The Siblings (for Theo and Nannerl)

I've been wanting to write this blogpost for some time. We all admire artists, often a whole lot better once they are dead and gone. But we often forget the price paid by their family members... the ones who invisibly served as gatekeepers to a great spirit truly gaining the opportunity to express itself. Behind many creative people, you will find parents who financed music lessons, sisters and brothers who paid the groceries, or perhaps merely through their presence, became the bridges to excellence.

Theo Van Gogh idolized his older brother Vincent and financial supported him. It is known that the only Van Gogh that sold in the artist's lifetime was bought by his younger brother, but how many people realize that we owe Theo a great debt for each and every coveted Van Gogh that now sells for millions at auctions. Theo bought Vincent's art supplies and regularly sent him financial means to support himself, but Theo also encouraged the development of his artistic style through regular feedback on Vincent sketches and plans and also by introducing him to other prominent artists of the era such as Paul Gauguin, Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Rousseau, Camille Pissarro and Georges Seurat. Vincent van Gogh's story seems so sad and lonely, until you see that one Theo is probably worth a million admirers. Theo van Gogh died about six months after his now famous brother, almost as if subconsciously he realized that his task here on earth was done.

Since his father was a music teacher, it is unlikely that the incredible music talent of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would have gone untapped. However, it might not have been discovered at such an early age, if there had not been another, slightly older child in the household who was just beginning with piano lessons. Mozart worshipped his sister, Maria Anna, a.k.a Nannerl and spent much time watching her playing and practicing, which eventually led to his own very early improvisations on the same instrument, in an attempt to copy her. Wolfgang and Nannerl played together in public until she reached marrying age, and although none of her work survived, it is known that she also composed music and that her brother had a high regard for her efforts. It can be argued that it was Nannerl's talent and mischievous influence, as much as their father's lessons that helped shape Mozart's incredible career as a composer.

A tale from the Taiga...

First, a bit of personal history... When I was in my late teens, very early twenties, this was my going-out song....



Know what I mean by a going-out song? If that's it, the world is about to go KA-BOOM and you've got time to listen to just one more song.... this was mine.... a heartbreakingly sad tale about betrayal on grand grand scale... the song is about a group of Russian soldiers returning home victorious to a horrible, horrible 'reward....
To quote from the last verses (lyrics by Mike Scott of the Waterboys)

But I never got to kiev
We never came by home
Train went north to the taiga
We were stripped and marched in file
Up the great siberian road
For miles and miles and miles and miles
Dressed in stripes and tatters
In a gulag left to die
All because comrade stalin was scared that
Wed become too westernized!

Used to love my country
Used to be so young
Used to believe that life was
The best song ever sung
I would have died for my country
In 1945
But now only one thing remains
But now only one thing remains
But now only one thing remains
But now only one thing remains
The brute will to survive!

I am posting this today, because the song has an odd echo in a piece added to the Smithsonion's website yesterday.... a tale of survival from the Taiga...

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/For-40-Years-This-Russian-Family-Was-Cut-Off-From-Human-Contact-Unaware-of-World-War-II-188843001.html


Please visit the link and read the absolutely awe-inspiring tale of what it's like, not to die, but to live in the Taiga... as the Lykov family did for more than forty years...

The Gold Standard

Pink Floyd. 1971. Live in Pompeii. In my opinion, this band, at this stage of their career, is about as close as you will get to a 'gold standard' of progressive rock music. In any of their filmed live performances of the period, their absorption in what they do is absolute and one hundred percent. There are no attempts to connect with the audience. In fact, for 'Live in Pompeii', there is no audience (except for a few village kids, who allegedly hid out of sight). The band became their music. In one performance, you would see Dave Gilmour stepping up to Roger Waters mid-performance to re-tune his bass guitar. In another, Roger Waters adjusts his phrasing to cover the instance of Nick Mason dropping a drumstick. Everything they do is a playful exploration of shaping sound. Elements such as shredding speed or vocal range do not even come up. Those are cheap tricks for lesser bands to employ. If the music calls for a specific note at a specific time, one of the band members will find some way of bringing it in - and it hardly matters which one of them it is, or how he did it...



There's a couple of things that's been on my mind for the past few months with regards to creative expression:

- reading up (for a writing assignment) about the Renaissance, a time when some of the world's most amazing constructions sometimes took generations to complete.
- listening to Neil Gaiman comparing the early part of his career to 'sending out messages in bottles and hoping some of them would come back'
- my own withdrawal from participation in a certain popular social network - for reasons I won't go into right now.

And again and again, it seems to bring me back to thoughts about audiences and the creative process...

A good creative artist becomes the work and disappears into it. Speaking about my own craft now, telling a good story is less about using clever words and sentences and more about making the walls of the existing world vanish. The best writer is the one who becomes invisible within the first three sentences of the story. That would be my personal 'gold standard' and to me, the only way to achieve this, is to forget that there is an audience.

Parallel Worlds: The double life of Sugarman

Reality. What a strange strange plaything of the gods. Allow me to tell you a tale of two worlds.

South Africa, 1986 - Sixto Rodriguez is dead and famous thanks to songs like the one below...
USA, 1986 - Sixto Rodriguez is alive but mostly forgotten



Parallel worlds, unaware of its other's existence... You can read the whole fascinating story here or, just go out and watch the music documentary 'Searching for Sugarman'.

Review: What a Wonderful Dangerous Place by Dan Pocengal

First, it's confession time. About fifteen to twenty years ago, I was a heavy subscriber to the whole guitar hero sub-culture created by such icons as Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen. I hated and mourned the arrival of grunge and annoyed people no-end with my quoted guitarisms.

Dan Pocengal's solo instrumental album 'What a Wonderful Dangerous place' could easily have fitted the genre. I discovered Dan's website because of his involvement in the Midnight Project, but I found very quickly that I would have liked his music even without that connection. Leaving a message about how much I loved his music, led to a correspondence that took me by surprise on a number of levels, touching on various aspects of spirituality, perception, reality and a whole lot more. Insights shared gave me the benefit of familiarity with a lot of symbolism in his music and in the images on his website, but since this is really meant to be a review, I guess I better say something about his guitar playing.

In the days when I devoured guitar magazines, one of the ongoing debates revolved around tone vs shredding speed, the general consensus being that you had either one or the other. Having said this, though, Dan Pocengal can certainly shred both meaningfully and moodfully, without sacrificing tonal quality.

A number of tracks are noteworthy. 'Mouthful of Tail' expresses the frenetic, chaotic activity of creation which is symbiotically linked to its shadow-aspect of destruction. 'Transmutation' also offers a glimpse of Dan's acoustic mastery. (One of my favorite 'other' numbers by Dan is an unplugged gem called 'Monastery Bells' which used to be on his website, but is not included here.) 'Orbital Junction' carries the slightest suggestion of melodic industrial music... without losing the primary soaring indentity of prog metal guitar. Despite its brevity, Star-Heart Wanderer is filled with beautiful movements and progressions. To discover the multi-dimensional wonder of 'What a wonderful Dangerous Place' for yourself, go to Dan Pocengal's website.

Well worth a buy if you love the electric guitar.