L'avenue du sommeil

l'avenue du sommeil
Originally uploaded by christing-O-

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.

Alan Alda (1936-) Actor, Director, Screenwriter

Sophie Lumen Has Moved:

Feed the Beauty

Meanwhile, beauty feeding continues...

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, to think quietly, talk gently, act grandly; to listen to the stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden, and unconscious grow up through the common.”

William Ellery Channing

Two blogs under transition

It feels like I'm changing offices, shuffling papers, files, desks, art on the walls-- you get it.  By next week I'll be settled in.  I am starting to work on a new project, an ebook:

Feed the Beauty~The Art of Aging. 

The text at the upper right corner of this blog gives an overview of what we will be creating--this is a collaboration of women.  I want to know and see how you are thinking, feeling, creating the space in which you are aging. I want to listen, staring with myself.

One of the Listening Women from Feed the Beauty~White Rose

Lotus

Tarab and the voice of Umm Kulthum

I have listened to Umm's voice many times in my studio. But I did not know about tarab until I listened to a recent NPR show (links and quotes below-emphasis mine).

Tarab is "a unique quality of Arab music that translates best to the word enchantment. 


Part of tarab is the idea that listeners are as important as singers; that there's a powerful, spiritual exchange between them that is crucial to the performance."


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124612595
More on "The Voice of Egypt" on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90326836

"For words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the Soul within."

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In Memoriam A.H.H., V

Feeding the Muse

An hour after I spoke to a Hospice volunteer group on Thursday, we drove to SeaTac and flew to the Southwest to visit dear friends. We listened to a different set of birds and looked at rock formations.  And the sky, it is big and pink with sand, infused with fine, dry air. 

I feed the beauty of my art muse in the Northwest where I live like a monk, a cave dweller of sorts.
I create out of my inner life and visions, pulling inspiration from what I look at, read,  listen to and pray for here. In my studio cave under big cedars and firs.

This weekend I experienced why artists and other creatives travel to feed their beauty.  I did not think I needed to do this, but now I believe otherwise.

RedRock NV, Sophie