PHILIP TOWNSEND REMEMBERED

The Beatles and the Maharishi 1967 –Philip Townsend

“The Beatles and Maharishi at the Meditation Centre, Abbotsbury Road, Kensington. After this meeting, they went to the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane, where Maharishi gave a lecture. These shots for Beatle purists were taken before they went to Wales or India. The shot of all the fabs, partners and road crew is interesting as it is one of the few with the whole lot in one snap.

The photographs are exclusive as I was the only photographer there. I had been asked by the holy man’s Public Relations agent to take them but they failed to pay, me therefore I own the copyrights.”

What I love is every Beatle has a distinctive expression at the meeting. Note John contrasted with Paul.

Gallery Loulou 2008

Philip arrived from London late in the evening. We met him at La Posada Resort Hotel. He did not stop smiling and chuckling in spite of his lost luggage, and a twelve-hour flight. His photographs had arrived and were already placed when we invited him into the gallery. Again, a resonating joyous outburst, ” Oh, it’s lovely, marvelous, just marvelous.” He was tall, lanky, and at seventy-something majestically youthful. We spent hours together over the next week. He loved when I made him a cup of Tea, the bumpy New Mexico road trips we planned, and the dinners. The slightest bit of congeniality towards him was returned with a pat or a hug and kiss. Opening night was a sensational tribute to a prince of a man.

What

SANTA FE-WINE & CHILI FESTIVAL, A MEMORY LIKE CEMENT.

April 15, 2023June 1, 2023 ~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

THE MEMORIES are fading, like images floating through a mist, not just of Dodger but the life pre-break-up, a carousal of my favorite places; swimming, hiking, running, new restaurants, gallery openings, shopping, concerts, clubs, dancing in the street and our porch parties, but I cannot remember the state of grateful, emerging in the vortex of sensations, stimulation, surprise.

Do we ever return to that kind of forever spectrum, as if it will never end, and then it does, and we cannot go back. It’s not too late to feel grateful, fortunate, and lucky to have lived so many acts of my choice.

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GASLIGHTING AND RECOVERY

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He’s digging my grave
For the dragon he pays
With our nest, now shaved
Tumbling into the abyss
I visit the comfort robes of the past
Monogrammed in stone

The will to relive what’s past comes at night

And must be excluded by daylight.

Of HUMAN BONDAGE

The sky hasn’t decided if it will let clouds overturn the sun, and I haven’t decided if I will pack the stack of books on the floor. No, I don’t feel the drive to lift and organize, my bed is warm and the house is not as warm.

I brought my coffee and peanut butter and honey toast upstairs, on a tray, I happen to collect trays, reminiscent of times when women ate breakfast in bed. Propped upright, I explored a movie about uneven love, tragedy, and resurrection. Of Human Bondage lit my taste, featuring Bette Davis and Leslie Howard. —– FILM MADE IN 1930 IN GRISLY BLACK & WHITE. Uneven love.
Days now remind me of reading 1984 in high school, and Fahrenheit 451 on film. We did evolve from a simplistic, hand-carved culture, built on rebars of freedom to a house full of furniture, relics, gadgets, screens, gates, and beeps. The beeps for me, make me jumpy, not seductively strolling around my apartment lighting candles in peace. I really do shimmy every time I hear the beep.
I chose Sunday to shut down all communication with the mainland, take the longest bath I can stand, and write. I need a rest, like a chaise lounge on a spacious veranda with honeysuckle, wisteria, and lavender, and then a mile away is the ocean, let me swim again.

I feel artists, and their works are not featured in the media, or maybe it’s because my scrolling is stuck on the essentials of living. In times of war, people must have known, see it now or never. Over two million working artists in the country, so google says, and when was the last time you discussed it at dinner, with anyone. I haven’t, and I don’t know why? Pop-up thoughts on life.

MOODY BLUES TUESDAY

December 9, 2022December 17, 2022 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Writing somberly so if you’re not in a dreary mood, skip reading. Somber writing is akin to writer’s block. It’s not a block really more like a disregard of hallelujah holidays, maybe. Disinterest in shopping, village festivals, parties, writing, dancing, and eating. If I place all the options on a puzzle board, this leads to the center. The vortex of discontent is a punctured life.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

A fractured life impacts emotional posture and is not unlike physical posture. We slump or stand tall. We love instead of neutralizing, we are inspired instead of stagnant, we romance our passions and we live to love. My heart is at the starting gate to love again, but the racetrack is missing. I’m undercover. I watch Blacklist or some foreign film in the evening. Most weekdays I’m circulating between finance, selling furnishings online, and writing.

The windows of my home reflect the splendor of nature that plays all day long in the winter. I’m spending more time watching sky stage plays: clouds still, clouds moving, colliding, changing colors, sculpted into aberrations of animals and faces, than cognitive thinking. The scenery is accompanied by my collection of records and CDs. Thank you to all my musician friends for the gift of mood enhancement. When I’m sorrowful I listen to Ennio Morricone, when I need a lift, Vivaldi, Sundays it is Turandot or some other Opera, and when I’m a go-go girl, Swing, Salsa or The Stones, when I feel alone, Sarah Vaughn, Nancy Wilson, and Etta James, for writing inspiration Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Annie Lenox .

I don’t see any remedy commercials for a fractured heart. By tomorrow the despair could vanish, like the rain that puddled us for the last two weeks. Everything I’ve experienced is good in the beginning. So, to begin the beginning, I’m going to listen to Begin the Beguine.

“Begin the Beguine” is a popular song written by Cole Porter. Porter composed the song between Kalabahi, Indonesia, and Fiji during a 1935 Pacific cruise aboard Cunard’s ocean liner Franconia. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee, produced at the Imperial Theatre.

http://vadebailes.blogspot.com/2012/01/beguine.html Word press changed the writing tools and they don’t make any sense. This is Fred Astaire and Jane Powell.

One of those needing mommy days

December 4, 2022 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

KNPR INTERVIEW

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https://knpr.org/knpr/2011-05/luellen-smiley

My first interview on Dad, when I listen now it reminds me how liberating it was to talk about my family history.

KNPR.ORG

Luellen Smiley

Luellen Smiley is the daughter of reputed mobster, Allen Smiley. Smiley’s dad was a close friend and confidant of famous Las Vegas mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and he was sitting on the couch just feet away from Siegel the night he was murdered. While Luellen Smiley hadn’t been born at the time o…

https://knpr.org/knpr/2011-05/luellen-smiley?fbclid=IwAR2YLsL-1RUSFQdjTtbrLmoVZXC29SF9ek8goQH95onmH3h1guo8Q8dv8fw

WHY LIE

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When do we begin to lie about our life our feelings, our fears, our everything? I ask this because of simple observation, knowing when someone is not telling me their truth and I remain silent, it’s not my way to ask, why do you lie to me? My friends are not lying, it’s more like a social cultural mask. My wise father once told me ‘Tell them your sister or father just died, and they’ll respond, excellent because they do not want to hear your problems.’ But I do, I’ve always wanted to know the truth. Why should we shield our traumas and hardship, more than our triumphs and accomplishments? Do you know who does not lie? ART and SPORTS. That is why we listen to music, read books, go to galleries and museums, films, the theater, and ballet or other dance performances. I cannot comment on sports because I’m not a spectator although I do love basketball.

We, and I mean this in only a visceral sense, do not believe the politicians, news, social media, or advertisements. We want to, but deep in our inner truth, we know it is the manipulation of our individual thoughts. And that my friends is why I trust art to deepen my understanding of the human condition. Thank you to all the artists and athletes who share their pain and glory.

WHAT IS A LOVE STREAM

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TWO EMBANKMENTS WEDGED BETWEEN A STREAM

THAT RIPPLES THE UK TO THE USA.

WHAT FALLS BETWEEN THE MEANDERING

USHERS GENTLE WAVES, LOVING CARESSES

SMASHES WHEN THE WAVES ARE EVIDENT.

SOAR TO BRING THEIR STREAM TO REST

TO FIND THE BEST

BELIEVING EXIST AND DESTINY FLOW

THEY DON’T KNOW

IF THE STREAM WILL ENTWINE

ENSNARE OR EMBRACE

EMBANKMENTS MEANT TO SHOULDER

UNTIL THEY ‘VE FOUND EACH OTHER

WHERE WERE YOU ON 9/11 AND HOW DID YOU FEEL ON 9/12 2001 AND 9/12/2022???

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Paper deaths mounting in pages written

By authors and reporters

On the day of bloodshed twenty-one years after

The morning news

Around the world

That our Towers fell on innocence; walking, living, twirling the streets of Manhattan.

Tears are shed in buckets of smoke between the sheets of death

The men and women that died shine through the wicked divide

Of hatred and love

Flames of courage cape first responders, and unknown heroes

Photo by Iarlaith McNamara on Pexels.com

Beaming down every morning

On tables arranged by nations and religions

In the homes of Democrats and Republicans

United tears all of these years.

Months turn over on calendars

New episodes and reality shows

Graduation and separation

Replaced furnishings and

Sketches of a vacation

Events the rest of us chatter up in coffee houses

While the stories of nine-eleven lay today in the headlines

On newsstands

In the windows of memory

Never forget

April Fools Putin

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April 1, 2022

The latest poll on our opinion about NUCLEAR WAR revealed that seventy-five percent of us are worried about NUCLEAR WAR.

April 1, 2022 Day 34

Listening to the news on and off today to collate my life with Ukraine. My tasks and routines are dismissed or performed fecklessly. Just now at four-thirty pm, a splash of the sun touched down to give me a moment to sit on the porch and let the warmth saturate through my gloves and coat.

I’m looking at the magnificent great great grandfather spruce tree across the street. A ballet wind fan is blowing the branches as if they are in toe shoes. Nature granulates humanity. We don’t live for thousands of years like rocks, rivers, oceans, mountains, waterfalls, and trees. Then I think of the Ukrainians, they will survive. I watched three hours of news today. The longevity and persistence of nature emulates the Ukrainian heart and spirit. My dice, cards, everything is on their winning this war.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS OR SOLITUDE

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IT’S CALLED NON-CONVENTIONAL but on our own personal level, if you fall in that broad culture and it is a unique and historically significant tribe, especially in the arts and the military. Artists skip from creating to counting change, very few make a comfortable living. The Military are more unconventional than any other profession. I’ve tried to imagine choosing to fight our wars knowing I could be shot or tortured.

Do you think that not choosing the basics: family, friends and a comfortable living are enough? They are, now I know that.

How did this become my spotlight, like a bulb that flickered and whispered, you thought you knew more. Well, I didn’t and now I am adapting my fictional life to nonfiction. Beginning with: relinquishing luxuries, vacations, replacing outdated or broken furnishings, buying my favorite designer garments, and most important a monthly budget. Now instead of withdrawing from my savings account, I am depositing. Friends and family pose a more rigorous effort to the depts. I’m a loner. There is nothing glamorous or mystifying about this stain at least not for me, more like solitude for longer periods of time.

Photo by Philip Townsend. London 1964

As I watch and hear the interviews of Veterans, Gold Star Families, Military groups, former Iraq and Afghanistan Marines, Army, The Navy and Airforce, and the ones left behind because their hero was killed have one knot that holds them together, and it is their family, their comrades in arms and friends.

It’s raining, the tiniest little drops, like new bourns. The sky is a saddened muted white gray, like it’s in mourning. Hoagie Carmichael is singing Two Little People, simple lines that rhyme. Without music, and I don’t listen as much as I did a month ago, I’d be in bed today, it is a day for music medics to carry my pen where it sinks.

I was selfish, spoiled, and myopic, now I am awake to eternal gratefulness for being born American.

Trying not to watch the news as my heart needs a reprieve from Afghanistan. I’ve never appreciated, honored, respected, and loved our Military more these past two weeks. Do you know that feeling? What happens next? Eventually this presses to a USA attack.

Buck up guys and dolls and be a civilian soldier.

WORK IN PROGRESS ON MAURICE

June 12, 2021June 23, 2021 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

HOME IN SOLANA BEACH

1930’s

Looking west to a smear of dusty crimson sunlight, a young man of twenty stood on the shoulder of Highway 66 waiting to hitch a ride. A powder blue Cadillac pulled up and the lad was caught in a puff of loose gravel. When the dust settled, a woman dressed in a two piece matching suit leaned over from the driver’s seat.
“Say fella, can you drive one of my cars to California? I’ll pay the expenses,” she yelled out the window. Another Cadillac pulled up next to hers with a jerk stop.
The lad stared into the shine of the car. It looked like wet paint and he was tempted to touch it.
“Sure will, yep I’ll do that. Should I get in now?” The young man answered.
“I need to see your driver’s license.” She added.
The man hastily drew out his license from a dusty plastic cover inside his billfold. She looked it over, and smiled. “All right Maurice, keep in close to us on the road, don’t get lost. We’re going far as Needles.”
Maurice held tight to the steering wheel, ‘Geez, ain’t this great, what a car. I’m going all the way from Nebraska to California in a Cadillac.’ He’d forgotten about the sharp pains of hunger, and bloody sores on his feet. Now he was sitting on warm leather seats, with the cold night air off his back, and ten dollars in his pocket.

Sixty five years later, I’m walking down the street where Maurice lives. We haven’t met yet. I don’t meet my neighbors. I move before I have a chance to care about them. It comes easy to me, being a loner. Then I met Maurice.