Halloween Music Adventures

 

Happy Halloween to everyone! I've always liked this holiday. I enjoyed leading a Halloween themed music activity with a group at Access Arts here in Charlottesville.   We sang some fun songs like the theme song to, "Addams Family," "Love Potion No 9," "Monster Mash."  We also played a game I used to play years ago as a child. We called it "Statue." This is a group of us would dance to a record (vinyl in those days!) and someone would take the needle off the record to stop the music. When the music stopped, we all had to freeze in to a statue pose. Then go back to dancing after the needle was placed back on the record. How funny to remember those days! We played this game with the song, "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. Who can not get a thrill out of that spooky laughter at the end by Vincent Price?

We also did a Halloween madlib song. Madlibs are where you take out the main nouns, verbs, adjectives and fill them in with new words. So for example, we used the song "You Are My Sunshine." I asked for a Halloween noun with two syllables. They picked, "mummy." An adjective to replace "happy" was "ghostly." A verb replacing "love" was "scream." so here is the first verse of You Are My Mummy"

"You are my mummy,  my only mummy

you make me ghostly when pumpkins are purple

you'll never howl dear how much I scream you

please don't take my mummy away. "

Things got pretty silly there but it was fun. As a child, I was scared of vampire and mummy movies. My older sister would tease me. One night I begged my parents to let me stay up later to watch, "Creature Features, " (who remembers this?) But as soon as the theme song came on, I decided it was too scary. I then said, "I am so tired.. I want to go to sleep now. " My sister said, "You are SCARED!!" I said I was not !!  In the end, I had to watch some of it lest my sister think I was a coward. 

Having said all of this, I am hoping Halloween this year will be a safe and fun one for the young and young at heart. I know last years' was not so fun with Covid raging. I know we have been seeing some improvement this year. 

The collage above was a piece I did for Halloween that I donated to a local nursing home. They had no art in their dining room. After Halloween is over, I plan to alter it for Thanksgiving and keep it up! 

Hope you are all well and happy! Thanks for stopping by! 

Autumn musings

 

Happy Autumn season to you! I really like the fall, how about you? For me the fall is a more contemplative time and a time of harvesting seeds planted in the spring. So, let's see about things I planted. 

For me my art has become a "thing." I have been doing some music themed art like the one pictured above. This collage will be donated to The Front Porch (local roots music school) new location. I have more I will be giving to them. I am excited to know that these artistic musings will be seen and enjoyed by the community. 

Other thing going on... I have been going through some old classical guitar repertoire I used to play and bringing back some of the pieces. One of them is "Classical Gas" by Mason Williams. That is one of my favorite guitar pieces of all time. It came into my life when I was 10 years old and there was a lot of change going on. My parents divorced, my mother remarried and we moved from the only home I knew all within the time frame of less than 2 years. "Classical Gas" was a song that got me through these changes. I know we all have important songs that are part of our life soundtrack. I learned to play Classical Gas about 20 years ago and somehow it faded from my repertoire. It is back now and it is like having an old friend return to my life. A great feeling!

I also went and stayed at Shenandoah National Park with my sister and did a lot of hiking and thinking and musing about life. I am excited for October to come because I have some ideas of things I want to bring back into my life. I will tell you all about that when that time comes!

In the meantime, I want to show you another collage I did this month pictured here. It is probably my favorite one of all. I think my next piece will also be with horses. Hope you enjoy and that you are all well and happy.