all you need is...

I'm about to write a post that i never thought i would. But it's casual Friday so don't think too hard on it.

Like a lot of people, I was raised on the Beatles. So much so that listening to a Beatles CD now is like eating Kraft macaroni and cheese. A one time love that takes me back, but to where and really, is this nourishing at all?

So if Kraft said they were coming out with mauve colored mac and cheese, i think i would probably be about as enthused as someone saying here's a remixed Beatles CD, using sounds from only their own songs to enhance the sound, give it a listen...

This is what happened. And it's amazing. Yes, you heard me right. The cd, Love, created by Sir George Martin and Giles Martin for the benefit of Cirque du Soleil, has actually pulled it off. As i listen, i can't help but being blown away by the scope of the project and the work that must have gone into it. First, that it was even attempted. Second that it really works.

It is not necessarily the Beatles part that interests me though. So let's take that away for a moment if we can.

What is most interesting is how many of us will know every sound that is played, even if we don't remember exactly which song it came from out of its original context. And while we might have an emotional, even nostalgic connection to each sound, here we are presented with fragments, so that now those connections are overlapping and butting up to other emotional nostalgic connections.

What happens when subtle pieces of dancing in the living room at age six, butts up with a note of being strung out at a rave watching the sun come up in college, overlapped by the glare of watching your mom sob at the news that Lennon has been killed? I exaggerate, however, because those moments don't overlap, but the tones do. And this works with the Beatles so well, because these songs, whether we liked them or not, were drilled into so many of our heads.

I have always been fascinated with memory and time working like a light beaming into an attic through a crack in the wall. Shards of moments past and maybe even future, and entire histories sewn into our identities are highlighted and reflected onto each other, aligning to create their own whole.

I am reminded of how ants find their way back to the entrance of their hill by recording an image of the elements surrounding their home when they face the entrance. This way they move in circles around the hill until all of those surrounding elements fit the image they have stored and they know they are in the right place and can walk straight to the entrance. It is only that one combination that will work.

For me, this is how good painting works, and what an artist is really doing when we do this thing we do. Re-arranging. Finding combinations presented to us br the crack in the wall... a shape, a line, a quality of light, a color. Reconnecting memories (in and out of time), perspectives, and emotion to find a certain combination that will unlock a door or even return us to center.