I heard the owl

I was looking at some of my online profile information recently and I always put down the book “I Heard the Owl Call My Name” by Margaret Craven as my favorite book. I could put down any number of books. Edmund White’s “The Farewell Symphony” perhaps or John Irving’s Hotel New Hampshire. Not very high-brow huh?

All these books are ones that had a huge impact on me at particular points in my life. Another is The Missionaries by Norman Lewis and most that I know of the history of Afghanistan and the surrounding area is from A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby.

I could go on – but back to the owl book. Read it. Actually read any of the above, but seriously, read Craven and tell me what you think…and don’t look up wikipedia because it gives away the ending. And a good book to read in tandem with it is Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen – which I am glad to have recently found a copy of for my shelves.

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Dance me to the end of love

While I am somewhat cynical about love, I am a closet romantic and I was very excited to come across this book today. Cohen AND Matisse – heaven. I am still licking my wounds after not getting to Cohen in concert so this is some recompense.

Its by the same people as “Life doesn’t frighten me at all” Angelou/Basquiat.

A peak inside.

And go here if you want to hear/see the whole song.

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Some notes

• My friend Merc has blogged one of my favourit-estpoems of his (thx)
• I am excited because I have a new camera  (a late birthday pressie) that’s small enough for pocket or handbag so I anticipate madly taking photos of the quirky things I see.
• Came across another cool artist, Neil Buddle (The Reverend) – I am particularly taken with “The Afterlife Series“. I like how the Baxter one has a different red (dripping) background on one edititon – I’d buy that on a T-shirt in an instant!. Check the Diglog too for collaborations with Jason Burgess (Burg).
• I decided today that one of the worst things that could happen as an artist (IMHO) is have McDonalds buy your work for their “family restaurants”.
• I am making plans for this year and the Auckland Writers and Readers festival might be a possibility, although I’d only be able to go for a couple of days. The line up at the festival is pretty amazing and there is so much I’d like to do in Auckland that it would be a very busy time.
• A few days ago I saw the movie “Che: Part One” with Benicio del Toro. Strangely disjointed but excellent – I can’t wait for Part Two.

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I remember you well…

I have been lacking inspiration in the last few days but while flicking through the Google reader today and vaguely trying to redo my blogroll, I came across this article from the New York Times. Nothing very remarkable really, you know “strange bag lady turns out to be great artist” but it made me think about the Chelsea Hotel “a rest stop for rare individuals“.

Works by Bettina Grossman

“Owing to its long list of famous guests and residents, the hotel has an ornate history, both as a birth place of creative modern art and home of bad behavior. Bob Dylan composed songs while staying at the Chelsea, and poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso chose it as a place for philosophical and intellectual exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning on in 1953, and where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols may have stabbed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death on October 12, 1978.

Visitors and residents of the Chelsea Hotel include Eugene O’Neil, Thomas Wolfe, and Arthur C. Clarke (who wrote 2001: A Space Oddyssey while in residence). Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead passed through the hotels doors in the 1960s.  Virgil Thompson, Larry Rivers, William Burroughs, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Patti Smith, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, and many, many others stayed here too. ”

Makes me wonder what it is about the place and brings me back again (!) to the artists residences question. I guess in a place like the Chelsea it is the reputation that attracts and so it builds over time. Still if I went to New York it would be fun to stay there and check out “the ghosts”. From what little know of New York I assume it can’t be too far from the Chelsea Gallery area (beware – there be gallerinas).

And lastly, I think it was horribly indiscrete of Leonard Cohen to ever mention who he remembered well.

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