Tag Archives: Magic
reflexion (rɪˈflɛkʃən) | camera (ˈkæmərə)
reflexion (rɪˈflɛkʃən) | camera (ˈkæmərə)
As you move forward in your life it is very natural to reflect upon the things you have acquired, the goals you have achieved, the people you have met. It is also very natural to feel dire detriment when any of these things are lost or your goals have not been achieved or these people have abandoned you. However, as you reflect upon your life, you remember very well that you were quite happy say, a year ago, without these things or people. It’s all really a matter of perspective.
Reflecting upon this past year, many things, goals, and people have come my way. I worked hard to make that all happen. I held onto things, I lost things. I accomplished goals, I changed my goals. I met people, I lost people.
I am very hard on myself. I am my own worst critic. I like to keep up with myself and excel above myself. But that makes taking photos and making art difficult for myself. So, in the past few months, I’ve been reflecting and looking at my own reflexion. I decided to turn it all off. The noise. The radio. The social media. The Facebook. The Twitter. Not a 100% but 90% isn’t bad. My own personal filter. I stopped caring about what other social personalities were doing. I stopped caring that I am supposed to get the winning photo. I stopped caring that I wanted to keep up with everyone else. Because I didn’t. I was only trying to keep up with myself.
I love the inspiration of art and music. The music. I fell into the music. The reverie and resonance when silence and sound meet upon chance. The art. I was always in love with the art. When creation is left behind it becomes a legacy after we are gone.
And some of those people understood that very essence about me and let me be who I am. These are my friends, they are my people.
Each one of them has inspired me…. Healing other people with her jewelry. Writing teen novels with her imagination and experience. Touring in the Middle East playing for our troops.
Inspiring.
Being inspired, I am able to run down mountains, I am able to listen to silence, I am able to touch guitar strings, I am able to go through another rigorous kung fu program, and most of all, I am able to take another photo. And being inspired, I am able to take my time, I am able to just show up. And when I look at the people around me, the things I’ve surrounded myself with, the goals I decided to achieve, I see a reflexion of me. A desire, not for a want of anything new outside but for a need of something old inside, so I can evolve into something/someone beyond all of Heaven and Earth.
Be happy with what you already have. You may build upon yourself with experiences with people, things, and goals. But a bee and all of nature has all it will ever need, and have been quite content with that for centuries.
Unphotographable | Sun Rays & Moon Beams
A small group of friends gathered on the 4th, sandwiched between the high desert and the high clouds. The sun cut through with its golden rays and accentuated our natural glow of love and energy. Everything was covered in magical godlike dusk, and I could not move out of it to capture it. I myself was captured, along with the blades of grass, the rose petals, the light between the trees, the shine in our eyes, the highlights in our hair, the warmth of our faces, the laughter echoing out into the sky… And when after the darkness finally covered us and when the sky exploded with stars, … the Moon smiled upon us as tiny universes taunted us with their cannons.
We Love LA | Blue Whale
We Love LA
Blue Whale
June 22, 2011
Jesse Palter
Sam Barsh
Nick Rosen
James Williams
Hear | See | Read
We Love LA, Blue Whale, Song 1, Set 2
We Love LA, Blue Whale, Song 2, Set 2
Never Can Say Goodbye
We Love LA, Blue Whale, Song 3 Set 2
We Love LA, Blue Whale, Song 4, Set 2
Outkast cover
We Love LA, Blue Whale, Song 5, Set 2
Hold My Hand
Jesse Palter Original
It was plain on entering that there’d been some adjustments. The show was advertised as a duo of young old friends Nick Rosen (bass) and Joey Dosik (sax). No sax behind the microphones as the musicians were warming up, though, and there were four: skinny Rosen in V-tee and geek specs, a disgruntled-looking pianist in a little straw hat, an aloof drummer in plaid short sleeves and a ball cap, and a dark-haired looker squeezed into a styly dress singing lyrics off a web tablet.
“Yeah, Joey couldn’t make it,” Rosen told me, walking over to the bar for a pre-set snackdown. “He plays keyboards too, and he’s got all these funky soul chords. So he’s out on tour doing that with Nikka Costa.”
I first saw Rosen in 2003, onstage with Dosik and an all-star L.A. band gathered to support the long-disappeared avant bassist Henry Grimes. Still teenagers then, Rosen and Dosik had acted as prime movers behind Grimes’ comeback; they went on to study at CalArts and Michigan and do what career musicians do — starve and build skill.
And make contacts. For this forced opportunity, Rosen called up some musicians from back East he’d run into who had recently relocated to SoCal, and dubbed the instant quartet We Love L.A.
First impressions proved wrongsville. For one thing, you wouldn’t have guessed these semi-random four would have locked together so smoothly, a synchronicity partly due to the looker and the keysman sharing an established act. She was Jesse Palter, winner of every vocal prize according to Rosen; her impassive demeanor complemented warm freshness of tone, perfect pitch and supercharged Schoenbergian scatting — when she chose blue notes, she knew exactly what and why. The piano guy, Sam Barsh, got his gruntle back once the action started, kicking out a leg, throwing back his head, even jumping up to boogie around like Stevie Wonder on a melodica whose mouthpiece snaked at the end of a crinkled footlong hose. Drummer James Williams’ visual disconnect sure didn’t extend to the music: Sitting on four sticks for maximum accessibility or alertness, he spattered strokes around a toy-size kit to generate a loose groove so open that we wanted to shuck our shoes; a tambourine shaken out of sight made our toe-tap impulse seem like a command from beyond.
Bassists love drummers who make it easy, and Rosen took full advantage down and up the upright’s neck, putting a lid on the beat or blocking out evenly spaced statements of melodic concentration. That’s why musicians and audiences love HIM: He’s a communicator, not a juggler.
I’d speculate that the gently bouncing first tune belonged to Rosen, since Barsh was reading the chords off a single page ripped from a spiral notebook. But a substantial hunk of the material showcased the pianist, whose soft touch poured out waterfalls of spontaneous romance with subflavors of suburban blues and strangely wistful funk.
Palter, meanwhile, coolly mined multiple traditions — “It Could Happen to You,” Radiohead and Jobim — without earning the stigma of eclecticism. And I can’t figure how she knew that “Never Can Say Goodbye,” with its lurking pitfall changes, ranks as one of my favorite pieces of songcraft.
Nice call, Nick. Made accident seem like good luck.
PHOTO OF NICK ROSEN’S ARM AND JESSE PALTER BY D.D. DARKE.
DTLA | Droplabs & Big Art Labs
At night when I am driving home late, I get detoured off the 5 through Main street. I never knew this is what it looks like during the day. ♥ DTLA
Magical Dinners
Today I had another magical moment. Acceptance without judgement. I was picking up Vinay to go on a hike, but we stopped into his neighbor’s house to say hi. Grandma Pat. When I stepped into the backyard, a magical portal opened. There were people sitting at a table having an afternoon cocktail and snacks. The garden was filled with herbs and flowers and fairies. What was to be a quick hello turned into a magical dinner party. People started coming over… I met Uncle Bill, David, Corrinda, Xylon, Xylon’s girlfriend, Susanne, and Telly. Grandma Pat made us a delicious magical dinner.
Patches
Oreo
