the book’s practical, conversational prose perfectly mirrors Emily’s spare and insightful illustration style—she is masterful at distilling complex subjects and concepts into warm and meaningful forms.
Congratulations Emily and Kelsey on the new book. And thank you for transforming illness, struggle, and pain into meaning, purpose, and beauty that benefits us all.
Todd.
CODA: Listen to Emily discuss the new book on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Gifted with the benefit of hindsight, we are aware of Bowie’s terminal illness during the conceptualization and execution of his final album Blackstar with the Donny McCaslin Quartet so it is surprising that hours before what would have been David Bowie’s 70th birthday (and several days before the anniversary of his passing) a Tom Hingston-directed video for the ironically titled “No Plan” has been released online.
Even from beyond, Bowie remains a beautifully enigmatic and otherworldly creative presence with the ability the stimulate our intellect and touch our hearts.
We are all the richer for his efforts: Peace, Blessings, and Godspeed David.
CODA: Explore the world of the album’s title track:
Design is hard.
Working on a singular project for a decade is commitment:
“it is more important for us to be creating beautiful, progressive, rewarding work with our partners than it is to take on every new client we can.” —Lost Art
The design firm Lost Art collaborated with the music outfit The Avalanches more than ten years as their second album Wildflower was in development.
As reviewed in this blog in September, Wildflower is an exceptional album—a sonic collision of genres transcending time and space and one of my favorite releases of 2016.
CODA: Check out “The Was”, a video piece created by the art collective Soda_Jerk and the Avalanches:
During a summer playdate with my best friend and our kids, he exposed me to Google Cardboard via a player received in the post from the New York Times VR (a recently launched content provider for Cardboard). After slipping on a pair of headphones and staring deeply into headpiece (which conspicuously resembles the old, static View Master), I was blown away by the seemingly effortless experience of swimming underwater with dolphins, climbing the spire of the new World Trade Center, and exploring the history of Cuban Dance.
Despite the fact that Cardboard is 360-degree video and isn’t true virtual reality it is an astounding, immersive experience for only $15 and the content being created for the player (many of them free) is equally impressive!
But, don’t take my word for it, explore it yourself:
16 years ago, a group of Australian proto-punk, alternative artists turned deejays unleashed Since I Left You : a sprawling, sumptuous fin de siecle album upon an unsuspecting world.
As the 90’s drew to a close, we were witnessing the swift transformation of the music industry from guitars to turntables, record stores to Napster, analog recording to digital assembly; and the Avalanches threw themselves headlong into this brave new postmodern world inhabited by likes of Massive Attack, Portishead, Moby, Air, Thievery Corporation, and DJ Shadow.
Like DJ Shadow’s 1997 magnum opus Endtroducing, the album Since I Left You painstakingly constructed a digital valentine to the quickly vanishing analog era. A lot has happened in since the early aughts and Wildflower quickly picks up and expands upon where the previous album left off. Assisted by a stellar roster of cameos, Wildflower is a collision of hard, urban beats and soft, psychedelic melodies expertly sequenced as only a collective of seasoned DJs can.
This was my album of the summer, but may be one of the most pleasurable listens of the year.
CODA: Listen to members of the band discuss the album with Beats Radio host, Zane Lowe.
Ever since music avatar and popular culture icon Prince Rogers Nelson died on April 21, 2016 there have been many tributes and testaments to his staggering talent but I think his most lasting legacy may be his comfort with non-conformity.
Prince KNEW he was different and that was his strength. He didn’t look, sing, play, or write like anyone else. Make no mistake, he had internalized the personas of Little Richard, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly Stone but through the prism of his own contradictory and ambiguous worldview.
Blurring the likes between black and white, straight and gay, sinner or saint, rock and R&B, was an anathema to the culturally rigid society of the 80’s. A world of cold-war paranoia, apartheid, and homophobia. Through his music and performances, he pushed the boundaries of what was considered to be socially acceptable.
As a Generation X black kid growing up in Milwaukee I knew my experience wasn’t much different from Prince’s Minneapolis and I saw him as a hero. Championing the underground and the counterculture and not allowing himself to be defined by his environment. The rebel, the hippie, the punk, the freak, and the queer were all equally attracted to his persona.
I never imagined that his vision would become the mainstream and that he would be embraced as an elder statesman by the cultural elite.
But, then again I never saw him dying at middle age either. Rest in peace, Prince there will never be another one like you.
Coda: 5 of Todd’s Favorite Prince Songs (in no particular order)
