Four Fives For Tuesday; Thoughts on Art & Music

Here we are! Another day, minute, hour and second of life that we were not promised and are very fortunate to see. What a blessing!

I am still amazed that the year is going by so quickly, that the weather in NYC has been so cold lately and that Thanksgiving is not only next week but, we have a little over 50 days until 2018 makes its welcome into our lives. How crazy is that? But thank God, for blessing us to see these exciting times.

And just as any other day, writing seems to just flow out of me like blood from a wound. Mama Kat posts these cool prompts every week on her website and I felt like joining in because it was an interesting one and hopefully you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed populating the information in this post which is like an introduction of sorts to who I am. Maybe some of these things will be similar to the way that you think. 

Five Things That You Might Not Know About Me

1. I love Shakespeare and everything he writes. I have loved him ever since a high school professor of mine made us memorize and recite a monologue from his play “Hamlet.” I loved him so much that I started to notice his language; so much that one day when reading the King James Bible, I noticed how Elizabethan the language in it was and after doing research, came to find out that Shakespeare was one of the translators of it. 

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Knickerbocker Classics)

I love "Romeo & Juliet," "Taming of the Shrew," still can recite the monologue from "Hamlet" word for word today and I consider his sonnets to be a template of how to write a song. The first 8 lines are the verse and the last two are the chorus. I love the way he wrote; beautiful works!  

2. Amel Larrieux has become my favorite singer. I love everything she sings and have every single one of her albums including from when she was in the group Groove Theory. I have seen her in concert four times and really enjoy the way she sings her songs. MY favorite song by her is “Even If” off of her first solo project Infinite Possibilties. There was a time when I would spend my evening singing all of her songs from every album to the four corners of my basement. Her sound is very unique and I love what she can do with her voice.

3. Aladdin is one of my favorite movies and though it is a cartoon movie, I can sit and watch it on any day or time, laugh, cry and sing along to every song that is featured in the movie. I never grow tired of it and watch it anytime it is on television and also have the DVD to it. Great classic animated film.

 

Aladdin (Two-Disc Set DVD, Special Edition,2004) English/French/Spanish

4. I was working as a choir director at Mt Moriah Baptist Church in Harlem, NY over the youth. It was interesting for me because I always wanted to work with kids and with music. The dilemma was reaching through to the kids. I came from a Roman Catholic background and I loved hymns. Still do. But, the kids did not like it so much. Every week I would come in with one of my favorite hymns and they said, “I don’t like that one miss Stephanie,” and every week I would leave crying. Then one week, I decided to no longer leave crying. I set a goal to create my own music to share with them and using Cakewalk Sonar software and my Korg Triton LE Music Workstation, I created my first ever collection of works of music. It was an album of Christian works featuring 14 tracks: intro, outro, two interludes and ten full length songs.

I Know is just one of them created for this project to teach the kids songs that I thought they’d like. Turned out that NYC bassist Ozzie Jones Jr liked my bass line on the song so much that he plugged into my system and did some live bass overdubs over it and the song was created. You can check out that tune here: https://soundcloud.com/stephanay-jnote/stephanay-jnotes-tracks-1

By the way, yes, I did meet my deadline and had a cd for every kid ready to give them with a bag of other goodies for Christmas. I worked night and day until the production was completed which was on Christmas eve of that year with cases, cd covers with photos, artwork on each cd and a track listing on the back. “I Know” is the only song I have shared publicly from it with anyone else.

5. I used to think that Miles Davis was mute because I saw this recording of a concert he did years ago and he did not speak to the crowd at all. He had his back turned to them most of the time. I didn’t understand his demeanor until when doing my college thesis and came across his autobiography where he spoke about being a student at Julliard and ideologies. I also read a few articles where he was interviewed and spoke about his views about society, jazz, racism and being accepted into segregated establishments only to provide a service.  Then I saw a video that was presented on Youtube of an interview where he actually had dialogue and that cleared up everything. I fell in love with who he was after reading his autobiography and he became one of my favorite jazz musicians of all times. I was excited to hear that there was a movie out about his life but decided not to see it because I was told that many of the aspects that I found interesting about him as an individual in this society that were featured in his autobiography were not included in the film and instead, the movie was based on the rumoresque side of his life.

 

Miles

Five Things I Am Knowledgeable About

1. Video Editing

2. Cakewalk Sonar

3. Live Musical Stage Performing

4. The Culture of Jazz

5. Composing

Five Things I Know Nothing About

1. Snapchat

2. House of Cards

3. Playing a horn

4. Driving in NYC without getting an attitude

5. Iphone 7 and up

Five Things I Believe

1. Christmas is the best holiday of the year and the best season is autumn because of all the beautiful colors and fashion designs made for it. 

2. A broken language does not mean that a people bastardized though they were forced to learn it. It means that they used their intellect to be able to effectively communicate in a language that was never theirs to begin with

3. Every hour of the day is rush hour because everybody has become so impatient lately. It seems like the more electronic and fast processing information becomes, the attention span of people and their ability to wait even for a second is too long. I think soon all positions where humans interact with each other personally will dwindle down and everything will be online without any real human interaction

4. God is the source of all my strength and the strength of all my life. Without him I’d be nothing. I can lean on him and through his faith, I do not have to worry about too much because he always provides a way; even out of no way.

5. I have a great library of music featured on Spotify that you definitely should check out and add to your music playlists here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WUF7BBajYlCVnn4phqIeU

Your Turn

Care to share? I would love to know some things about you that might be similar or different. What are five things that would surprise people to know about you?

Thank you for reading my post and thank you for sharing your thoughts. God bless! 

One Skein At A Time

The art and love of crocheting took root in my heart and grew into love about a decade ago when I was sick and in bed with the mumps. I didn’t want to accept the truth that my perfect attendance record was going to be tarnished suddenly because I was caught up in the fire of an ailment. But it was becoming evident all around me that the contagious thing that took over me, was going to leave me bed-ridden and home until it withered away.  

What was an over-active lady supposed to do when so many tasks were clamoring for my attention while I was forced to be in hearty accord with my bed? The answer; rest.

I tried. I slept. I lied in bed with the television on. But I couldn’t alleviate this attachment to the opinion that I needed to be doing something other than. And so, I found something to do to keep me active. 

One Skein At A Time

I took out a crochet needle and started making hats. I saw an old coworker of mine getting crafty with a needle one day and the idea of gauging and skeining gained enormous influence over me. And so, she showed me the basics and thank God she did because as time kept stealing past me as I lied feeling defeated by my sickness, I crocheted and crocheted some more. The art of it enabled me to be at peace with where I was at that moment in time.

Changing the Needle 

Finally I got back on my feet and wanted to test what I made amongst my friends and co-workers. Who knew that I would sell so many of my hats that day that it would leave me convinced that I was supposed to be making hats. I started to enjoy the fruits of my labors even more when I started vending my crafts at street fairs.

At one particular street fair, a man approached me and told me that he wanted some hats for his store located in Greenwich village. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn. He told me he wanted fifty hats. I said that I could have them for him in a week or so. He told me he wanted them by Friday. 

For the next five days until the time of our meeting, I sat up day and night, through my lunch breaks, on the buses and trains and during every free moment I could find, and I crocheted. Friday came and about an hour before our meeting time, I accomplished the fifty, only for him to ask me for fifty more for the following Friday, which provided me with additional time to adjust my sails and do what I was tasked to do and add signature tags to the new set of fifty that would hang in the Greenwich store's window display on West 8th Street.

I don’t crochet as much as I used to anymore, though when the rain and snows take over the New York landscape, I find myself on my couch skeining away. 

I’ve made hats. I've made bags. I've made baby booties. I've made bibs. I once made a queen-sized granny square blanket as a gift for my loved ones. I’ve made ornaments in bulk for baby showers and bridal showers. I have crocheted scarves and dresses and even teddy bears. 

But now with my same heavy hand that I write, it seems as if carpel tunnel is somewhat taking over it with the pain my wrist is anchoring to. But crocheting was a love of mine and still is which is why, I always did it with this joy in my heart that turned into love.

Crocheting Love Songs

Artwork by Ricardo Ricky Jean

When I write songs, I often use my experiences to tumble into the meat of the work. Crocheting was a passion and so it became the subject of a love song I wrote.

The title of the song is “Crocheted” and I moved through every stanza unrestrictedly over the music of Derrick Smith,  with all the aspects of the art of crocheting in mind and turned it into a love song; one skein at a time. 

Please check out my song and video here:  https://youtu.be/kjkGWjqJDvM

P.S.

Check out the website that features  some other things that I have crocheted here: http://melodiaz.0catch.com/hand-made.html

Happy to have vibed with you all. Thank you for reading my blog post.