a Light morning

Today In a bit of a nostalgic mood, I decided to show off some of the iconic tableaux that have shaped my modes of movement and expression...the nineties and the DC craze, from bootylicious up to the Damn hot tableaux from Lose my Breath in 2004...Michael Jackson sitting en pointe, Janet Jckson, her fierce flip the bird expression from the duet with her and MJ for "Scream".

My last shared musing for the day...

Today's last post is a quote I usually try to keep in mind.. though sometimes not successfully...lol

“Your prison is nothing in comparison with the inner prison of ordinary people: the prison of attachment, the prison of anger, the prison of depression, the prison of pride.” - Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Namaste, and til the next time I unload,

Carl-Anthony

Why Not be Happy, and funny formulae for life

was perusing some blogs and came across something I liked immensely and sought to share, I am quoting from Commentarial.com, a site I have come to like for the musings there

"... happiness is ephemeral by its very nature, because it is not a thing. it is not a way, a program, or person, or even a religion. it occurs because we, as animals, spiritual though we be, are alive, and because at times we encounter treasures in our journey at which to cast a wry smile- from marriages and births to the morning traffic. what happiness is...is a byproduct. a sidenote of Being.

not to say that we shouldn't be happy. that kind of thinking is precisely what i would like to avoid. but rather, if we insist on existing, perhaps there need be a more sustainable reason for taking your next breath and putting one running shoe in front of the other.

so, in light of this discovery, i have deigned to author, to my knowledge, the shortest self-help book of all time:

*pain + sadness + happiness = being alive

* perpetual happiness = amphetamine abuse disorder."

-Hope you enjoy that as much as I had reading it

A sample of a random morning...

As I lay dying...

LOL. no, that line's been taken, and not something that'll fit for quite some time..anyway, this morning as i lay in bed watching the sun rise on another restless night- I awoke from an intensely real feeling dream yet all i can recall is that I smelt burning, felt myself being pulled in four different directions almost to breaking point, and I was happy...

yes...that's right...happy.

and I'm more bewildered at that than you can imagine. I usually consult my grandmother in cases where dreams bother me, she usually has some insight into things like this (and as dream analysis in Freud's school never did grab me much, I seek her out) but, as she has for the moment ex-communicated me for the major offense of being absent from church while she was in Kgn. Having no one really to "share" this with on the level of an exchange (the other person I share these recollections with for any depth at the moment being as remote as the isthmus of Suez makes Egypt from Norway ), I simply ignored it and shelved such musings in favour of other things.

I thought on the urge I had to write, to express my own creativity in a tangible way. I thought on the time since i had last completed a work and its use (as I have always come to see my work), as a lasting monument to my inadequacy; found it to be quite a while and settled on a piece I have wanted to for some time try my hand at but never had the confidence to do...still lacking that confidence, I nevertheless plough on into it...Stay tuned for word on it...I might even put up a recording *cues dissonant chords and mounting tension*

This picture is of the facade of La Fenice in Venice, the place my dream played out (yes, i remember that detail starkly), one of few opera houses I MUST see before i die

Random fact

Fun fact:

A female counterpart to the Roman athlete/slave the Gladiator, was the Gladiatrix (Gladiatrices for pural) and they werent only Hot, they were badass... - kinda makes the Pepsi cola ad that much hotter doesn't it? lol

Serrano - A History of Sex...WARNING!!! if you are a prude ignore this Post!!!

This has been some time in coming, and I am loathe to ignore the beauty of this topic simply to show a face of censure when in truth as artist myself I am enthralled by the works and I seek to put myself in the mind of the Artist... I give you Images from Andres Serrano's A History of Sex, 1996

My favourite piece of the ones i have presented is "Protesis" and I love the exploration of Masculinity vs femininity and the concept of empowerment...and a certain cheeky undermining of their legitimacy with the object needed to achieve this, but then i could be very chauvinistic minded because of the YEAR the exhibit was first mounted...lol

The Prayer of the Depressed...

Below I submit a catholic "prayer of the depressed". I myself am not catholic, but i admire the divine in all things and their validity to their practitioners. I find the words beautiful, and feel a certain pull in its supplication:

"O glorious St. Michael, the Archangel, leader of the angels who stood against Lucifer and his devils, I stand before you with a broken heart, weighed down by problems which I cannot understand nor solve.

Your sword was instrumental in the defeat of Satan, the prince of darkness. I beseech you – help me withstand this darkness that engulfs me and my life. Protect me from negative thoughts and lift my spirit whenever I feel that everything will go wrong. Lead me to a total trust and confidence in God.

As you surrender your will to Him, give me the same courage to follow you. Let me savor how it is to live in the light of God who gives meaning to everything that happens to us. Guide me to understand the CROSS of JESUS so that my sorrow will be my salvation.

Let me see the hand of God in all events of my life so that I may always hope that something good will come out from the bad things that happened to me.

Accompany me, St. Michael, in this difficult journey to find new meaning and purpose to my life. Light your sword in this darkness so that I may see Jesus and His Mother, Mary. Someday, may we see each other in the bliss of heaven, where all tears will be wiped away. Amen.

(retrieved from: www.turnbacktogod.com)

I added the top/upper picture (Which is of Lucifer) to highlight something that has been a source of annoyance for me, all pictures of the war neglect to show the "Beauty" of the Morningstar...if the bible went at pains to describe his beauty, here u are depicting the last moments of that existing beauty, why not show that? I understand an afterward of decay and grotesque imagery, but at least give the due as written? I implore future artists...

Pictures that speak volumes

THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD LOOK...wow

An afternoon contemplation...

I sat reading, an activity to which i am always prone, and one that has never ceased to skyrocket in frequency after prolonged sustained interaction with persons in an area...as a performer who also works in a service industry, you can imagine my plight, and the intensity with which I persue this activity. I read a line today from Frank Delany's Novel Shannon- I highly recommend him, he is a great read by the way, he did excellent work in Ireland, another novel of his set in his native country - but yes Shannon (which explores an Irish-americam Catholic Priest who, on returning to the US after the war seeks to find his lost sense of awe, religion, and purpose, and leads -cant give away twists- to his pilgrimmage to the Land of his Ancestry) - Okay, tangents put aside(yea, I can be that annoying lecture for what should be a sentence dude), i read a line today that spoke a truth that is i imagine universal and forgive my stating the obvious when i share it, but in its awesome simplicity I never thought of it until being made to think of it...the line went thus:
"...It is well known that all languages convert the names of their deities into swear-words..."

My mind had a semi-profound moment...mostly because I always say that it isnt just a matter of the profane existing to give balance to the sacred, but that they were and are in many ways the same thing differing only in the circumstance...(There was the lecturing thing again, lol). it was an interesting concept to stumble upon...