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This year I’m going to step inside a painting.  It could be Starry Night (above), it could be Sunflowers, I don’t know how many I will experience, but I’m willing to try all of them.  An Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit is coming to Kansas City and I’m on a waiting list for tickets.  This is actually the kind of experience I would like to create for audiences.  I’d like to make a space where people go in and something happens and they are changed… like apples dipped in caramel.

Look!  There’s a boombox, spinach leaves, a hi-hat cymbal… it’s the stuff that dreams are made of!  I could live in a world like this.  This particular piece is titled Communication With Departed Souls Via the Amplified Sounds of Spinach Leaves Dropped on a Hi-Hat.  My friend, Bryan Voell, has a steady hand and a cool imagination.  He is the creator of this and other illustrated works.  You can see more of his drawings and collages on bryanvoell.com.

The sky was blue and the grass was dry.  Conditions were perfect for an outdoor birthday party.  Last Saturday Adelyn and Lincoln, turned four together and a handful of us came outside to celebrate the milestone.  The birthday kids played with their cousins on the playground next to the shelter, after that they sang The Wheels on The Bus, and then they opened their presents and ate birthday cupcakes.

I’ve looked at hundreds of case numbers on my contact tracing job over the last three or four weeks.  The names used to stand out, now it’s the numbers.  I write down the last four digits of a patient’s case file to keep things straight with my quality assurance checks.  When those numbers look familiar I can’t help but notice.  Yesterday a different number jumped out at me and wrestled me to the ground.  I entered data from the 4077th row of the spreadsheet and told three of my co-workers.  Two of them knew the significance of that number.

After hearing this you’ll swear the Man in Black is singing from the grave– but it’s really Marty Stuart. This song is only three months old!

This grandmother started out in Ray Bradbury’s imagination when he wrote I Sing The Body Electric in the 1960′s.  She cooks, she cleans, and she can squirt orange juice out of her index finger.  NBC originally aired this sci fi children’s program in 1982 about a robot grandmother who cares for a family after their mother dies.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll wish you had your own electric grandmother when you’re done watching this.

Bandmates? He don’t need no stinkin’ bandmates! All this guy needs is a tennis racket and a typewriter! Massimo Tortella aka Porcapizza does more with a Pringle’s can and a butter knife than most musicians will ever do on an electric guitar.

If you play it they will grow.  45 years ago Mort Garson recorded Plantasia, an album for plants and plant lovers.  Sunday afternoon my old bandmate, Danny Firestone made a post about it on Facebook.  I listened to Symphony for a Spider Plant, and I couldn’t stop smiling.  See if you can say that three times fast!  When hard times come my way I’ve got a plan now: put on a pair of headphones and let these electronic sounds from the 70′s work their way into me like a Calgon bubble bath.

It’s a humbling experience. There’s only so much a guy can do during his waking hours with two eyes and one brain, but if I can’t dig it up, someone else can.  That’s what I realized when I read a few posts from friends and strangers last week on Facebook. Those discoveries include:
- an album made for houseplants
- a Jimi Hendrix song played on a tennis racket and a typewriter
- an elderly robot
I will go into more detail as I shine a light and brush the soil off of each one.

The diner in my hand is also the diner in my mind.  It’s actually a magnet from the refrigerator.  If I stare at it long enough and deliberately shrink myself down to size, I could walk right through that steel alloy door and sit at the counter.  You’re probably thinking “how could you do that in a two dimensional object, Dave?  You need three dimensions to walk inside a handheld diner!  As soon as you open that door to the diner, you’ll bump your head into your own refrigerator!”  It’s ok, I’ve already thought about that and I have a team of engineers working on it.