Chagall, Proud Father, & Vampire Weekend

"Color is vibration like music; everything is vibration" -Marc Chagall

Apr 22, 2024

I recall in my younger days wishing life was more like a dream—richer in detail and color. A good dream, not a bad one.

We all have times like this, where we wish real things were “better” than they actually are. It was this romantic and melancholy way of thinking that birthed the phrase “the grass is always greener.”

No, the grass is exactly as green as it is.

It is why kids love wizards and magical adventures. Give me Narnia over suburbia any day. Who in the world really wants reality?

Gen X’ers know this by heart: Reality Bites.

Fast forward to my college days when I realized in full living color—life was not a dream.

Or if it was, it was a scary one. I did not want to grow up. Reality held nothing for me, not yet. I wasn’t prepared for it. Could I survive it? A real job. A real grown-up life.

You can call me Peter Pan, but there’s just one problem: I can’t fly.

This was around the time I fell in love with Marc Chagall—with his legacy, his work. I didn’t realize such beautiful dreamscapes had already been painted and existed in our drab world.

Soon enough, I had a cheaply framed print of Paris Through My Window hanging on my wall, along with Kandinsky’s Saint George 1 and a Miro (I can’t remember which)—some surrealistic thing with a road-sign yellow background, some black lines and big red smudge of a dot.

But Chagall was my true love. I can’t imagine how many hours I spent staring into that painting: dreaming.

Paris Through My Window offered a glance through a symbolic window into the City of Love, but not the real one: Chagall’s vision of it.

It also provided me with a two-dimensional, pet cat with a human face that never moved or needed fed.

In the end, I had a lot in common with Chagall. Our Jewish heritage. Our wish to make reality into a dreamscape swathed in beautiful, elegant color.

Plus, we both have a respect for poetry, and poets. Chagall befriended many along the way.

I just finished reading Chagall by Jacob Ball-Teshuva, an art critic and collector who knew Chagall for 35 years, published by Taschen. It’s a biography and a visual feast of all things Chagall.

Below are some of my favorite pieces, borrowed from the book.

*The Dream*, 1978 (I told you he paints dreams)

On Poetry Foundation, I discovered this perfectly fitting and hilarious poem about Chagall.

I’m such a proud father—a shameless plug for my own son.

I have two kids and a wife. I love them all. But, right now, this is Solomon’s moment.

I’m going to put him in the limelight right here on

Substack

. The kid—15 years old—is killing it right now on the keys.

He was recently accepted into Interlochen Arts Camp, where we expect he will finally meet others his age who are equally obsessed with their own instruments.

Solomon recently released his first original single on Spotify. Please give it a listen.

Here is the visualizer he made for the song:

Here is the cookie cake Tracy ordered for Sol to help celebrate the moment.

Don’t like my newsletter?

Just

Ignore

It.

Vampire Weekend—Only God Was Above Us, Album Review

Right away, in their new album, Frontman Ezra Koenig, and bandmates, Chris Tomson and Chris Baio show us, they are all grown up. The album opener, “Ice Cream Piano” begins with an expletive.

This is not an omen of curses to come, but more a prediction of surprises, both in musicality—this album screams of diverse instrumentation—and lyric dichotomy.

Themes jump back and forth between their opposites: war and peace, classical and modern, kind and unnatural, east and west.

Yet, when you dive in even deeper, you come to realize this album covers the entirety of human history—it’s about our rotating planet, and the human dramas that have spun out upon it, “sifting through centuries.”

And no matter where these songs go, how far away they may wander, they continue to turn back and nod at New York City.

There is lingering nostalgia for the city, a place the bandmates have lived and loved.

Listeners encounter prep-school gangsters, worlds above water and tunnels underneath, a space where ice cream pianos really are I scream pianos, a globe that is on fire, at war, and centuries later, a moment of peace; when some kid cuts class, and then a war begins again.

There is a movement and energy that travels to far off places.

And there are characters to meet along the way: A roman soldier with a spearhead, undercover agents, a broke bodybuilder, a fake fortune-teller and an “inept long-distance runner losing every race.”

You will meet a gang of Gen-X Cops. And a bull-gored matador.

It’s difficult to pull just a few favorites songs off this one—so many stand out.

“Connect” is an acid jazz party with chickens in the bedroom, a cool walking stand-up bass, a clanky piano, and sporadic drum spurts tattering through.

Listening to it is like opening a box of candy, but confetti sprays out instead.

These songs arrest you—take you places you have never been. The landscape is meandering; the road is winding.

It goes way up high where you can see lower valleys out over the edge. Your nerves kick in, but this is a trip you won’t forget.

Personally, I can’t resist the urge to (re)listen to “Mary Boone.” There’s something magic in the vocals, and the background choir, and when the drums finally hit (in hip-hop style), you have to dance.

And in the end, the longest track as the outro, “Hope,” repeats “Our enemy’s invincible, I hope you let it go.”

Is our enemy death? Is it human aggression and violence?

Is it all of our myriad problems? All of ours.

Or perhaps the enemy is not even real.

The song is a grown-up take on our complex and far-from-perfect world. It’s about coming to terms with this place we all call home.

This Weeks Word—

Color or Colour:

Rather than focusing on the word and its definition, I’d like to talk about the effects the colors have on our minds and moods, according to the research of Sally Augustin, Ph.D.

In her Psychology today article, titled “The Surprising Effect of Color on Your Mind and Mood” we learn:

Green: Seeing the color green has been linked to more creative thinking—so greens are good options for home offices, art studios, etc.
Red: People seeing others in front of red backgrounds generally find those other individuals are more attractive than when they see them silhouetted against other colors, so reds are great for a bedroom wall. Having a red surface in view also gives us a burst of strength, so reds are good choices for home gym areas, etc. Seeing red has been linked to impaired analytical reasoning, though, making it a bad option for offices.
Violet: People link a grayish violet with sophistication, so it can be a good selection for places where you’re trying to make the “right” impression.
Yellow: Using yellow in a home can be problematic. Many people dislike the color, so if you have a lot of yellow rooms in your home or a yellow front door, you may be advised to repaint to get the best price for your home should you sell. An exception: Many people use yellow in kitchens—with no negative sales repercussions. Yellow may be accepted in kitchens because warm colors stimulate our appetite.
Blue: People are more likely to tell you that blue is their favorite color than any other shade. That makes it a safe choice. Seeing blue also brings thoughts of trustworthiness to mind; always a good thing.