I'll Follow The Sun

My favorite Beatle gets me out of a creative rut; plus, Cyndi Lauper cleans out her closet, billions of beads, a little-known artist gets her due, and the bird no one can tame.

Hi readers,

How are you? And if you're in the line of fire for this incoming winter storm, do you have everything you need to hunker down at home this weekend? Hit reply and let me how prepared you are or aren't, plus what you like to do to pass time during weather situations like this.

Here at HQ, I've been reworking parts of a book proposal (I realized that what I said I wanted to do and what I was doing were two different things, *&^%$!@!), and interviewing folks for future magazine pieces. Sometimes I feel like my progress is painfully slow and that gets frustrating, but progress is progress, and you have to keep making it, even when you want to bang your head on the wall.

One unexpected cup of comfort: The oral history Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run. In it, you get a peek at post-Beatles Paul McCartney trying to figure out what he wants to do next that isn't driven by what record label bosses say will sell, or by what Beatles fans want and expect. That kind of stuff really can weigh on a creative, whether they're a superstar or a middle-aged nerd trying to fix a goofed-up proposal.

After the Beatles, Paul and his wife Linda moved out of London to a Scottish farm where he wrestled with ideas and played around and sat with himself and his fears (yes, Paulie had FEARS) as he tried to figure out how to get himself out of a creative rut. The result was Wings, which I'd say was worth the teeth-gnashing and self-doubt. And I love that he and the band could have banked on him being Paul FRIGGIN McCartney, but chose not to. They loaded up a tour bus, and drove around Great Britain without a plan or bookings, and asked if they could play to whatever crowd they got. They got the crowds, and built from that, and it really paid off. I'm not finished with the book yet, but it gave me the nudge I needed to make solid and positive inroads on what I had been dramatically (and wrongly) viewing as a disaster. So far, I give it an infinity out of ten, would recommend. So there you go.

Hoping all of you are doing well, or at least doing as well as you can be, given the circumstances. Below are a bunch of links about creative people doing interesting things and getting their due. I hope you find inspiration in some of those pieces, or at least a little bit of entertainment.

Please stay safe and warm this weekend!

Until next time,

Paige

Writing prompt: Write about a time you were in a rut, for whatever reason. What was the rut and what did it take to get out of it?

Never play to the gallery… Always remember that the reason that you initially started working is that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations — they generally produce their worst work when they do that.

-- David Bowie

Endnotes

Deal After Deal

A lot of times celebrities auction off their gently worn threads and random ephemera, unleashing bidding wars for random acrylic bangles and sewing kits. That's not eighties pop icon Cyndi Lauper's style. Recently, Lauper cleaned out her closet and sold those castoffs in a donated space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Call me crazy, but I absolutely would have stood in line for a couple of hours just to see what was there. Mind you, everything was from the past 20 years, so there was nothing from her "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" era. But there were plenty of fingerless gloves, wildly patterned Moschino blazers, brightly colored hats and more to choose from, most of it reasonably priced. "I wanted to make it accessible for the fans," said Nikki Fontanella, Lauper's longtime stylist. "How cool is it to be able to have one of Cyndi Lauper’s shirts, and it’s $30?" Pretty cool, I'd say. Even cooler: Proceeds from the clean out went to Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights, Lauper's fund that supports organizations positively impacting the lives of women and girls.

Sew Good

Last week I oohed and ahhed about oboes, oboe players, and oboe makers. This week I want to do the same for the Black Masking Indians of Mardi Gras, specifically Big Chief Demond Melancon, who was the subject of a feature in this month's Garden & Gun. Demond often spends more than a year working on his suits, stitching on 15 pounds of feathers, and millions of custom beads and rhinestones that he imports from all over the world. In 2018, he auctioned off one of his creations at Sotheby's and was able to buy the house where he now spends around 12 hours a day sewing with his wife. His carnival costumes and smaller fine art pieces are now shown in galleries all over the world, which, he says, has exceeded his wildest dreams. “I do this three hundred and sixty-five days a year,” Melancon said. “Before this, I poured concrete and cooked lobsters at Drago’s. Now I’m an artist and I get to wake up, drink my coffee, and sew. I’m doing what I wanted to do as a kid.” For more, visit Melancon's website demondmelancon.com.

Pondering a jaunt to New Orleans Mardi Gras this year? Here's a guide that includes parade schedules and anything else you might want to know to have the best time ever.

Boxed Out

The Dutch painter Piet Mondrian made a name for himself by painting nonrepresentational works noted for their use of color blocks and lines. But, as the The Guardian recently reported, it may be that he owes his success to "a cross-dressing lesbian artist who lived in a Cornish cove." Now that artist – Marlow Moss – is finally getting her due as someone whose work most likely influenced Mondrian than the other way around. For more on the fascinating effort to pull Moss from the footnotes of art history, click here.

"A Bird That No One Can Tame..."

Do you remember back in the 1988 Olympics when ice skaters Katarina Witt and Debi Thomas both performed to music from Georges Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen in their long programs? They called it "The Battle of the Carmens" and everyone tuned in – okay maybe just me – to see who'd out-drama the other one (Witt) for the gold medal. Outside of the music and this fiercely independent main character, one of the things that has made this opera so iconic is its embrace of flamenco. Starting next month, flamenco historian Juan Vergillos will be offering an online class that explains how this opera catapulted flamenco into the spotlight and guides viewers through the history of the dance, using interpretations of Carmen from the last 150 years. Though Vergillos will be conducting the class in Spanish, friend of the newsletter and flamenco impresario Julie Baggenstoss will be providing English translation. For more information, and to reserve your spot, click here.

If you get a minute, please consider...

...donating warm winter items to local shelters in advance of the ice storm this weekend. Thank you!