Ekphrastic Ecstacy

Words and Pictures

Mark your calendars! Newburyport Art Association is presenting LINE WORK: How do we construct, deconstruct, play, force, dance, speak a line? The show will feature various combinations of artwork and words.

I couldn’t resist the call! Two of my paintings (with words) will be included in the show: The Jazz Man and Heading Home.

I love how, the longer you have painted, the longer you have written words, music, whatever you do, the more you can create odd combinations from past and present. Something that was written in one context can be cut and pasted somewhere else entirely and BAM! you’ve created a different creature - one you never could have anticipated.

Kind of like jazz.

Jazz Man

I have a thing for bass players. I’ve played a bit of bass over the years, including this pick-up moment in Bucerías, Mexico. These gentlemen kindly let me step in for a tune or two. Talk about fun!!

The double bass - its shape and curves, its resonant sound. You can sing a song alone or with your guitar and it’s just fine, BUT, bring in the bass player and you’re flying, you’re grounded, you’re singing like you’ve never sung before, swept up with the drive, the power, the line.

For the Newburyport Art show, I grabbed words that I had collected from my jazz piano lessons.

A Straight-Enough Line

Café Beaujolais, the lights are dim, but she doesn’t need ‘em anyway. The crowd at the bar isn’t listening. She’s used to that. She just closes her eyes and plays.

Follow this line, you know, man, like over a two-five-one, up chromatically and then do just the left-hand voicings, like, run up the bass line, inversions, so then take it, yeah, approach the C startin’ off and do little arpeggios or pentatonics, like a B flat pentatonic over a C minor, that’s gonna sound slightly out…oh yeah, baby…or a kind of a tritone substitution sharp eleven - a Lydian sound, y’know? Lydian, Dorian, Phrygian…I wonder if they played jazz in the Middle Ages. Right hand voicings…that makes it kind of interesting…mixed voicings…you know, the shells on the left, with the melody line soaring over the top. Or fugeddabout it, just stick with the blues and in every key, but, spread ‘em out, see? That’s just usin’ those same notes, but it sounds better. Ooooh yeah…now I’m thinkin’ in G Major? Skip every note, they sound better opened up. Hmmm… Green Dolphin Street? C major seven, up chromatically, two altered pentatonic scales, skidding up a string of black and white - It seems like a dream, yet I know it happened…flat six, the shape of the solo is very angular, scales and targets, scales and triplets. Fish have scales, like a suit of armor, less drag in the water. Dolphins are mammals though. Let’s comp on Bluesette, Bb major. Poor little, sad little blue Bluesette, don’t you cry, don’t you fret, you can bet one lucky day you’ll waken and your blues will be forsaken. Nice progression to learn over a two-five-one. That’s so out, man! Toots Thielemans played harmonica. Maybe I should try that. Why can’t I? Oh yeah, that was obviously E flat - a half step below and a scale step above. Major pentatonic- so good here. I never think of this without a sigh, y’know what I mean? I’m approaching the third, the nine instead of the one, see? Whole step, half step, you know, diminished, you can get shapes out of that. There’s only three of ‘em too! Like, that would be like, what am I doin’? There’s this one, this one, this one. … move any of these, it’s the same chord …good for quick fills. God…what to use over A minor 7 flat five? I love the form of this thing! she muses, twisting her face…that’s pretty out!

Her cigarette burns low in the ashtray. The melting ice has thinned down the booze. Table five requests All of Me again. That’s it. It’s late, she says to herself, kills her watered-down scotch, then walks in a straight-enough line out the door and heads home.

play that bass, ink ksully

And if you want to see my other painting with its accompanying words (and the many other artists and poets!!!), you’ll just have to come see for yourself! The show runs, February 5 -28. Opening reception OPEN to ALL, Feb 7, 4-6pm.