Categories
Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs Nashville

You Ain’t the Man

 

Saint in blue with cross on forehead.At the time I wrote this song, I always wore boots. Generally white boots, since brown boots represented drudgery and losing track of your life’s purpose, and black boots represented tyrany and abuse. They couldn’t have heels in case I needed to run for my life. They needed thin souls, so the pounding of my feet against hard surfaces would stimulated my electrical systems. And the toes had to be pointy- to represent fire.

Pants needed to be flexible and yielding enough to kick a predator in the chest and then escape over a tall fence. But sweat pants were out of the question, since they dampened my electrical circuits. Shorts were impossible, since they triggered water-attacks (the feeling that I was dying of thirst.) Skirts were less than ideal, since they make you reluctant to hang upside down or climb a pole, but it was generally skirts that I ended up with anyway. At least they let your legs be free (I hated it when pants touched my legs), and generally you only need to climb trees at nighttime anyway, when the bad guys are all out.

I needed shirts that would cover my shoulders and the back of my neck, which I could not bear to have exposed. But no turtlenecks- they brought to mind strangulation. And no sweaters, since I feared they would absorb the electricity from my body. Multiple layers of fabric covering my heart were a must and I preferred it to be something hard and form-fitting, like a suit of armor, which frequently led to me wearing extra layers of underwear on top of my shirts.

I always wore a hat, even indoors and even at night. I didn’t feel safe without one, and it needed to have the widest brim possible, which generally meant I ended up wearing fussy outdoor-wedding hats covered in lace and silk flowers, a look I didn’t much care for. And last but not least, I needed a gigantic cross pendant, to keep anyone from trying to steal my soul. Later, I switched from a cross to a letter A.

Download MP3: You Ain’t the Man

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Music & Songs Nashville Plants and the Emerald Kingdom

I also wanted to Make Love

 

Garth Brooks and his horse on a mountain path in Mexico.I like this song because it is a question song, and I really like questions. I like people who ask questions, and I love asking them myself. I’ve been trying to cut back though, because it can get to the point where I only ask questions and never make any statements at all. James (who may be biased because he hates questions and comes from a culture where they are neither asked nor answered) has also warned me that constantly asking questions could make me seem unintelligent.

But for some reason, appearing unintelligent has never bothered me. At times, it has been a source of joy, like in school, where through a campaign of routinely saying the dumbest things I could think of, I was able to change my horrible nickname “Brain,” to the more palatable “Brainless.” Being Brainless was fun. Brain had to stick to the program, saying things others could understand and appreciate, but Brainless wasn’t confined to those narrow gray crevices. She was free to explore, to soar to the clouds, to give the right answer OR the wrong one, if the spirit moved her.

Still, freedom  can lead to exhilaration,  and sometimes spin into intoxication and mania. One thing I have learned to appreciate about intelligence, even feigned intelligence, is its sobering and grounding aspects.

Download MP3: I Also Wanted to Make Love

Categories
Music & Songs Nashville Santa Fe Yellow, Gold, Kings, Fathers, and the Sun

Blessings from the Father

 

Ladies... this is a nude man. Naked man with black kidney.

 

I started painting nude women to please my husband, and then at some point I started painting nude men as a form of rebellion. It was very satisfying and I never went back. Even now when I see a “Cowboys in Shorts” calender it makes me feel giddy with feelings of freedom and power, like a bird flying out of its cage.

Not that by nature I like nude pictures of men anymore than the average person (who I know from experience is not fond of them!) But I do think that in a culture where women are frequently objectified (some call that a phallocracy), they are funny and refreshing.

Once I started hanging around my nude male paintings, however, they became a lot more than just refreshing. Once the shock value wore off, I started to find feelings of great comfort and safety in their presence. Nude men like these will never let anyone hurt you. And they are every bit as sensitive and caring as they are strong. They are true blue and have nothing to hide. They will be there for you forever and ever.

I guess through my own paintings I was able to envision men who were givers, not takers, and supportive rather than narcissistic. I don’t think this would have happened if I was painting men with clothes on.  It is through their musculature, organs, and the shape of their bodies that these men reveal their true natures. Sometimes a face can be a mask, but organs never lie.

Download MP3: Blessing from the Father

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs Nashville

Who Will Make Love to Me?

 

Are you ready for space? Grey alien with big eyes in pants suit.

 

 

It seems that, for a while now, the color white has been trying to take over the (human) world. White walls, open space floor plans, buddhism, yoga, kale smoothie detoxes… when will the reign of white ever end?

At the time I wrote this song I was completely swept up into the color white, trying to wear, eat, and decorate with it exclusively. White can be refreshing and protective, but geez, it can also be such a cold color, disconnecting you from everything warm and earthy.

 

Download MP3: Who Will Make Love to Me?

Categories
Earth, Pink, Mothers, Love Music & Songs Nashville

Little Russian Boy

Kevin Srebnick in brown shirt with indigo background.   This song has its roots in a dream I had as kid, in which a boy dressed in rags would run through a never-ending cityscape of ruins. I knew it was Russia because the ground was soft brown/tan and the sky was robin’s egg blue and endless. That is always how I imagine Russia- an endless expanse of light brown earth under an endless light blue sky. No plants, no water, just earth and air.               Download MP3: Little Russian Boy

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Music & Songs Nashville

Never Make Love

 

 

Chancellor Beak poses for a portrait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Never Make Love

Categories
Music & Songs Nashville Red, Soldiers, & Fire

Fuck Me All Night Long

 

Nude woman with basketball.I think only me and Prince know what it feels like to write a bunch of sexual-sounding songs and then become a Jehovah’s Witness (or marry one in my case). The horrors & humiliations of suddenly seeing yourself through the eyes of a librarian. Oh well. The fact is, that fire used to be my favorite element, and fire always makes things come out sounding a little sexual, regardless of how scholarly your intent is.

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Fuck Me All Night Long

Categories
Music & Songs Nashville

The Old World


Nude lady with white bird standing on cube.

I wrote this song in Nashville… moving to Nashville after living in L.A. was something of a culture shock. In L.A. I didn’t have a car or even know how to tune my own guitar- asking strangers for rides or tunings wasn’t a big deal, because after all, we’re all one, man! I could even walk around wearing antennae on my head, and although it did make me stick out a little, it didn’t create a division- people would just ask why I was wearing antennae on my head and then proceed to share their own alien abduction stories. But in Nashville everything was colder, heavier, more serious. Conformity was the chief value, for people and music, and anything different was cast in a dark and sketchy light. To conform was to be clean, intelligent, wholesome, loving.

And conformity begins with clothes, which is why I had trouble right off the bat. For reasons I can’t remember, I was determined to wear only white clothes (in addition to eating only white foods and living in an all-white apartment). But especially on a limited budge, white clothes were not always easy to come by, and I sometimes ended up wearing things that were definitely white, but not altogether clothes- like Christmas decorations and tablecloths, for example.

Why didn’t I just try to make life easy on myself by fitting in?

Download MP3: The Old World

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Music & Songs Nashville The Odyssey

Telemachus’ Realization

 

Painting of statues and cathedral. Man with sword and dagger.

Another song from the Odyssey… Telemachus visits Menelaus who treats him like a king- far different from the way his mother’s suitors treat him (in fact they are planning to murder him on his trip home).

I remember playing this song in Nashville at “Coffeehouse Survivor”. Two musicians would play a song, a panel of three judges would score them, and the winner would go on to compete in the next round. I didn’t want to participate in something so savage and degrading, but since it was my philosophy to say yes to everything, I went anyway.

Treating art as something that can be scored and judged like that is… well, it is beyond ridiculous in my opinion, and harmful to everyone involved. It is like ranking people’s souls. Not to mention that art frequently deals with perspectives that are new, while judgments tend to stem from the values of days gone by.

But at any rate, I played this song in the first round, and lost by a landslide to a man in a cowboy hat. One judge even gave me a zero. Ouch.

Download MP3: Telemachus’ Realization

 

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Music & Songs Nashville The Odyssey

Run Rabbit Run

 

Painting of nude man with fortune telling rabbit. Checkerboard grass and pink cloud.Another song from the Odyssey… Odysseus’s encounter with the witch Circe… in the background you may be able to hear the snow plows & I really wish I could run away from New England at the moment… it is not the snow or the coldness that bothers me but the fact that they last forever. Two short months of spring/summer and then the struggle to survive starts all again. Plus, there is the lack of sunlight, which has the positive effect of making the thoughts and judgments of other people seem far away, but the negative effect of making your spirit feel like it is gasping for breath.

The prevailing philosophy on how to handle winter here is “Don’t fight it, embrace it.” When I press people for details, they generally recommend skiing. Which is a costly embrace. I think waging an all out war on winter may be a better idea for me, though I haven’t decided how to go about it just yet. If money were no object, I would buy hundreds of lamps and keep them turned on all day long, turn up the heat to 80 degrees, and fill a humidifier with the scent of ylang-ylangs and grapefruits, so I could live in a sunny and moist paradise.

As it stands, my best winter survival tips are tons of vitamin D and long car rides to ward off the dreaded cabin fever.

Download MP3: Run Rabbit Run