Clarence John Laughlin

Henri Edmond-Cross

Hello, Inner Sunset

My good friend, Daniel Durrett from Michigan daze, has just released a new album and I have to tell y'all that it's pretty damned wonderful. I've listened to it 20+ times in the last couple weeks and I am still wanting to listen again.

The album deals with themes of corporate America, chasing your dreams and is a cautionary tale about not letting the bastards of the world stick it to ya. It runs from sinister to hopeful. It's a road-trip you'll want to take again and again.

Daniel, who had a cushy (and unfulfilled) life developing microphones for Shure, left the corporate world stifling his dreams to pursue his soul love; music. He moved from Chicago to San Francisco with his yogariffic gf, Kari and their beautiful, sweet dog, Nala. Having quit my job 15 months ago to focus on art, I can really respect and "feel what he's puttin' down".

The whole album, although it is very rock-folk based, drifts into icy, ethereal, and dreamlike electronic textures that make pinpointing an exact genre quite a feat. Maybe somewhere in between Radiohead, Sigur Ros and Beck could one find a centerpiece for Hello, Inner Sunset.

If you just want to listen to it, you can listen to a full stream here: http://music.danieldurrett.com/

A great guy. A great album. Show my man some love!

Love ya, Dan (and Kari & Nala)!

The Angel Of Dali...

Absynthe Drinker...

Marker heaven in a tripped out (mine)d...

Cupcakes; a lost art found by my mouth!

{ Current Events Wash Me Away } by Big Sway

Fell into a pool of magnetism
Eyes inviting event horizons
I feel destiny of the crushing
Like empty tin can smiling
A black hole back to unrequited love
Straight ahead through the morning

Down the dark rabbit hole soul windows, I
Plunge, not caring
Wearing poverty, smiling, time
Is beautiful and willing

Life is what I make of it
And that son'va bitch is smiling

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A electric guitar distortion flutters in my breadbasket
I'm tickled with antennae
Ten to full moon
A cartoon, beating
A unwrapping bloom
Like honey and true
The fruit of confusion is sweet
The seeds of life are fey
Open your arms and lock them around my head gasket
Kissing, we pray

- - - - - - - - - -

Running away with me
My fantasies spin and buck reality
The gypsy queen found puzzle pieces
Loves the mess back together again
Juggling, my mind grieves
Between inaction and valiancy

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Poem, arrow point, pierce
The heart of the matter like dull, stolid Cupid
Delinquently fierce
Off the mark and intrinsically stupid
On the up 'n' up
Off the map
Entirely perfect and foolish
The dream of the heart or the lap?

Rage against the ghoulish

{ Your Beginning Was Everything; The End } by Big Sway

Somewhere along the line, God is watching and I have my pants down
Only he doesn't judge
and I don't give a shit
(being the one with the downward-aimed pantaloons).
Nobody gave me anything I needed.
Everyone gave me something I thought I might.

I tried, I did, to face your vacuum,
only to be sucked up and put in a compartment
with other pieces of refuse refusing to be wiped out
like moral ambiguity and falafel.

Somewhere along the line, I forgot
what a wonderful wilderness I am.

Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with life,
and dominos clacked
and patterns emerged
and death gifted me a wet, red rose;
my Valentine embracing heartbeaten fortitude.

Sweetening my pain with love, I laugh.
Sweating, in my palms, I love myself, alone.

Life is leavening death.
I was born on Dia de los Muertos
and still dance with the happy phantoms.

My end is just the beginning...

Valentine's Day pt.2

So far, I've made more than $100 on V-day cards and have a handful ready for tomorrow. C'mon, male blockheadedness! LOL

{ A Naive Beauty } by Big Sway

Stars flash across dark pupils & procure silent wishes
from naiveté, who wears chiffon to bathe
in the rose water milky moon.

She rides the kingfisher. Rides the loon.
Cries & doesn't know why she breaks
the dishes or the 3-legged stool.
Mezzo piano & out of tune,
she mews the blues alone again,
dancing as Paul Klee,

{ Fruit-First, Flee Forth } by Big Sway AKA me

wise guy poets write about what they know; nothing
eyes on the sides of their heads like ornamental goldfish
threading thin air to gold, one day
the space-cases will inherit the lost earth

my collection of bottles plays brown glass upon dew encrusted pane
my knuckles tickle from the cold, full moon air
all the horses got their carrots &
the hairy grass is crowned
in a diamond frost rebirth

while, down the road, a wood chipper snarls to life
while, on the street, a manhole cover blows jazz
while, on the other side of the world, they do stuff
lots of stuff
lots of undefined things, they do
like in cars and houses and government buildings
while, in my mind, out; tossed & cursed
(i.e.
a hot thirst for a non burst of taut girth)

the horizon is used as leverage
for a climbing, flaming sun to reach
the zenith coming (30 years of age young)
I implore you, stay away
from the thought hearse
as bad as you think things get
a dull mind will make death a lot worse

Valentine's Day

Everyone got a sweetheart? If not, you can join the devil, me and the bottle (making three) this year. =D

I am making a bunch of $5 Valentine's this year. I'm selling them at the Hop Monk Tavern in Sebatstopol, Thursday night, and at the Tea Room Cafe in Petaluma, Friday from 8-3. Wish me luck. Ray-Ray needs some money, honey!

New Abstract painting...

This piece is super texturiffic! I couldn't quite scan ALL of it in due to technological size restraints, but you get the idea.

I started this piece by glopping down a few colors of paint and worked out some basic shapes. Then I made a bunch of circles and spirals with the brush in the wet acrylic base. Hours of finger painting (on a heavily textured base is a joy) happened until I got the colors the way I liked them. To finish, I threw in some light to heavy outlines and signed the darn piece.

I'm interested in what imagery you get from it. If the painting were an emotion, what would it be?

Another day at the office. -R

A helmeted priest and a horn'ed Skitter...

I was sitting at the Tea Room Cafe today and the owner, KT, told me she hadn't seen my blog yet. I told her I hadn't updated in about four days and we decided THIS would be a MOST intriguing blog entry. Hahahahaa...

So, don't forget to check out the latest four entries for some SCHWEET drawrings.

THIS entry is two pieces out of my small pen drawings book. I used a Micron .05 pen. The helmeted priest is entitled "The High Priest Passes No Judgment" and the critter is "Six-Point She-Skitter".

Sinister Valentine's character, Love...

Colorful pen abstract...

Rolling with the punches...

I went in to thicken this guys lines in and ended up making him look like he had on lipstick, which was not my intent. Where to go then? Incorporate, my good man, hence; Lipstick- CHECK! Leather pants- CHECK! HIGH FIVE!!! Now it's a super fun piece about a lipstick-wearin', leather pants-sportin' fiver of highs. LOL

Hopmonk in Sebastopol every Thursday

I vend my art a this event, "Juke Joint" (the Brooklyn group who played last night was the phat, funky, rump-shakingly wonderful & eclectic Pimps Of Joytime) and sold one of my fave pieces to a VERY cool guy, Eric, as a gift for his bro-in-law. Therefore, I am no longer po as fudge; I am only po as sin now. Hahahahaha. These kinds of events are great. I like pressing skin and accosting people to go through the "exhibition". Someone even paid me to draw him. I gave the Pimps' bassist the drawing above of Freddie Hubbard (since he bought one of mi amiga Michelle's knitted "wristies"; I like to share and help out, what can I say? My momma raised me dern good). All in all, I was happy with the fruit of the eve. Much love!

-R

p.s. Go check out Pimps Of Joytime and if you ever get a chance to see them play & you like dancing ("A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having!"), go,cats and kittens go, go, go. =D

Featured Modern Poet: Frank Reardon

{ Fried Okra } by Frank Reardon

She often sang "Elvira"
from the little lights trying
to find their way through her
plump belly

Hair net and a face full of
fried okra-
Six sermons from Paul's
luscious letters,
The last of the two dollars...

I married the dreams of her
Waffle House and gave them
to Decatur County,
Either way I was promised
two biscuits and a side of
Jimmy Dean.

I kept believing as the
Juke-Box played "Rose Colored Glasses"
by a silk tongued John Conlee
Turning over the fire of my beauty
and marrying her on a Good Friday,
good lines, good Klonopin...
Jesus and the defeated.

Anger and broken dishes
finding a set of fins in a loose bin
of old caramel wrappers,
Bama face was the detour

The baby is crying
The baby is sitting in shit
while the trailer eats a bowl full
of fists,

I just watched her hair fly
as she threw the last of my
compact discs out the window,

Another beer,
Another kiss,
Another picture frame of hate...
Each day trying to convert the already late,

Black suit rented
A wedding that no one cried at,
Gambling the lines and odds-
when it would end

Forsaken and 5 years drunk...

2-3-10


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FRANK REARDON has published several poetry collections including Cancer Face, Exorcism Of The Con-Artist and Rival Tongues. His work has appeared in such magazines and webzines as New York Quarterly, Quillbillies, Black Listed, Epic Rites, Denver Syntax and Kill Poet. Interstate Chokehold is his first major collection. Frank currently lives in North Dakota and is working on his first novel.

Reviews

“Frank Reardon is a truly exceptional young poet currently rising up from the bowels of the internet. One could compare his work to prominent street poets of past generations, but it would be unfair to lump him in with anyone, for his work has no problem standing on its own merit.”
- John Dorsey

“Frank Reardon works words like a hungry young prize fighter, creating killer combinations that produce knock out verse. A real contender, the kid’s a triple threat with heart, style and class. An up and comer to be reckoned with.”
- S.A. Griffin

“Frank Reardon is a prophet, word brawler and unapologetic caller of society’s bullshit. His words are brutally honest and can take you places you didn’t know existed or weren’t comfortable traveling to alone. One of the best voices of our generation.”
- Richard Daley

“Frank Reardon is a heart beating through impenetrable odds. His writing reaches into your skin, grabs your bones and asks you to dive head first off the cliffs of fear and fragility into the vulnerable sky of our empathetic space and time.”
- Scott Wannberg


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His latest, Interstate Chokehold can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Interstate-Chokehold-Frank-Reardon/dp/0981998445/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265252746&sr=8-1 and is currently waiting for you to tenderly caress it's spine as it gives your brain the BEST night in the sacrament of it's life!

Go on. Don't be scared...

...You know you wanna. Puckishly yours,


-RayRay

Abstract Expressionism

This 3'x4' painting of mine is one of my favorites (and just my luck, I don't have enough wall space to hang it). It was all about the energy and the contemplative void it was created within. I need some more big canvasses. If you ABSOLUTELY must have this piece, it's price tag is a mere $1,000 (hey, maybe some rich art collector person will happen on my blog; z'worth a shot). ;)


ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM-

"A painting movement in which artists typically applied paint rapidly, and with force to their huge canvases in an effort to show feelings and emotions, painting gesturally, non-geometrically, sometimes applying paint with large brushes, sometimes dripping or even throwing it onto canvas.

Their work is characterized by a strong dependence on what appears to be accident and chance, but which is actually highly planned. Some Abstract Expressionist artists were concerned with adopting a peaceful and mystical approach to a purely abstract image.

Usually there was no effort to represent subject matter. Not all work was abstract, nor was all work expressive, but it was generally believed that the spontaneity of the artists' approach to their work would draw from and release the creativity of their unconscious minds.

The expressive method of painting was often considered as important as the painting itself." -Artlex.com

Critters.

I love drawing critters. This jaunty lil guy just discovered the world and so far, he digs it (like he has 2 shovels). Any name suggestions for the new friend?