What can Happen in a Year

Not long ago I purchased Noah Scalin’s “A Daily Creativity Journal –Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life.”  This book has been in my messenger bag for month’s egging me on to try it you know you will like it.  With my summer all but a mad house I decided that September would be ideal in tackling this.  So for one year I will try my hand at mixed art every day.  I decided that each month will have a theme to carry out along with my inspiration and maybe a story or two.  I am trying to make a change from in front of the TV to managing my time to involve self growth (if I lose some weight in the time better still.)  My son is taking Photography with a 35 mm film camera this semester and hopefully the levels of Hell in regards to heat will slowly cool so that we can explore the country side near our home.  I can’t wait to take pictures he can only work with black and white (he will learn how to develop it.)  Fun will be had with Photoshop, gimp and other techniques.   Now without further ado……….

For the month of September I have decided my inspiration will be the ABC’s of my musical past.  September for me meant school days a time to wash away the cobwebs of summer to focus on the months of learning ahead.  So ABC’s was the jumping off point, but what kind of ABC’s, what about music I thought it plays a major role in my formative years it was my solace during the rough times and my pleasure during the good. 

Music to me is the sound track to your life all it takes in a few notes of a certain song to push you back into a moment in time, a memory long forgotten.  Growing up my siblings had either moved away or where so much older they didn’t like me playing in their stuff, but on a rare occasion my brother would let me into his room pick out an album and listen with the headphones on.  In this space I heard The Who’s Tommy, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Quadraphenia, and Led Zeppelin.  I was transformed lying on the bean bag chair as Roger Daugherty sang to me about love, loss, and hope or David Bowie taking me on a journey to another realm.  It was here that I saw music as a powerful seducer weaving words to make sense of a feeling or a note that made the hair on your arms raise; it was in this time I learned about my own voice.  For me music was my salvation growing up a place to crawl into when life around me made no sense and shelter from the storm of my own emotions knowing that someone else had been to that place and made it back.   I walked everywhere along with my walkman I would walk for miles listening to mixed tapes imagining that I was in a movie and this song fit into the screen play.  I also pretended that I was a classical trained dancer stuck in an all girls reform school; I would take out my 45 of Styx’s Come Sail Away and proceed to dance in my room.  The catch was that behind the mirror (which I pretended was a two way mirror) Pete Townsend was watching me and talked the Warden into let me out so I could go on tour with the Who as a background dancer.   So each day will be art work representing a letter in the alphabet along with the band and song.  These are some of the bands that made my life a little less lonely and scary.