isn't it what art is all about...?

"isn't it that one wants a thing to be as factual as possible, and yet at the same time as deeply suggestive or deeply unlocking of areas of sensations other than simple illustrating of the object that you set out to do? isn't that what art is all about?"

francis bacon (the painter), quoted in an article on august sander in the summer 1980 issue of artforum, but does not footnote the bacon quote's source.

my uncle the composer...

hello friends of the blog - my uncle the composer will be performing in new york in a few weeks, if you like my music, i think you would like his, and even if you don't like my music, i think you would still like his - especially if you are a fan of morton feldman or arvo part... here's the info:

Wednesday, December 12, 2012 8pm Jeffrey Roden “Wait And Hope”, with internationally-acclaimed and two-time winner of the Performance Incentive Award, cellist Madeline Shapiro

@ the cell:
338 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011
(646) 861-2253
thecelltheatre.org‎


$10 online
$12 @ the door


“Mr. Roden’s piano work is a meditative 12-part cycle that recalls the spirit of Morton Feldman in its gentle, pianissimo textures. Its gestures are relatively simple: short, repeated, slow-moving themes — most seemed to be four evenly spaced notes — are punctuated by lightly dissonant chords and explored in soft-edged, enveloping variations”. –New York Times

upside down, the sky is ocean...

very excited to announce the publication of my text: "upside down, the sky is ocean" for insert blanc press's pamphlet series "rabble". each artist/writer is asked to create a short text (1500 words) focusing on a single artwork, object, idea, etc. as you can see from the image above, i chose redon's pastel of buddha.

each publication is 8 panels, and one or two images.
available and more info here.

a beer stained picture of my past...

while ebay is generally a place i haunt for old music photos, records, etc. i somehow came across this punk flyer, and it floored me. as you can see, the band at the bottom is the seditionaries, a band for which i was the singer. the band formed in 1979 and broke up in 1982. i generally made the flyers for gigs, but this one i had never seen (or don't remember) and i have no idea who made it. i remember playing with the mau maus (who were super great and super cantankerous - i remember playing with them at the hollywood press club, and the lead singer in a drunken stupor throwing fried chicken at the audience from the stage), and of course, i remember opening for the minutemen (twice - once on this gig, which i barely remember, and once at the cathay de grande, which i do remember - they were freaking fantastic). it would be a cliche to write about these flyers as related to proust's madeleine, but the truth is that when objects such as these appear 30 years later, soaked with the residue (both physically and internally) of the events and the pasts, these things are monumental in terms of what memories start to unfold out of them.

ADDENDUM: thanks to greg.org for doing some sleuthing on the web, and finding one more flyer from this gig that i had never seen before... and in the meantime he's confused the hell out of me...

there are elements of this yellow flyer that look very much like the residue of my hands - particularly the skull borders on the top and bottom, and in particular the skulls at the bottoms which have little S's on them which was one of our many logos. the writing on the top looks like my writing - but the writing that says 8:00 and 105 park row is definitely not my hand, nor is the map... then i arrive at the dude eating an arm and i'm at a total loss... continually crisscrossing my memory as both being mine and at the same time certainly not mine... 

now, i'm wondering if it was a flyer cobbled together from several others (i remember seeing some of my own flyers re-used on other band's gig flyers at the time), but i have to admit i am not sure who made this one.... someone else or myself...