On Friday, June 2nd, I attended the Opening Reception for The Art of Music, an exhibition where five of my paintings are on display at Westbury Arts in Westbury, NY through June 30th. I am really happy to be part of this show.
The theme of the show is to have art that was created by people who also make music. I’m one of six people in the show and the only woman. I’m pretty sure the other artists primarily identify as musicians whereas it’s the other way around for me. Actually, I don’t even consider myself a musician, though some kind friends insist that I am simply because I create music. I think of myself as an artist who uses music as another medium to express myself, but the term ‘musician’ feels beyond my experience. I almost didn’t enter this show for this reason, but after asking a few friends what they thought, I went ahead and went for it. So glad I did. The others in the show have separate time slots on different days when they’re performing with their bands on the stage at Westbury Arts. That option was offered to me, but between my low energy level these days as I continue to recover from the strokes and the fact that I don’t play with others (I wish I did!), instead, at the Opening, I played an improvised melody on my Native American flute. It was a joy to play and a video of my presentation is on my YouTube channel, as well as on the Westbury Arts Facebook page.
Music has always been a huge part of my life. As a kid, I wanted to be a musician before I ever picked up a paintbrush, but in our small house it was easier to do art. My art has saved me throughout my life, being a solo pursuit and one practiced in quiet for the most part. As an adult I need music to create my art. Every painting is done to a certain type of music or to a particular song that is played repeatedly until the work of art is finished.
One memory from when I was very young is the small child’s organ we had that I enjoyed playing. I really wanted a drum set but in our small house there just was no way it would work. When I was about 8 or 9, I took piano lessons and my parents got a piano from one of their friends which they situated in our dining room - the most vulnerable place for me to practice, so I didn’t. Instead, I’d stay up in my room and color in the pictures in my piano lesson book. When my piano teacher saw it, she chuckled and told me I was going to be an artist, not a musician. She was right.
Over the years I had wooden flutes - a bamboo flute I bought as a teenager at a craft fair, and then a Renaissance-style recorder. As the years went by, new musical instruments made their way into my life, including hand drums, percussion, tambourines, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, asalato/kas-kas, tanpura, and other wonderful music items.
I can’t mention making music without mentioning Douglas. I am still grieving deeply and continue to discover things that were part of our life together. One postcard announcement of our Watercolor Tape recently emerged from an old folder. The Watercolor Tape was a cassette tape with music that Douglas and I created together. I hand painted the labels with watercolor paints. He had a recording studio and knew how to play so many things. He also had a beautiful voice which I and only a roomful of people ever heard in his only performance at Dr. Stella Russell’s Salon in 1994. Douglas had terrible stagefright but was so incredibly gifted in so many ways. When we were together all those years, we had many jam parties and attended the IMF at NYU a few years in a row. I really enjoyed making music with him and at the time, I didn’t think I could sing so I mostly did a spoken word type of thing. I have a compilation CD from the IMF one year where Douglas put a song on it for me, one that I “sang” to called Wicked Rain. The lyrics are really sad (probably due to the sadness of losing my mother and other members of my family at the time), but I remember creating the sound samples with my voice and Douglas putting each sample on a different key of the keyboard so I could play them as he played the background part. Pretty cool.
These days I enjoy playing my flutes, djembe, box drum, a small dingy drum I call it (small steel drum), learning acoustic guitar, and singing. I recently discovered a Music Circle that meets regularly and it’s perfect for me in so many ways. I’ve really, really missed playing with others and still at my age dream of being part of some kind of musical group one day, perhaps with ethnic instruments or voices or something else entirely that will come together organically when I meet the right people. I also do recordings on my own with different instruments and post them on my SoundCloud page, or make videos for my YouTube channel of me singing in my own language which feels easier since having mild aphasia from the strokes. Music is a healer, as is Art. If I had to choose one, I don’t think I could.
