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
Los Angeles Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire

Life Everlasting

 

Self-portrait in blue coat on red background.

One of my dearest wishes, at the time I wrote this song, was to be illiterate. If only I could have a clean and unconditioned mind, I felt there were so many things I could do and know… the sky would be the limit for me.

Books written by humans seemed like a distraction to me- a way of constraining my mind within a narrow bandwidth of information- when the whole world that surrounded me, with all its colors, shapes, and fragrances, was a page of a book written in the language of the angels (which I called Angelese). Angelese is a language of symbols and the senses, the notion that everything we perceive around us is deeply meaningful and that our hearts are naturally capable of discerning this meaning.

Because people lie all the time, and constantly distort the truth. But in the book of angels, the truth will always be written out, clear as day. As the pedophile walks down the street, there will be a sign, an impression somewhere, that tells you who he is.

 

 

Download MP3: Life Everlasting

Categories
Kentucky Music & Songs The Savage Life Uncategorized

Easter Hill

 

Nude woman with pastel ribbon and polka dots.

When I wrote this song, I was scared all the time. A feeling of absolute terror and doom was a constant in my life. If I was taking a shower, I would feel like a psycho was just about to pull back the shower curtain. If I was walking outside, I would feel like a car was just about to screech to a halt and force me inside at gunpoint.

Because of that, I suppose, I tried to surround myself by things that were as non-threatening as possible. Everything in my apartment had to be pale pink (or white when that wasn’t possible). Pictures of unicorns had to fill every wall (preferably baby unicorns being protected by their mothers). I only read children’s books and rarely  ate anything other than dessert. I would spazz out and begin to cry if James mentioned anything remotely dangerous or violent from the news or world events.

Smells would especially freak me out. I couldn’t tolerate the smell of any savory food. And perhaps due to living in such a smell bubble, my sense of smell started to get more and more sensitive. Soon, I could tell what James was thinking about through subtle “smell puffs” he would release. Cupcake or baked good puffs meant he wanted to spend time with me, and the faintest puff of meat and tomatoes meant he was thinking about work, with garlic and onions being added if he was angry at his boss.

 

Download MP3: Easter Hill

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 Santa Fe Uncategorized

Long Way Home

 

Nude Lady reclining while electric blue eagles dance.I wrote this song in Santa Fe, but it is still following a “rule” I established for myself at some point in Nashville, which is that every song must have the phrase “making love” somewhere in the chorus. Why did I establish this as a rule? I don’t know- it just gave me tickley feelings inside…

The phrase “making love” reminds me of something that in high school we used to call a Jinx-99. A Jinx-99 is a man with oiled hair, a thick mustache, and a tank top who gives you red roses and chocolate body oil on Valentine’s Day. He is just too much man, like having to eat a whole stick of butter with no bread. The phrase “making love” reminds me of that, too sticky & sincere to bear, which is what made it irresistible.

So, anyway, I wrote this song in Santa Fe, where, as I’ve mentioned, I lived in a weekly motel off the side of a highway, a very isolated and unenriched location. Before this, I had lived in Nashville, where I had a car and was constantly going here and there. Now I did not have a car and was stuck in the middle of nowhere. All day long, while my husband worked, I sat in a tiny motel room. It may be hard to understand the effect this has on a person’s mind unless you have experienced it yourself.

Although I had rarely watched tv before, I now spent countless hours being tortured and brainwashed by Country Music Television. It made me nauseous, but I couldn’t turn it off. Eventually, I had to return the television to the front office.

In a desperate effort to not die from lack of stimulation, I began prank calling people everyday as part of my morning routine- 11 people first thing every day before breakfast. I covered all my clothes in rhinestones, sequins, and other reflective surfaces (one of the lies they told on Country Music Television was that you could never be depressed while wearing rhinestones). I hoped that wearing these clothes beneath the bright desert sun would somehow energize me. I started wearing feathered headdresses, hoping that they would draw more energy from the air into my brain. And sometimes, I would walk alongside the highway carrying a red ball so large I could barely hold it, hoping it would draw attention from the people driving by, hoping their psychic energy would somehow keep me from going insane. But it was too late- I already was.

Insane people are like corpses, though, they point to a mystery- what happened to this person, who did it? Generally people do not murder themselves, and generally they do not drive themselves insane.

Download MP3: Long Way Home

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
Brooklyn Music & Songs

Lucky One

 

Pygmy with acanthus leaf, bones, and stars.In the movie Brooklyn’s Finest, a Brooklyn cop goes on a killing spree in order afford a safer home for his family. I can totally relate to his feelings, and yet, I kept wanting to yell at him, “Move to Indiana! Why don’t you just move to Indiana!! Don’t you realize there is cheaper housing there?!?”

Why does Brooklyn even exist- why doesn’t everyone just move to Indiana? What is the upside to Brooklyn? As far as I can tell, there isn’t more stuff to do, there isn’t greater earning potential… so, what gives?

At any rate, this is another song I wrote while struggling to keep my head above water in the belly of that concrete monster. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the hardest things to deal with was feeling deprived of all the things that make life feel happy and comfortable, like friends, nature, a happy home, a slice of pizza that hasn’t been held in a stranger’s dirty hands. My mind would spin around and around trying to think of ways I could bring this lost pastoral energy back into my life (Because somehow, just as in Brooklyn’s Finest, the idea that I could simply leave never seemed to enter my mind.)

At one point, I was convinced that the color orange was the answer. I saw Brooklyn as basically being the Kingdom of Gray, and thought orange might be the color that could cut through the thick dullness that gray represented, and bring in the energy of the Harvest, that time when all your efforts are rewarded and all the seeds you have planted come to fruition.

So, not having much money to spend on the color orange, I bought a basketball, a pair of orange high top shoes (the only orange shoes I could find for $9), plus some orange tissue paper and candles. I taped the orange paper to my wall and lit the orange candles beneath it. But when I opened my door, the paper caught fire and flew across the room like a giant orange monster, landing on the floor where I stomped it out (and then extinguished the wall). I decided to put the orange candles on my kitchen table instead, and let them burn through the night so I could wake up and enjoy my harvest in the morning. Instead, I was woken by a strange sound that turned out to be the entire surface of my kitchen table burning. The spirits of the harvest at work!

 

Download MP3: Lucky One