Life's Surprises and Inherent Humor

Sometimes I'll create, imagining a thing will be kitschy. It surprises me by becoming elegant.

Other times, I'll set out to create an elegant thing and laugh as it becomes kitschy.

Color Psych! Lura Astor
Put the Fizz In  Lura Astor, assemblage detail

Dancing and The Unlived Life and Creativity

bubble kids photo prise 28 avril 2012 Saint-Merri, Paris by bpixel

The following writing is from the book Sylvia Ashton-Warner Teacher 

These are her notes on teaching in New Zealand, the class known as the "infant room". The children are Maori and English.

Published by Simon and Schuster NY 1963, she is known for her work on organic teaching.

The photos are not from the book.
 
Dancing
 
 …. Plato said it was the one complete expression involving the faculties on all levels, spiritual, intellectual and physical. That’s what I think too. Not that I deliberately teach it for that reason. It just happened one bright spring morning when I was playing some Schubert to please no one but myself that a child stood up from his work and began composing a dance, then another, then another, and there it all was. And here it all still is.

Although most of the interpretations come from them, I indulge myself by providing them with a further selection of movements to use as they choose, to supplement their own movements. But I haven’t noticed much of it being used voluntarily in their interpretation of new music. The old story of imposition again.

I never use other than classical music. Not only for my own sake but because it was a classic that brought them to their feet in the first place. So far I have used Schubert, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Brahms and Grieg. But I’m only feeling my way, since my only source of dancing knowledge is from my own dreaming.

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My aim is that a child may be able to create dancing as freely as he draws or writes autobiography or plays. But I haven’t got there yet. (By the time I wrote the book Spinster I had got there. (Lura note: Spinster was made into a film Two Loves starring Shirley MacLaine) Although we place dancing in the output period, we also use it to break any strain of work during the day.

The Unlived Life
It’s all so merciful on a teacher, this appearance of the subjects of an infant room in the creative vent. For one thing, the drive is no longer the teacher’s but the children’s own. And for another, the teacher is at last with the stream and not against it: the stream of children’s inexorable creativeness. As Dr. Jung says, psychic life is a world power that exceeds by many times all the powers of the earth; as Dr. Burrow says, the secret of our collective ills is to be traced to the suppression of creative ability; and as Erich Fromm says, destructiveness is the outcome of the unlived life.

Martha Cooper

there'll be dancing in the streets ... music, sweet music

 

 

 

As a dancer and teacher, I love how Sylvia Ashton-Warner could play classical music but received dancing lessons in her dreams!

Curiosity

Curiosity allows for conversation.

click here for quote

Sky Ablaze with Stars

During genealogy study I read: 
1833 year of the falling stars 

I look it up ...13 Nov 1833:

“From two o'clock until broad daylight, the sky being perfectly serene and cloudless, an incessant play of dazzlingly brilliant luminosities was kept up in the whole heavens."



It was so bright that a newspaper could be read on the street. 

One writer says, "For nearly four hours the sky was literally ablaze."


Mystical Wisp mixed-media by Lura Astor

purple spiders

In a swimming pool an 11 year old girl asked, "What are all those purple lines on your legs?"

Well, I thought, a map of my years on earth. Considering ...

 ... the number of leaps and landings, jumps and choreographed tumbles during 30+ years of dance/performances.

But it was hopping within one square foot of stage, over and over, while the other leg, a la seconde en l'air at waist height, then burst! a round of twirling jetes circling the stage in half backbends ...

... yes, it was that first jete out of the centripetal motion and I could feel my capillaries as the foot landed on earth and spiders of electricity crawled up my leg.

Kinda like that, these maps of our lives, etched on skin and membrane.

Kinda like that, kid.

art: The Gift lastor

It's About Time

make melonade

Ah, Sometimes We Just Gotta Play

I love the little boulder legs.

video: Improv Everywhere / #2 of Movies in Real Life series

Play

'You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.'

 - Plato

to be faster than an angry elephant

Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.                - Michael Pritchard

 












- and from Rules of the Wild, Francesca Marciano:

It was as if the silence of wilderness had seeped into me and had quietened the useless noise of my fear.

The incredible thing was that the more we ran, the more we laughed. We kept holding on to each other, laughing hysterically, like children playing a game. We burst into camp panting and shaking with laughter."

"Huyu, anaweza kukimbia sana," said Lenjo to Adam and the other guys, pointing at me and shaking his head with a smile.

"Of course I can run, what did you think?" I replied jokingly, wiping the sweat from my forehead.

And suddenly I felt victorious. It was fun, after all, to be faster than an angry elephant.

 
































 Train Window: Lura Astor Art

Woman with Baby Elephant: credit unknown
Elephant Reading: credit unknown

a beautiful fix

"What a beautiful fix we are in now; peace has been declared."

- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) after the Treaty of Amiens, 1802

Hold Hands

I honestly don't know if this is true, but the idea provokes thought.

Touch can be a healer. Touch can create empathy. 

Comedian Louis C.K. speaks with Conan *click here* on smartphones. He says it is important that young people are able to look people in the eyes and create empathy, rather than just text and be on a phone/computer. Of course google glasses and others say the phone is going away.

a moment of respite in a cup

The names of the teas were relished and recited:  Gallant Mask of Mirth, Down of the Damask Dove, Lair of the Green Dragon, Wistful Glen of Pewter Fog, Pirouette of the Dancing Cloud, Shy Panda, Lazy Water Lily, Evening Snow Diamonds ...

We were all comfortable by now and began to enjoy ourselves, throwing adjectives and descriptions aorund more confidently. One tea was pungent, alfalfalike, vegetative, wtih a deep nose. Another was rich, mild, elegant, with a lingering sweetness and a liquor color of a pale avocado.

-from The Agony of the Leaves: The Ecstasy of My Life With Tea  
a lovely book by Helen Gustafson, champion of fine tea in America, tea buyer, introduced the art of tea onto Chez Panisse's menu, taught afternoon tea, and enjoyed mis-matched sets of tea cups and saucers
RIP

Lapsang Souchong  by Lura Astor

Exhibit: Reflections: Portraits of the Elderly as They Once Were

A lovely exhibit of photographs of an elder looking at versions of their younger self through the mirror.

What a concept!

Which images of your life would you choose?

click here

photo: Reflections: Portraits of the Elderly as They Once Were

Death * Songs * Solstice Turning

 

Died a million deaths 

Sang a trillion songs

watercolor: Empoire Lura Astor

Vision

The strange thing is that now,
as my vision is less good,
my visions are getting clearer.

-Katharine Hepburn

from I Know Where I'm Going
by Charlotte Chandler





illustration: Visionary? lastor

We Are Exploding Stars

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today.

~ Lawrence Krauss


Star Light Star Bright I Make a Wish Tonight

illustration: Thread Stars Lura Astor
assemblage detail Startle Lura Astor

Paul Hunt for Laughs - Paulette Huntinova

Anyone who has ever done comedy or parody knows that a key is to make your mistakes look so simple. You actually have to be better at what you do in order to make fun of it. Enjoy!

Playful Universe

Those critics are mistaking dullness for depth.

The universe is playful; quantum physics teaches us, among other things, that the universe is made up of irrevocable laws and random playfulness.

Evolution is playful. It's always going off on adventures, playing games, taking chances.

Evolution frequently does things just for the hell of it - why not writers, too?           - Tom Robbins

illustration: haHah lastor

Do You Get Inklings?

May be it's because I grew up with a mom where inklings are the norm. She'd say, I had an inkling, or, I have an inkling. It was just normal.

I've heard it called spidey sense, intuition, 6th sense, 22nd sense, other sense, inner sense, guidance, gut feeling, heart feeling, goosebumps and more.

What's yours?

I like the word inkling because it twinkles. It has a bit of spark and sparking.

Mom got inklings, always a nice think, I have an inkling.

illustration: Surf on Sparks detail Lura Astor