Category: Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White

We Can Mate with Rabbits

I feel like I should apologize to the whole world for posting up so many paintings of people who aren’t wearing clothes. I can understand why people don’t like pictures of naked people, because generally I don’t like them myself.

Astrology believes that, on average, half of a person’s life is what they make of it, and the other half is in the control of outside forces. The exact ratio, however, varies from person to person. For some people, the majority of their life is a reflection of the choices they have made. For others, the majority of their life was completely outside of their control. Sometimes I feel that I fall slightly into the latter group.

So, although I don’t wish to tell the story of WHY I ended up painting naked people, I will say this- that I don’t generally enjoy being surrounded by nakedness, BUT once you have begun to paint naked people, it is only a matter of time before they no longer seem naked to you, and they just start to seem like people. Their bodies become a symbolic extension of their inner life and the workings of their minds. And once you reach this point, you have to be CAREFUL- because the figures that have become so harmless and normal in your own mind, still have the power to trip off ideas of perversity and lewdness in other people.

So, in closing, I would like to say that although nakedness is frequently interpreted as a symbol of moral slackness and crudity, sometimes people are naked just because there are no more clothes to wear.

Download MP3: We Can Mate with Rabbits

Tags astrology, clothes, morality, nakedness, perversity

Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs New Hampshire

3 Stacked Stones

I think this song may have been inspired (like so many others) by my hero Reinhold Messner, whose brother Gunther died while they were climbing a mountain together. But on a personal level, it reflects the feeling of being lost in a world of ice- coldness, loss, isolation- as the flame of life struggles to hang on.

Download MP3: 3 Stacked Stones

Tags flame of life, Gunther Messner, ice, isolation, Reinhold Messner

Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs New Hampshire

White World

Julien in Salem, Massachusetts cemetery, with scarf and coat. — Me, enjoying an autumn stroll through the park, and looking forward to winter!

I wrote this song during winter in New Hampshire. Most people here seem to like the ice and snow, but to me they were prison bars. Staying indoors all the time can feel very claustrophobic, but so can walking around under gray skies covered from head to toe in thick black fur, unable to breath and still freezing.

But, since everyone else seemed to love winter, I figured there must be something I was missing. I wanted to love winter too; I just needed to know how. So I went to the library to check out books about eskimos, hoping to pick up some tips on how to be happy in an all white world.

From the eskimos, I learned the importance of drinking fresh seal blood so your soul will be part human and part seal. I learned that you can eat raw brains, liver, and intestines, and that meat doesn’t have to be cooked, it can be eaten frozen as well. I read about wife swapping, and giving away babies you couldn’t feed, sometimes even leaving them outside on the ground in the hopes that someone else would find them before an animal did. Their lives reminded me of White Fang and Call of the Wild- deep, rugged, brutal, and nothing like the lacy white wonderland I had been hoping to read about!

The cold seems to drag everything down, forcing you to make tough choices between what to hang on to and what to let go of. I know some people choose to live in super cold environments where the sun doesn’t shine for months at a time, but I still don’t know what their secrets are. How does a person keep happiness alive when all the fruits and flowers have died?

Download MP3: White World

Tags eskimos, ice and snow, keeping hope alive, New Hampshire

Los Angeles Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs

Jokerman

I wrote this song while living in Egg Nest, Beverly Hills. At the time, I was attempting to support myself by selling paintings, which was a reasonable idea, since I had sold many of them, especially portraits, over the last couple years. Except that something about the IQ mashing euphoria of southern California had gone to my head, causing me to think it would be a good idea to multiply all my prices by one hundred. That way, I’d be a hundred times richer, right?

Needless to say, having prices that started at $20,000 made paintings difficult to sell, and being the owner of a twenty million dollar art collection was of little comfort once my food supply dwindled to candy bought with street quarters and online dating sites.

Download MP3: Jokerman

Tags art collection, Beverly Hills, Egg Nest, portraits, southern California

Kentucky Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs

Ice Man

Another recording of Ice Man- this one recorded at home. A song about being so defeated by internal and external forces that a person no longer has it within them to struggle… a song about ice!!

Download MP3: Ice Man

Visit my previous post and recording of this song.

Tags defeated, ice, ice man

Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs Sky Blue, Ether, Flags, and Fairies

Indian Friend

This song was inspired by Reinhold Messner’s “The Crystal Horizon,” a book about the first solo ascent up Mount Everest, but also, metaphorically, about the challenges a person can faces while trying to follow their own path and be true to themselves. The loneliness, guilt, and doubt, but also the exhilaration.

To me, crystals, mountains, and ice all represent that place of individuality and isolation… whereas valleys represent the warmth and comfort that comes from merging with others and following a more well-trodden path. But hopefully, when a person does come down into the valley, it will be to nourish and renew themselves, not to donate blood to a wandering mercenary.

Download MP3: Indian Friend

Tags crystals, ice, Indian Friend, mountains, Reinhold Messner, The Crystal Horizon

Kentucky Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs

Nobody Lies

Another song about somebody all alone in a world of ice struggling to keep their will to live alive…

Download MP3: Nobody Lies

Tags ice, Lies, music

Kentucky Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs

Ice Man

Post author By julien
Post date June 17, 2013
1 Comment on Ice Man

Another song about someone dying from hypothermia. It was inspired by this magazine cover…

Why do I like songs about people dying from hypothermia? Because as humans, we need our world to stay just the right temperature. We lose our ability to live if things get too hot or too cold. Sometimes, we compensate for an excess of warmth or an excess of coldness in ways that prove detrimental to us later… for example, if our lives feel too cold we might engage in excessive risk taking or drama making, or if things feel too hot and chaotic we might isolate ourselves and hide behind a computer screen.

But, there is only so much we can compensate for, and eventually these hostile forces overtake us. When there is not enough love and nobody seems to care about us, we can compensate for a while, but eventually the ice creeps into our soul and we lose the ability to move, to reach out, to feel, to care, and finally even the will to live is extinguished.

It makes me think of the following poem by Robert Frost:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Download MP3: Iceman

Tags fire, hypothermia, ice, ice man, music

Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs New Hampshire

White World

Post author By julien
Post date May 28, 2013
1 Comment on White World

This song is called “White World” and it is about… well, on one level, like many of my songs, it is about people lost in a frozen world, struggling to maintain enough body heat to stay alive. On a metaphorical level, it is about the struggle for perfection and goodness, and how it can sometimes run counter to the struggle for survival, growth, and even love. Ideals are beautiful, but also cold and inhospitable. Everything that enchants us with an image of perfection, can also leave us disenchanted with the way things are. If there was no ice in the world, no dedication to purity and goodness, then maybe the world would heat up into a chaotic, fiery hell. But, if there is too much ice- when the attachments to moral, spiritual, or aesthetic values grow too strong- it becomes harder and harder for any life to flourish.

Personally, I do believe that there is a world where the Platonic Forms live, a world of perfection and beauty, but I do not think humans could survive there for very long. I think it is the world of minerals, and there are places on Earth where this world can be visited- at the North and South Poles, and also at the top of any mountain that stretches above the tree line.

This song was recorded by James Prendergast, who is playing guitar.

Download mp3: White World

This is a picture of me on the top of Mount Washington, New Hampshire. I was very excited to be beyond the tree line for the first time ever!

Tags music, white world