I have always loved the works of this young American Brahmin artist who was felled by AIDS – far too soon. He was, of course, related by marriage to two of the most iconic Americans – at least for me – of the 20th Century: Gore Vidal (whose Michael Overleaves are to be found on the Michael Overleaves Appendix page) and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis – both of whom were king souls.
Michael Jackson by Andy Warhol. On this the anniversary of Michael Jackson’s birth, I thought to pay tribute to one of the most inspiring creative geniuses to have ever graced this world. This is a work by Andy Warhol which is part of the Revolver Gallery’s Andy Warhol: Revisited – A Pop Art Exhibition in Yorkville at 77 Bloor Street West, Toronto. One of the truly fantastic shows to have graced Toronto in long ages.
I finally got to attend a couple of weeks ago with my brother and my only nephew – in town for the summer from the Bahamas. We had a good visit and the show was the most spectacular show I have seen in long ages. Beautifully curated and just intimate enough that it doesn’t end up being overwhelming or, more importantly, underwhelming.
Michael Jackson: August 29, 1958 [-O-] June 25, 2009.
Here’s a dream, previously shared in this unique and utterly unrivalled blog of mine, of Michael Jackson being his marvellously shamanic wonderful self. I love you more, Michael – sweet and blissful dreams.
Composition: Billie Holiday, Arthur Herzog Jr. c. 1939
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Fine and Mellow
Written: Billie Holiday c. 1939
Live TV recording 1957.
Voice: Billie Holiday
Piano: Mal Waldon
Double Bass: Milt Hinton
Guitar: Danny Barker
Tenor Saxophone: BenWebster & Lester Young & Coleman Hawkins
Baritone Saxophone: Gerry Mulligan
Trombone: Vic Dickenson
Trumpet: Doc Cheatham & Roy Eldridge
Drums: Osie Johnson
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Strange Fruit
Written: Abel Meeropol c. 1937
Composition: Billie Holiday c. 1939
Voice: Billie Holiday.
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Lover Man, Oh Where Can You Be.
Written: Jimmy Davis & Roger Ramirez & James Sherman c. 1941
Live performance 1958, Oakdale Music Theater, Wallingford, Connecticut.
Voice: Billie Holiday
Piano: Mal Waldron
Bass: Milt Hinton
Trumpet: Buck Clayton
Drums: Don Lamond
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One of my all-time favourite Billie Holiday tunes. I first fell in love with it whilst working at the Underground Railroad Restaurant on King Street East just west of Sherbourne Street back in the late 1970s – all whilst finding time to run around the city taking ballet class and studying in high school then later at York University – when Salome Bey was doing her Cabaret show and her husband, Howard Matthews was part owner, along with Jazz drummer, Archie Alleyne. There was an intense and wonderful Jazz education!
Too, there was that memorable Sunday Brunch in late 1982 at the actress, Patricia Neal’s grand Upper West Side apartment which Merlin took on a short-term sublet. Frederick Jones and his Puerto Rican-born lover were there, along with a couple of dancer friends of mine and, of course, fellow dancer and friend of Merlin’s, Miguel Godreau.
Merlin the night we met, Friday, October 1, 1982, had excused himself from dinner at the Afro-Cuban restaurant, around from my West 49th Street apartment, on 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. He had gone to make a phone call – ah yes, there was an age before the cellphone’s ubiquity – and cancelled getting together with Miguel. They had been dating after Miguel had appeared in Ken Russell’s 1980 film, Altered States starring, William Hurt and who at that time was a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Just in case, I had proven an utter bore, Merlin had made alternate plans; however, after I had passed most of dinner to the groovy music massaging his burgeoning lap across the deuce from me with my nimbly dexterous pointed feet, Miguel did not stand a chance.
Besides, one does not exactly say no to one’s task companion when first meeting on the physical plane… again, especially when it was planned. In any event, after fruit-filled pancakes drowned in Canadian maple syrup, Merlin and I – who by then had had multiple ménage-à-trois with Miguel – blew each other soft kisses whilst he sat admiringly looking at Miguel and me slow dance to this truly haunting tune.
Merlin almost never danced; however, our pas de deux between the sheets has left Merlin an unsurpassed lover of magical skills.
Happy Birthday Billie Holiday and, wherever you are, may your current incarnation be a most blessed lucid dream. You know, I really ought to do her overleaves…
One of my favourite pieces in the current Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at the AGO. The reviewers in both the Globe and Mail and NOW magazine haven’t a fucking clue what they are talking about; certainly, in the case of the latter it is the sort of sly invidiousness that one can ever expect of Canadians in their cool animus towards Blacks and the Black artistic aesthetic. Later for the likes of sphinctered, snow-driven dreck comme lui…
Of course, all that glorious fecund green serves as a good enough reason to say, Happy St. Patrick’s Day. As James Joyce so deftly illustrated, we are all Irish for being possessed of imagination… we are all dreamers – I certainly am. I love you more!
Today, I managed to have awaken from a long slumber of non-stop work shifts and multiple jobs and managed en route to another to slip into the Jean-Michel Basquiat show at the AGO.
I had missed the opening weekend and just did not want Black History month to end without having seen it at least once.
I was floored. I had never before paid attention to his works because to see art reproduced in print and definitely online are quite another matter. To have moved through this exhibition was the most lucid of flying dreams.
The Self-Portraits, Chinese New Year/Year of the Boar, Every Untitled work, the above collaborative work with Andy Warhol and most especially, Oreo, all provoked such wonder, and they each affected a deep soulful resonance.
What can one say, the man was an unparalleled genius and, most of all, he loved Jazz; he loved Charlie Parker!
I got on my Samsung Note 4 and texted everyone I know demanding that they haul arse toute de suite to be wowed. My adorable sister will come to town on the weekend, to gaze and praise. We’ll have a blast.
The sense of colour, attack and the unmistakable afrocentrism are what really moved me and above it all is this W. E. B. Du Bois quote which I had long forgotten; it sits beneath the description for the painting Black Soap 1981:
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”
And how the lunatic racial predators love laughing their vapid skulls in seething grudge; indeed, Jazz has its roots in klezmer!
So very nice to see that the hunter has fast emerged in this millennium’s infancy as the prey. Is it any wonder as their real and unwavering enemy rages terror on their civilisation that they turn around and grow even more resentful, spiteful, murderous towards us, thereby betraying their cowardice?
What can they do? When for so long the racial predator has reigned supreme and unchallenged, along comes a genuine foe with an even greater sanguineous appetite for the hunt.
Keep whistling, you can’t possibly be preyed on. Why should karma apply to the racial predator indeed?
This show has been a marvellous feast; it is one to which I will return and ravenously devour… time and again.
Dreams are the poetic expression of the soul. 