STUDY IN YELLOW

Giacometti
Looking at the
Dirty yellow
Rubber ball on the
Round brass
Table with the
Dying yellow
Roses in a
Square yellow
Box.

Photo by Roger Bourland

My grandmother, Nancy Arnold Rhodes, gave me this photo album when she moved out of her home. It was originally given to her by her mother’s mother as a Christmas present in 1905, which is odd in that Nancy would have only been 3 years old. Perhaps it was an heirloom type present given to Nancy’s mother, Nancy Edy Ewing to enjoy until her daughter came of age. This book has photos of my relatives from and around Pendleton County, Kentucky.

Music: “Three Daydreams” from THREE IMPROMPTUS by Roger Bourland

As the son who was gay and didn’t have kids to raise, I’m making some of my familial contributions by tending to our family tree. It’s not that I’m desperate to make new friends or make contact with lost relatives, I just find it a satisfying hobby.

As in my previous post, I’ve assembled a photo album put together by Lavon McDonald in 1928-29. Her parents, seen early on in the photo montage, died somehow, and my benevolent great-grandfather, Charles E Rhodes, adopted her.

These photos go through her parents, her friends, and then her new family, the Rhodes and Arnolds. Marion Rhodes and Nancy Arnold marry in the course of this set and produce their only child, my mother, Jo Ann Bourland. The other hero in my life is JoAnn’s grandfather, Charles E Rhodes. Lavon has collected all of her photos and put them in one book during two probably golden years: 1928 – 1929. The pictures here are largely of my relatives and their friends and neighbors from northern Kentucky, east and northeast of Lexington.

[One question I still have is: Who is Carolyn? In Marion's arms. My notes say Rhodes. From which Rhodes?]

One of my four Great-Grandfathers was Ernest Bobbitt Bourland (1875-1949). E.B. was a minister from various cities around Lexington, Kentucky. He and his wife had one child: my father’s father.

My parents recently gave me this book and I decided to scan it and make it available. The music is from my FOUR PAINTERS: Thomas Hart Benton (2001) for piano quartet by Roger Bourland (me).

Mmm, I’m having a summer flashback. In our trip to southern France, we ate at home several times. One of the highlights of those meals was Jenny and Daniel searing a demi-lobe of foie gras, with salad, a lovely Gigondas wine, stinky cheese, French bread, and ham. That was lunch.

Jenny was perpetually photogenic as she cooked. Nicely framed by the kitchen window, I snapped this Vermeerish picture.

OMG! Greg Brown (the fiddle player in this photo) just sent me this picture. It is the Yahara River Valley Boys, a bluegrass group I played with from 1972-4 in Madison Wisconsin. The photo looks vaguely like the Flying Burrito Brothers. Are these wholesome lads or what?

L-R: Roger Bourland, Ed Fyffe, Jamie Shelton, and Greg Brown.

We spent a week in North Andover, MA last week. The day before we left we got socked by a big snow storm. As the snow began falling, I raced out and snapped this Christmas card picture of the back yard. The beauty of the snow was beautiful. I don’t miss the 2 degree weather.

This is a very old map outside the Los Angeles Courthouse. Sometimes maps age and need to be replaced. In this case, it has, in my view, become a work of art and no longer functions as a map and therefore needs to be replaced. It seems like a symbol of our world today. As beautiful as the old one is, the current map isn’t working and needs to be replaced.

[Photo: © 2007 by Roger Bourland]

I just picked up Daniel Levitin’s new book “The World in Six Songs.” A thrilling read and is truly coloring the way I think of music nowadays. Quite refreshing.

Daniel Levitin

What I have loved, is that it is such a marvelous way to get to know new music that you might never have heard of. It’s such a hoot that people like Bob Dylan have regular shows that he narrates and picks songs for. His banter is almost poetry sometimes. You hear the blur between his singing and his speaking.

I can flip the channel and hear spa music for days. Float on soft synth music, meditation music, druggy music, trance music, and so on. And then FLIP and you are hearing close harmony from the 40s, FLIP metal music FLIP news FLIP Christian enthusiasm FLIP twelve channels of classical music FLIP I’m in the mood for folk these days. I get to hear so much early to modern “folk” music. It’s a music that resonates with me and it’s a joy to find it.

My point in all this, is to celebrate XM radio in opening even college professors to all kinds of new music. I used to think it was a luxury. Now, I’ve discovered a lot of music, AND it’s deductible.