Grand Grey Lynx

Bon jour,

Comment?

Recently asked what my favorite period of visual art was, I had to stop short and address the subject through a broader, more general appeal.

For me the best stuff happened in America between the end of WWII and the middle of the 1960's...give or take half a decade. But not only in visual art. This is the GREAT TIME for journalism, art, film, music, dance, poetry/lit - everything! Social Justice...Spiritual Consciousness...True Human Liberty...

This is not to say the BEST in the history of the world. Who knows? Who cares? This is my favorite period and the one that is most influential where my own projects are concerned.



I also started watching Jean Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema.

It is a poem.


The Old Man

Chapter One - The Old Man

The old man stared at the spinning fan in the window. He peered through the blink-a-black light, his eyelashes fluttering before his agitated vision.

He heard a hornet humming past his left ear. Then another. Then another hornet, closer and faster, like the next one, and the one immediately following it.

The cars passsed by like armored boars, snorting and growling, masticating and belching all black roads between here and there; shitting carbon colored clouds of bleak, black, bad history and torment.

The Old Man sat upright on the sidewalk near the intersection of Hart and Altman. He'd fallen asleep again.


Chapter 2 - Wake Up Little Snoozy

Tea comes from China. Whether it does or doesn't is of no importance to us dear reader, but it was important to the Old Man as he dunked a small, white, wet bag on a string into and out of the still, steaming water.

Tea comes from China. He thought the thought for a long time. He didn't hold the statement in his head like a scribble on a chalkboard. It breathed. It was draped in musculature and wet with function and consciousness.

Tea Comes from China.


Chapter 3 The Devil Rides West

The television was turned up loud, but he didn't really notice loud noises anymore. As his senses receded he felt safer in the world. As his hearing dulled to a soft, still, hushing wave, he became more like an animal, more aware of his faculties, having begun to perceive the limits of their definitions. He began to interpret the input from the environment around him in terms of fight-or-flight - like a monkey or perhaps a grand, grey lynx. Sounds were either vitally important or of no consequence.

Their was little to flee from in the small apartment on Altman. But there was fight in the Old Man.


Chapter 4 The Conquering Hero

The Old Man stood up and turned slowly, committing to an about-face like a reluctant mule. He raised one hand above his eyes to shield them from the bright, burning light. He began the long walk home.

The End












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Love,
Joe Nolan

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Where Does True Freedom Lie - Consequence and Necessity

Ahoymatey!

Welcome aboard the good
ship gollywog!

Morning in the Old South. You can smell the smell of
people smelling
for the smell of the the idea of magnolias in bloom.

Not yet children. One should not be impatient with
the Sun.

PUCK
42 Thou speak'st aright;
43 I am that merry wanderer of the night.
44 I jest to Oberon and make him smile
45 When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
46 Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
47 And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
48 In very likeness of a roasted crab,
49 And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
50 And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
51 The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
52 Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
53 Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
54 And "tailor" cries, and falls into a cough;
55 And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
56 And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
57 A merrier hour was never wasted there.
58 But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.

Fairy
59 And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

Enter the King of Fairies [OBERON]
at one door with his TRAIN, and the
Queen [TITANIA] at another with hers.

OBERON
60 Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

- A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare


The Flaying of Marsyas, Titian

This painting has a soundtrack...




On black evenings the crows fly at half mast toward the
dreaded dawn. The daytime isn't all bad: the warm sun, the
rain baths, balmy winds beneath inky wings. But the night is
full of the dead. And the dead are full of blood and the soft
tender.

The night is full of dangers unseen and Apollo's reasonable light gives
way to the shadows of the passions and the frightened fates of superstition
and magic.
When the compass becomes a cutlass and the triangle spins boom-
erang, maps reduce to sad, nostalgic paintings and science celebrates fire
with the slaughter of another sacred animal.

Stretched between these poles, in the shocking realization of the dynamo, one must
ask - Where does True Freedom lie?






















And now a word from Jack Parsons regarding the nature of freedom, it's consequences and necessity:

...The laws against mutually agreeable sex expression must be repealed, together with the laws prohibiting nudism, birth control and censorship. We must emphatically deny that love is criminal and that the body is indecent. We must affirm the beauty, the dignity, and joyousness and even the humor of sex.

Indeed there are obscene things in the light and in the darkness; things that deserve destruction: -- The exploitation of women for poor wages, the shameful degradation of minorities by the little lice who call themselves members of a 'superior race' and the deliberate machinations towards war. Nowhere among these genuine obscenities is there a place for the love shared by men and women. There are sins but love is not one of them and yet, of all the things that have been called sins, love has been the most punished and the most persecuted. Of all the beauties we know, the springtime of love is closest to paradise. And as all things pass, so love passes -- too soon. This most exquisite and tender of human emotions, this little moment of eternity, should be free and unrestrained. It should not be bought and sold, chained and restricted until lovers, caught in the maelstrom of economics and laws, are hounded like criminals. What end is served and who profits by such cruelty? Only priests and lawyers. Let us adhere to a strict morality where the rights and happiness of our fellow man is concerned. Let us call our true sins by their right names and expiate them accordingly -- but let our lovers go free.

If we are to achieve civilization and sanity, we must institute an educational program in love-making, birth control and disease prevention. Above all we must root out the barbaric and vicious concepts of shamefulness and indecency in sex, exposing the motives and methods of their proponents.

Happy are the parents who, as a result of sexual experimenting, are well mated, taking joy in each other's passion, seeing beauty in their nakedness and not fearing to expose their bodies or the bodies of their children. They would never shame their children for their natural sexual curiosity.

Jesus told the "fallen woman", "Go and sin no more" but I, who am a man, say to you who have given your body for the need of man's body, who have given your love freely for his spirit's sake; "Be blessed in the name of man. And if any god deny you for this, I will deny that god."

The ancients, being simple and without original sin, saw God in the act of love and therein they saw a great mystery, a sacrament revealing the bounty and the beauty of the force that made men and the stars. Thus they worshipped. Poor ignorant old Pagans! How we have progressed. What was most sacred to them, we see as a dirty joke. From this sordid joke we have played on ourselves only Woman Herself can redeem us. She has been the ignominious butt of the joke, the target of malice and arrogance and the scapegoat for masculine inferiority and guilt. She alone can redeem us from our crucifixion and castration. Only woman, of and by herself, can strike through the foolish frustration of the advertisers' ideal. She must elevate her strong, free and splendid image to take her place in the sun as an individual, a companion and mate fit for, and demanding no less than, true men.

Let there be an end to inhibition and an end to pretense. Let us discover what we are and be what we are, honestly and unashamedly. The rabbit has speed to recompense his fear, the panther strength to assuage his hunger. There is room for both even though the rabbit would probably prefer a world of rabbits (dull and overpopulated). All traits are useful wrath, fear, lust and even laziness -- if they are balanced by strength and intelligence. If we lie about things we call our weaknesses and sins, if we say that his is "evil" and that is "wrong", denying that such faults could be part of us, they will grow crooked in the dark. But when we have them out in the open; admitting them, facing them and accepting them, then we will be ashamed to leave any vestige of them secret to turn crippled and twisted. Fear can sharpen our wits against adversity. Anger and strength can be welded into a sword against tyrants both within and without. Lust can be trained to be the strong and subtle servant of love and art.

It is not necessary to deny anything. It is only necessary to know ourselves. Then we will naturally seek that which is needful to our being. Our significance does not lie in the extent to which we resemble others or in the extent to which we differ from them. It lies within our ability to be ourselves. This may well be the entire object of life; to discover ourselves, our meaning. This does not come in a sudden burst of illumination; it is a constant process which continues so long as we are truly alive. The process cannot continue unobstructed unless we are free to undergo all experience and willing to participate in all existence. Then the significant questions are not "is it right" or "is it good" but rather "how does it feel" and "what does it mean". Ultimately these are the only questions that can approach truth but they cannot be asked in the absence of freedom.

Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword, John Whiteside Parsons




Please take the time to check out my other vids, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel:

Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen to "Mission" and the rest of my new CD - Blue Turns Black!



Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Consider purchasing a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Number 777

Welcome to us, every one.


Rest In Peace, Beautiful Betty.

For those of you in the State of Tennessee, I'd like to encourage you to check out the latest issue of Number: An Independent Journal of the Arts. In my ongoing role as cultural polymath and provocateur, I contribute my writing to a number of different print and online publications. Number is a Southeastern art journal, published quarterly by the University of Memphis.

I have been writing art reviews/interviews with Number for years. For this latest issue, I was asked to serve as guest editor. Having put together a team including some of Nashville's most well-known and respected cultural commentators, we assembled a version of the journal that was bold, brash and beautiful, while remaining warmly familiar.

IMHO :)

Plese pick it up and check it out a gallery, museum, school or cafe near you. Just off the top of my head, Nashvillians can get it at Frist Center, Zeitgeist Gallery, Cheekwood, Watkins and the Vanderbilt Fine Art Gallery.

I will post a link to a .pdf file soon for the rest of ya.

In the meantime, here is the editorial I wrote for this issue.

Enjoy!


9 for #62

Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes, and feel with their own hearts.

- Albert Einstein


Like many good things, this all started with a party...

In Nashville - about a year and a half ago - I was at a celebration for a friend coming home for a visit. Down the street from my apartment on Belmont Boulevard, another acquaintance hosted a generous gathering in her honor: a lovely night, a short walk, comrades, drinks, and an interesting proposition.

One such comrade - Gadsby Creson - had made the trip from Memphis. Her new husband - Memphis' own Dwayne Butcher - had come along as well. Dwayne and I had met before, but not often and never for long. We had been in contact mostly through our mutual association with Number.

Having a chance to get (re)acquainted, the subject of the Journal came up. It turned out that Dwayne had recently joined the board of directors at Number, and he and our fearless leader – Leslie Leubbers – had been conjuring a sea change.

The simple ideas we spoke of that night transformed, multiplied and grew over time. Magical beanstalks can lead to humiliation as surely as The Goose That Lays The Golden Egg, and one is wise to watch such verdant progress with ax in hand.

In this case, the gamble has paid off.

This is the first of four upcoming issues of Number:An Independent Journal of the Arts that will challenge familiar assumptions about this publication's range, depth, variety, and voice, while also serving as an undeniable reminder of Number's place in Tennessee as its most important regional, visual arts publication.

Each issue of the upcoming run will be curated by a guest editor: myself in Nashville, xxx in Knoxville, xxx in Chattanooga, xxx back in Memphis. By that time – a year from now – Dwayne Butcher will take the wheel as the new full-time editor of Number, replacing the unforgettable Leslie Leubbers.

I have been lucky to work with Leslie longer than I have worked with any other editor. Her encouragement of my writing has been invaluable, and she has given me many opportunities to contribute to this Journal and become invested in its ongoing legacy.

Thank you, Leslie.

Since that night at the party – when Dwayne first tested my interest in guest editing an issue of this Journal – I have been asking myself two questions: “What is Number?” and “What can it be?”. Heretofore, Number has been the only publication that has consistently brought an intelligent, insightful voice to the visual arts throughout the state. It is literally one-of-a-kind. Given the opportunity to re-imagine the Journal, I began to focus on the second question.

This issue of Number - primarily - covers the Nashville art scene in a way that has never been possible in the Journal. Traditionally, Number favors the goings-on in its own backyard of Memphis. This is due to logistics more than a lack of desire to fully-cover the rest of the state. It is likely that these next issues will favor – if not spotlight – the localities of each of the guest editors. This is the first time that Number will be able to deeply involve itself in these particular frontiers, and – one hopes – that the treasures uncovered will be revelatory. In addition, each editor will be in the enviable position of transforming the Journal to align it with their particular (peculiar?) understanding of the poetry, pathos, politics, and people that make up their own little corner of the visual arts scene in The Volunteer State.

The Journal you are holding in your hand is equally familiar and foreign, explicit and exotic. Here we have the expected critiques of contemporary art exhibitions, but from fresh voices, speaking strange ecstasies with rough tongues. In addition, the horizon recedes in this new landscape to include reportage, memoir, travelogue and essay, twisted into a tapestry of sensations that evokes morning prayers, feral bunnies, 7” records, and midnight movies watched with wanting eyes. Huge abstractions eat one commentator alive, while another is hard pressed to find the gallery he is parked directly in front of.

Both John Ford and John Wayne swagger through this newsprint prairie. In Ford's movie, The Quiet Man, Sean Thornton (Wayne) moves to Ireland, searching for himself in the land of his fathers after killing an opponent in the boxing ring. Number is facing a similar transformation: rediscovering itself among the people and places that have always defined it.

In the pages you are about to turn, birds take wing over the Giza Plateau as paint pours across a canvas to form a syn-aesthetic geography. And yet, we are at home, in our beds at night, the wind through the windows, the solemn footsteps in the other room, a head-full of dreams half-realized, but beckoning. A clean, well-lighted place full of images and inspiration may be subsumed by the dim revelations of The Spectacle, but the faithful still make their joyful noise in the night.

Seeing this city's art community through the eyes of the writers, artists, educators, photographers, grifters and stow-aways that have made this document possible, I'm reminded of something a young friend of mine recently wrote:

“...you get what you believe in.” *

Amen, little brother.

Don't forget the graffiti on the wall, around the way, down Belmont Boulevard - The Street of Dreams - where our holy quest first began:

“Be brave.” **


Joe Nolan is a poet, musician and freelance writer living in Nashville, TN. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com

* http://thearmchairrevolutionary.blogspot.com/
** http://www.sslifer.net/propaganda/propaganda.html#


Ok, enough of that. Let's rock out!





While the world as you know it explodes into pure cosmic possibility, you may be thinking, "Hey? I wish I had some great jams to kick it to."

Never fear! Explore this treasure chest and listen to - and purchase - my new CD at your favorite online outlet. Also click the VIDEO button to watch the short film REvolution featuring yours truly on the soundtrack.

Enjoy!

Be gentle in your sleepy hands on this world.
Be a killer in Heaven.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

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