Foo Pup

We've been trying to figure out what this. It's cast ceramic, and the glaze appears to be in the deliberately imperfect Japanese style known as Wabi Sabi. And it certainly is cute ("Kawaii"), so that also suggests that it was made in Japan, whatever it is.

I'm going to make a wild and completely non-academic guess, based on no evidence at all: this piece of ceramic art is a young, immature version of what is commonly called a Foo (or Fu) Dog, also known as a Guardian Lion in China.

Here's a large and apparently grown up Foo Dog / Lion guarding the main entrance to a fairly big house or possibly a temple:

A much smaller white Foo stands guard atop our piano:

No doubt that when they get older, Foos become fiercer and even scary looking, and that's probably a large part of their appeal as spiritual guardians of the material world. But I'd be just as happy if our little Foo Pup never grows up, and stays as cute as he or she is today.

Here are a couple more photos of the Foo Pup:

 

From Within The Imminent Grove: Track 2: Sakura Falling Onto Snow

 

One year ago, in March of 2020, I went into Kyle Everett's Robotboy Records studio in Eugene to start a recording project. The original plan was to do a few demos, translating what there was inside my head into at least some form of basic song structure, and take them home to listen and see which tracks had potential to expand upon and eventually build up into something more than just an idea.

And then the plague hit, and a lot of plans had to be put on hold, for a lot of people. Before the studio closed for the duration of the pandemic, we had five solid song demos with basic guitar + beat + vocals, recorded over two relaxed four hour sessions. Any of those could have been morphed into a completed song with the addition of more instrumentation, and there was also a sixth sketch track of a germinal sci-fi folk tune.

Last summer, after seeing that things weren't going to return to normal anytime soon, I put together a home recording setup in a quiet upstairs bedroom, and began learning how to record, edit, and mix on my own. For a guy whose concept of hi-tech is assembling and blowing up high compression air cooled VW engines and designing and building tube amps made to be detonated - both 1920s level technology - working with 21st century digital recording was a steep learning curve, but the journey was more fun than not.

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Note: There should be an embedded YouTube vid below, with the song Sakura Falling Onto Snow, but if you're reading this on a phone or iPad, it's probably not there, Google only knows why. Here's a direct link to the song on YouTube.

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Sakura Falling Onto Snow was little more than a sketch of a song last March, and none of its previously recorded demo tracks were kept. Since that time the key has risen two steps and the melody evolved, the tempo slowed a few bpm and new words written, and gradually a somewhat different song emerged from what was once a string of Haikus held together by a guitar pretending to be a Koto.

As of now, Sakura Falling Onto Snow is a work in progress, more than simply a demo version, yet not quite complete. You may notice there is no bass line to complement the lowest pitched wooden drum, and eventually it would be great to have another solo instrument added to the bamboo flute - perhaps a Koto or a violin.

If you do decide to honor this humble song with a listen, please consider doing so with headphones or some sort of speaker system besides the tiny ones in a phone, in order to get into the spirit in which it was, and continues to be, created.

 

Sakura Falling Onto Snow

Words and music by James Aoyama

Copyright 2021

For Kaede, Audrey, and Takeo

 

Basic tracks recorded at home with vintage gear

Remix, mastering, and additional tracks recorded by Kyle Everett at Robotboy Records, Eugene, Oregon: https://www.robotboyrecords.com/

 

James Aoyama: guitars, vocals, bamboo flutes, intro synthesizer

Kyle Everett: DX7 synth and percussion

Taiko drums by Jim and Kyle

Thanks and credit due to the memory of science fiction and fantasy goddess Ursula K. Le Guin for the title of the collection, "From Within The Imminent Grove".

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Contact James at aoyamajim@gmail.com

One Evening At The East Rim Of Lake Abert, August 1973

Mark and Blue

One evening at the east rim of Lake Abert. Lake county, Oregon; August, 1973. Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super rangefinder; Kodacolor, ASA 80, 1/50s at f8.

1957 International Travelall

Billy on the High Ground

You Haul

There's a story here, of course, and an adventure: Almost 2,500 miles of mountains and forests and desert and prairies. An indestructible 1957 International Travelall, with a dog named Blue in the back seat, pulling a trailer full of guitars, drums and amps, three down sleeping bags and hardly any luggage. Friendly folks along the way, and diners serving breakfast all day. 3mph on a rutted dirt road in granny low gear over the Continental Divide. And beer, lots of beer.

Un Jour à La Pointe de Fermin, 1973

Un jour à La Pointe de Fermin, Saint Pierre, avec Jacques Victor Humble III, 23 mai 1973. Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super télémètre (rangefinder), Kodacolor, ASA 80, 1/50s à f5.6.

101.8º Fever Two Hour Collage Challenge

"Happy Service Animals"

* Note: The following blog post was written in May of 2019. In it I somewhat humorously describe what at the time felt like a seriously life-threatening experience. However, for many others who came down with that same strain of the influenza virus last year, it was no laughing matter - indeed, between 30,000 and 60,000 in this country alone would never laugh again. This year's new and novel super virus is at this moment hitting the world like a modern-day Black Death plague, and it's all many of us can do on a daily basis to hold off fear and panic, and continue living our lives secure in some knowledge of, and hope for, a happy and productive future. As I write this, on Friday, April 3rd, 2020, our family is getting ready to celebrate the 20th birthday of our shining son, Take-o (nickname Tayo).

About a month ago I came down with a bad case of the deadly Influenza. The same disease that caused so much misery and tragedy in the early 20th Century, depopulating many towns throughout the US, it's still with us today. But now, we know how to deal with it, and very few people ultimately die as a result of contracting the ever mutating virus.

And no, it's not because of the "flu" vaccines that local supermarkets are happy to inject into you. Read the fine print on the label, and hidden in all the legalese jargon, it not so clearly states that the vaccine doesn't actually prevent contracting influenza, the manufacturer never specifically made any claims that it did, and you have no basis for any legal action or recourse whatsoever in case you sicken and die, so go talk to your own personal savior, amen.

What we actually do know now, that we didn't in 1918, is that the most efficacious method of recovery is to stay hydrated, and get plenty of rest in a clean and quiet place. So that's what I did, and it's hard to believe how many hours one can sleep through the course of a day when you have a fever over 101 degrees.

After almost three days of that, I felt well enough to sit at the kitchen table, and have a cup of soothing tea, while looking out at the springtime garden. There was a bundle of mail, and while going through it, a bunch of loose advertisements fell onto the table - stuff from a farm and ranch store, a couple pizza joints, an insurance agency, a store specializing in really crappy quality tools, a mail order cigar shop...

It was all so colorful laying there in a random mess; it was hard to stop staring at that cheerful pile of paper. It's been said that often, the most effective and compelling art is made during states of mental imbalance (or a short lifetime of it, like Van Gogh or Schubert). In my still feverish mind, I thought it would be fun to set myself an art challenge: What can be created from a very limited palette of material, in a very limited time, such as two hours?

I found a pair of scissors, a glue stick, and a sheet of blank printer paper, and got to "work". In spite of my best efforts, including making quick and imprecise cuts, the clock went about five minutes over, by the time the project felt done. So technically, I lost the self imposed challenge, but gained a strange and weird collage. It's the second collage I've done; the first was about a hundred years ago in a college art class. Since it's the product of a feverish (and thus unbalanced) mind, it must be art.

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Here's a link to a fine web (and print) magazine devoted to the art of collage: "kolaj". It's made and curated by real collage artists (unlike, let's say, a random half-crazed guy hopped up on chamomile tea), and features the work of today's best and brightest practitioners of the artform.