"To The Substitute Art Teacher" by Jordan Bolton

The talented illustrator Jordan Bolton (previously here) has released a book of his tender, stunning--and dare I say it, life-changing--pieces called "Blue Sky Through The Window Of A Moving Car." Here is "To The Substitute Art Teacher." Beauty can be found anywhere, and everywhere.

You can buy his book here.
Visit his Instagram page to see more.
https://www.instagram.com/jordanboltondesign

"Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev" by Aphex Twin

There is an interesting story to this Aphex Twin (the nom de musique of electronic musician Richard James) track, "Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev" which was recently released on the Aphex Twin retrospective album "Selected Ambient Works Vol. II (Expanded Edition)." It was originally performed live at the Barbican in London in 2012 as part of an experiment James called The Remote Orchestra: a 48-piece orchestra and a 24 person choir all wearing wireless headphones took sound and visual cues (colored bars displayed on a large monitor overhead) to sing or play certain notes and in certain styles or volumes from James working on a laptop computer backstage. In effect, he turned the orchestra and choir into a sort of electronic instrument he could play by clicking on his software.

The track has been reworked and is presented here in reverse, which recalls something Brian Eno might have done. The idea that ambient music is holistic, meaning one can take any small section and have it represent the whole, is apparent here. It does not matter if the track is heard as it was recorded or played backward. The cumulative sense is the same.

But what is truly touching are the liner notes from "Selected Ambient Works II (Expanded Edition)" about this track:

Rhubarb notes:
My mum gave me so much love, dedicated her life to me, filled me to the brim with confidence and somehow managed to be a nurse at the same time. That love she gave can now be felt by millions of people all over the world and beyond through this music.
Thanks for everything Lorna James!
I watched both my mum and dad die in front of me recently, was so very grateful to have been able to be with them then, as scary as it was to see. She was cracking jokes hours before she left, even though she was in a lot of pain, she told the awkward doctor on the last day, 'I should be shot, put down', she was very funny. I opened the lovely french doors to the room she was in on the last morning, it was sunny and she said, 'ah that beautiful Champagne air', will remember that til I die.
I still meet them in my dreams regularly and have relaxing normal chats about nothing in particular, I'm going to see if all three of us can listen to this track next time we meet up.
Richard D. James, June 2024

Considering I am between the anniversaries of my own parents' deaths, I am very moved by the story, his notes, and certainly the heavenly music.

https://aphextwin.warp.net/

"Ichi go ichi e" leads to "mono no aware"

Two Japanese phrases compliment each other: Ichi go ichi e leads to mono no aware.

BEAUTY: Illustration For Winter--Gerard Dubois

In collaboration with Japanese department store group Mitsukoshi Isetan, French illustrator Gerard Dubois created an homage to an antique view of what the future could possibly look like in his series Nostalgic Merry and Delightful Future Christmas. The images have a charming quality with little hints of a mechanical future that never actually arrived...with levitating robots, Victorian space helmets, jet packs for reindeer, android nannies, and a flying snow machine cage.

https://www.gdubois.com/ 

https://cp.mistore.jp/global/en.html

"Convocations - Meditations" by Sufjan Stevens

My god. I am nearly speechless. The angel Sufjan Stevens (previously here) has released a collection of ambient tracks that are some of the most profound sounds I have heard in a long while.

It may be tempting to reduce Convocations into a longform ambient anomaly within Sufjan Stevens’ vast catalogue. It is, however, neither an anomaly nor entirely ambient. This is not a side project. From his numerous dance scores for New York City Ballet to instrumental albums such as Enjoy Your Rabbit, Aporia, and The BQE, Stevens spends at least half his working life making largely instrumental music, as he has for decades. And though the first ten pieces, dubbed “Meditations,” unfurl as gorgeous states of reflective new-age grace, this is by no means an ambient enterprise. Stevens invokes the lessons of Morton Subotnick, Maryanne Amacher, Christian Fennesz, Brian Eno, and Wolfgang Voigt here. As musically erudite as it is emotionally experienced, Convocations can be dissonant, vertiginous, rhythmic, repetitive, urgent, or calm—that is, all the things we undergo when we inevitably live through loss, isolation, and anxiety.

Indeed, Convocations moves like a two-and-a-half-hour requiem mass for our present times of difficulty, its 49 tracks allowing for all these feelings to be felt. The album is divided into five sonic cycles, each replicating a different stage of mourning. Convocations occasionally soothes and sometimes hurts; when it’s done, you’re left with a renewed sense of wonder for being here at all.

In fact, Stevens made Convocations in response to (and as an homage to) the life and death of his biological father, who died in September last year, two days following the release of The Ascension. It is, then, ultimately an album about loss, and an album that reflects a year in which we have all lost so much. One could easily compare this project to Stevens’ album Carrie & Lowell, which he wrote following his mother’s death. But this is something entirely different. A new time, a new season, a new life lost, a new reckoning, a new kind of isolation, grief, despair, frustration, confusion, and the search for happiness and hope for the future. This is not a personal record, but a universal one. Convocations is built on a shared experience that seeks to be honest about how complicated grief can be in these difficult times—the pain, the anxiety, the unknown, the absolute joy of memory. This is also an album made in lockdown, when we were all cloistered in whatever space we had. So long as the science and statistics hold, Convocations arrives just as we begin to emerge from a year whose losses we will calculate for a lifetime. It is, then, right on time, as we begin to process our grief and try to carry on with it. 

—Grayson Haver Currin

The first of the five volumes, "Meditations," was released on April 8, 2021 and all ten tracks are posted below. "Meditation I" makes me weep.

The other four volumes, "Lamentations," "Revelations," "Celebrations," and "Incantations," are scheduled to be released by May 6, 2021.

https://sufjan.com/

For Valentine's Day: In Love 2021

Beauty Is Melancholy

BEAUTY for Día de los Muertos: Vanessa Davis

English make-up artist extraordinaire Vanessa Davis is also known as The Skulltress and it is easy to see why. She paints herself as various--and gorgeous--stylized skulls that recall the Mexican calaveras seen at this time of the year, Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.

https://www.instagram.com/the_wigs_and_makeup_manager/

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