52 Weeks, 26 Letters

Letter A, Part 2, Week 2

William Ackerman
"The Bricklayer's Beautiful Daughter"

Change usually occurs in small steps, a little tweak here, a little tweak there and a minor improvement is made. This type of change is common: autos, iPhones and influenza all evolve this way. There's little difference between any two sequential versions. Those small changes add up eventually, however, and there is a big difference between the 1980 and the 2020 Accord, between the first iPhone and the iPhone 11, and between the 1918 influenza and the 2018 influenza.

In contrast, the difference between the car and the horse-drawn carriage is greater than the difference between any two cars in history.  Sometimes change is not a small step down the street where we all live, but a giant leap into the great wide open.

Like many American acoustic finger-pickers, William Ackerman started off a small step from John Fahey and the American Primitive style. Eventually that folk foundation gave way to more minimal and meditative music. He released his first album at one book store in the Bay Area. After finding others making the same type of modern compositions, he sold millions worldwide. His label, Windham Hill became a brand, with recognizable covers and a common atmospheric production that introduced a new genre of music to the world.

The lesson here is that both types of change are powerful. Little things add up to big things over time. Big changes are more rare, but the impact can be colossal. The important thing is to never stop trying to improve whatever you do. It's a lesson direct from evolution: adapt or die.

I've always been guitar-oriented and Will's music was such a revelation in so many way. It was really hard to pick just one song from his catalog, but I settled on "The Bricklayer's Beautiful Daughter". I think you can hear the folk roots where he started, but the steps towards what would later be called New Age are evident as well. Will must like it too, he's recorded it three times. I acknowledge the decay that happened to New Age, it happens with anything new and exciting when the trolls latch on. It's how you go from William Ackerman to Kenny G, but that's a discussion for another day.

Week 1: The Letter A, Part 1

52 weeks, 26 letters

An alphabetical list of artists and associated tales

Week 1: The letter A, part 1

America "Ventura Highway"

For whatever reason, many groups have used locations for names, be it a city, (Boston, Chicago), state (Kansas, Oregon) or continent (Asia, Europe). Two displaced Army brats took on the moniker "America" to make sure the local Europeans knew they weren't faking their accents. Understandable, but I have often felt given their soft-rock style and songs about the desert, sunshine and, well, California, that maybe they should have been called "California" instead.

Or maybe not. I think that more than any other state, California encapsulates most parts of America, good and bad. Pick a state, we've got that: Agriculture and oil, hippies up north and the DOD down south. Sunny shores, majestic mountains, and amazingly scenic deserts. There are cotton fields and casinos here. And of course, miles and miles of highway for that most American of all things, the automobile.

One day when I was in third grade, our teacher was showing us an academic film, when she noticed we weren't exactly focused on its educational aspects. Finally, between the collective gasps and giggles, one girl had the courage to ask "What are they WEARING?" 
"Oh" said Ms. Alderdice, "That's just California. They are always ahead of everyone, those clothes will be here in three or four years."

Well I had seen enough Star Trek to know you can't live in the future, you can only be stuck in the past. Right then, with the certainty only a child can have, I determined to live in California someday.

California is not just a mash-up of America. Places like Silicon Valley, Napa Valley, and Hollywood are uniquely Californian. There are no other cities quite like Los Angeles or San Francisco. And then there's the Southern California coast, where I live now. It's hard to describe the optimism and freedom a day of being near the ocean, soaking up the sunshine and navigating the open highway can bring to you, even on a bad day. This song captures that wispy warm feeling, even for those that have never been here. It's superb Sunshine Pop¹, and most certainly Californian. 

¹Which makes it all the odder that a certain symbolic someone latched onto not the sunshine, but the opposing Purple Rain part.

He(art)

Show Up Scientist!

June and the Poop Kids

June and Michelle

Back to the Beach

I'm home again, as worn out as the batteries in my phone and camera. I'll fill in the last few days this week, as we've been w/o the google tubes for the past few days. In the meantime, here's a few rules for touring Espana:

1) Get out of Madrid ASAP. Hit the Prado and the Palace in one day, then move on. It just doesn't have the charm and scenic setting of the outlying cities. Yea, you can party all night, but if that's really what you're after, go to Ibiza. It's also cheaper in many of the surrounding areas.

2) They're not kidding about the wacky times in Spain. Check 'em carefully, or it will probably be closed when you show up. In general, there is a 2 hour morning slot, and a 3-4 hour afternoon slot when any historical feature will be open. Other than that, cerrado.

3) If you can survive on moderate drinking and light eating, you can just order some beers for lunch. Doing this allows you to eat before 2PM. If you have two drinkers with you, stagger the orders for more tapas. Shop around for the best deals.

Buenas Noches!

Madrid: Day 3
Heaven and Hell

Today was a blur of churches and bars, with the ratio of Church/Bar being close to 2 or so. It all works out given multiple drinks at the bars. The main cathedral beside el Palacio Real was closed, but we did manage to enter the crypts, which were interesting in their own way. I pondered how much one would have to donate to a church before they would go so far as to bury you in the building underneath the feet of the other worshippers. But hey, somethings are worth any price right? And they had a nice statue of Pope John Paul out front.

Rock da beat PJ!

We also made it to the Big Church of San Francisco, which is notable for having one of the largest domes in Europe, and the Capilla de San Isidro (I like the SoCal spelling better). The latter still bore some of the scars from an anarchist bombing prior to WWII. We also tried attending a museum containing many maps of Madrid over various time points, but it was sadly under construction (get ready for repeats of that phrase). To counter balance all the church time, we went to view the only statue to Satan in all of Europe, found in Madrid's main park. He's up at the top of this post.

The touring of the day ended at El Prado, the Spanish National Museum of Art. Now I was pretty excited as they had been advertising a special section of Francis Bacon. Only it didn't turn to be the nerdy-cool Sir Francis Bacon, but an artist by the same name. However, his art was great stuff (check out his screaming Pope) and well worth some time pondering. The rest of the Prado...I could go without most of it. There were some pictures by Bosch that are classics, as well as some great stuff by Goya, but other than that it was lots of mundane paintings that didn't do much for me. Quoth the Jackass "Europe's primere museum of art that I don't like." Yowch.

We ended the day at La Finca de Susana, a restuarant the Rough Guide said we should run to. It was rather posh for a supposedly cheap-end eatery and seemed to be frequented by locals and tourists alike. I was caught off guard by my chilly vegtables, having been described as oven-roasted I rather expected them to be, well, warm not gezpacho style. The pollo ratatouille was rather good and JA had to guard against an elderly woman's advances on his calamari. Yum.

I should mention that Madrid is currently having a Cow Parade, in which various artists get to dress up cows in creative ways of their choosings. This one in particular caught my eye, as fiery war-gods can require ice cold women to withstand our high-temp touch. Still, I wasn't quite sure about the coloration of this one in particular, but luckily the artist was nearby as I was snapping fotos and I got to ask a few questions his way.

When I asked about the color, he responded in his half-english, half-artist sort of way: "Why the blua? Well zee colors, they are deeferent things non? Love iz red, like the fiery blood, but sin, de sin of dezire iz dee blue-ah. If you go to embrace her she would melt, no? Dis color weel then come to you. She will cover you wiff sin."
Such is my life dear reader.

Madrid: Day 2

We started the day at the Palacio Real de Madrid, used by the Spanish Monarchy up until the beginning of the 20th century. The palace is essentially one large square building, with the inside being taken up by a large courtyard. The most impressive thing to me was the Royal Armory. I’m sure I made D&D jokes here the first time around (“Excuse me, do you have any Vorpal weapons?”). This time was al WoW (“Have any of these swords received the Crusader enchantment?”). Yup 23 years of dorkdom ladies. The workmanship on some of the crafted armor and weapons was truly impressive. The armor suits were set up on purple-velvet mannequins and realistically posed to induce nightmares (especially the smaller suits for the King’s children). I felt bad for the horses that had to bear not only a plate-wearing knight, but their own heavy armor into battle. The royal pharmacy was impressive mostly by the amount of material they had on hand (“Where do they keep their MSDSs?” mused JA). Most of the Palace itself wasn’t particularly exciting either, but there were a couple of rooms that were very impressive: One in which the entire surface had been covered in porcelain and another in which much of the room had been covered in carved marble.

Being as it was around noon, we next tried to score some lunch, and found out that lunch is around 1:30 in Spain. To pass the time, we decided to have a few beers and made a wonderful discovery about Madrid: for every round of beer you buy, you get some free tapas. The guide book had suggested that this was an outdated tradition, so we were quite happy to find it still active. To be scientific, we tested the tradition at several cervezerias, all of which brought us small snacks with each round.

We ended the day by heading toward the Botanical Gardens. Not exactly the right time of year to go, but the sections in hot-houses were well-tended. The cactus section in particular had some interesting specimens. Being a botanical garden out of season, it makes sense that it is the place you want to have an exhibit on Shackleton’s expedition to the South Pole. *cough* The exhibit was rather interesting with most of the photographs taken by the team’s official archivist on display, including some rare color transparencies.

Of course the perfect ending of the day was some more doner kabobs. That and the cookies we found called “Filipinos”. Ahhh, colonialism, what fun you've caused.

Atocha Rail Station

Madrid: Day One

We arrive in Madrid on schedule (7AM) despite American Airlines best attempt to throw us off by not balancing the baggage at the outset. Jackass (JA) jokes about designating his own smoking zone, since he barely had time to power-puff down a cigarette between connections at JFK. I kinda hope he does so I can put the recent fire-safety training I had into action by squirting him with the Class ABC fire extinguisher I see hanging on the wall. As it was, we dutifully trudged through customs (“Why do we have to get costumes in Spain?” I overheard a child ask.) and onto the Metro. We arrive at our hotel around 9AM hoping to drop off some luggage. We’re informed that we can occupy the room at that time, if we so desire. This sounds like a good thing, but in situations like this it is far too easy to lose the day to what is supposed to be a quick nap. Hoping to prevent jet lag by synchronizing to local time, we drop off the bags and immediately head back to the Metro and try to stay awake until evening.

On Sundays in Madrid, most of the museums are free. We head to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, as it’s the one with the earliest opening time. The Reina Sofia focuses on 20th and 21st century art, having a large collection of early Cubist and Surrealist works, as well as some more modern Avant-garde. I’m surprised both JA and I agree that some of the more interesting paintings are done by Jose Gutierrez Solona. His work is dark, both in nature and in practice, many of the paintings seemingly devoid of any thing brighter than brown.

Of course Dali’s Little Cinders fascinates me for a good five minutes. In my mind, very few surrealists stand anywhere near Dali. Mostly because their paintings aren’t REALISTIC as their genre name would imply. (Miro: WTF?) That rear-end near the bottom central of the painting looks like it would be warm to the touch when you see the painting in person.

The powerhouse piece of the MNCARS is Picasso’s Guernica, a very large nearly twin-tone painting done in response to the air-raids upon the town of the same name in the early part of the 20th century.

I actually found a kindred spirit there in the exhibition that focused n Paul Thek. Described as an artist’s artist, he seemed rather close to a merry prankster to me. I wished I could have flipped through his notebooks to see more of his random thoughts (ex: “If you are philosophically unable to raise to action, drop your pants for Jesus!”). His art jumped all over the place over his career span, from really beautiful “Feather Paintings” and word-filled animals, humorous and colorful paintings to his recreation of his Pharoaic burial. This also ended up inspiring some of his somewhat sickening Meat Pieces. (Unfortunately I can't find a good link to the majority of his material, so you'll have to poke around on your own dear reader.)

In the end, his prankster prodding and poking at the establishment seemed to weigh him down: “I don’t enjoy doing ‘bad art’ but people still don’t get it, they don’t get what evils society has. So I keep dong it….but it makes me feel bad as well.” I feel you Paul, that same sadness hit me after every penis drawing I did in high school. They just didn’t get it then either.

Unfortunately, for lunch we had Mr. Surly European as our waiter. We didn’t get olives, like the other folks. We didn’t get the check when we asked. Heck, we didn’t even get napkins with our food. Mr. Surly didn’t get much of a tip. This really made me question why we bothered coming to Europe, when South and Central America are much closer, the folks much friendlier and the cultural art etc. more interesting (at least to me). Nothing like some snobby nob like to put a damper on your day. We brushed through the Standard Issue Archeological Museum and caught the Metro back near the hotel, pretty exhausted and a little disappointed.

The day was saved by some Young Turks, who made the best dang Doner Kabob’s south of Alemania. It’s amazing how much good food and beer can lift your spirits. I expect to return there often before leaving Madrid.