Mixed Tapes

I had an ex-girlfriend send me a mixed tape this week. I loved it, yet have no idea what it is supposed to mean. Actually I have no idea what a mixed tape meant the many times I got them in high school or college. They, the tapes, could have referenced my love interests disdain for my taste in music. The tapes could represent things that women wanted to tell me but could not verbalize, or they could have been a simple, gracious way of giving a gift meant to please and educate. There is great mystery in a mixed tape, and I find them to be one of the best gifts one can receive, even if one hates the music. In that case, it can make for a duel meant for Carnegie Hall.

Last evening I went to Sonny Rollins' 80th birthday party at The Beacon Theater, with my friend Beth Anne. Her boyfriend is in the band and it was a marvelous concert and backstage party. I came to realize that the NYC jazz scene is very different then the NOLA one. Several of the performers (Roy Hargrove and Ornette Coleman) mentioned that they had not been invited to the Crescent City. I find that separate camp thing rather interesting. There is a distinctly different feel to jazz in New Orleans to that played in New York. If you go enough, it's very easy to tell. I have always chalked it up to the difference between the organic manner that people play down South, to the more straightforward thing going in New York.  But there is more to it, I just don't know what it is. Do you think that Sonny Rollins made mixed tapes for the ladies? There is one mixed tape that I have and listen to all the time. It might be my favorite music, and it is the last vestige of a brief love affair that recalls the halcyon days of college and my late-twenties. I feel some guilt listening to it with women in my life to this day. It still speaks to me.

I have really never made mixed tapes for people. It is not lack of interest or heart that precludes me from having not made tapes, it's just not my vehicle. Jewelry, however, is my vehicle; and the many pieces I have made are absolutely about saying things, or expressing things, that I have trouble verbalizing. The pieces are my voice, and I think that the women who I have cared about, or felt complicit with enough to give jewelry to, have preferred the gold to the vinyl. Actually vinyl dates me more then I deserve to be dated. The premise is the same though. As with the tapes, I imagine, tastes change and genres vary as a vehicle of expression. The same thing holds true for jewelry. At the moment, and not too soon for fall, I have become obsessed with rubelite from Mozambique. It is really a very unusual pink tourmaline that is inky-purple, and magenta. The stone is all I can think about when I sit down to paint. I put on Duke Ellington's "New Orleans Suite" and grab the purple and magenta gouache. I have no idea why a color stone serves as my voice at times of my life, but it does. Yesterday, I built a stone wall on my property in Millbrook. Most of the rocks were shades of slate grey, varying from light to dark. They were opaque and very heavy. All I could think about was what a wonderful contrast they make as a color for the before mentioned tourmaline. It is a subtle and strong color combination. It is also the color combination of Prince Charles' polo team. Do that make it regal? I prefer to think of my masonry as an inspired regal pursuit; perhaps I'm fooling myself. As long as its gets the wall done, I'm sticking with it. Fantasy or no fantasy. That remains the tenor of things. Off to Jackson Hole tomorrow for the art festival.