Here is "I'm Lost"... "Everybody is an artist, not only painters."
"Wonder" is, despite its chugging rhythm, wistful. There it all goes, then it's gone.
https://www.dan-black.com/
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Saturday, March 15, 2025
"I'm Lost" and "Wonder" by Dan Black
I am happy to see the return of Dan Black. Last time we saw him here, he was singing for 24 hours about how our hearts never stop beating. And now, here he is with two songs that pluck at the idea of memory and nostalgia. Maybe I am just in a mood, but the words to each of these songs feel personal to me...when I was a boy, I spent a lot of time alone in my room listening to records, imagining a world full of music and performance. And sometimes someone would join me in my room, listening to records, dreaming...and where are they now...
Here is "I'm Lost"... "Everybody is an artist, not only painters."
"Wonder" is, despite its chugging rhythm, wistful. There it all goes, then it's gone.
https://www.dan-black.com/
Here is "I'm Lost"... "Everybody is an artist, not only painters."
"Wonder" is, despite its chugging rhythm, wistful. There it all goes, then it's gone.
https://www.dan-black.com/
Thursday, March 3, 2022
Life may actually flash before your eyes on death by Holly Honderich
I don't know if you caught this recent little news item (it probably got buried because of the start of WW III)...it has fascinating implications.
Life may actually flash before your eyes on death - new study
By Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington
New data from a scientific "accident" has suggested that life may actually flash before our eyes as we die.
A team of scientists set out to measure the brainwaves of an 87-year-old patient who had developed epilepsy. But during the neurological recording, he suffered a fatal heart attack - offering an unexpected recording of a dying brain.
It revealed that in the 30 seconds before and after, the man's brainwaves followed the same patterns as dreaming or recalling memories.
Brain activity of this sort could suggest that a final "recall of life" may occur in a person's last moments, the team wrote in their study, published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on Tuesday.
Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a co-author of the study, said that what the team, then based in Vancouver, Canada, accidentally got, was the first-ever recording of a dying brain.
He told the BBC: "This was actually totally by chance, we did not plan to do this experiment or record these signals."
So will we get a glimpse back at time with loved ones and other happy memories? Dr Zemmar said it was impossible to tell.
"If I were to jump to the philosophical realm, I would speculate that if the brain did a flashback, it would probably like to remind you of good things, rather than the bad things," he said.
"But what's memorable would be different for every person."
Dr Zemmar, now a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, said in the 30 seconds before the patient's heart stopped supplying blood to the brain, his brainwaves followed the same patterns as when we carry out high-cognitive demanding tasks, like concentrating, dreaming or recalling memories.
It continued 30 seconds after the patient's heart stopped beating - the point at which a patient is typically declared dead.
"This could possibly be a last recall of memories that we've experienced in life, and they replay through our brain in the last seconds before we die."
The study also raises questions about when, exactly, life ends - when the heart stops beating, or the brain stops functioning.
Dr Zemmar and his team have cautioned that broad conclusions can't be drawn from a study of one. The fact that the patient was epileptic, with a bleeding and swollen brain, complicates things further.
"I never felt comfortable to report one case," Dr Zemmar said. And for years after the initial recording in 2016, he looked for similar cases to help strengthen the analysis but was unsuccessful.
But a 2013 study - carried out on healthy rats - may offer a clue.
In that analysis, US researchers reported high levels of brainwaves at the point of the death until 30 seconds after the rats' hearts stopped beating - just like the findings found in Dr Zemmar's epileptic patient.
The similarities between studies are "astonishing", Dr Zemmar said.
They now hope the publication of this one human case may open the door to other studies on the final moments of life.
"I think there's something mystical and spiritual about this whole near-death experience," Dr Zemmar said. "And findings like this - it's a moment that scientists lives for."
Link to original article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60495730
Life may actually flash before your eyes on death - new study
By Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington
New data from a scientific "accident" has suggested that life may actually flash before our eyes as we die.
A team of scientists set out to measure the brainwaves of an 87-year-old patient who had developed epilepsy. But during the neurological recording, he suffered a fatal heart attack - offering an unexpected recording of a dying brain.
It revealed that in the 30 seconds before and after, the man's brainwaves followed the same patterns as dreaming or recalling memories.
Brain activity of this sort could suggest that a final "recall of life" may occur in a person's last moments, the team wrote in their study, published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on Tuesday.
Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a co-author of the study, said that what the team, then based in Vancouver, Canada, accidentally got, was the first-ever recording of a dying brain.
He told the BBC: "This was actually totally by chance, we did not plan to do this experiment or record these signals."
So will we get a glimpse back at time with loved ones and other happy memories? Dr Zemmar said it was impossible to tell.
"If I were to jump to the philosophical realm, I would speculate that if the brain did a flashback, it would probably like to remind you of good things, rather than the bad things," he said.
"But what's memorable would be different for every person."
Dr Zemmar, now a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, said in the 30 seconds before the patient's heart stopped supplying blood to the brain, his brainwaves followed the same patterns as when we carry out high-cognitive demanding tasks, like concentrating, dreaming or recalling memories.
It continued 30 seconds after the patient's heart stopped beating - the point at which a patient is typically declared dead.
"This could possibly be a last recall of memories that we've experienced in life, and they replay through our brain in the last seconds before we die."
The study also raises questions about when, exactly, life ends - when the heart stops beating, or the brain stops functioning.
Dr Zemmar and his team have cautioned that broad conclusions can't be drawn from a study of one. The fact that the patient was epileptic, with a bleeding and swollen brain, complicates things further.
"I never felt comfortable to report one case," Dr Zemmar said. And for years after the initial recording in 2016, he looked for similar cases to help strengthen the analysis but was unsuccessful.
But a 2013 study - carried out on healthy rats - may offer a clue.
In that analysis, US researchers reported high levels of brainwaves at the point of the death until 30 seconds after the rats' hearts stopped beating - just like the findings found in Dr Zemmar's epileptic patient.
The similarities between studies are "astonishing", Dr Zemmar said.
They now hope the publication of this one human case may open the door to other studies on the final moments of life.
"I think there's something mystical and spiritual about this whole near-death experience," Dr Zemmar said. "And findings like this - it's a moment that scientists lives for."
Link to original article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60495730
Saturday, March 10, 2018
The Sweeney House
Two years ago, Texas Public Radio spotlighted artist Gary Sweeney and his touching art installation that served as a farewell to his childhood home. I recently came across the article and felt a kinship with Sweeney since I have a house I grew up in (we moved a lot but my Grandmother's house was the place that remained stable) to which I have a very strong emotional connection. Homes are so much more than shelter...they become imbued with life and energy. They matter. Almost as much as the people who lived in them.
Artist Turns Family Home Into Beautiful Art, Then It's Torn Down
By JACK MORGAN • MAR 1, 2016
San Antonio Visual Artist Gary Sweeney has spent some time away from the city to say goodbye to his childhood home. Oddly, even that turned into a very impressive work of art. Gary Sweeney was raised in a place and in a time that in a real sense, has long passed.
"I'm from Southern California, a place called Manhattan Beach...two blocks from the beach."
60-something Sweeney was raised there in the surf-crazy 1960s, so he pretty much lived the Beach Boys lifestyle that people heard on the radio. Sweeney laughed to remember it.
"Yes I did, as a matter of fact! The Beach Boys were from the town just east of us--Hawthorne, California--we kinda thought they were less-than-authentic because we thought they were flatlanders,"
Early life for revolved around that beach and his humble home.
"My mother bought it in 1945 when my father was coming home from Guam from the Navy during WWII, and he became a policeman in Los Angeles and he was making $75 a month."
The young family eked by, and they grew--Gary and his sister were born and their parents built on to the house accommodate.
"They turned a 1-story house into a 2-story house and created an apartment underneath for my grandmother and a garage for the car. That was the second stage. The third stage was my father popped out the back and built a darkroom for himself."
Gary's dad Mike would also serve on the Manhattan Beach city council and spend a lot of his spare time taking and developing pictures.
"My father was a very serious amateur photographer and photographed every aspect of our lives. Every event, every first day of school. Every little league game. Every Christmas. And so he had a cache of hundreds and hundreds of photographs inside of his dark room."
In time, Gary and his sister moved far away and built their own lives and careers. After the rest of the family passed on, the house became rental property. Recently, Gary decided to sell. But he was torn.
"It occurred to me that I was selling our family legacy that was in our family for 70 years, and this is the house that my sister and I were brought home from the hospital to" he said. "My father actually died inside the house. My grandmother died inside her apartment downstairs. Every childhood memory is surrounded by this house."
Sweeney had an artistic brainstorm involving the hundreds of family pictures he found in his father's darkroom.
"I decided to enlarge these photographs and have them printed onto what is called an MDO board, and so I've covered the outside of the house with family photographs that sort of tell the Sweeney family story."
Black-and-white and color family pictures from four to six feet in length paper the entire exterior of the house. From the ground to the eaves, everything but the windows and doors are covered. It's a touching, artistic sight, and clearly a labor of love.
"This idea was just clear as a bell when I started thinking of it. I needed to give it a proper farewell, and I needed a tribute to my father's photography. I wanted to pay homage to the house. And I wanted to tell a story about growing up in Manhattan Beach."
I asked if any one picture tugged at his heartstrings.
"Well the one that seems to represent it best for me is I'm sitting on our wooden porch and I had a Davy Crockett outfit on with a coonskin hat. I'm guessing I was three years old. My mother said I wore that outfit night and day, and it could be the hottest day of the year and I would have that coonskin hat on my hat."
Sweeney has been at the house much of January and February. And re-connecting with old friends. Many friends, and even strangers have stopped by to look, and to talk.
"I had a woman burst into tears and start sobbing. Somehow this struck a nerve with her. It is a very emotional experience. People are really affected by it."
On Sunday the hundred and four pictures came down and March first the house--well, it will, too.
"The house just goes away, yes. I actually had someone ask me if I was going to be there when it was demolished" Sweeney laughed. "I said no of course not. I cry at card tricks; I'm not going to watch my childhood home being demolished!"
But what of all the pictures? They will be trucked back to San Antonio. And the artist's ingenious way of paying homage to those who gave him life, and artistic direction will be gone.
http://tpr.org/post/artist-turns-family-home-beautiful-art-then-its-torn-down
Artist Turns Family Home Into Beautiful Art, Then It's Torn Down
By JACK MORGAN • MAR 1, 2016
San Antonio Visual Artist Gary Sweeney has spent some time away from the city to say goodbye to his childhood home. Oddly, even that turned into a very impressive work of art. Gary Sweeney was raised in a place and in a time that in a real sense, has long passed.
"I'm from Southern California, a place called Manhattan Beach...two blocks from the beach."
60-something Sweeney was raised there in the surf-crazy 1960s, so he pretty much lived the Beach Boys lifestyle that people heard on the radio. Sweeney laughed to remember it.
"Yes I did, as a matter of fact! The Beach Boys were from the town just east of us--Hawthorne, California--we kinda thought they were less-than-authentic because we thought they were flatlanders,"
Early life for revolved around that beach and his humble home.
"My mother bought it in 1945 when my father was coming home from Guam from the Navy during WWII, and he became a policeman in Los Angeles and he was making $75 a month."
The young family eked by, and they grew--Gary and his sister were born and their parents built on to the house accommodate.
"They turned a 1-story house into a 2-story house and created an apartment underneath for my grandmother and a garage for the car. That was the second stage. The third stage was my father popped out the back and built a darkroom for himself."
Gary's dad Mike would also serve on the Manhattan Beach city council and spend a lot of his spare time taking and developing pictures.
"My father was a very serious amateur photographer and photographed every aspect of our lives. Every event, every first day of school. Every little league game. Every Christmas. And so he had a cache of hundreds and hundreds of photographs inside of his dark room."
In time, Gary and his sister moved far away and built their own lives and careers. After the rest of the family passed on, the house became rental property. Recently, Gary decided to sell. But he was torn.
"It occurred to me that I was selling our family legacy that was in our family for 70 years, and this is the house that my sister and I were brought home from the hospital to" he said. "My father actually died inside the house. My grandmother died inside her apartment downstairs. Every childhood memory is surrounded by this house."
Sweeney had an artistic brainstorm involving the hundreds of family pictures he found in his father's darkroom.
"I decided to enlarge these photographs and have them printed onto what is called an MDO board, and so I've covered the outside of the house with family photographs that sort of tell the Sweeney family story."
Black-and-white and color family pictures from four to six feet in length paper the entire exterior of the house. From the ground to the eaves, everything but the windows and doors are covered. It's a touching, artistic sight, and clearly a labor of love.
"This idea was just clear as a bell when I started thinking of it. I needed to give it a proper farewell, and I needed a tribute to my father's photography. I wanted to pay homage to the house. And I wanted to tell a story about growing up in Manhattan Beach."
I asked if any one picture tugged at his heartstrings.
"Well the one that seems to represent it best for me is I'm sitting on our wooden porch and I had a Davy Crockett outfit on with a coonskin hat. I'm guessing I was three years old. My mother said I wore that outfit night and day, and it could be the hottest day of the year and I would have that coonskin hat on my hat."
Sweeney has been at the house much of January and February. And re-connecting with old friends. Many friends, and even strangers have stopped by to look, and to talk.
"I had a woman burst into tears and start sobbing. Somehow this struck a nerve with her. It is a very emotional experience. People are really affected by it."
On Sunday the hundred and four pictures came down and March first the house--well, it will, too.
"The house just goes away, yes. I actually had someone ask me if I was going to be there when it was demolished" Sweeney laughed. "I said no of course not. I cry at card tricks; I'm not going to watch my childhood home being demolished!"
But what of all the pictures? They will be trucked back to San Antonio. And the artist's ingenious way of paying homage to those who gave him life, and artistic direction will be gone.
http://tpr.org/post/artist-turns-family-home-beautiful-art-then-its-torn-down
Saturday, May 27, 2017
You Can't Ignore The Past
“I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are that you can't ignore it.”
--Lauren Bacall
--Lauren Bacall
Thursday, July 21, 2016
BEAUTY: Drawing--Garth England
Regular readers know that I am an interior designer among other professions, and I recently had a consultation for a possible new client that touched me deeply. I got a call from a woman on the east coast who said she had inherited a home here in California. She said she had been back and forth several times and had started to remodel one of the bathrooms. But she said she is now interested in renovating the rest of the house. So after we arranged for me to get a key, I went to the house to take a look at the scope of work involved. I was under the impression that the house would be empty, or nearly so. But I was surprised to see a home with lawn furniture and plants hanging on the front porch, looking very much currently cared for and lived in. I let myself in and while the house had been cleared of most large furniture pieces, smaller items remained. An antique table topped with a few books in German. Some lovely abstract art pieces on the walls. Persian rugs. In the kitchen, papers, bills, and sunglasses sat on the peninsula as though someone had just recently arrived home. A bookshelf of cook books sat next to a carved oak dining table and chairs. Pots and pans sat silent in a cupboard, used by someone to cook all their meals. In a home office, walls were covered with framed certificates and diplomas and letters to a woman who was praised as a marvelous teacher, someone who changed the course of the lives of her students.
The more I looked, the more my heart ached and throat closed up, and the more I was aware of the life of a human being who is no longer living...but whose entire life in objects remains...the tiny, precious things that we all take for granted in our lives but that will outlive us. As such things have the power to do to me, I was transported back to the deaths of my parents and their home I was responsible for clearing out and selling--all the daily, average objects suddenly took on a huge importance. My mom's tiny porcelain kitty collection, my dad's favorite yellow bowl from which he ate his nightly treat of popcorn...
And the state of this home in front of me was suddenly crystal clear--the meaningful objects, the ones with sentimental value had already been removed. A kind of infinitely sad, almost tangible half-life existed in the house for me to practically swim through...someone's invisible memories and life unknown to me, echoing with the lives of my parents and the lifetime, knowledge, memories and love and...presence that is gone. Presence. Walking through this house shook me and returned me to a state both familiar and feared. And inevitable.
So I was pleased by the synchronicity when I stumbled across, the next day, information about an artist who had, very late in life, recorded all the places and events he could recall. Since he was not suffering from any kind of cognitive impairment, he was able to recall details of nearly everything.
Garth England liked to draw. So he meticulously cataloged his life in the English town of Bristol, mapping out streets, profiles of houses he lived in as well as his neighbors', elevation views of his boyhood bedrooms, furniture suites, and cartoon panel-stories about episodes in his life. One of the most poignant is a story about him and his brother during what is known as Operation Pied Piper (where children were evacuated to rural areas and away from city centers at risk of being bombed in WWII), and being sent to a family in Woodroyd for safety.
Thankfully these drawings were discovered and published in a book which went to print just before Garth England's death. It is wonderful that he knew of the book and its imminent publication...and by extension the value of his memories and life. Here is the blurb from Future Perfect, the Bristol City Council-funded public art programme that allowed Garth's work to be discovered and turned into MURDERED WITH STRAIGHT LINES: DRAWINGS OF BRISTOL BY GARTH ENGLAND:
"Garth England was a long-term resident of Hengrove and Knowle-West in south Bristol; Murdered with Straight Lines tells the poignant story of a childhood lived through a world war and its aftermath; the development of Britain's Welfare State and social housing provision; vernacular architecture, indoor toilets and fitted kitchens.
The drawings were discovered by Jo Plimmer, engagement curator of Future Perfect, when she visited Hengrove Lodge as part of the public engagement programme. Garth died in 2014 but he knew of our plans to publish his drawings and gave us his blessing."
The title refers to an anecdote England told: "Murdered with straight lines — that’s what my art teacher used to say about my drawings. He didn’t like the way I always used a ruler." He may have been a slave to the precision of his ruler, but these drawings are earnestly created and colored with a beautiful, naïve, loving care.
The things we leave behind.
The book can be purchased through the publishing house Redcliffe Press here or through Amazon UK here.
*sniff*
The more I looked, the more my heart ached and throat closed up, and the more I was aware of the life of a human being who is no longer living...but whose entire life in objects remains...the tiny, precious things that we all take for granted in our lives but that will outlive us. As such things have the power to do to me, I was transported back to the deaths of my parents and their home I was responsible for clearing out and selling--all the daily, average objects suddenly took on a huge importance. My mom's tiny porcelain kitty collection, my dad's favorite yellow bowl from which he ate his nightly treat of popcorn...
And the state of this home in front of me was suddenly crystal clear--the meaningful objects, the ones with sentimental value had already been removed. A kind of infinitely sad, almost tangible half-life existed in the house for me to practically swim through...someone's invisible memories and life unknown to me, echoing with the lives of my parents and the lifetime, knowledge, memories and love and...presence that is gone. Presence. Walking through this house shook me and returned me to a state both familiar and feared. And inevitable.
So I was pleased by the synchronicity when I stumbled across, the next day, information about an artist who had, very late in life, recorded all the places and events he could recall. Since he was not suffering from any kind of cognitive impairment, he was able to recall details of nearly everything.
Garth England liked to draw. So he meticulously cataloged his life in the English town of Bristol, mapping out streets, profiles of houses he lived in as well as his neighbors', elevation views of his boyhood bedrooms, furniture suites, and cartoon panel-stories about episodes in his life. One of the most poignant is a story about him and his brother during what is known as Operation Pied Piper (where children were evacuated to rural areas and away from city centers at risk of being bombed in WWII), and being sent to a family in Woodroyd for safety.
Thankfully these drawings were discovered and published in a book which went to print just before Garth England's death. It is wonderful that he knew of the book and its imminent publication...and by extension the value of his memories and life. Here is the blurb from Future Perfect, the Bristol City Council-funded public art programme that allowed Garth's work to be discovered and turned into MURDERED WITH STRAIGHT LINES: DRAWINGS OF BRISTOL BY GARTH ENGLAND:
"Garth England was a long-term resident of Hengrove and Knowle-West in south Bristol; Murdered with Straight Lines tells the poignant story of a childhood lived through a world war and its aftermath; the development of Britain's Welfare State and social housing provision; vernacular architecture, indoor toilets and fitted kitchens.
The drawings were discovered by Jo Plimmer, engagement curator of Future Perfect, when she visited Hengrove Lodge as part of the public engagement programme. Garth died in 2014 but he knew of our plans to publish his drawings and gave us his blessing."
The title refers to an anecdote England told: "Murdered with straight lines — that’s what my art teacher used to say about my drawings. He didn’t like the way I always used a ruler." He may have been a slave to the precision of his ruler, but these drawings are earnestly created and colored with a beautiful, naïve, loving care.
The things we leave behind.
The book can be purchased through the publishing house Redcliffe Press here or through Amazon UK here.
*sniff*
Monday, December 22, 2014
Holiday Treats 2014
My first clear memory of winter—probably around 1968 or so—is connected to our house on West Main Street. My mother hung wreaths of red, crinkled cellophane with a single tiny red bulb in the front windows. We had a fireplace and my mother and father helped me make a long chain out of colored construction paper to hang from the mantel. Mom made her Christmas butter cookies and I associate their warm, safe smell and luscious, enveloping taste exclusively with Christmas. We mixed white frosting with food coloring to get red and green and I got to frost a few cookies, and then sprinkle on the multi-colored decorations. I ate several before bed each night with a glass of milk and it was heaven. And of course, Santa had to have some on Christmas Eve so my mom and I would leave a little plate for him—and a carrot for the reindeer.
Mom’s Christmas Butter Cookies
Sift together three cups of flour, one teaspoon of baking powder and half of a teaspoon of salt. Then cream together one cup of butter and three quarters of a cup of sugar; stir in one unbeaten egg, two tablespoons of milk and one and a half teaspoons of fine vanilla extract and mix well. Add the dry ingredients a third at a time. Chill the dough for one hour. Roll the dough onto a floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Roll to one-eighth of an inch thickness. Use cookie cutters and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake them five to eight minutes at 350*, watching carefully. Frost and decorate. Enjoy.
JEF
Friday, October 10, 2014
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