another eye opens

Quote of the day: VINYL

February 11, 2015

VINYL

The first record I bought with my savings was Discovery by Electric Light Orchestra, from 1979. I bought it at Sears. I still remember the cover, the jacket with the lyrics on it, and the picture of the Arab boy running away from thieves after stealing the ELO flying saucer. But other senses also intervened: the smell, cellophane’s aroma, the texture of cardboard, paper, and vinyl. The secret of vinyl records lies in the senses, in the way we related with the object and its art. The touch which, as I remember, as a young boy having slept with a 45 RPM containing the musical tale of Peter and the Wolf between my hands. The feeling that the story was mine as many times as I wanted and with the magic of a wonderful box that extracted all its secrets, and which my alchemist father knew how to operate as many times as I asked. We enjoy our mother’s voice and the comforting feeling of sucking on our thumb since the moment we are inside the womb. The same thing happens with the right size of the 33RPM record. The covers, the concept could be admired as contemporary art pieces, thanks to the fact that Alex Steinweiss turned, in 1938, into the father of this concept by adding light and color to the boring and almost anonymous packages.

–Iñaki Manero

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Tags: discovery, electric light orchestra, inaki manero, vinyl

Photo diary: day trip to Guanajuato

February 10, 2015

(click photos to enlarge)

Someone I know had dismissed San Miguel de Allende as “Gringo Gulch” but praised the next town over, Guanajuato, as “the most beautiful place in Mexico.” I don’t know about that, but it is a very different environment — absolutely not thronged with gringos, lots of tourists but from all over Mexico. A much more local experience.

Mercado Hidalgo

The houses are often painted in bright colors, a wider palette even than in SMDA.

It was overcast when we arrived, so a little subdued.

Later, the sun came out and we got the rainbow spectrum.

Meanwhile, we took in a lot of art — the Diego Rivera Museum (in the house where he lived with Frida Kahlo)…

and the Museum of Contemporary Art, small but packed with some good stuff.

“Electro Encephalo Sax V” by Jazzamoart

“Untitled,” pencil drawing by Eiki Ito

small painting by my favorite artist on display, Javier Hernandez, aka Capelo

lunch at a very local place

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Playlist: iTunes shuffle, 2/8/15

February 9, 2015

“Sandy Cove,” Jimmy Webb
“Cruel,” St. Vincent
“Dancehall Domine,” the New Pornographers
“Stars,” the XX
“When Your Lover Is Gone,” Helen Merrill
“Almost Real,” Kelli O’Hara (The Bridges of Madison County OCR)
“Did You Ever See a Dream Walking,” Sunny Gale
“I Can Do Better than That,” Sherie Rene Scott (The Last Five Years OCR)
“Just a Ride,” the Virginmarys
“Sleeping,” Steve Kazee (Once OCR)
“b,” iamamiwhoami
“Vlan Vlan Vlan,” Panda Valium
“The Time (Dirty Bit),” Black Eyed Peas
“Save Me,” Ryan Adams
“Panis et Circensis,” Tha Boogie
“Some Nights,” fun.
“Always Starting Over,” Idina Menzel (If/Then OCR)
“Here Lies Love,” Diana Krall
“I’m Afraid of Japan,” Final Fantasy
“Hell No,” Ron Basejam
“The World Inside a Frame,” Stephen Pasquale (The Bridges of Madison County OCR)
“Strange Mercy,” St. Vincent

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In this week’s New Yorker

February 8, 2015

Before the moment passes and a new issue arrives, I want to nominate last week’s New Yorker as one of the “must-reads” in the pile that stacks up in house. The high-quality contents include:

new fiction, “Sweetness,” by Toni Morrison, intently focused on a black mother’s obsession with her daughter’s darker skin and what that will mean for her in the world (presumably an excerpt from her forthcoming novel God Help the Child);
“Lottery Tickets,” Elizabeth Alexander’s wrenching Personal History essay dealing which what happened when her husband dropped dead of a heart attack;
Rebecca Mead’s profile of Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose musical Hamilton at the Public Theater has gotten unusually good word-of-mouth in advance of its opening February 17;
Alice Gregory’s moving and instructional tech-focused article (“R U There?”) about how crisis counseling via text message has turned out to be surprisingly effective; and
best of all, “The Trip Treatment,” very very interesting article by Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma and other books, mostly about food) about about clinical research into using psilocybin to treat patients with depression, anxiety, and terminal illnesses.

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Tags: alice gregory, elizabeth alexander, lin-manuel miranda, michael pollan, rebecca mead, sweetness, toni morrison

Photo diary: Casa de las Ranas in La Cieneguita

February 8, 2015

A tip from our mutual friend Stephen Silha led to visiting Casa de las Ranas (House of Frogs), the compound presided over by Radical Faerie outsider artist Anado McLauchlin. He lives and works in a small town just outside San Miguel de Allende. Every building on the property — the studio where he works, the Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery where he shows his work and that of others, the house where he lives with his husband Richard Schultz, even the public toilet (speaking of Going to The Chapel) — is covered top to bottom, inside and out, with colorful mosaics and found-object collages. The work is fun, witty, open-hearted, sacred, and beautiful, as naive as Howard Finster and as sophisticated as Lucas Samaras. We took the tour with two young Frenchmen and a woman from Guadalajara, just a few days before the gallery premiered “Conversations in Vision: A Two-Man Show,” featuring one room of work by Anado and one room completely revisioned, repainted, and inhabited by a young Mexican artist named Agustin Santoyo.

(click photos to enlarge)