This is the fifth installment in a series of posts hovering in the general vicinity of the new album I’m working on. It’s working title is Monochrome. Those of you who have been following along will notice that the classification system has changed. I think it makes more sense for the name of the song featured in the post to be the primary title and for “Recording Monochrome” to be relegated to a subtitle.
It seems I’ve stepped into the shoes of yet another persona, this time an art collector considering whether to sell a work no longer in keeping with his “focus”. Most likely it will make it onto the record. But it’s probably not anything I’ll ever perform. I don’t like the narrator. He’s smug, maybe even an asshole. And the whole scene there “in the framing room” reeks of commodification, patriarchy, colonial privilege and control. Alma, whose name means “soul”, is not having any of it. Not sure if this is relevant or not, but the portrait, Retrato Alma América (by Luis Gonzalez Palma), has been living on a wall in my office since 2014.
Here’s a rough mix. For some reason I sang the 3rd verse twice. No idea why. But the first of the two will be excised in toto. You’d be amazed what can be done with scissors these days.
Recent Acquisitions - 1
Recent Acquisitions O self, who are you? On the road, we are two. On Judgment Day we are one. - from "Mural" by Mahmoud Darwish Alma came to me a year ago, put forward by my eyes down at the gallery. Astute was the word he used, but really I was just enchanted by her gaze - serene within a halo, so proud in that garland of chrysanthemums. She's kept up with the market. I’d realize a profit. I’m sure I would. The artist is collected In Los Angeles, Jerusalem, and Rome. Someone would come along. She'd find another home. I’m sure of it. My focus is evolving: 18th-century navigation and geography, maps and pages out of folios scavenged when the bindings can't be saved. I’m careful with the provenance. Nowadays the trade is rife with piracy. Alma isn't talking. I can see in her expression she does not approve of this latest round of purchases and the general situation in the framing room, accustomed as she must be to a simpler life, with her mother in Peru. Or is it Paraguay? Now there's nowhere in the room where her eyes in fixed perspective do not follow me. Reflected in the glazing of The Anchoring Place at Tenian, she follows me. Through The Plan of the Town of Paita And The Burning of the Town of Payta, she follows me.
Seems like not liking the narrator because he’s smug, maybe even an asshole, and the reek of commodification are good reasons to leave this in. Something he loved led him to acquire this. The reselling placed a dollar value on that love, which is the trap that reduces love and mystery to mere transactions… in which falls the whole world. I love this song. For whatever that’s worth! Thanks!
Strong!