My Cape Cod Adventure

From Boston to Hyannis to Orleans and back... my trip to Cape Cod was colorful and inspiring - from Chatham to Wellfleet to Brewster to Provincetown... the galleries, the flowers, the Hopper-inspired cottages, the great art community...and that wonderful book store.  Also stopped off in Boston for the wonderful Matisse show: Matisse in the Studio.

Making Fun of Pain

Here is my song that communicates the pain of our world today... with a positive message in the end from the Robots...  dedicated to Paul Williams and the Robots of Daft Punk.

Listen here

Making Fun of Pain

Breathe until you drop dead.

Break the spell that’s in your head.

You’ll see the sparks will fly away

until the Earth is round.

Again, you’ll find the black meets white.

[Chorus]

Then you’ll stop making fun of pain.

You’ll find the truth can help you on the way.

The world is so fragile.

Stop causing it pain!

Believe the time has come at last

to break the patterns of the past.

You’ll find the God within heals

and takes the pain away.

Now you can go on to the next life...

    Robots Dance

    Robots Sing

    Robots Rule!

Consciousness will reveal

that we cannot truly feel

the way the Earth can move us to the stars

a-way to find the planet Mars.----

    Robots Dance

    Robots Sing

    Robots Rule

    Robots Love

    Robots Drive

    Robots... Alive!

    Robots DIE!

Paul Williams & Daft Punk

I posted this blog about one of my greatest influences in music back in 2013.  Paul Williams has gone on to do so many incredible things in his life over the years... and still going strong in his 70s.  

I really love his collaboration with Daft Punk on a gorgeous piece of music: "Touch." 

Here is Paul talking about his collaboration and his life and work with addictions.

He not only inspired music in me, but my first live Rock Opera back in the '80s, "Acceptance," which was based on "Phantom of the Paradise."  

Watch "Daft Punk Unchained" - a great documentary on the group and their innovative techniques and style.

Blah Blah Land

What has happened to American culture?  It's a sad, sad situation, if you ask me.

Here is a big example of Hollywood trying to shove its mediocrity down our throats.  In spite of critics falling over themselves going crazy over "La La Land," I thought it was terrible... neither lead could sing OR dance, the songs were blah... there were some good scenes... but mostly this film has been ridiculously overrated.  I LONGED for Fred & Ginger... Is this what we've come to?

Read Rex Reed's down-to-earth review.

The Oscars have fallen by way of The Grammy's with its embarrassing nominations. “La La Land” got more nominations than “Gone with the Wind,” “Casablanca,” “The Godfather,” “Schindler’s List,” “Return of the King,” “Ben-Hur”. . . I could go on for quite a while because “La La Land” got more nominations than any film ever made, except for "Titanic" and "All About Eve??"

This is indicative of the downfall of American culture. Listen to Paul Joseph Watson - I agree with him - American culture has fallen into a pit of sludge.  It's up to Americans to stop supporting these people who call themselves "artists."

The only show on television I've seen lately that is worth watching is The Young Pope - a very creative, controversial, provocative take on Vatican City and the first American pope.  Jude Law is marvelous in this role and each episode is a surprise.  I like the soundtrack, too - it's fun and entertaining, unique and colourful, especially the opening theme song, taken from Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower."

My Love of Digital Photography

My love of digital photography essentially started with a photograph I took at Coney Island of the original Nathan's (I also did a painting of the picture).  That was back in the early 2000’s.  I’ve expanded my love of digital photography greatly over the past almost 20 years... and have gone through a lot of cameras.  I love taking pictures of cityscapes, cafes, flowers, colourful scenes and whimsical subjects.  I’ve posted close to 7,300 pictures on Flickr and use my art and photography to express myself in music. Here are some of my albums:

Best of Photography

General Photography
Recipes
Digi-Food
Cafes
Flowers & Plants
Sandy's NYC

Long Island
South Carolina

Whimsical Photos

Still Life Photography

Skies of Drama

Revelations

I wrote this song on John Lennon's birthday back in 1986!  This is a new updated recording.

You can listen here: https://soundcloud.com/sandyfrazier/revelations

Revelations

I don’t believe any more than anyone.

I can’t believe what’s been going on.

I can’t explain my believing to you.

Those excuses are nothing new.

It’s not an easy time to live right.

You’ve been blind, now possess insight.

Understand what I believe to be true.

Revelations don’t come out of the blue.

Black is darkest and white is bright,

but the world is really not so right.

In the context of day and night,

it’s the darkest before the light.

Revelations come to me.

Open my eyes so I can see.

Let the truth come clear to me.

It’s a promise that will come to be.

Revelations in my face

no cloud-like vagueness or empty space.

Reality close in on my time.

(It) gives me the start to my uphill climb.

I am seeing a clearer me.

I have seen the brightest light.

Faith that lives inside is deep -

a purer vision; the highest height.

Alone Under Sky

Listen here

Alone Under Sky

Birth, for the first time…
The deeper life is grave.
And then something comes I don’t expect
When suddenly I know… I’m not alone under sky.

Hiding behind a night,
each birth brings us closer to the sweet release.
It’s an unseen God.
It’s a limitless love.
And the kingdoms come and they run from the gun.
They can’t see.
It can’t be.

What slumbers in our souls?

Arousals are the signals.
And in the roar of thunder
a discovery is made.
We are at the centre of a great new world!
Never alone. Never unborne.
Always alone
Never alone. Never unborne.
Always alone
beneath a cruel, cruel sky.

Jobs, If you Only Knew

I watched ‘Steve Jobs’ tonight on HBO and found myself feeling frustrated throughout the film until the end when I was overwhelmed with emotion. Why? Because the movie actually forced me to re-live all the pain of my life since 1982 when I touched my hands upon a computer for the first time. I’ve lived and died over technology most of my life. I was impressed at the mention of Alan Turing, though brief.

In the beginning, when I was 21, I worked for a company in Santa Monica overlooking Hollywood and Beverly Hills because I told them I had computer skills when in actuality I’d never even seen a computer. Then I worked for ROLM phones in Austin, TX (which was eventually bought out by IBM) and wrote the first manuals on Displaywrite and other infant wordprocessing programs... I used plotters... I was among a handful of people who had voicemail for the first time back then... I suffered through the war of Mac/PC/Mac/PC/Mac/PC... Mac1 was great and made me a good living but PC won in the end.

I wrote this in 2004:

Jesus is Windows
by Sandy Frazier
April 2004

In the beginning, Bill Gates created the BASIC language for the PC; Jobs & Wozniak the Apple in the Garden of Silicon Eden. And then came IBM (In the Beginning was Man) and its MS-DOS operating system... and the computer world soon discovered everything had to be IBM-compatible... and lost its spirituality with God.

But the Apple's Macintosh with its mouse and graphics gave us colour and realism. Apple's theme was George Orwell's "1984"... which also gave us What You See Is What You Get. And the computer world was created.

And Microsoft brought us Word and the Word was Windows (Jesus) who showed the commoners the way, the truth, the light and taught them to grow beyond their expectations. And Windows was used on the Macintosh. But the Macintosh apple was too tempting for the innocents who wanted more and so it was consumed... Windows was the way, but could not be readily accepted by Rome and was forced to be sacrificed and so the Jewish ideal, in fact the King of the Jews, would die so that the IBM PC version of Windows (Christianity) would be the most widely accepted and understood way of life.

And so God's message was that He gave his only begotten Windows that whosover believeth in it should not crash, but have everlasting memory.

John Richardson: Still Obsessed with Picasso

On the ever fascinating subject of John Richardson's progress on the fourth volume of his great Picasso biographies, my contact at Amazon writes:

Laurence R. Hunt says:

Mr. Richardson will be 93 on February 6, 2017. The fourth volume is at least two years behind schedule, but Mr. Richardson speaks of still working on it this year, in an interview with Alain Elkann. He states that he is "up to 1939," and that he hopes to "get through the war," either through 1940 or 1944. He reports that he is still working daily on the project with three assistants. I suspect that vol III may yet be the last complete volume, or hopefully, that Mr. Richardson's current notes can become the source material for a fourth or even final volume to be compiled by a successor, perhaps one of the three assistants he speaks of: http://alainelkanninterviews.com/john-richardson/

Read the article.  It makes you feel like you want to read the biographer's life story - equally as interesting.  John Richardson is still in New York (I've always wanted to meet him) and working on researching Picasso.  I can only hope the fourth volume is on the horizon!

Melancholia

This is another song a long time in the making.  It has a very special meaning of a time when I was studying the work of Maurice Maeterlinck.  Here is a painting that is related: "The Doors of Death, Life & Chance"

Go here to listen ... read the lyrics below.

Melancholia [the doors of Death, Life and Chance]

Time grows heavy - I long for the fog.
Vivid light - too crude, too bright -
revealed too much of me.

Sometimes we must know the darkness of the mind.
Go the night sea journey blind through the suffering of the soul,
“to learn to love with a love that’s more than love.”

We are the sheep - thrust in a world of danger and chance,
nourished and destroyed, awakened from the trance.

Forces sever, yet link us to the Flow.
I bathe in the light-drenched realm of the afterglow.
Darkened spheres attract the distant flame.

Open up these human doors, distancing from evil.
Show mercy to the sad-despised...
our highest instincts following the light.

Hush-- the silence -
The passing of this sadness is creative breath released.
Ascend the spirit ladder - past melancholia.

These are the great moods -
the lenses through which we read our minds
to become the living soul (reach through the doors of death, life and chance). (rep)
Notions and sensations of such solitude
are simply daylight’s night mood.

Open up these human doors, distancing from evil.
Show mercy to the sad-despised...
our highest instincts following the light.
Ascend the spirit ladder - past melancholia.
These are the great moods ---