I suddenly realized the other day that I had not written a non-sports related blog in quite some time. With the Rays and the Bucs playing in October, I write about these events and then move on to something new. Yet after reading Dallas’s interesting “Meet at the Java & Jive” parts 1 and 2, I was inspired to write a little about what I’ve been up to lately.
I have been playing a lot of bass lately. I was on MySpace the other day and I saw a bulletin from Preston, who I met through Eric. His band’s bassist is moving to Gainesville and they were looking for a replacement. I’ve always wanted to play bass in a band where I wasn’t the chief songwriter. I love writing basslines to songs that I’ve never heard before. It’s so free.
So I tried out for the band, driving out to Prestons house with the good ol’ Squire Jazz Bass and my Fender Bassman in tow. The tryout consisted mainly of playing along with Preston while he showed me some riffs. I was a little nervous because even though I know I’m a good bass player, I start to feel like I should be playing guitar and I get all frazzled. It doesn’t seem fair that while others are playing chords I get to basically play rhythmic melodies. The latter half of the tryout was meeting Prestons brother Logan, the drummer, and basically comparing our favorite horror movies. They are knowledgeable gore fans, Logan not only loving George A. Romero, but also sharing my opinion on the win-win situation of watching any and all B horror. I felt at home.
Preston gave me the chord structures and emailed me recording of all 9 of their songs. A few of them were pretty challenging considering that Prestons style of songwriting features the progressive feel of extended verse based more on the words being sung instead of even measures. It’s a good thing I got a lot of practice with this concept playing with Eric, who writes very similar songs.
It’s been three days since I got the songs and I have them all pretty much down, some of which I wrote killer lines for. I hope they like stuff that moves around with plenty of high notes. I rarely play below the fifth fret (A) of the E string, using those notes for emphasis rather that rhythm. If you’re gonna play bass, why just follow the lowest possible root notes?
We are rehearsing on Friday evening. It’s been a long time since I ‘ve played in a full band, so I’m gonna have to get my stamina back up.
I have been taking a slew of Art classes over my last two quarters at IADT. I fell in love with Manet’s “Olympia” while in Humanities last quarter. When you know that back story of the portrait, it’s a rather riveting story. When it premiered at the 1865 Paris Salon, it caused a huge uproar. The bold statements are everywhere.
Traditional paintings of Venus consisted of the female form in a state of rapture, her long hair flowing while her gently gaze searches the heaven. Basically, Venus offered herself and her beauty to eye of the beholder in an act of submission, at once placing the female form on a pedestal after having tamed it’s awesome power. The settings were usually of a beautiful nature scene. Very idealized.
Manet more or less “fucked with the formula” by painting Venus as a courtesan, laying on her bed nude, both forcefully covering her femininity and returning your shocked stare with a confident glare of her own. She lays at leisure, dismissing the flowers from a pleased client, shooting the viewer a look that I believe blows the Mona Lisa out of the water.
You can go on for hours studying this work because it is so full of meaning. Typical portraiture of the time made common use of pets, usually small dogs, to symbolize power and status. Here, the Venus lay a foot from a black cat, a sign of peasantry, with it’s back arched in an confrontational stance equaling it’s owners leveling glace.
Another facet of this fine work that I had not thought of until it was discussed on my Survey of Modern Art class was the status of the black woman in the picture. In class we were covering how to fully appreciate art, which is a topic I usually scoff at. I think the term art appreciation is the one of the most pretentious combinations of words ever devised.
The prof was saying that you really have to take into account the social and cultural feeling of the times in which the work was made to fully understand it. That sounds pretty obvious, actually it’s the corner stone of understanding anything. I scoffed once more. One thing he pointed out, however, was very interesting.
Being an American, when I see a black woman in a painting from the mid 1800’s I automatically think of slavery. The fact that she is in servitude a white woman helps re enforce that conclusion. In all of the time I have spent observing this work, I never thought to entertain the idea of the social climate concerning racial tolerance in France. Turns out that by that time, slavery had been over. Way over. Blacks were free to do what they wished, and while they more often than not held jobs of burden, so did the same amount of whites in that time. The higher class treated everyone like shit: black or white.
When this is digested, Olympia takes on even more dimension. The look on the black woman’s face is one of cautious admiration. She sees that while her employer, this courtesan, is in apparent servitude to men by which she makes her living, she also holds sway over them because her ideal female form is what they desire. While she holds an ignored symbol of courtesy in her hands she eyes the Venus thoughtfully, at the same time both registering the conditional power that she holds in her station in life.
There are a million other things I love about this work, not the least of which is Manet’s artistic style. The slight use of the unfinished memory style of impressionism coupled with excellent traditional techniques combine to perfectly convey the scene. The warm color of the parlor in which the subject lay, the dark outer reaches of the work.
So, you could say I’m a bit of an art snob now. I have come to realize that I have always loved artistic composition, I just studied it in film more often. Art fags are just film nerds that prefer still shots.
There are a lot of great shows on TV right now. Fringe, Dexter, Calfornication, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Life on Mars and True Blood are fine examples. One show that totally surprised me was Sons of Anarchy. It’s actually become one of my favorite show lately. When I first heard of the show it consisted of really annoying 5 second images of motorcycles and dirty rock chords. Not too impressed. Those little commercials actually had me anxiously waiting for the show to premiere, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.
A while later they actually showed proper trailers for the series. They actually looked pretty nice. Kind of gritty with lots of crazy, violent stuff. So, naturally, I decided to DVR it and check it out. Totally into it.
It’s like a rural California Sopranos, focusing on a wayward biker gang trying to scratch out a living while either bribing or knocking off whoever gets in their way. The show follows Jackson, known as Jax, the Vice President of the club and the son of the club originator, now dead. While trying to balance a life of crime and family (again like the Sopranos), he finds a book his father wrote about the philosophy of being a rebel, someone who lives truly free of the system. He finds that the club is not what his father had envisioned, much of their activities totally opposing the original plan.
This sets up the main conflict of the show. Jax struggles with the burden of his father’s vision while trying to cope with the various dangerous things that he gets into on behalf of the same club he is loyal to. This makes for great TV. I hope it lasts because it truly is well written and deserves the viewership. We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?
Well, that is a pretty clear slice of what I’ve been up to lately. I hope you all are well. I must be off…. more later.
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