Miles Ahead!

Miles Davis 2

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Miles Davis

Davis III, Miles Dewey 26/5/26 <0> 28/9/91  Tiger 8.4.4 = 7

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I am so looking forward to the opening of Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead this week.  i think of any other Jazz artist, Miles is the only one whose every album, on listening to it, I conclude is a favourite.  This creative genius just oozed authenticity.  Of course, a major part of his outréness and originality had to do with his having been an actual old soul.

I have always been partial to him as he was briefly married to Cicely Tyson who was a maternal first cousin of my late mother’s who in her youth did play the cornet.  Of course, Cicely Tyson, who is still going strong and currently starring on Broadway, is an entity mate of Miles Davis’.

My creatively gifted mother whose songs are published in the hymnal of the now Wesleyan Church was a remarkable woman who was pure intellect and a source of fierce pride.  She whose paternal grandparents were Sephardi from the small Brazilian community which settled in Nevis.   Indeed, she who is now reincarnated in London, England, male and first-born and about whom I have dreamt – East Indian/Caucasian heritage in this lifetime and currently aged 13 years old.

Sadly, none of my dream encounters with Miles Davis were ever audiocassette-recorded as they were never had during the decade when I did so – 1989 to 1998.  Each of those dream encounters did, though, validate his agedness of spirit and he seemed every bit an old soul during astral plane encounters.

In anticipation of this long overdue film – imagine that, the paucity of Jazz biopics when so clearly Jazz is rooted in Klezmer!  More than that, on to the matter of saluting a true original, a true creative genius and a giant of Black high art.

*Sadly, I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to track down the title of the Miles Davis painting herein featured; alas, to no avail have I managed to have discovered its title et al.

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Birth of the Cool, 1957.

Kind of Blue 1959.

– This is the music (Kind of Blue) I am mostly likely to listen to, after having audiocassette-recorded the dreams, on awaking from a flying dream.  This music is about finding centre whilst simultaneously remaining aloft in the realms of the flying dream.  As West Indians would say, it’s sweet!

Milestones, 1958.

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©2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

#OscarsSoWhite!

By far, one of the funniest Academy Awards Opening monologues.  Leading up to last night’s awards, I was a bit apprehensive about how the whole race row would pan out.  I think that Chris Rock did a fantastic job and steered the entire controversy in the appropriate direction.

The beauty of the monologue in 1999 is how pure and wonderful it was.  So much has transpired since then and we are all a very different human race post 9/11, post Barack H. Obama’s presidency – racism has become since then so in-your-face and toxic… most of all, the problem of climate change is undeniably upon us.  So very good of Leonardo DiCaprio to have spoken so eloquently as he did.

Finally, regardless the diversity controversy in Hollywood and the facts being what they are, it matters little when this beautiful world is slowly becoming less viable for human civilisation…  Merrily we besottedly chug along like dopey lobsters denying that it is getting tepid under the collar.

Finally, Whoopi and her opening monologue got it right, it was the best #OscarsSoWhite! ever.

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©2013-2025  Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Beyoncé Slays!

Beyonce

Just as powerful as Michael Jackson releasing “Remember The Time” during Black History Month in 1992 so, too, Beyoncé slays by dropping Formation during Black History Month and on Bob Nesta Marley’s birthday no less.  Love it…  Love her!

Happy Black History Month!

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©2013-2025 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.

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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

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© 2013-2025 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.

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Oreo.

Oreo

Acrylic on Canvas

126 x 100.5 cm

© 1988 Jean-Michel Basquiat

Provenance:  Private Collection as of 2005.

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!

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Exu.

Exu 1988

Acrylic, Oil Stick on Canvas

199.3 x 254 cm

© 1988 Jean-Michel Basquiat

Provenance: Private collection

Today, I shall see this show for the fifth time.

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Diana’s Resolve… Extra-Human Tall Whites Arrive.

Diana-Princess-of-Wales-Nelson Shanks 1994 oil on canvas

One of the last dreams I would have, before moving to Montréal from Vancouver, would be a most ominous dream of Diana, Princess of Wales.  At the time, my life was in flux as I hurriedly packed up my art collection and made preparations to fly out of Vancouver to Montréal. 

As Pandora da Braga had lived in Paris for ten years, after having worked in the Prime Minister’s Office – Prime Minister, John Turner – studying then working as a journalist in the city of lights, I would make wonderful friends of my own in Paris. 

Naturally, they all implored me to move to Montréal because they could then visit me and not have to worry about not speaking English.  Of course, if you can’t live in Paris, Montréal will make a damn good substitute – the locals’ hideous xenophobia notwithstanding. 

To say the least, I was only too happy to take flight from Vancouver which had proven a racially suffocating hellhole once too many for my legendary impatience… to say nothing of pride and integrity.  Since I am not in the world to suffer the racial predator overlong, it was time to move on when I chose to.  Knowing when to take leave is key to survival in any situation. 

The astral plane dream encounter with Diana, Princess of Wales was inordinately lucid and possessed of a clarity that spoke to its prophetic potency.  Of course, on awaking from the dream, I had completely misread the message of the dynamic being played out.  At the time of the dream and on awaking, I had assumed the subject of ominous prophecy to be Prince William rather than Diana, Princess of Wales herself. 

The dream proved rather sobering.  The evening when the news broke of Diana, Princess of Wales’s death, I stood in my Montréal living room and screamed horrified because in that moment I had finally gotten whom the subject the prophetic dream was; it was Diana, Princess of Wales. 

There was the same density and foreboding in this dream as in all dreams which presage death.  There was no mistaking the ambiance of the dream; death palpably hung in the air. 

At the time, it was Sunday, July 27, 1997 and whilst the Moon then transited both Taurus and my twelfth house, I did nothing more than pack and run off to Stanley Park after dark to get one more last session of hot sex in the midst of five-hundred-year-old moss-furred Sitkas. 

Oh what delicious fun times!  Nothing beats having sex in the middle of nature; it is so primal, so spiritual, so shamanic and elemental. 

The dream was a beautiful farewell from Diana, Princess of Wales.  I am sure that she would be immensely proud of how Prince William has fared since she bade him fare well in that dream. 

Sweet dreams as ever. 

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Pandora da Braga and I visited with Diana, Princess of Wales, at night-time, in this the first dream.  I spoke to her of her great insights to world politics.

As well, I told her of how much she had learnt in this lifetime – the great insights garnered from her experiential awareness of human suffering and the human condition.

This woman was incredibly powerful in this astral plane encounter.

You had a sense of her very soul itself being present in her body.  As this was an astral plane encounter, one was not experiencing Diana, Princess of Wales the glamour puss, the manipulative or, for that matter, the fucked-up basket case.

You saw the power behind the incarnate persona and understood why she was born to be Diana, Princess of Wales.  All that emotional baggage ultimately was mere façade.  This was a very steely tough customer.

Her eyes were always very direct and clear; they were not soft and dewy or doing the virgin bride Diana Spencer routine.  She wore a powder blue suit and was in supreme control.

She then went to a near dark bedroom to check on Prince William, the future Duke of Cambridge.  The heir apparent was lying in bed, foetally curled up whilst soundly asleep.

He looked so tiny and so frail and vulnerable that one had to wonder if he were an asthmatic or suffered from seizures.  Even though asleep, Prince William seemed emotionally needy.

I was much reminded of Clarice Seberg-da Braga in this woman’s resolute steeliness.  I stood a few feet away whilst Diana, Princess of Wales stood leaning over the side of the bed next to her sleeping firstborn, Prince William.

The energies here were those of a retirement home or an orphanage.  The vibration here was both dense and very sad; it was a most sombre ambiance here.  I even passingly wondered if Prince William were in danger of dying.

When I spoke to her, she had said nothing and seemed remote, removed and otherly focussed.  However, she was undividedly listening to me.  Her focus was intense, with a singleness of purpose that was so unlike her incarnate persona, it was hard to believe that she could have become so legendarily emotionally fucked-up.

For being in this woman’s presence, one realised that this individual has seen a lot.  By far, much more than mere mortals see in the course of three or four lifetimes has she.

Her energies surprised me as they were massive.  One had to exactly wonder who she has been in past lives.  I had a sense of her that she was an early mature soul.

Prince William Wedding

*This would indeed prove a rather prophetic dream.  I remember been so upset at this dream that on awaking, I went and looked up Prince William, Duke of Cambridge’s astrological chart to see if there were any indicators that he could possibly die early in life or imminently.

So ravishing was Diana, Princess of Wales that it never occurred to me at the time of the dream or on awaking, to have looked at her chart to see if there were any signs of her possibly dying imminently.  Of course, there in her chart was a very ominously looming Pluto square transit which went exact the day she died.

I might also add that it is an afflicted Pluto which is conjunct her natal Mars.  Think what you want but there is no way that Diana, Princess of Wales was not assassinated.

She was, in the dream, clearly resigned to her fate.  She was obviously aware of her role in the historical drama being played out and she, finally, fulfilled her role with great aplomb.  END.

**Of course, at the time when living in Vancouver, where the dream was dreamt, I had attended a dinner party at friends’ Sentinel Hill bungalow where a gay South African of British aristocratic heritage spoke at length about Charles and Diana and their ‘child’.  Said he, Harry was not the child born out of wedlock – the second born was a real Windsor prince.  The real bastard had been her firstborn which meant a lot, especially since the Bourbon father was Catholic – little else was then divulged.  This was in late 1995 – with Nelson Mandela coming to power, he like many whites fled South Africa with a sizeable colony settling in the lower mainland – when Charles and Diana clearly were headed for divorce.  That dinner party was the second time that I had heard this rumour about Diana’s sons. 

A couple of years earlier, after I broke off relations with Manhattan cabaret singer Frans Bloem as a dinner guest of his proved a vile racist Jew, who vehemently denied that Blacks had any connection, let alone claim, to Jazz.  I promptly decamped for the rest of my vacation from Frans’ West Village apartment to Chelsea with an old dancer friend, whose lover had died of AIDS and left him fabulously well-off.  One evening, we went to a dinner party on the Upper West Side where the view across Central Park was to the condo where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis would die short months later.  Present at the lovely dinner of a wealthy Mexican, whose home was truly grand, was a Spanish aristocrat; he spoke at great length of Diana and Charles – it was the time of their recent separation.  The minor Bourbon royal was keen to let it be known that Juan Carlos, the King, was William’s father and not Charles.  This he said with great pride and who knows, added he, maybe one day the Church of Rome would reclaim Westminster Abbey and Britain become annexed to Spain.  END.  

william and catherine

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Then, in this the second dream, I entered a film which advanced back in time.  I was taken back to the beginning of my reincarnational cycle here on Earth.  That is to say that for my soul’s experience here on Earth, it was the beginning of time.

There were lots of heavy-looking satellites here.  As a result, the celestial lights are strange as compared to contemporary times.  There was a sense of purple intensely coming through from the light spectrum.

Too, blue came through strongly here rather than the intense ‘white’ with which we are so accustomed.  A very interesting phenomenon this was.

This was a very rocky terrain as I stood looking down to a spectacular vista below.  Next, there was a mass influx of people who came from another planet.

There had been a mass exodus to Earth.  The arrivée extra-human’s spaceships were not all that sophisticated comparable to today’s space shuttles.  When they disembarked, they were an unusually tall race of Whites.

They averaged over seven feet each, on the short side, pushing nine feet; even the women were in excess of seven feet tall.  They were a shabbily dressed group.  Too, they looked truly shell-shocked; it was as though they had had to take flight in a hurry.

Seemingly, there had been a massive apocalyptic crisis which had precipitated their sudden departure.  As a result, they had ventured here to take up residence on Earth.  They seemed as if refugees from a war zone.

They were, the whole group of them,  quite a mess.  Immediately, they set about on a campaign to subjugate the planet and make it theirs.  Theirs was a focus that was driven of their having been from elsewhere.

This was hostile territory that had to be tamed and made to order; the new planet, Earth, had to support their agenda and nothing more.  This was the beginning of a reign of terror which clearly endures to this age.

They had a series of rulers, who came with the mass exodus, all of whom were male.  They were a militaristic culture.  They were the quintessential warrior warlords; brutish and sadistic to the core were they.  They had no qualms about killing.

They couldn’t have cared less, after all, about the people whom they were killing; after all, they were all merely humans and not of their extra-human race.

They were brutish specimens, the hunter-warrior extra-humans, with thick full beards.  These were a people who had known nothing but a long history of warfare.  They were bred to be killers.  Truth be told, they were deadly and at war with life itself.

Alas, it was a sad but true fact and one that was rather insightful as to the real deal behind history of this planet.  As life on Earth ultimately proved a non-viable long range proposition, they elected to adapt to Earth by breeding with select humans.

The group which proved, in the long term to be most viable for their genetic stock to endure and prosper would become today’s Caucasians.  As a result, the hybridised Earthly humans became as if at war with themselves.  Incidentally, all the racial groups were hybridised; however, what would become Caucasians were deemed most desirable.

I have always thought it very interesting that the all-dominant White tribe is home to Europe, the only continent on the planet where the inhabitants never constructed pyramids.  They, pyramids, are in Africa, the Americas and Asia but not to be found in Europe.

These people were truly Hitlerian in their savagery.  I could see how easy it was for the true Earthlings to have been subjected by these people.

The locals were a peaceful people who lived close to and in accord with nature – that included the pre-hybridised Caucasians.  Then along came this exodus of Tall White extra-humans who proceeded to subject both them and nature.

This seemed to have, perhaps, been in New Zealand but it was obvious from what I learnt here that the invading Whites had touched down in several locales on the planet.

Theirs was an agendum whose task demanded timely action over a given breath of time.  They were intent on suppressing the Earthlings, all over the planet.  When their extra-human stock began dying out, they then elected to hybridise the native humans of Earth.

Obviously, at the end of this campaign, they would then choose to settle in Europe.  What was really telling in all of this was the fact that all of life in the Universe is cyclical.

To that end, we see history being repeated in modern times with the campaign begun by Christopher Columbus.  There is nothing ennobling or uplifting about this European exodus which, as per the panorama I witnessed, mirrored the campaign of the Tall White extra-humans on their arrival to Earth.  Though less savage, the strong Tall White extra-human genetic markers in Caucasians has affected their outlook on being focussed here on Earth.

As a result, the hybridised Caucasians humans’ raison d’être has been about warfare, rape and separatism.  Notice, too, that until the rise of Judaism, there were no patriarchal religions on this planet.  Religions weren’t of any use, prior to the arrival of the Tall White extra-humans, as all the people of Earth were living in accord with nature.

Too, the rise of Judaism marked the ascent of the notion of a single god and, most of all, one which was vengeful, warring and decidedly patriarchal.  Like the orthodoxy of Judaism, it was anathema to the arriving extra-human Tall Whites to mix or cohabit with the true Earthlings – at least until their long term survival proved impossible.

That aside, the extra-human Tall Whites went about suppressing the planet.  They did so in a reign of terror that was truly horrific.  They murdered and savaged the Earthlings with ferocity that one would a species which was not one’s own.

The Earthlings were being killed as though they were an infestation of vermin who had to be culled and controlled.  This they did in their campaign to make the planet viable for their extra-human Tall White stock.

So very telling as this is precisely the repeated/mirrored history which we are living today.  A history, indeed, in which the White Tribe has spread over the planet in the last half millennium, displacing the local Earthlings in their path.  Sadly, so dominant is the Tall White extra-human genetic makeup in hybridised Caucasians, it has been as though their fellow humans were not also human.

This has being most actively pursued in Africa at present which thanks to racism makes it permissible.  Truly horrific a spectacle this proved.  Devastating were the campaign’s results, to say the least, on the locals then as now.

*I must note here, though, that the original Tall Whites were little related to today’s Whites.  Not only were they close to nine feet tall, if not more, they were pasty to grey-white in colour.

In the true sense of the word, they were Tall Whites rather than Caucasians.  END.

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When planning to go to a movie, in this the third dream, I had asked Ian Banks Jr. if he would accompany me.  Flatly, he replied no.

The look on his face was truly hostile as if to ask if I were out of my mind to have asked him.  I was very stunned, in fact, by his reaction.

In any event, I readily recovered and went off looking for a seat in the theatre.  I ended up close to a White couple with three small kids.

The children were talkative but there was nothing objectionable in their behaviour.  I actually quite liked being near them with their refreshing playfulness and spontaneity.

As the house lights went down and everyone grew quietly anticipatory, I seamlessly refocussed from the dreamtime to the waking state.

*On awaking, I felt exhausted from the travel involved in moving back in time to seeing and experiencing the arrival of the Tall White extra-humans.  I took the time to remain in the pyramid, after having recorded the dreams, to meditate with crystals and thereby restore my energies.  END.

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Photo/Art: HRH Diana, Princess of Wales

Oil on Canvas

64 x 40 Inches

© 1994 Nelson Shanks.

Provenance: Collection of Charles, Ninth Earl of Spencer.

© 2011 HRH Prince William, Duke of Cambridge.

© 2014 HRH Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

http://www.spencerofalthorp.com/

http://www.nelsonshanks.com/

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.

Ball Game.

Ball-Game

Oil on Canvas

36 x 36 Inches

© 2013 Wim Heldens

Provenance: Private collection

http://www.wimheldens.com/

Love Wim’s masterful sensual use of light and colour.

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Twenty years ago, when flying in to Manhattan from Vancouver to be with then lover, Manhattan cabaret singer, Frans Bloem, I would meet Wim.  As all I ever do is sense energy and think of anyone encountered as a Michael Overleaves puzzle – is this a warrior or just a cynic? – I knew without a doubt that he was an old soul.  Like every other old soul encountered whose overleaves I have done, I felt a sense of home, acceptance and harmony for being in his presence.

At the time, Wim was sick in bed with the flu and so I went out shopping and got him some Campbell’s soup – what  do I know about making homemade soup? –  and spent part of an evening hanging with him.  The interlude was truly memorable; it was like being in a dream which, incidentally, is also another hallmark for me of being in the presence of an old soul.

Wim truly is a great human.

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© 2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.