Some Drama

Here & Now, Some Drama, Art, Nadja Gabriela Plein, Eunice Kim, Jocelyn K. Glei with Jenny Odell, Wu Fei, Peter Saltzman, Duke Ellington and band.

HERE & NOW

It’s been very pleasant day, first at the Monterey Pride parade, followed by a lovely afternoon having lunch and playing a card game (Apples to Apples) with friends. I’m aware of how lucky we are on the Central Coast to have mild weather while the rest of California swelters just a few miles east of here. Here’s hoping the weather gives those folks a break soon.

Monterey Pride Parade 2023. Photo: Jean Vengua.

SOME DRAMA

[Content warning: bug encounter] After I posted Issue #107 of this newsletter, in a bizarre turn of events, I was laying in bed, reading, when a bug flew or jumped into my left ear causing quite a bit of pain.¹ After some drama (involving a lot of screeching on my part), I drowned the intruder via murderous application of a shower-nozzle full of gushing water pointed at my ear. I had never wanted to kill anything so badly and I didn’t care if my solution punched a hole in my eardrum.

I guess I can laugh about it now. But really, it was traumatizing. I hoped I had flooded the bug out of my ear and down the drain. It seemed a good sign that my ear no longer hurt, although my hearing was muffled.

The next morning I went off to Urgent Care. Because the interior of my ear canal was swollen, the NP sent me to ER, where the doctor referred me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. Five days later, that doctor found the bug corpse still wedged in its final resting place—my ear.² Ugh.

This just felt like the last straw in a series of health issues (though none of them immediately life threatening) that I’ve dealt with over the last 3 months.

Then, just in time for Issue #108, Substack decided I was violating a terms-of-service rule and suspended the newsletter—which explains my silence last Saturday. I submitted a query, and the suspension was lifted a couple days later—with no explanation.

Well, that’s life, no?

ART

I’ve been doing a few small pieces that are also functioning as studies for larger works on paper. As you can see, I’m working on simplifying things.

Ink on Khadi paper, 5.75 x 6 in. By Jean Vengua.

And here (below) is the first asemic I’ve done in months. More on asemics here (scroll down to “Rabbit Hole” and Steven J. Fowler) in Issue #37 of this newsletter.

Untitled Asemic. 10 x 10 in. By Jean Vengua.

RABBIT HOLE

Note that I am changing the subheading “Links” to “Rabbit Hole,” since what I place here is the result of my falling down Alice’s rabbit hole every week . . .

• “A Hundred Times Looking – Observational Drawing as Meditation,” by Nadja Gabriela Plein. Plein takes mindfulness beyond the usual realm of “wellness” in considering its relation to art making.

• Eunice Kim’s work stems from the patterns, rituals, and art that she saw in her grandmother’s house as a child. She discusses her early influences on her website. Her art is featured in the Artful Review.

• “The Worst Advice that Artists Hear” — from the Art Prof and friends:

SOUNDINGS

• Jocelyn K. Glei’s podcast Hurry Slowly considers “context collapse” and “how we get locked into online personas that keep us from evolving and speaking our truth.” With Filipino American artist/writer Jenny Odell in “Am I allowed to say this?”

I decided to go on Substack and see what interesting music can be found there.

• “Steaming” a solo guzheng improvisation by Wu Fei on her Substack newsletter, Wu Fei’s Music Daily. She tells the story of this piece in the accompanying notes.

• Peter Saltzman does a pretty amazing 2015 rendition of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan.”

• Saltzman points us to the original “Caravan” by Duke Ellington and his band.

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1. And the only thing worse than feeling a bug burrow into your ear is hearing it.

2. Well, fortunately my ear was not its final resting place. From there it went to a petri dish where I got to look at the damned thing, and then it went into a medical waste bin. Yay!