A Sculpture Of Rain

From a terminal at the airport in Singapore.  Maybe someday I will get to see in person.

"Embrace" - A Video of Longing

This moves me.   it's unique, expressive and, for me, reflective of how pain, pain's darkness binds and constrains.

EMBRACE from Ashley Rae Pearsall on Vimeo.

Wow! A Friend's Choreography is Praised

I was not well enough to be able to attend either of my friend Stefanie's performances, but she promised me videos.   About a month ago I took my first dance class in years with her.   Her class was fun and fascinating and a wonderful experience.   And I managed not to completely embarrass myself.

So I was keen to see the performances this past weekend and very sorry to be unable to attend.   But I am so proud of her.

 Check out this review from today's Washington Post, which starts with

The Washington area is home to a veritable rainbow of ethnic dance troupes. You want Armenian folk dancers? You can probably find them, swirling around at a festival somewhere. A far rarer find is a choreographer who can successfully fuse ethnic traditions with modern technique and package everything into a performance that a wide audience will find compelling.
Stefanie Diahann Belnavis, a young Jamaican American dancer, may be one of those of those choreographers. 

I'm thrilled and happy for her.  The rest of the review is just awesome too and ends with this praise:

The second half of the show was pure performance art. “Sighted” explores Belnavis’s loss of vision in one eye. After exiting the theater for intermission, audience members were led back in small groups, following an onstage trail through a maze of lights. Dancers clicked the bulbs on and off. Televisions buzzed with static and black-and-white video of Belnavis describing her limited vision. For a choreographer with impaired vision, she offers viewers much to see.

She is leaving soon - moving to Cambridge to pursue her master's in Dance Movement Therapy and Mental Health Counseling at Lesley University.   Good luck beautiful lady!  

Oh La La! An Exciting Photographer in NYC

Christa Meola is another photographer; Natasha Lakos developed her visual identity as well.  

Christa is based in New York City, and I've already contacted her about doing my photos.  

She is writing a book on how to look great naked, which I just love love love.   She specializes in boudoir photography.  

I also loved and watched the interview she did with Nate, the creator of Sticky Albums which gave me a bunch of great ideas for my own new business.  I've corresponded with him about my ideas, and I can hardly wait to get started.

And to have some sexy pictures taken!    

Lovely Paris Photographer

Carla Loves Photography and Italy and Paris and Life.  And I love her.

The wonderful talent, Natasha Lakos, who will be doing my visual identity for my new business venture launching early next year also did Carla's.

Since discovering Carla I have spent a lot of time on her site and even ordered her book - Italian Joy - which is really a joy!

I also love the before and after shots here.

And I also love that she told me about this exhibit here in DC on Amelia Earhart at the National Portrait Gallery.  Very cool.

I've not been to Paris since 1988, but next time I am there I am going to try and have Carla do a Paris photo shoot with me.

She's an Aussie too, always a good sign in my book!   They are the best.

Check out her site.

Great Podcasts to Enjoy

Here's a list of top 10 podcasts.   I'm already fan of the top two - Bloggingheads.tv and Slate's Political Gabfest as well as the Economist's on this list.   I'm interested in checking out some of the others.

I also like BBC 4 In Our Time - which covers history, philosophy, culture, religion and science.

BBC History Magazine
"BBC History Magazine’s podcast comes out each month, featuring interviews with notable historians talking about topics ranging from crusading knights, Tudor swimming, or the D-Day landings."  It's so British.  And really cool.  

and Sounds True Insight's at the Edge Interviews with leading spiritual teachers and writers about their latest challenges—the "leading edge" of their work.  I always learn a lot and her questions are good.  


A friend told me the Monocle podcasts are also good.  Any one try them?

Shadow Stories

Who didn't do this as a kid?  Create puppet stories with the shadows of hands on the wall.

But this is just amazing.  I've never seen anything like it.

British Library Assembles Famous Love Letters

I just love the British Library (though I prefer the old one with the museum, with the old reading room).

Now they have collected famous love letters in this book Love Letters 2000 Years of Romance.

And The Daily Beast excerpts a good variety in this essay, 'Love Letters' Anthologizes 2,000 Years of Passion Put to Paper.   Love letters may be becoming extinct, but I still write them.  I love them.  

These excerpts are fascinating to read as a reminder that love, longing, pain, jealousy remains the same whether now or 2,000 years ago.  The human condition remains.

3 Year Old Recite Billy Collins Poetry

I learn about this on NPR - with this story, Love of Words Brings Child, Poet Together, which concludes with -

For the poet to affect a reader — well, that's the point. But for a reader to affect the poet, it took a small exceptional boy.

Indeed.

Here is the video of the astonishing child reciting our former US Poet Laureate.   It made me teary!  I love poetry and I love children!

You can follow along with the text of the poem from Poets.org here.

Body in Ballet as Art

From Oprah----

OWN Original Shorts: Ballet

Take a moment to watch these dancers create fine art with their bodies. Enjoy!

Where Good Ideas Come From

Check this out.  Fun and interesting.

Poetry about Michael

These words, by Maya Angelou, a poem entitled "We Had Him" were relayed by Queen Latifah. Very moving.

We Had Him by Maya Angelou

Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing, now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips like a puff of summer wind.

Without notice, our dear love can escape our doting embrace. Sing our songs among the stars and walk our dances across the face of the moon. In the instant that Michael is gone, we know nothing. No clocks can tell time. No oceans can rush our tides with the abrupt absence of our treasure.

Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.

Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.

He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.

Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that.

He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

We had him, beautiful, delighting our eyes.

His hat, aslant over his brow, and took a pose on his toes for all of us.

And we laughed and stomped our feet for him.

We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing. He gave us all he had been given.

Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana's Black Star Square.

In Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama, and Birmingham, England

We are missing Michael.

But we do know we had him, and we are the world.

Brooke Shield quoted The Little Prince -

"What moves me so deeply about this sleeping little prince is his loyalty to a flower--the image of a rose shining within him like a flame within a lamp, even when he's asleep... And I realized he was even more fragile than I thought. Lamps must be protected. A gust of wind can blow them out."

And -

Eyes are blind, you have to look with the heart, what is most important is invisible.

Brooke did the best at humanizing Michael Jackson.

He (and Brooke) were came of age when I did - in the 80s. Not just his music, yes, that. But his dance moves. His magic moves greatly influenced the choreography I danced and performed as a teenager ; I see it now in the videos. And later too, just for fun, on the Mug floor. He was of my age.

Now he belongs to the ages.

Obama the Writer Celebrates Artists

I am loving the concert - all music I know - which is a rarity.  Forrest Whitaker just read these very lines from Faulkner's banquet speech when he accepted the Noble Prize.  

It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

I read elsewhere that Faulkner was drunk, had to be lied to in order to get him on the plane to Norway, he just didn't want to go.

Thank goodness he did.

Can read the full text here.

Thank goodness Obama is an artist and a writer himself.  A new day.

More From Colbert's Christmas

This is a beautiful song and piercingly funny - against evangelists, Christians and Muslims, atheists too. Really original but most of all a lovely melody. With Elvis Costello. Enjoy "There Are Much Worse Things To Believe In"

A Fresh Look at Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night

I spoke with my dear friend Claudette last night and she reminded me of this most amazing art video.  Basically, you enter Van Gogh's Starry Night, in 3-D.  She told me of showing it to her art students and a young boy, around 3rd grade, was so entranced he admonished another classmate - "Sit down!  I can't see Van Gogh!"

And the music is Don McLean.

Enjoy -

This is Why I LOVE NEW YORK

Get a load of this play, Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending At times like these I wish I lived there (another time is the day I get the brochure for ABT's spring season, which was yesterday).

Here's the hook:

Ms. Weiner focuses on Mrs. Clinton as both a heroic and a tragic figure. In this telling Hillary (Mia Barron), when she is still a girl dreaming of an adulthood in which a woman might pursue the presidency, pledges her devotion to Athena. Aphrodite, jealous, makes it her business to thwart Hillary, her principal weapon being the slick, charming Bill Clinton (Darren Pettie).

And this closes the deal:

Bill’s testimony before Kenneth W. Starr’s panel, complete with McDonald’s French fries, is a hilarious dismantling of Mr. Clinton’s real-life explanations.

Why I Love Dancing With the Stars

Here is just one reason.  Last night's show featured the seven Vivancos brothers from Spain:  

Spots of Time

"One of my fascinations about my own life is that every now and then I see a thing that unravels as if an artist had made it. It has a beautiful design and shape and rhythm. I don't go as far as some of my friends, who think that their whole life has been one great design. When I look back on my life I don't see it as a design to an end. What I do see is that in my life there have been a fair number of moments which appear almost as if an artist had made them. Wordsworth, who affected me a great deal, had this theory about what he calls 'spots of time' that seem almost divinely shaped,"

- Norman MacLean.

Picasso's Guernica in 3 Dimensions

My friend Cecilia sends me the most amazing videos to be found on the internet. She sent me the sand painter before the artist got a gig doing commercials for network television. I featured that work here on the blog for Valentine's Day.

Now, here is a 3D version of Picasso's Guernica by artist Lena Gieske. Picasso painted this work in response to the Nazi's destruction of the town of Guernice in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

It's haunting to watch, which you can do here.

Mozart via Ringtones, Really

hat tip Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.  

I :LOVED this.  



Enjoy!