Monthly Archives: October 2013
Day 127 10/30/13: JAWS Tribute: Enjoy Art! Help Sharks!
What are you doing this weekend, Los Angeles?
Why of course,you’re attending “Smile You Son of A Bitch,” a Jaws-themed Art Show at the Hero Complex Gallery!
This divine mash-up of pop culture and activism includes the work of over 90 international artists celebrating the glory of Quint, Brody, Bruce and all things JAWS.
The $10 admission benefits Pangeaseed’s shark conservation and education efforts.
When: November 1-3
Opening Reception: Friday Nov. 1
6 pm-10 pm
Where: Hero Complex Gallery, 2020 South Robertson Blvd. Studio D L.A. 90034
Day 126 10/29/13: Shark Miscellany #3
A hodgepodge of shark/marine welfare news & oddities:
1.Check Out Five Designs Inspired by Ocean Predators
2. Australia: Please keep rejecting OCEARCH!
3. Greenpeace Serves “Shark fin Soup” to protest New Zealand’s finning laws
4. Death at Seaworld author David Kirby on CNN Vs. Seaworld
5. Would you like to see a shark throw up? Okay, here you go!
I’m Set Free
Day 125 10/28/13: Remembering Lou Reed, Andy Warhol & An Old Horse
I wanted to write about the shark presentations my students gave, but most of them were lifeless recitations of Powerpoint slides, and I found myself thinking more about Lou Reed.
I played his music all last night.
What does it take to crack open the human heart? I don’t know why I’m surprised at my depth of feeling at Lou’s death.
Had I forgotten the heavy thrill of buying my first VU album, “White Light, White Heat,” of memorizing “The Gift”? How I used to keep a picture of Lou Reed in my photo album among images of my family? Why did I not even own this music I loved so much anymore? I’d memorized every song.
Between classes, I tried to lose my despair over the death of a major artist and the death of collective student imagination, in an essay about horses called “Partnering with Pegasus.” Mares are the true leaders of the herds, not stallions. I started thinking of 1992, the last time I saw my childhood mare-ribsy and grizzled, 35 years old coming over the edge of a hill. She nickered when she spotted me, but I, shocked at her appearance, gasped.
Then we both froze staring at each other.
What a great surprise to find that horse standing in that field again.
The image hung there, and suddenly infusing that lost world was John Cale singing “The Style It Takes” a gentle song about Andy Warhol:
I’ll put the Empire State Building on your wall,
For 24 hours, glowing on your wall
Watch the sun rise above it in your room,
Wallpaper art, a great view…..
Did they always belong together this unlikely memory pair–an elderly horse and lonely Andy Warhol?
I started thinking of that well-worn Camus quote about having an infinite summer within. The places I’m afraid to return to, those fields, those songs (which are also places), are sites of renewal. Loss numbs and loss surprises. Like music it wakes us up again to the dream of life.
Meanwhile, in Florida….
Lou Reed: Magic and Loss
The Velvet Underground: Ocean
Day 124 10/27/13: Lou Reed & Grief’s Transformative Magic
When I heard about Joe Strummer’s death, I was climbing a mountain road in Vermont during a light snowstorm a few days before Christmas. That far north, most radio stations broadcast in French. Rolling through the static, I finally heard words in English telling me that Joe Strummer had died. Today, I heard about Lou Reed driving through a cloudless late morning in Los Angeles.
The Velvet Underground will always be very important to me, but in my twenties they were a revelation. I had a big crush on Lou Reed for a long time. I went to see him at the Greek theatre on the eve of the Los Angeles riots. I saw him another time on the tour for the New York album. I passed on a free ticket to see him once in 2000 or so cause I had tickets to Elliot Smith. Since Elliot Smith killed himself a couple years later, I’m glad I saw him at least once.
I loved every Velvet Underground record. My favorite Lou Reed album was “The Blue Mask.” I really dug the crazy, beyond Oedipal madness of the title song. But one of his records that really got me through tough times was 1992’s “Magic and Loss.” Had there ever been a “grief rock” album before? Surely John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band explored many forms of grief in harrowing songs like “Mother,” but I had never heard such a purposeful, focused two-sided exploration before. My brother had died in 1990, and sorting through the guilt and sorrow I felt took a long time. “Magic and Loss” wasn’t always easy listening, and I remember my boyfriend at the time finding descriptions of hospital beds less than conducive to romance.
I feel gratitude to all the artists that helped me through. Too many to name. John Lennon’s death would take a book to tell. I learned of George Harrison’s death in the bleary light of November mountains. And Lou is a big one.
Sometimes I move through the litany of loss–family, friends, beloved animals, the great artists who are our teachers, and then I hit the larger losses. The extinctions. “What do we do with information like: The world’s major fisheries will collapse by 2048?” I asked my class. When someone dies we are jolted. It’s always sudden no matter how long the illness, or “battle.” But when we live inside an accelerated period of extinction, it can remain invisible to most of us. Yet both losses are “personal.”
But which losses push us to a sharper, more urgent appreciation of living and which ones make us fold? Is this our choice to make?
I like Lou Reed’s philosophy–that grief is transformative–a kind of Purgatorial fire that purifies but doesn’t destroy:
When the past makes you laugh and you can savor the magic
That let you survive your own war
You find that that fire is passion
And there’s a door up ahead not a wall
As you pass through fire as you pass through fire
Tryin’ to remember it’s name
When you pass through fire lickin’ at your lips
You cannot remain the same
And if the building’s burning move towards that door
But don’t put the flames out
There’s a bit of magic in everything
And then some loss to even things out
Read more: Lou Reed – Magic And Loss Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Related articles
- Lou Reed dies aged 71 (telegraph.co.uk)
Day 123 10/26/13: Shark on a Bus & Other Stories of Creative Conservation
This eccentric Australian diver/environmentalist travels the countryside in a bus filled with marine artifacts including a 5 meter white shark to educate the public about “killer” sharks. Admission fees collected for his “mobile museum” are donated to ocean pollution campaigns.
And on the subject of unusual forms of advocacy, check out this interview with Debbie Salamone of Shark Attack Survivors for Shark Conservation….I also just discovered Operation Blue Pride, a group injured war veterans that have come together to dive with sharks and promote awareness about ocean conservation.