Personality & Style

Sketch: Cellular Music

At a show on maps at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College in the late 90s, I saw one of the first maps of the human genome. It looked remarkably like a sheet of music. That raised all kinds of questions in my mind, some of which were answered in Oliver Sack's book, Musicophilia. A few years later, I signed up for National Geographic's Genographic Project and received a map of where my particular mutant gene gang traveled, from its origin in Africa. We were the first ones out, not surprisingly.

When I lived in Budapest (1992-96), I met a music ethnologist who loaned me a tape of Georgian music (a country in the midst of the Caucasus Mountain range, on the border with Russia). This was the Rustavi Choir. It's unusual music, most often sung a capella, without instruments, and using a polyphonic structure where two melodic lines move more or less independently. I loved this music in a deep, elemental way — like it was part of my genetic code.

As much as I love it, it's one of two types of music that I must listen to by myself (the other being High Lonesome). It makes people uneasy, I'm not sure why. It may be the unfamiliar musical scales that sound vaguely discordant. My liking for it may be a result of early training as a second soprano — you have to learn to hear music that is neither the tune nor the harmony but something in between. I also loved the guards in the "Wizard of Oz" and their chanting , "Yo-eee-oh". Or maybe it is in my DNA.

My neighbor got the Genographic test done first and convinced me to do it. She had predicted that her roots would be deep in India and that turned out to be true. Just to get in the spirit of things, I predicted that my ancestors had spent time in Russia, in particular Georgia. I based this entirely on my reaction to the polyphonic music of the Rustavi Choir. From the results: "Haplogroup HV is a west Eurasian haplogroup found throughout the Near East, including Anatolia (present-day Turkey) and the Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia and the republic of Georgia."

The song below is called "Chakrulo" and has to do with wine and grapes. The video below that is the Rustavi Choir rehearsing "Khasanbegura", a marching song, while sitting around a table. The video isn't great but the sound is excellent and is a better example of the polyphonic singing. Listen if you dare.





Photo above: digital manipulation of the genetic code.

Sketch: Michael Jackson

"You have to be able to hum it, from the farmer in Ireland to the lady who scrubs toilets in Harlem to anybody who can whistle to a child poppin' their fingers. You have to be able to hum it."
-- Michael Jackson
on how to make music universal

I'm watching BET and their tribute to Michael Jackson. My favorite video might be Billie Jean. I remember when it first showed up on MTV and I thought that it was right that the sidewalk should light up when he danced.

In the middle of all the weirdness surrounding Michael Jackson, Ebony Magazine did a cover story (December 2007) on him celebrating the 25 year anniversary of the release of Thriller, still the all-time best selling album ever. They simply ignored all the weirdness and focused on the genius and amazing talent. It was a really good read with beautiful and stylish photos and it made me forget the weirdness and remember the genius. They don't have it archived but someone scanned it here.

"It was Tchaikovsky that influenced me the most. If you take an album like Nutcracker Suite, every song is a killer, every one . . . so I always tried to strive for that."

COVER ART on "Dangerous" by Mark Ryden

Sketch: Mark Twain

Two summers ago I went down the River Road along the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, Minnesota and ended up in Hannibal, Missouri where Mark Twain grew up. Born Samuel Clemens, he changed his name to the words sung out to mark the depth of the river. "Mark twain" meant two fathoms deep, safe for passage. His book, "Life on the Mississippi" tells the story of the river, his apprenticeship and eventual rise to steamboat pilot and is laced with tall tales and observations.

Of course I read "Tom Sawyer" and Huckleberry Finn" and loved them but Mark Twain got my attention in high school when I found out his book "Letters from Earth" had been banned. This is a collection of letters that Satan writes describing humans. Dark and very funny.

He was a reporter as well as a writer ("Supposing is good, but finding out is better") with an endless curiosity about the world and a tongue-in-cheek view of many of the things in it. By the end of his life, he had outlived everyone dear to him and some understandable bitterness crept in to his writings and speeches although his friends from that time period describe him as peaceful and serene.

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained."

The other person I always think of when I think of the Mississippi River is John Hartford, banjo and violin virtuoso, composer of "Gentle On My Mind", riverboat pilot and dancer. In his memory, "Way Down the River Road":

Sketch: Patron Saint of Traveling Light

Growing up Catholic, there were some saints who were mystifying, others scary, some comforting, a few inspiring, some merely saintly and some who were just flat-out nuts.

Saint Francis of Assisi was one of the comforting and inspiring ones, someone to emulate and also identify with, especially as a teenager – he ran away from his dad who was trying to make him be something he was not.

He was rich, playboy rich, and then he wasn't. Fed up with dissolution and waste he gave it all away, down to a brown robe and sandals and crusts of bread from strangers. Eventually he gathered followers, having a wise thing or two to say. He also counted among his friends many members of the animal kingdom and is the Patron Saint of Animals, the Environment and Italy.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
— from the Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

I like to travel light but not as light as saints -- I like to come home to a good bed and chair, a library, a kitchen, a hot shower. If you want to have company and good parties, you need a comfortable home. These things can be soothing to the spirit -- your own and others. A lot of people like my house but my favorite comment came from one of my daughter's friends: "I can take a nap in your house."

Excerpt from Get Lost: Ruby prepares for a trip.

I love to pack. I love it so much that I pack everything twice, sometimes three times. A mild case of OCD, maybe, but really it’s more the need to travel light and efficiently. I want to have only what I need plus a few things just in case; like the hobbit, Samwise, and his piece of string or the English Patient and his Book of History by Herodotus. I put on some hot water for tea and got down my bag from the closet shelf.

Pet Portraits

thinking about doing pet portraits. could include a package of notecards with the portrait on them. thoughts, anyone???

Sketch: Mae West

"I believe it's better to be looked over than overlooked."

Mae West was a playwright, writer, producer, director, actress and sex symbol. She was offered her first motion picture contract from Paramount in 1932, at the age of 38.

"Too much of a good thing can be wonderful."

Her father was a prizefighter named "Battlin' Jack West".
Her mother modeled corsets.

"A hard man is good to find."

In 1935, she was the 2nd highest paid person in the U.S. after William Randolf Hearst.

"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted."

She wrote and produced a play called "Drag" about homosexuality but the Society for the Prevention of Vice made sure it never opened.

"It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men."

When the censors came down hard on her, she increased the number of double entendres, going for the subtle over the obvious.

"Is that a pistol in your pocket,
or are you just glad to see me?"

"You only live once but if you do it right, once is enough."