One of the nice things about Aber is that you can get good fresh local food.  Here is a nice way to have a meal, based on Welsh ingredient but perhaps a traditional American vegetarian approach to eating - Mary’s super duper salad (it could have used something more substantial than bread and cheese flan, though, to make it a dinner rather than lunch).

• seasonal mixed greens from the Treehouse
• strips of fresh basil
• red and green bell peppers cut into strips
• lovely brown mushrooms
• vine tomatoes
• cranberry raisin salad from Julian Graves as a topper (dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, cashews, walnuts, almonds, sultanas)
• assorted olives from Ultracomida
• dressing made from olive oil, balsamic vinegar, grainy French mustard from the French market
• fresh baguette from Slater’s bakery
• goat cheese flan made with French chevre, Birchgrove eggs, and double cream (or, the next day, just put cheese on the bread and don’t bother with the flan)

For dessert, pick some blackberries on Pen Dinas while having a walk in the sunny Sunday afternoon, rinse and serve with Penlanlas strawberries and the rest of the cream.

Yum!

See the Bricolage page for documentation of the progress made this week on that particular project in the Conceptual Art Scrapbook.

Another area being prepared is In the Box / Out of the Box, now conceived of as two separate but linked pieces. Work has begun on videotaping, watch this space.

In the past few weeks, quite pleased with the Square Festival so I have been more or less immersed in INCA Music Project and also fascinated by the Drip Dry Man, hypnotic.  You can find INCA on facebook, and Drip Dry Man on MySpace. Also very pleased to hear Ken Whelan’s group playing a gig after hearing him informally around town, he’s got lots of clips you can listen to online as well. See EdgeWork for more. Gypsy jazz group Chocolat / Three Dots were also great, see MySpace. If you have a chance to hear any of these regional musicians, do.

For a more mellow yet exotic mix of music, the other big chunk of what I’m listening to in the past week is comprised of Buddha Bar compilations. Chillout/lounge with world beat flavour, smoothly mixed by DJ Ravin, these are yearly 2-disc compilations issued in connection with the Buddha Bar restaurant in Paris (and elsewhere).  Makes smooth party music and nice to spin poi to it.

Finally, still revisiting John McLaughlin from various eras, most recently listening to his original Shakti material. Uplifting and intense - like Rrose Selavy!

If you are following the process of the Conceptual Art Scrapbook, you may want to see what changes have taken place recently. I’ve just added several new pieces and expanded others. I’m trying to keep the original ideas in there and some reflective notes, because the scrapbook may or may not be the finished product but it is a documentation of the process of creating it.

I’m starting to share some of this with people, and interesting questions and dialogues have emerged. I’m documenting them in side notes on the process. This reflects my thinking about my thinking about the art, in response to a question or comment. I do welcome any reactions.  If you share with me, please do keep in mind that I haven’t put any poetry or other creative work into the public realm for 20 years and this is a bit scary. I do want to take the risk and let it be seen because the dialogue is valuable, so please be honest but gentle.

If someone suggests or inspires a possible enhancement that I decide to include, I am trying to acknowledge their contribution.

It is important to be seen. Thanks for your attention.

Just came backfrom Harry’s Bar and Bistro where Virgil and the Accelerators played. Virgil has really matured as a guitarist, check him out. With brother Gabriel on drums, it is really a family affair.

The gig was excellent, all they needed was a second show.  Keep an eye out for future gigs and maybe a new CD in the future

Haunting spiritual and sensual music from Spanish singer Rosa Zaragoza who sings in a variety of spiritual traditions, languages and styles. Sometimes you hear the belly dance, sometimes the flamenco, sometimes the digeridoo (yes!).

Quotes extracted from the English introduction to her home page:

Rosa Zaragoza started her professional singing career in 1984, inspired by discovering the lyrics to Jewish-Catalan songs from the 15th century. She performed these songs in a tour through Israel, New York and all over Europe. She then began working with both religious and secular material from the three cultures of the Iberian Peninsula: Jewish, Muslim and Christian.… Rosa founded and is the artistic director for the Mystic Music Festivals of Barcelona (2000 and 2001) and Valencia (2001).

You can get her music on iTunes or download some clips from her website. Just do it, you know you want to!

2008July

http://picasaweb.google.com/msjacob123/2008July

Here are some random photos just uploaded.  How many cats do you see in the cover photo?

The grand house is Aberglasny.  The teapot is mine.  Lots of beverages to be had in my house.

I’ve been more or less gasping for more creative air to breathe, creative projects that lie outside of the work I do in my job, which is also creative in its way and which I love.  To provide an outlet, I’ve set up a new page on this blog called conceptual art scrapbook, a place where I can note down concepts for artworks that may or may not be created.  At a mimimum I should be able to add some visuals and more text over the next few weeks.

If you take a look, let me know what you think.

Dan has played a few more interesting gigs, including the Takoma Park Jazz Festival and a gig at ArtOMatic (photo).  Please see Dan Barbiero’s MySpace page for some very cool improvisational music. He plays double bass, sometimes as ‘prepared bass’ where the sound is altered by the addition of other implements. More information can be found on his webpage.  Watch for Dan to perform in the Washington DC area.

Here is a blurb from Dan about his gig in College Park (sorry I didn’t get this up prior to the gig…life got in the way, but I don’t know how many local people would see it anyway): 

Nine Strings–Gary Rouzer on Steinberger bass cello and Daniel Barbiero on double bass—will present a live improvisation at the College Perk coffeehouse on Sunday evening June 29.  Our sets will alternate with sets by artrock duo CliffArt and will feature a mixture of duo and solo improvisations in an electro-acoustic atmosphere.  We start at 8:13–hope you’ll be able to come by to listen. 

 

 Photo is Dan at ArtOMatic.

I’ve just come from seeing ‘Sleep Furously’, a film by Gideon Koppel filmed in Trefeurig not too far from Aber.  It premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival and features music by Aphex Twin, so hits on a couple of chords.

• Here is an article about it at University of London, with some quotes from Koppel http://www.rhul.ac.uk/messages/press/message.asp?ref_no=1710

It is a very soft-spoken film, more intense in the last third introduced by the only words from the filmmaker, as opposed to the unscripted speech of the people being filmed living out their lives.  Ghostly words appear on the screen about only having the courage to speak out when things are ending, having the courage but not the words. This sentiment has already built up over the preceding sequences but permeates the final scenes.

Beautifully framed with the camera usually stationary below normal line of sight, you get a close-up view of textures of life in a small farming town with the heads and faces of the people often cut out of the frame. The effect is fragmentary and abstract, rich textures of a weather-beaten wall, hay in a barn while pigs and calves are being born. Lush colours and emptiness.  Slow unfolding of daily life, returning to the library’s book mobile that seems to knit the community together bringing a very odd selection of titles to break the isolation of the older denizens of Trefeurig. There are children, elderly, and middle-aged people, but almost no one is seen in their 20’s or 30’s. Lovely people talking about their animals, hands baking a Victorian sponge (for Americans, this is a cake).  A slow build up of intensity.

The sense of the passing of an old way of life has already been commented on, with the closing of the school etc (a very real local issue). The final scenes bring home a heavy sense of melancholy and loss with time-lapse photography of curtains in an empty window and other scenes of derelict or near-derelict cottages.

I was expecting the music by Aphex Twin to be more prominent than it was, in many cases they didn’t choose the more electronic pieces.  Quiet. 

I walked back in the rain in a contemplative mood indeed.