Climbing out of sad ...

Today was one of those really shitty days ...

I never used to write out of them but I will today ... write as I climb out the other side of some serious sad.

I usually go on a reading-jag, or a find a beautiful movie, or listenhard to music.

Tonight I found all this new music to consider.  I'll see if it's some to love.

There was Andrew Belle and In My Veins.  Laura Marling.  Lissie.  Olaf Arnalds, Old Skin.

Sometimes I just need to find someplacebeautifulenough and tonight I found hernameismoon.

I found her site perfectlywonderfullybeautiful.  And stayed there until I started to feel okay again.

And I had an idea that everyday over the next month I'll post 3 beautiful things found during my day.  Perhaps being proactive about beauty is how it should be. 

I noted quotes in my journal as I devoured the new website.  I loved ... 10 years from now, make sure you can say that you chose your life, you didn't settle for it.

Mandy Hale.

hernameismoon introduced me to awelltraveledwoman who wrote ... you should not have to rip yourself into pieces to keep others whole.

Wise advice I thought, wishing they sometimes taught useful things in school ... rather than all that other stuff that still involves me finding algebra, and other silly things, terrifying.

Georgia O'Keeffe photographs appear, randomly, throughout awelltraveledwoman's website.  It seemed like a place I was meant to find too.

Which reminds me ... Annie Lennox was there as I started to climb out of sad.  I was searching for an album she put out just before I flew from New Zealand.  The sculptor who moved into my cottage on the edge of the harbour told me of it.  She did a good thing, introducing me to Annie ...

Did I ever write of this song?  I love it so much at the moment ... Ghosts in the Orange Blossom Air!!

Perfect. It is.

Now, to for the roadtrip so I can play it all.

Indie Artists in the Middle East - a 2014 list.

I spent a part of my day working through this list of Mideast Tunes' Top 20 Indie Artists of 2014.

Curious, I visited their About:  Our mission is to bridge barriers of faith and geography to unite people committed to fostering constructive discourse in the region through music. The core of the project manifested from our desire to promote bands and musicians that would otherwise never be given a second glance in the international scene. We feel that is because most people would never think to look to regions like the Middle East and North Africa for highly thought provoking music. The need to change that is our driving force.

We believe music can change the world and that the musicians of the Middle East and North Africa will lead the way.

Founded in 2010 in Bahrain, the site has expanded to serve as a primary resource for discovering up and coming Middle Eastern talents.

Two clear favourites emerged as I wandered through.  Youssra El Hawary, from Egypt and Mo Zowayed, from Bahrain.  But there are so many others ...

I found the following interviewe excerpt on NPR about Youssra and her music. 

'For "Al Soor," Hawary borrowed the lyrics from one of her friends, the political cartoonist and author Waleed Taher: "In front of the wall/In front of those who built it/In front of those who made it high/Stood a poor man/Who peed/On the wall, and on those who built it and those who made it high." (Needless to say, a "good girl" doesn't sing about people eliminating — but Hawary does it with a wink and a smile.)

Taher had published them as part of one of his cartoons years ago, long before the Arab Spring — but Taher's meaning gained new resonance after a huge wall was erected in Cairo on Muhammad Mahmoud Street, which leads on one end to Tahrir Square and on the other towards the Egyptian Ministry of Interior.

So it was natural, if pretty daring, for Hawary to enlist a photographer friend to go shoot a DIY video for "Al Soor" in front of the Muhammad Mahmoud wall, which is now covered regularly with fresh work from a burgeoning group of graffiti artists.

In the video, Hawary is bathed in beautiful breaking morning light; the women shot the video shortly after dawn, mostly in hopes of not having their work shut down. But the giddy happenstances of this shoot done on the sly — the random guy who asks El Hawary to snap his picture, the kids dancing, the caretaker shooing everyone away at the end — just adds to the perfect, easy magic of "Al Soor."

Indie Artists in the Middle East - a 2014 list.

I spent a part of my day working through this list of Mideast Tunes' Top 20 Indie Artists of 2014.

Curious, I visited their About:  Our mission is to bridge barriers of faith and geography to unite people committed to fostering constructive discourse in the region through music. The core of the project manifested from our desire to promote bands and musicians that would otherwise never be given a second glance in the international scene. We feel that is because most people would never think to look to regions like the Middle East and North Africa for highly thought provoking music. The need to change that is our driving force.

We believe music can change the world and that the musicians of the Middle East and North Africa will lead the way.

Founded in 2010 in Bahrain, the site has expanded to serve as a primary resource for discovering up and coming Middle Eastern talents.

Two clear favourites emerged as I wandered through.  Youssra El Hawary, from Egypt and Mo Zowayed, from Bahrain.  But there are so many others ...

I found the following interviewe excerpt on NPR about Youssra and her music. 

'For "Al Soor," Hawary borrowed the lyrics from one of her friends, the political cartoonist and author Waleed Taher: "In front of the wall/In front of those who built it/In front of those who made it high/Stood a poor man/Who peed/On the wall, and on those who built it and those who made it high." (Needless to say, a "good girl" doesn't sing about people eliminating — but Hawary does it with a wink and a smile.)

Taher had published them as part of one of his cartoons years ago, long before the Arab Spring — but Taher's meaning gained new resonance after a huge wall was erected in Cairo on Muhammad Mahmoud Street, which leads on one end to Tahrir Square and on the other towards the Egyptian Ministry of Interior.

So it was natural, if pretty daring, for Hawary to enlist a photographer friend to go shoot a DIY video for "Al Soor" in front of the Muhammad Mahmoud wall, which is now covered regularly with fresh work from a burgeoning group of graffiti artists.

In the video, Hawary is bathed in beautiful breaking morning light; the women shot the video shortly after dawn, mostly in hopes of not having their work shut down. But the giddy happenstances of this shoot done on the sly — the random guy who asks El Hawary to snap his picture, the kids dancing, the caretaker shooing everyone away at the end — just adds to the perfect, easy magic of "Al Soor."

Georgia O'Keeffe, on making the unknown known.

I feel that a real living form is the result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown—where it has experienced something—felt something—it has not understood—and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown—known.

By unknown—I mean the thing that means so much to the person that wants to put it down—clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand—sometimes he partially knows why—sometimes he doesn’t—sometimes it is all working in the dark—but a working that must be done—

Making the unknown—known—in terms of one’s medium is all-absorbing—if you stop to think of the form—as form you are lost—The artist’s form must be inevitable—You mustn’t even think you won’t succeed—Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing.

Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you—catching crystallizing your simpler clearer version of life—only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead—that you must always keep working to grasp—the form must take care of its self if you can keep your vision clear.

Georgia O’Keeffe (painter) writing to Sherwood Anderson (writer).  

Source: Brain Pickings.

There was something about this small article, by Maria Popova, that made me want to note these words and keep them to read again and again.  I loved the first paragraph most particularly.

I enjoy reading what artists write to each other, seeming to want to think on an important thing that so many wouldn't find important or interesting.  Sometimes these things seem like the real stuff of life, as opposed to the forms we fill out and the lives that we Must live in that 'real' world people talk of.

Soon I will be heading off on another adventure, in a small village somewhere between Naples and Rome.  There is a house and some dogs that I've been invited to visit, while breathing some good country air, with a view that I suspect I might want to photograph every day.

There is a book that wants to be written, or two.  There are the photography workshops to announce, the ones I've planned for 2015.  There is a bar where I'm hoping the espresso is perfect and where my beloved crema brioches are possible.  Where there's a delightful red wine waiting for me.

Another adventure in Italy, in that land where everything is possible and sometimes, just sometimes, you find giantic lightbulbs out in the carrugi.