You May Say I’m a Dreamer

I have lovely memories of music as a child.

My parents instilled a deep love of music in my sister and me. I was regaled with stories from my tot years of Alice Cooper crooning me to sleep. I can distinctly call up memories of sitting on Granny’s lap in church, my head on her chest, listening to her sing hymns in harmony with the congregation. I fondly remember sly phone calls from Dad with instructions to cue up a record to play for Mom when he called while out on the road. Then there are concerts I have attended, my first in my own car with my best friend and a band that we loved; all the way up to Crosby, Stills, Nash…and Young with my Dad years later. Music is there in my life and some days it’s what gets me through to the next. I am ever grateful to my parents and every person that has introduced me to music or a song or shared a moment with me, musically speaking.

This all came about because as I was reading VeryShortList.com this morning. I was a few days behind in my reading and I saw they had posted a story alerting all to a documentary about John Lennon and I called Mom quick to let her know. See it wasn’t too long ago that Mom, Dad and I sat one late evening in the living room and played CD after CD to gather their playlist of songs for their trip to Europe. When we got the the Beatles the decision became infinitely more difficult! There are not many songs that we didn’t proclaim, “Oh, this is a great song”. But I digress, this documentary is about the last decade of Lennon’s life. His life with Yoko, their love of New York City, and their shared political views. It will feature unreleased music and home movies. It will show John as we may have never seen him before; as an artist, as a man and above all else as a totally flawed human. So if you at all will be around tonight tune into PBS for the American Masters series, LENNONYC.

Artistry

The art history class I took in college changed me!

It opened my eyes to things that every person should, in their lifetime, see. There are periods in art that I’m not very fond of, but then you get to periods like impressionism and literally the sun comes out, the wind whips your hair, the birds sing and you are immersed! Mom recognized that these classes for me opened up a deep love of art and thus as a Christmas present one year she bought me a membership to the Denver Art Museum with the stipulation that I take her to the amazing impressionist show that was scheduled.

Art, since then, has been something that I consistently shared with Mom.  Dad has come into his since he and Lindsay went to Tanzania in 2007. On their return trip they stayed in Amsterdam and went to the Van Gogh museum. I think that is when Dad found art. So as I was surfing my daily blogs today I was lead to this amazing video created by Philip Scott Johnson, a digital artist from St. Louis, MO. He has taken self portraits created by Van Gogh and morphed them into a video. Van Gogh created some 37 self portraits between 1886 and 1889. The video is a really neat look at the way he saw himself and though things, surroundings, his look change, his eyes never do. Have a look!