july 9
It is tough to get good images of the larger drawings, but I have been working on monkey drawings pretty much every day - I’m just not posting them all. I have to save some surprises for when I finally exhibit these. This is from the first sitting of a monkey named Cassandra. The drawing is 18.5 x 22,” and is ink on paper.
I need to express my eternal gratitude and indebtedness to Betty Vermeire and my father for letting me use their research photos, which are an incredible resource. It is an interesting and strange process indeed to take images that were very scientifically specific and then parse them into something akin to art. I also want to make clear that, despite the obvious anthropomorphic interpretations of their expressions, they were not suffering while these photos were being taken. It is so much more complex than that, grasshopper… more thoughts on that later, or in the comments…
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July 10th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
For banjos everywhere:
“Way down in the congo land sitting in a coconut tree,
there was a monkey and a chimp–and Lordy how she loved him.
Everynight in the pale moonlight sitting in the coconut tree,
these love words she always said to he…
“Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba”
said the monkey to the chimp.
“Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba”
said the chimpee to the monk.
All night long they chattered away.
All day long they were happy and gay,
swinging and swaying in a honky, tonky way.
“Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba”
said the chimp, “I love but you.”
Abba dabba dabba in monkey talk means
“Chimp, I love you too.”
Then the ol’ baboon, one night in June,
married them and very soon,
they sailed away on an abba dabba honeymoon.”
Though accorrding to Gazzaniga, chimps make LOUSY dates. No T.O.M.
Mark
July 10th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
You know don’t you, Mark, that Catherine was (maybe still is) REALLY good on the tenor banjo?
July 10th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
For us old, culturally deprived, folks - what’s T.O.M.?
July 11th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Char told me about Cathy’s banjo-playing, and I’m dying to hear it. Banjo would be perfect for various medieval pieces: think “The Hern” after the style of John Fleagle. He’s one of my all-time favorites; if I could trade my singing voice with anyone’s, it’d probably be his.
I was a failure at the piano (six-year-old saying “good riddance to bad rubbish” to the piano teacher at the first lesson was probably a bad omen), but I’ve toyed with the idea of picking up something easier for my own enjoyment. Maybe (I’m not kidding) the hurdy-gurdy: my medieval ear loves drones, and intuition tells me there’s something about wavering modulated notes that would be forgiving when I raise my terrible, terrible voice into song.
Gotta wish everybody a happy July — I’m gone for three weeks to the ancestral village in Greece. The days I live for. Have a great summer!
July 11th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Theory Of Mind. This is why (according to the Gazz), this is just one of the major reasons chimps and all apes and monkeys make such BAD dates. They have no TOM, therefore: no empathy and absolutely NO interest in what you are talking about or how you feel because they do not infer you have a similar mind as theirs and cannot therefore extrapolate your behavior and emotions. All they want is FOOD. SEX. SLEEP. RAGE. I told him that still sounded like an OK date and that HIS TOM was malfunctioning when he was talking about what I thought would be a bad date. Whenever talking about consciousness, awareness, being, whether with neurologists, cognitive psychologists or philosophers, TOM and the “zombie question” always comes up eventually.
Banjos: one of my bros (the Field Biologist at Smithsonian) played the banjo really well (unfortunately he has passed on). Aren’t banjos featured in the intro to HERMAN’S HERMITS “Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter”? Other than that, I cannot think of many “rock moments” with banjos. Sitars, ukes, of course. But banjos? What is the most RECORDED rockin’ moment with a banjo? Theme to SOUTH PARK? Of course I fully realize the importance of the instrument in other genres, but I was just trying to expand my knowledge. Are there ELECTRIC banjos?
Mark
July 11th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Jesse: I know a hurdy-gurdy player in Rhode Island that I could introduce you to. I’m not kidding. As a matter of fact, I know a number of early music pros.
Mark: def are a lot of amplified banjos, but not electric technically cause unless the sound is synthesized, you need the acoustics of the resonating chamber. There are some subtle banjo tracks in some Air songs, and some plucky not-so-finessed moments in The Grand Archives, and maybe in The Mountain Goats? Not sure. These are just some of what I’ve listened to this week.
Mom: you’re the best.
Dad: in case you are quietly following this, bemused by watching simian faces appear from the past, I just want you to know that I made cornmeal-battered fried okra yesterday (locally grown), then today had the inspiration to include it in a fresh-egg and spring onion omelet. It was one fine omelet.
July 11th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Alina sent this to me:
July 11th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Cathy’s mom? You’re going to laugh, but I thought CLH was Cathy’s dad! (My imagination turned CL into Clive Lewis because he’s the only CL I could think of.) And I had Betty as Cathy’s mom, despite the fact that Cathy referred to her by her first name. (I thought it was a West Coast thing.)
I guess nobody’s going to be rushing to be my partner in a game of Clue after this one….
July 11th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Cathy plays a mean banjo! I loved it when you played it VT! I wish I had seen some of your shows you spoke of in your earlier RI days.
July 11th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Cathy,
Perhaps when you next draw a tree, it should be a genealogy tree (for Jesse, et. al)!
July 11th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Jesse:
Who cares about your Clue abilities: YOU’RE GOING TO GREECE!!!!! Have a great time (as if that needs to be said) and don’t lose your Elgin Marbles. Give a thought once in a while to those of us stuck in humid urban centers without a maenad in sight.
Mark, always dreaming of wine dark seas and rosy-fingered dawns
July 12th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
BTW: That banjo clip is what I term “tragically cute”, or possibly even “lethally cute.” However, the banjo PLAYING is great.
Mark, back from atlasing the Berks. No bears, but lots of deer and fawns (awhhhh, also “tragically cute”); Gray Fox, Woodchuck, Beavers et.
July 13th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
ARTISTS/NATURE/BANJOS: an upcoming trend or a full-blown movement?
SEE LINK BELOW and scroll down.
http://drawingthemotmot.wordpress.com
Mark