Here's the dealio. I would love to be able to live like Jason Mraz - he plays what he wants and lives by what he hears, and gets to spend his whole life making records of what just sounds good to him. Admittedly, he's probably high as a kite 24/7, but his way of life is to be envied.
I don't want to envy him. I want to be able to see and feel as honestly as he does, and though I think I do somewhat often, it's intimidating to see how he can follow the wind wherever it goes. I think about how I'm so comitted to grad school and my career and everything, and though I know that that's what I want and love, I also wish I could spend my twenties wandering. Maybe I still can, but I want to hold onto his type of mindset as long as possible. On another note (ha) his sound tonight had a lot more jazz and blues influence than I expected. It was pretty damn awesome, to say the least, and I have no choice now but to buy the new album...
But I don't feel like writing about the here and now anymore. Finally the here and now is less of an issue, so I can let my mind wander again. Have you ever seen Raoul Dufy's paintings? Well, they're kind of more watercolors, but they're all so beautiful. I found Dufy for the first time a long time ago, in all the little prints hanging around my great-aunt's apartment in Hastings, NY. She has always been the quirky aunt - her life story has been more than colorful, and it's hard for me to put together any solid image of her if all I know of her are the things that people weren't embarassed to tell me. To describe her, she's a lot like Mrs. Robinson from the Graduate. Anyway, I have always been curious about her, and she and I have found that we have a few very random things in common. She was just as much of a Yankee fan at my age as I am, and even got a phone call from the first baseman once after she wrote him a letter. She has a surprising taste in music and isn't afraid of all the new stuff out there, including John Mayer and other (granted, non-hip hop) current artists. She's probably going to vote for Obama, though I don't know that for sure, and most of all, she loves Raoul Dufy.
Ever since I realized how wonderful his paintings were, she pounced on that opportunity to get a little closer to me. Now, whenever she sends a card, it's got a Dufy on the front - she even gave me an old postcard that a favorite family member wrote to her a long time ago (I never got to meet her). It's Dufy whose paintings cover that big wall in my room at home, six posters ranging from sailboats to horse races to floral arrangements. At first glance, he's just another French painter, but he reminds me of life the way Jason Mraz does, in a sense. It's really beautiful, when you get down to it, but you just have to be brave enough and smart enough to want to get down to it.
So go google Dufy if you want to see something beautiful. I need to start making art again - hearing all this music lately is making me long for any kind of art at all. I can feel it coming. Well, maybe it's that I feel summer coming, but summer is art in its own respect, don't you think?
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