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"Walkers by, undressed
leaving a trail of haste
A taste of never again
Broken fur and salted paws
carnage at the top of the lungs
Names on hands,
wired and bound behind your back.
Strong heart, head mid storm.
Sometimes a fire bust mostly,
a smoking rose."
'Hunters' from 'Fear The Poet' Vol. 2 by Bon Nielsen.
I think I may have mentioned my grandma before, she was a force of nature. Since I moved into this new home, she's more present than ever, something tells me she would have loved it here. Maybe it is the atrium in the heart of the house that she would have filled up with giant geraniums or the fact that there are a lot of yellow hues. She used to say "Yellow is the colour of crazy people" and golden gems like that aside, she taught me so many things, so many important things, that I am still working most of them out 20 years later.
This painting is her, how I remember her. The Picasso it is based on was her favourite calendar page that hung in her kitchen no matter the month, year after year.
The duality in her face is a nod to that old chestnut about "eyes in the back of every woman's head" and in her case, also her uncanny ability to see a person throughout.
The Gernika bull head in her skirt, because that's where she lived for many years. The blood tear to a horse in her heart is the horror of the Spanish civil war that scarred her bones, not that she would have ever admitted to it. The many hats she had to wear, the red lips and nails to her last breath, her magic silver hair, so full of fire and her eyes, golden, for she had seen beyond.
"Indarra adeitasuna bidez" is the last thing she ever said to me knowing I was about to run away to never meet again.
"Strength through Kindness"
I spent a lovely half morning with Tammy Sioux, scouting her horse ranch in Joshua tree, CA.
We have a new music video coming up for the very talented Bonnie Montgomery, all the way from Little Rock, Arkansas.
Catch them if you can on their tour's California leg:
Wed April 22 'The Wayfarer', Costa Mesa
Fri April 24 'Pappy & Harriet's', Pioneer Town
Sat April 25 'The King's Inn' Los Angeles.
After the full moon eclipse last night and collecting over 500 pictures we went for brunch and got talking and then we made a little experimental short to one of Mesquite Treason's songs. I promise you not people staring at windows were involved.
There's no doubt in my bones that Georgia O'Keefee, Chavela Vargas and my grandma hang out in some kitchen cooking with roses and singing and dancing and painting each others' bodies, half drunken and howling at the dark. I know because when the Moon is fat, she howls back.
Sweet dreams this morning with the three of them talking softly over each other and laughing like hyenas.
Always a nice surprise to find a forgotten notebook.
"In The Hands of a Crow" 2010
This drawing happened while the aforementioned was playing on the background. Crows are a permanent (and grand) fixture around here... Magical even.
Ink - 11x14in
These are my favourite form of entertainment, it has always been.
Since I can remember, I sketched my family based on colours and textures, unknown to me that I was impersonating their voices on paper. They all thought my notebooks were a hot mess until my nan started recognising patterns (same people in different pages). I believe my synesthesia comes from that side of my family, her sister apparently had similar (chaotic) notebooks but at the beginning of the century nobody had paid much attention. Nowadays they probe you through childhood to diagnose not-crazy, just funky-wired.
While everybody in preschool was having a go at stick figures, I would argue that the yellow triangular lines and scratched paper folds were clearly my mom, but a bubble head and 5 sticks had nothing to do with her. Consequently my teacher used to display my 'abstract' works as how-not-to-draw your family. Fun times.
I still wonder what part of a stick figure is not an abstraction.
Details from 'Into the Gramophone' Series © BB Nielsen 2008
I thought I would introduce my ways of poetry with a vignette. My words are uncomplicated and automatic. Short stories and poems mainly, 20 years later I have compiled around 200 pages of poems in a book titled 'Fear the Poet', which will be available soon.
These are my daily charms. Verses from Neruda seem to always sneak through my daily crevices. There are a couple of bracelets, one given to me by my family a few yules ago, made with Mauritanian stone beads, which I had as a necklace I never took off as a kid. What I love about those is that no matter how (if) you crack them, the inside follows the outside pattern throughout. It's not just little ripples, it's bright coloured full circles, stars, rhomboids and dots and parallel lines, all perfectly made by nature, which sort of explains how I see inside my head.
The other bracelet was given to me by a friend of mine I very much admire, the brains behind Soze Gallery in dtLA, the bracelet is by Onyx and Chains and everytime I glance over to check my non existing watch, it reminds me that it is 'Time to Shine', as her saying goes. A green beetle in my pocket, allegory to the Heart chakra and my link to California. His & Hers 'soulmate' rings and my golden double necklace holding a sparrow, a clock marking 10 minutes to 2 and a feather. The latter for the pagan/native-American beliefs of connection to the skies, the spiritual plane, the sparrow as a homage to the first poet (Gustavo Adolfo Becquer) that got through to me (at 13) and saved me from 'undying love'. The poem rang true because I could see sparrows out of my bedroom window and his opening line referred to how they would return year after year. Glad I was only a teenager for only a few months. And finally, the clock. It points exactly my time of birth, which was 5 full days later than expected.
And down the rabbit hole and forevermore, 'I shall be too late!