Dear Radio-Dodo Heads,
Here is a great song for you, for today. If you will permit me the suggestion, I hope you will listen to it once, with closed eyes & monitors; and then, listen while watching, because it is a very enjoyable music video.
PS
Dry Cleaning is a pretty great band; try Leafy, which the one my DJ played for me last week. Knackering drinks with close friends indeed! Are there llama plushies here?!
Dear Poet,
I thought I'd write you a poem about the land tide. It'd go a little something like this:
How would it feel, to go so slow,
snail slow, superslow enough
to feel the land tide? To feel the few inches
that the earth lunges towards, leans towards, the moon.
Leaning and lunging with the land tide,
you'd feel your own blood rising up
with it, tingling the top of your head,
you might jump up, at the peak of the land tide, and you'd go a little higher,
leaping imperceptibly further.
Dear Weekend,
I've been reading all about reading poetry all aloud, and I am all for it. Try this great, and hitherto unknown to me, poem by Anne Waldman, Uh-Oh Plutonium.
Tomorrow, another fine poem! Stay tuned!
Dear Universe,
Keep on sending the mail art! I promise to write back soon! In the meantime, enjoy this song for today!
On second thought, let's listen to it again, shall we? Until we know it, by heart.
Dear All,
Today, a brief lesson on painting. Materials needed: paint, surface, brush, time. Step four is the most important step- do not skip step four!
Step One: Get something to paint on. Paper, cardboard, wood, canvas, aluminum.
Step Two: Put the fuzzy end of the stick into the paint.
Step Three: Daub, swoop, or stroke the paint onto your surface from Step One.
Step Four: Use your Checking Stick.
Your painting is now done, and suitable for framing. Or maybe heading towards done? I love your painting, and I cannot wait to see your next one!
Marilyn Levine, Waldo suitcase, ceramic, 1975
Dear Darlings,
Ooh, I found a lovely little pair of songs for you! Well, no, that's not right, I discovered that a pair of great songs had a lot in common, an overlap of theme, and I couldn't wait to play them for you! Enjoy!
PS
Dig trompe-l'œil clay? Check out Richard Shaw.
Dear Fridays,
Don't worry, you can still dance! The Summer is ending, but Fridays continue. Here are some songs about summer for your dancing pleasure.
Summertime and the Living is Easy
Yes, I noticed it too; the summer is a very melancholy song subject. I think it's because it's over so fast, and we only ever want what we do not have. But, let me know what you think; send a message by paper airplane, and I will reply promptly.
Dear All,
I was at a party (wait, what is that? It's a thing people go to to have fun and celebrate together- the shadow side is that you might infect each other with viruses or ideas), and a old white guy was talking. No, that isn't quite the whole story, but for now, this description, plus 'inebriated' will do.
Anyway, it was funny, too, because it was a gathering of mostly women, of all kinds of ethnicities, ages, and gender orientations. So, it was funny that this guy was filling, was being allowed to fill, so much space.
Anyway, like I say, this man was talking, and I saw some young women bristle at his talk, and I lamely blew some support in their direction, but still, this guy was talking. Loudly, because, well, people that talk shit quietly aren't really a problem, are they?
Anyway, I heard my lame and weak protestations, which I had designed to undercut but not confront directly, this old loud white guy, and I felt keenly how formed I have been by talk like his. How whispered undercuttings are not really enough.
Anyway, I decided, that even though I have wanted to share some of the great moments; the great openings in my formative years, made possible by the voices of men that seemed to ring very true, very boldly, very expansively; that these moments are kind of polluted, actually, and not good enough to share.
Anyway, by moments I mean words, I mean books.
Anyway, I am going to clear my bookshelf of these kinds of men talking, even though they meant a lot to me, because I don't think we need them anymore. I don't think people need to hear more of the details of what they do not want, and
anyway, I don't need to either.
PS
Here's a source for some books I can put in the newly emptied spaces on the shelf.
Edouard Manet, Spanish Ballet, 1862.
Dear Friday Evening,
You know what you are, don't you? You are the summer dance party, and this is your song!
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Dear Drawing,
Ooh, I love these diagrams! I found them in a book of paintings of birds, and they are really wonderful. They are more compelling than the actual paintings, but I give you a few of them, so you can see for yourself. I love the compositions of the shapes, untethered from their landscape. If you are crazy curious about the books, you can see one here, and the other, there.
The whole thing has got me thinking about the outlines, the minimum that you need to tell the tale of identity, and I am also considering the circled numbers; the corresponding text. Is that the compelling part? Is the appeal the way this diagram hopes to instruct? When we see a diagram, do we get ready to receive direction?
What if, say, I took a whole lot of outlines, of things, like leaves, cups, pillows, fruit; and I put some numbers on, or near, and I painted it all up in a nice buttercup color? That sounds like it would be swell, doesn't it? The outlines would have maybe the barest hint of reference to them, just enough to make you think, and then we can enjoy contemplating the question posed by having these varied objects in the same picture.
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Dear Funsters,
This, I believe, is it. I am all funned out. It's not the end, of course, it's the beginning! We will still meet here and I will continue to leave you messages in the hollow of the bole of the big tree in the empty lot on the corner, but we will put this summer time pursuit of fun aside for now. It's time to cram in all the fun that we haven't yet gotten to thus far, and to turn slightly towards the Fall.
For this week of summer fun, I offer you:
Take a photo safari.
Learn to walk on stilts!
Get an ice cream, large, or small.
Plan a cruise; large or small.
And, your dance party tune!
Thanks for joining me in the summer fun!
Dear Metaphorical and Analogical,
Like, I am pretty sure like is my favorite word. It's like, really useful, because it sets up a dialectical, a juxtaposition, an analogy. This is like that.
Also, here's a few more beautiful bonuses to the word like: Liking, indicating a fondness for, is a nice, positive thing to bring to a conversation or an object. I like that hat! I like those shoes! I like this chocolate mousse! You get the idea; liking things is pretty damned pleasant. Let's continue, if you'd like?
The word also sounds very happily like the word 'lick.' And that, my friends, is also likeable! Imagine, you see a dark, nearly black stone on the beach that you like; you pick it up, you like its warm heaviness, and, to get a little closer, you give it a lick. It's salty and fine! Many things that you like, in other words, could do with a licking.
Anyway, it's like deja vu, because I feel like I have professed my adoration of like before, like, maybe a few years ago? I don't think I could live without like.
Dear People,
I am stupefied by the wonderfulness of this! I can only add that it's a wonderful world, full of wonderful people, giving gifts, great and small, all day, all night!
Dear Feet,
Here, try this dance for your Summer Dance Party this week! Oh, wait, you are going to need some music for those moves: try this. Oh, you might also want some instructions.
Still from It Came From Beneath the Sea.
Dear Summer of Fun,
Yes! Here are another five possibilities for your summer fun pleasure! It's true, we can't go on like this, and I see that the cottonwoods in the creek are starting to yellow, but this week, we continue to fun like the summer has no end!
Dance party track! (That was so great; let's have another one!)
See you next summer fun week, while it lasts!
Dear A.,
I am beside myself. Perhaps it is just the weather- today there is a sultry, warm rain, and little breeze. This tropical exhibition comes to us by way of the furthermost fringes of a Hurricane. Here, it is nothing but mildness, but I cannot help but wonder if its centered, powerful force is not also in some effect here, too, as I am in a fury of sorting and discarding items.
Perhaps, though, it is the influence of my acquaintances- whom travel, and move, visit and relocate themselves of late. Some, indeed, have gone away for good. Would that you were here beside me, on the porch, with the scent of the dampened bromes around us: I would pour us two small glasses of a monukka wine, a dessert wine, into wee crystal cups, carefully, slowly, lentamente, so as not to disturb the lees. We would set here, with bird and insect song all about us, and I would seek your counsel on a book that I consider parting with: Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette.
It pains me to part with it, and yet I realize that I cannot expect the possession of a book of manners to improve my own: I desire to act in accordance with etiquette, but I do not consult the book, and what is worse, I am an oar without a boat to paddle, in that whatever is left of the forms of this book ate 64 years old, and my only opportunity to practice them will be with people of, shall we say, at least 80 years of age?
Missing you,
signed,
M.
Dear August Fun,
Are all these weeks of fun dragging on for you? I have an option for you and your discontent!* I also have one that looks ahead to the approaching Fall and its longer evenings. Try one of this week's five funs on for size; I am sure there will be something you like!
Sleep under the stars in a bedroll!
Provision yourself for a Fall knitting project.
Until next week- keep up the good fun!
Here are some photos I saw but did not 'take:'
a field of purple blue silver cabbage
intersecting barn walls
a fence of wood in dry dirt
an old station wagon with three big stripes
a murder of crows lifting out of a cypress
two women in pink shirts
a dozen different photos of shifting fog and revealed water
the front of a roadhouse
light on waves
tree trunks leaning left
Dear Dancers,
Another spatially and semantically significant song for your summer dance party pleasure!
Dear Funsters,
I have more summer fun for you! Remember, you must have fun at least twice this week! It's a chore, but somebody's gotta do it!
Another extended dance mix (with ribbits!!)
Until next week's fun!
Dear Record Player,
Here is your Friday prescription: your summer dance tune for today!
Easter Hat, from Draped, Anonymous Women, by artist Patty Carroll.
Dear Confidante,
I am working on the mysteries, still. What is identity? Yes, we have spoken of this, and I think I mentioned my panic at being asked to define one for myself. I have been digging at it sporadically, in my usual, unkempt garden kind of way, and I found this artist, this photographer, Patty Carroll. She'll knock you out of your socks; enjoy the ride!
Dear Dodo Reader,
The summer fun continues this week! It's true, a lot of the fun suggestions involve making something, but you already know to take a hike, or a swim, or a paddle without me telling you to visit the beach or go on a picnic. I have chosen these funs for their unusualness. Also, y'all know that if your kind of fun is to clean grout, you should be on a different channel.
For fun this week, why not:
Play a card game. (just push the Create a Game or New Private Game buttons)
Okay, 'til Tuesday's fun list next week!
(un petite encore- close listeners will enjoy the difference in vocal style in these two versions!)
