Once upon a time there was a powerful Fairy Queen living in the Woods. She was beautiful but lonely.
Poor travelling musician touched her heart with his tunes… But there was another heart looking for love…
A girl living in the woods with a pack of wolves for a family heard him sing and fell for his voice before she ever knew him.
Love and Music walk hand in hand, you know.
So, the powerful Queen and the human girl both fell in love with the musician… It happens on a regular basis – there is nothing new under the sun.
And yet something has changed. Actually, everything has changed. Harmony was empowered with magic; magic was subdued by simplicity; poor girl married the musician and they lived happily ever after.
My silence lasted too long. I have been writing this and that though… And taking pictures too. For the future. I still cannot upload them successfully to the Media folder of my dashboard most of the time, and I probably never will. But I cannot just leave a blog I was working on a whole year.
It is a year, yes. I feel so humbled thinking of all the friendship and support you have given me, dear blogger friends. It has been a wonderful year with you. I admire and love you.
I don’t feel well today, to be honest. I forget to smile. I worry about everything that has been happening in the world lately. It breaks my heart that the evil seems to be taking over. Is it taking over?
We live in a murky world of half-truth. How to navigate so that we never leave the safe half? How to beacon the others ?
The 21st century has brought two opposite trends in image culture: a “selfie” and a trend to hide, alter or mask the face. The “selfie” has a reputation of being annoying, vain, and even addictive; the obscured face is either disturbing, or fascinating and entertaining for a viewer. Depends on the circumstances.
Literally faceless creatures (like Slender Man) can be found in Mythology of many nations around the world. A mujina is a creature with no face that can shape-shift into human form. Japanese immigrants brought this folklore to Hawaii. In 1959, a woman was reported to have seen a mujina comb her hair in the women’s restroom at a drive-in theater in Kahala, and when the witness came close enough, the mujina turned, revealing her featureless face.
That must have been scary.
There is also an assortment of the hooded and cloaked beings – Faeries, Grim reapers and others. None of them is after any good.
Whomever we meet we do want to see their face. Not because we have a phobia or something. We simply want to communicate, work, have fun and just be with someone we can relate to. And we all know that faces tell more than words.
What the obscured face means for it’s owner? Erased identity, insecurity, or inviolable privacy? All of above? What if it is not their choice?
The Doors, “I can’t see your face in my mind”.
Album Strange Days
1967
Here is an article about a plane crash survivor, Stephanie Nielson. Here is her blog. If any of you are going through the hard times, read her story.
Barbra Streisand with Andrea Bocelli “I Still Can See Your Face”
Photography tip of the day: Scan your old photographs to preserve them. Visit the same places and the same people. Reenact your old images.
Happy New Year, everyone! (And I do hope it is happy, or, at least, reasonably happy, which is my personal goal for 2015).
Most of us know how important it is to work, to exercise, to drink water, to read, to thank, to radiate good vibes etc, etc. Every important thing adds to our overall well-being, and it is good that there are quite a few of them. If, being an imperfect human, I fail in choosing the most important, the right, and the best today, I still can pick up something from the list of important things and do it before I go to bed. No one is a failure. No one is neither programmed to fail, nor to win. We will start it again tomorrow and try to do better next time.
It is so good to be alive and every day have a different tomorrow to look forward to.
I saw this guy in the street shortly before I left for the airport. Unfortunately I had no time to ask his name, and where he came from. He had a companion, a very plain looking young lady, which made me think about them as a couple of exotic birds – a colorful male and a modest female bird. I dropped a few coins in their collection box and took these pictures.
I was thinking about this couple all my way to the airport. I was trying to google them, but with no success. They will stay a mystery until next winter when I hope to meet them again.
Their clockwork band filled the street with some Irish music. The dolls didn’t look uniform and evenly worn, and I guessed that they didn’t perform all together on a regular basis – only on some special occasions. They were turning around, banging into each other and turning back again. When a crowd gathered to gaze at the unusual performers, the man picked up a fiddle and started to play along. I was sorry that I had to leave.
I don’t know if their intention was to cheer up the crowd. I personally felt a sad kind of fascination watching the clockwork dolls live their mechanical lives. Is there anything more helpless in the toy world than a mechanical doll?
People can end up living mechanical lives too. Lives without remorse and joy, without compassion and prayer for help, without fight and success. Lives without a different tomorrow.
Year 2014 was supposed to be very dangerous because of the technical and electronic failures and related accidents, which unfortunately came out to be true… Hope that 2015 gives as a break so that we can focus on our personal lists of important things to work on. This video is for you to put a big smile on your face 🙂
Happy New 2015!
Photography tip of the day: When you take pictures of your little ones and share them on social media sites, consider the content of the photograph.
This year is running out, and there is still so much to do! Finishing projects and fixing things in a hurry doesn’t seem to be neither productivenor satisfying. Sometimes the front looks OK, but the back tells another story… like in this picture… Well, lets don’t press too hard on ourselves: it might take years to realize that some things look better unfinished.
There is something I call perfection, though. It is a video clip that I share every Christmas. When I watch this video, I feel like everything falls into place; my questions and my doubts get a perfect answer; vanity dissolves; harmony returns. Music and Art are perfectly woven together, and I am sure you will enjoy watching and listening to it, all of you, regardless of your age, religion or familiarity with arts.
Mike Masse is a former attorney who began performing once a month at the Pie Pizzeria in Salt Lake City in 1993, and did it until recent years when he moved to Colorado with his family. Now he is a full-time musician, performing in different states. Check out his web site : there is his gig schedule, and you might find him near where you live.
Mike also performs live with the former members of the band Boston, Barry Goudreau and Sib Hashian. Here is a great piece, More Than A Feeling (1976) for you to enjoy.
This is a fantastic acoustic cover of Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” performed by Mike Masse & Jenny Oaks Baker.
So, it is what I am doing today instead of “finishing and fixing” 🙂 I am listening to the music I enjoy.
This is Dublin in December.
This is an old farmstead in the mountains.
I love Irish music. Its roots go back to the medieval times, and one of the best examples is Wexford Carol. You can listen to this traditional Irish Christmas song sang by The Palestrina Choir of St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin.
Listening to the beloved hymn, I think about the coming year 2015. I cannot believe I have lived so long, but I don’t mind to keep on living.
The year 2014 has been both successful and devastating. They say 2015 will give us a break. We will see. There is a song I really like: Muse, Time is running out, from their best album Absolution. It is difficult to say what the song is about: Matt Bellamy himself is not sure…
Matt Bellamy: “It’s just about feeling that the last moments of your life are running out and… it’s more about the emotion itself: being suffocated, feeling that your last chance is being taken away from you by something that’s outside of your own power, and you can apply that to society, a relationship, your religion or whatever”
I like the song, but it makes me feel uneasy when I think it might be about something that is coming – something that is outside our power and control; something that can affect us in a bad way. So, may be lets think that it is simply about a mad love with a woman of destiny 🙂
What I really want to say – the truth of the matter is that the time is truly running out. Gradually.
Thank you for listening to this very different selection of music with me!
Tip of the day: This holidays, take some photographs that are out of your usual genre. Discover yourself 🙂
Have a Great Day!
Making memories 