Natalie Cole 6/2/50 ]-O-[ 31/12/15

Natalie Cole

Natalie-Cole

natalie cole2

natalie cole3

Cole, Natalie 6/2/1950<O>31/12/2015

Michael: This fragment was a fifth level mature artisan – 3rd life thereat.  Natalie was in the power mode with a goal of growth.  She was a sceptic who was in the moving part of intellectual centre. 

Natalie’s was a Saturn/Mars body type. 

Natalie’s primary chief feature was stubbornness with a strong secondary chief feature of self-destruction which was primarily internally focussed. 

Natalie’s casting is in the fifth position of the fourth cadence in the second greater cadence – she is a cadence mate of Richard E. White (he is in fourth position).  She is a member of entity six, cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod 414 – another entity mate. 

Natalie’s essence twin is a discarnate artisan and her priest task companion was known to her. 

The three primary needs for Natalie were: expression, freedom and power. 

There are 12 past-life associations between Natalie and Arvin whilst there are 16 past-life associations with Merlin.  

natalie cole4

I am so devastated by this loss that I don’t even have the time to do the usual due diligence of listing credits.

So poised, elegant, admirable, fabulous, fantastic… could scat/vocalese just as stratospherically as Ella Fitzgerald.

From seeing her at Ontario Place’s Amphitheatre in the ’70s, whilst she did her funky soul diva incarnation, to the sheer brilliance of her sophisticated Jazz syncopation, there was no one else who could make me feel more fuck-all fabulous pride and take seriously this joint call being Black.

Natalie got to the very essence of who we, a proud noble people, truly are.  Her album: Take A Look (1993) literally afforded me the grace and dignity to get through the most hellish experience of being in a workplace surrounded by people who haven’t a clue that they are crazy – a people who collectively render us as invisible and who relish at every opportunity the racially predatory thrill of talking about us and openly ridiculing us as though we were a weeble-infested bag of flour in the corner.  These marvellous people for whom the gun is g_d incarnate and for whom it has never once occurred that we possibly could perceive them as crazy – crazy as in having invented something as absurd as Apartheid, crazy in openly gunning us down because well… one can, crazy as in busing, crazy as in building latter day landlocked Mayflowers whose hull hold a cargo that staves off the flowering of the next Coltrane, Tatum, Monk, Ellington et al… crazy as in harvesting a most strange fruit from poplar trees whilst crazily dressed up in the coward’s garb from pointy head to toe, crazy as in then having the fuck-all temerity to squat all over the culture and ape, ape, ape like crazy every thing we do culturally, creatively…. alas, who else but the crazy would openly hate you then turn around and ape everything you do from Jazz, to Hip-Hop, to Rap and all the while, like the truly crazy then somehow think that we never notice that they never ever have personal relations with Blacks… la Krall, Bublé and Eminem to name but a few readily come to mind.

Every day in Vancouver, for having survived and gotten one day closer to triumphantly getting through 24 months of workplace probation, it was to my lovely art-filled West End apartment that I retreated where this lovely beauteous-eyed goddess, Natalie Cole, would greet me with a voice that would truly embalm the soul from the bilious dissonance of the racial predator – those who haven’t a fucking clue that they are crazy…  And how the crazy people love to laugh at everything.

Sweet and blissful dreams dear Natalie, you proud noble griot who came to remind us that we are the most beautiful lotus to have flowered from the hellish swamp known as the semi-feral well-armed racial predator’s paradise.  What a positively rich, layered, textured, august life you accomplished…

A better place this world, a more grounded people we are, for you having chosen to be focussed herein at this time, in this place.

_________________________________

*As I had always planned on doing Natalie Cole’s Michael Overleaves, they had not been done at the time of her passing and my having penned this impassioned tribute.  A couple of weeks later when her overleaves arrived, it was one of the rare times that on receiving someone’s overleaves that I broke down crying.  I always felt strongly connected to this woman – she was family.  Here then, at this juncture, though they have been added previously and subsequent to this original post – it is now December 2016 as I change the copyright time stamp – are Natalie Cole’s rather august Michael Overleaves – Natalie’s overleaves are now listed above.

There are these little things that bind us for being entity and cadre mates… at the end of the video for Route 66 which accompanies this tribute post, Natalie Cole can be heard saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!”  This is precisely what fellow artisan and entity mate Attila Isaksen and I would repeat to each other as a greeting or when slipping out of inner musings after long pleasurable sexual play.  END..

___________________________________________________________________________________

©2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Concrete Cabin.

Concrete Cabin  Oil on Canvas 198 x 275 cm 1994 Peter Doig

Oil on Canvas

198 x 275 cm

1994 Peter Doig

One of my favourite Peter Doig paintings.  I rather love it for being so quintessentially Canadian.  I am more readily reminded of Vancouver, rather than Toronto, as the Sitka-like evergreens – which are the soul of Stanley Park – are so not Toronto.

Happy New Year to every last one of you.  Thank you so very much for being focussed herein; your support is immensely encouraging.  Here’s to life, health, happiness and, of course, sweet dreams!  Nothing but the very best in 2016!  I love you more…

______________________________________________________________________________________

© 2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Francis Albert Sinatra!

Portrait Of Frank Sinatra

Veni… Vidi… Vici!

Happy 100th Birthday Frank!

That’s Life

Vocals: Frank Sinatra

Album: That’s Life (1966)

Label:  Reprise

Writers: Dean Kay & Kelly Gordon

Funny how some songs capture a time and a moment.  Late 1982, Merlin was in town and though he was subletting the Trockadero Loft in Chelsea on Sixth Avenue, we had checked into the Chelsea Hotel – why did it have to close? – for a romantic weekend.  The Chelsea had always been Merlin’s favourite New York Hotel.  Merlin chose a suite on the third floor.  The first night as we staked a passionate claim on each other’s hearts, from the suite above, one of Hotel Chelsea’s many tenants played this song over and over and over and over through the night.  The room was too hot and it wasn’t too cold that night; so, we left the window opened a crack whilst we loved, sinned and forged our bond anew in this lifetime to Frank Sinatra’s stellar magic.

Photo: Promotional studio portrait of Frank Sinatra, 1950s. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

_____________________________________________________________________________

© 2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

In Remembrance: Hugh Steers.

Breathing 1987

Breathing

Oil on Paper

11 x 15 in

1987 Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers

Signature 1991

Signature

Oil on Canvas

66 x 56 in

1991 Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers

Sick Room Hugh Steers 1990

Sick Room

Oil on Canvas

38.12 x 40

1990 Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers

Hugh Steers Self Portrait 1987

Self-Portrait 

Charcoal and Watercolour on Paper

30 x 22 in

1987 Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers.

_______________________________________

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.

I remember… this World Aids Day, 2015

_________________________________________________________________________________

© 2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Man Changing into Thunderbird VI of VI

20150609_123817[1]

Oil on Canvas

© 1977 Norval Morrisseau

Provenance: The Leitz Collection,

Art Gallery of Ontario.

http://www.ago.net/

Love these works especially more so as they have been recently relocated within the gallery; they are better displayed now.  A true shaman of the first order, Norval Morrisseau.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

© 2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Sick Room.

Sick Room Hugh Steers 1990

Oil on Canvas

38.1 x 40.0 Inches

© 1990, Hugh Steers

Provenance: Estate of Hugh Steers.

One of the most poignant AIDS-related paintings of the last century.  Truly moving.

________________________________________________________________________________

© 2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

I Remember.

Michael by Warhol

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.

https://warholrevisited.com/

Michael_Jackson_as_Captain_EO

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.

https://dreampoetica.com/2014/09/17/oh-what-joy/

https://www.youtube.com/embed/LeiFF0gvqcc“>http://

Remember The Time, Michael Jackson, © 1992 MJJ Productions Inc.

____________________________________________________________________________

© 2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

What Beautiful Magic This! Make Some Noise!

Oscar Peterson                                           Oscar Peterson 15/8/1925, Montréal!

______________________________

C Jam Blues.

1964.  Live Denmark

Piano: Oscar Peterson

Bass: Ray Brown

Drums: Ed Thigpen

_______________________________

Boogie Blues Etude.

1974.  Ronnie Scott’s Club

Piano: Oscar Peterson

Bass: Niels Pedersen

Guitar: Barney Kessel

________________________________

Night Train.

Piano: Oscar Peterson

Bass: Ray Brown

Drums: Ed Thigpen

_________________________________

Cakewalk.

1987 Live Tokyo

Piano: Oscar Peterson

Bass: Dave Young

Guitar: Joe Pass

Drums: (Martin Drew)

___________________________________

1964 Live Denmark

Piano: Oscar Peterson

Bass: Ray Brown

Drums: Ed Thigpen

____________________________________________________________________________________

© 2013-2026 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.