Amy! Amy! Amy!

The new film about the life of Amy Winehouse is almost unbearable to watch.  It seemed her entire life was filmed and videotaped... so you're able to actually watch her go from a young, gifted, vibrant girl to a skeletal, bulimic, drug addicted shell of herself right before your eyes.

You see her vibrant personality - and likable she is - in the beginning... a sweet young girl who possesses a gift that everyone can plainly see.  Her face lights up like a candle.  She opens her mouth to sing and out comes Billie Holiday!  You're completely in awe... and then she talks, walks and lives... and you can't believe she survived to 27.  She looked so fragile.

Loving Amy is easy if you haven't seen this film... she wrote songs as if she'd lived 100 lifetimes... and, as she sings in "Back to Black," she'd died 100 times.

Nonetheless, I find it very hard to feel sorry for her, even though the director obviously wants you to. She had all the opportunities in the world handed to her at a very young age - just for being there. Millions of dollars backed that golden voice.  She had the best musicians, producers, promoters.  She threw it all away... for a guy, for another hit of her drug of the moment... and though she was very ill and needed help... it's not like help wasn't offered.  She was just born to be tragic, sing like a jilted lover and die like she'd always belonged in the 27 Club.

I love these songs of Amy's:

In My Bed

Amy Amy Amy

What Is It About Men

Tears Dry on Their Own - one of her better performances - masterful! 

SandyYokoPiece

Thanks, Yoko, for all the memories!

A Work to Be Stepped On

Painting to Hammer a Nail

Yes

London poster

Plastic Ono Band room

"Shaved Fish" record

Half a Room

Cut Piece

My Yoko Experience - June 26, 2015 - MoMA, NYC

Listen to Walking on Thin Ice

Go to ImaginePeace.com

Read Sandy's Article: Yoko on the Periphery

Read One Day at a Time

Jacob Lawrence: Painter of the Triumph of the Human Spirit

Jacob Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an African-American painter known for his portrayal of black life in America. In 1941, then just 23 years old, Jacob completed a series of 60 small tempera paintings with text captions about the Great Migration, the multi-decade mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North that started around 1915. Within months of its making, the series entered the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (today The Phillips Collection), with each institution acquiring half of the panels. Lawrence's work is now an icon in both collections, a landmark in the history of modern art, and a key example of the way that history painting was radically reimagined in the modern era.

I had the great pleasure of viewing the MoMA exhibit and was very moved by this series.  It's one thing to try to capture beautiful images in paint - quite another to be able to tell such an intimate story with tempera on brown paper, which conveys exactly the mood and emotions of its subjects and makes us truly feel the pain of the people. 

Jacob was ahead of his time and if he were alive today, would be front and center in the struggle against racism in America.  He was the witness to it all and brought such grace to his subjects, which leads us from the early 20th century all the way to the steps of the church in Charleston, South Carolina that recently suffered such tremendous senseless losses.  His paintings predict the strength and character of these brave souls and teaches us to move forward and beyond such intolerance.

One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Works
At the Whitney Museum of American Art
His Legacy
Biography
Phillips Collection

Along with Lawrence's series at MoMA, the exhibition includes other accounts of the migration from the era, including novels and poems; music by Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday; photographs by Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Gordon Parks, and Robert McNeill; and paintings by Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, and Charles White. The range of works in the exhibition sheds light on the ways in which Lawrence drew upon and transformed contemporary models for representing black experience in America.

Rediscovering Elliott Smith

I went to the director’s screening of "Heaven Adores You," the documentary about Elliott Smith, the other night.  My mother and I listened to his music a lot before she passed away... but now I’m rediscovering his music and finding a whole new way of listening to Elliott’s songs.  I like to read the lyrics while I listen because they’re so brilliant... as was he.

If you go on YouTube and type in Elliott Smith XO (his record, XO)... and just listen to each song, it’s a real experience.

Here are his lyrics: http://www.sweetadeline.net/lyrics.html

You’ll notice his Beatles influence....  listening to Elliott for the first time (especially XO) is like discovering The White Album all over again!

My favourite songs are:

Waltz #2 – biting in his own way... about his mother and stepfather

Between the Bars – the saddest song in the world

Tomorrow Tomorrow – some of the most beautiful harmonies

Sweet Adeline – such a rare surprise

Miss Misery – he became famous when they played this song in the movie, “Good Will Hunting”

Check out Torment Saint - the wonderful in-depth biography of Elliott's life and music.
My special tribute to Elliott's Between the Bars.

Premiere of "The Blue Butterfly"

My song, "The Blue Butterfly" dedicated to Henri Matisse premieres today.  It's the story of a blue butterfly and a painting Paul Cezanne had given him which inspired Matisse for many years to paint his many masterpieces. This is one in a series of songs from my upcoming album, "Painting Music."

In Hilary Spurling's brilliant biography of Matisse - The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, she tells the story of how Matisse was encouraged by Madame Matisse to follow his dream: he saw a blue butterfly and spent his last dollar to buy it so he could duplicate the blue of that butterfly in his painting.  The butterfly and Cezanne taught him in a very special way to become the painter he always knew he could be.

"Matisse said he had dreamed from his earliest years of the radiant light and colour he finally achieved in the stained-glass windows of the chapel at Vence in 1952. 'It is the whole of me . . . everything that was best in me as a child.' He told his grandson, who had been taken aback to find almost every conventional feature of a church interior missing from the chapel, that his whole life had been in some sense a flight. 'I come from the North. You can't imagine how I hated those dark churches.' One of the effects that pleased him most in the Vence chapel was a clear reflected blue of an intensity he said he had seen before only in the glint on a butterfly's wing, and in the pure blue flame of burning sulphur: the flames of the volcano that first erupted in a toy theatre in Bohain seventy years before. 'Even if I could have done, when I was young, what I am doing now--and it is what I dreamed of then--I wouldn't have dared.'" 

Here are the lyrics to my song:

The Blue Butterfly

She heard an echo. She understood in her soul
and from all the lives she’d lived before…
Intuition must be trusted. Blind faith cannot tell
when the mysteries are found at the bottom of the well.

Risks and faith in the smoldering fires
and the burning of his deep desires.
The Genie of the lamp’s
full of demons and the dance.
Singing Harmony in Red.
His passionate view of joy they said
crossed the Green Line, o wild Fauve;
paint the red room and orange grove.

The blue of that butterfly and Cezanne
made you more of a spiritual man.

Blue as a sulfur flame filled with Mediterranean light.
Such a blue, it pierced his heart.
He knew he had to buy that cherished butterfly.

The painting spoke in its own clear voice.
She knew right then that she had no choice
but to breathe in the harmony.
She made the greatest sacrifice
to decide and not think twice.
Cross the blue line, o wild beast,
break the mold and paint a feast.

The blue of that butterfly and Cezanne
made you more of a spiritual man.

Go here to listen now on Soundcloud.
Watch the video here.

Current Fascinating New York Shows

FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life

At the New York Botanical Gardens, FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life will focus on the iconic artist's engagement with nature in her native country of Mexico. The exhibition will be the first solo presentation of Kahlo's work in New York City in more than 10 years, and the first exhibition to focus exclusively on her intense interest in the botanical world. [more...]

Van Gogh: Irises and Roses

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York - Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) brought his work in Provence to a close with exuberant bouquets of spring flowers—two of irises and two of roses. This exhibition will reunite the four paintings for the first time since the artist's death and is timed to coincide with the blooming of the flowers that captured his attention. It will open 125 years to the week that Van Gogh announced to his brother Theo, on May 11 and 13, 1890, that he was working on these "large bouquets," and will provide a singular opportunity to reconsider Van Gogh's artistic aims and the impact of dispersal and color fading on his intended results. [more...]

Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971

The Museum of Modern Art presents its first exhibition dedicated exclusively to the work of Yoko Ono, taking as its point of departure the artist’s unofficial MoMA debut in late 1971. [more...]

Read: "Yoko Ono on the Periphery"

The Blizzard

Sandy's new single, "The Blizzard," is live on Soundcloud

The Blizzard

[inspired by “The Blue Bird“]

Martyred rose…
alive in the blizzard,
reaching petals toward the light,
bless’d the promise of the night.

I rose one morning to a blizzard.
The wint’ry wind blew snow deep in my way
and I knew a storm was coming,
So I set out to find what debt I had to pay.

Sleep and Death, Sleep and Death
representing its last breath.
Just to meet – the dead in the
house of the unborne;
the rose knows about Death and Sleep!

…and the spell of the absent one moves forth.
And the wisdom of the deepest
holds the weeping eye so dear -
to chase away the fear.

Encountering the waiting ones
who seek their incarnations.
Slashing at their natural zeal,
we’ll scorn the sweet sensations.

Deep in the new theatre
lives the flaming youth
where the transformation quickens
and the plot of life thickens.

Can’t speak to an absent mind
that smothers such impressions.
wonder is enlightenment
in its truest expressions.

…and the spell of the absent one moves forth.
And the wisdom of the deepest
holds the weeping eye so dear -
to chase away the fear.
To chase away the fear.

Boston's Museum of Fine Arts Receives Art Seized by Nazis

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is receiving a major gift of 186 works seized by Nazi forces in 1938. It’s taken decades for the donor’s family to recover the famed collection that includes fine jewelry, rare books and paintings. The objects have taken a fascinating journey between Vienna and Boston.

Some were taken by the Nazis in 1938/39, and then recovered by the real Monuments Men after the war, and eventually came back to the family - referring to the members of the Allied force’s Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program, who were charged with finding, preserving and returning culturally important works confiscated by Hitler’s forces. [more...]

Silence is the Healer

Silence is the Healer is a long time coming.... dedicated to my mother, Elizabeth Baron, who thought it was a very special song and on her death bed asked me to record it.... Here it is in her honor - listen here.

These are the lyrics:

Silence is the Healer

I am the ghost, the ghost of war
and I can feel the pain no more
and now I observe, I haven’t a prey.
I’m just shadowing the lives
standing in my way.

We sent our troops in harm’s way.
Few will live to fight another day.
I was a ravaged angel in the storm
and now I’m home, safe and warm.

Silence is the healer…
to inspire the better angels of our nature.
With these gifts, the harm’s in us.
Yet prayer can overcome.
Let the doors they open open doors for you.

Out of nothing
I’ll always rise above it all
and traffic in souls that reinvent time.
I am the daughter of the gods
and I know where I stand.
I harbour no remorse, no bloodlet
on my hand—
Silence!

The wounds lie deep, but tomorrow renews
and with that promise, we can’t lose.

Baptized Again

I've been busy working on this song for the last 2 months.  I really wanted to go back to my roots and sing about what inspired me to be a songwriter in the first place.  

I hope you enjoy it.  Go to SoundCloud to post ratings and read the lyrics below.

Baptized Again

Born from a bad beginning,
I played the Chicago blues.
When everyone failed me and left me alone,
I’d nothing left to lose.
My radio kept me from losing my mind.
I heard what I understood
to be the first music of its kind
from the Delta and the backwoods.

Baptize me again
each time I slide back down.
I wanna be baptized again -
my lower self I must drown.

Elvis taught me gospel and heart;
his rhythm and soul bled through.
Impassioned holy-rollers pulsed
as songs in my heart, they grew.
In tiny, white-worn chapels
where music raised the dead
rejoiced in jubilees of hope.
The preacher man was led.

The preacher man’s dark cries,
with fire blazing in his eyes,
and the rhythm of tambourines
was moving through my veins.
On the long dirt Blues Highway
I paid my dues this way
I shot emotions through my guitar
and said what I needed to say.

Gospels, hymns and the spirit of song

arms raised to heaven’s gate
borne of pain and sensual tales,
sprang from broken hearts and hate.
Baptize me in my music
to overcome hardships and pain.
Its waters filled with a soul force;
got down in a torrent of rain.