Get Back What You Lost!

By L.Phelps

i log on to my computer, i start my iTunes, i search in the iTunes store for the latest release from my favorite band… and before i know it, i am listening to the new album.

Yet somehow i feel empty. i feel like i have somehow missed out on the part of music that now seems so… forgotten.

Gone are the days that i went to the record store at midnight, waiting in lines to get the latest release. Gone are the days that i anxiously listened to the radio in the hopes that i would hear the newest single. Gone are the days that i cracked open the plastic of a new CD and spent days and days listening to it… over and over and over again.

These days, i search, i download, i shuffle, i sync, i skip. i… i… i…

i somehow end up missing out on the magic of music. i miss having the experience. i miss having something tangible. i can’t be the only one.

Vinyl Art gives us back something that we’ve lost. It gives us back what we lost when music went digital.

The high gloss shine of the tiny grooves in the record make me giddy for the first time in years. I feel connected to the music again. I feel like I have something special. I feel satisfied I feel.

Thank God.

Direct

Things are happening! Just now 2 people stopped in front of our house to get flyers at the same time. We're going to sell it. I know it. We've finally decided on the general area we're looking at in southern California as well.

So my art is doing well too, which is good for the transition to supporting my family with it. Yep. And it's happening the way I like it, unexpectedly.

Neil Young for a repeat customer in Italy as a Christmas gift.

Jimi Hendrix for an upcoming super-cool exhibition in a corporate gallery in NYC of 24 of my pieces, replacing the Hendrix that just sold as a birthday gift to the bass player in an extremely big important prog-metal band who's friends with a waiter at the restaurant in Pacific Palisades displaying 20 other of my pieces through the holidays.

Frank Zappa for a surprise gift to my parents neighbor, a guitarist in another seriously cool important band.

I need to be direct because Abbey is about to wake up. And I need to be direct with my art, selling to the customer, to the music people. A unique method for a unique offering.

Peace.

Hello iWorld!

That's what I typed first publicly using my new toy, err tool. I got an iPhone!

So if you've been wondering where I've been, there's your answer. This thing, which I'm using to compose this post, is amazing. Life changing isn't an overstatement. From superfluously fun functions like a level and an Etch-a-Sketch to crazy helpful portability of functions like Twitter and email, the possible uses of this thing are endless and ever increasing. Apps like Y! Music have been updated even since I got mine to work better. Customizable radio anywhere. All your music on the iPod. Books in the Amazon Kindle app. High quality video easily shareable.

That's the most impressive aspect I think. How easy and interconnected the functions can be and then shared. I can take time-lapse photos of a painting and share them with a myriad of options and then converse with people watching and then send PayPay invoices and buy items on eBay. Switching between apps is so easy and they remember where you were last as well. I can read Twitter forwards now chronologically because it holds my position in the stream. It remembers what page you're on in a book and what song was playing on the iPod. Man, I could go on and on. And have in discovering what it can do.

Oh yeah. And it's a phone.

Peace.

Closet Collector

No, that doesn't mean I collect closets. It means I collect in the dark. In the depths.

Anything. Everything.

It's been thanks to my wife that I live in an organized and navigable home, with a reprioritized life. Seriously. If I showed you a picture of my room as a teenager... archaelogical layers going back through school with a path only to the window and stereo.

What it means also, though, is that I value objects for their own sake, for their place in a group of similar things comprising a set, for their own intrinsic connection to everything and everybody that came together to produce them.

Records, I celebrate with my Vinyl Art.

Books, I'm starting to present with my Liter(art)ure, my drawings in books. http://literarture.info

A simple start, with just a phone number and link to the posts on this blog about the pieces I've done. I'm very excited to gradually work through the practical "affordable and portable" matters that will allow me to sell them. We'll see. I know some pretty nutty book people.

I know collectors.

Peace.

Zen in the Art of

I've been pondering the word 'art' of late. Its scope. It's not just cultural creativity or artifacts. It's way WAY more. It's what happens when you've found internal peace and balance.

Bradbury, one of my literary heroes, the author who signed a copy of a book of his for me that I treasure, and who I haven't done a piece of Liter(art)ure for partly because I hesistate to take a copy of one of his books I love out of circulation, wrote "Zen in the Art of Writing". Zen in the Art...

That's the ticket! I realized that just last week. When you find that moment, that repeated space and time that gives you peace, that puts you in harmony with the Universe, that's what you do, why you are here. You've found the Zen in the Art of it. You're creating art with Life.

Now this is in contrast to creating artifacts, which is more technically what my paintings are. They are pieces of art. Not works. I don't like the word works in this case.

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"If it's work, stop it and do something else."

An Evening with Ray Bradbury 2001
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They are pieces of art created as an artifact of my creation of art.

This probably sounds froo-froo or overly metaphysical, but I really do think we all can find our art, and with it, our moment of Zen.

Once you've found that. Well.

Peace.