Echinomastus of Arizona, flowers

The Echinomastus forms found in Arizona, in flower, all in one handy blog post.

Echinomastus intertextus (disclaimer: a cultivated plant, not a habitat photo, and not specifically the form found in southeast AZ):





Echinomastus erectocentrus, from near Benson, AZ:



A rescue plant of Echinomastus erectocentrus from a nearby location:



The first of two stars of this particular post, Echinomastus erectocentrus 'acunensis' from Pinal County AZ:



bizarre extended green pigments in this one:



a lot of variety in the flower colors:











Another star, Echinomastus johnsonii 'lutescens' from Yavapai County:











And last but certainly not least, Echinomastus johnsonii, from northern AZ, plants sent to me by a friend there, salvaged from a construction site:







and there you have it. From Cochise County to Mohave County. Hundreds of miles of driving and 8 months of field work. Can't wait for next year.

Venue Trauma

It's an eternal quest, really. Especially for so-called "underground" or alternative performance. Where should it happen? In Santa Fe, I've been to or played concerts in living rooms, at grocery stores, in vacant storefronts leased just for the weekend, in old movie theaters between owners, in art galleries (of course), in school gyms, even in performance spaces (usually ones that have no sound system, no stage lighting and certainly no piano...I actually once rented a lousy spinet piano for $500, to stage a concert at the Center for Contemporary Arts, in the theater).

So there we were at High Mayhem's small space tucked back off Lena St. near the railroad tracks, surrounded by art studios and dry gullies and arroyos, all set up, soundchecked, ready to roll by about 8 pm. Enter a fire marshal and three of Santa Fe's finest. Turns out High Mayhem doesn't have commercial zoning, just residential. Maximum occupancy: 8. Number of musicians in Rrake (with two guest trombonists): 7. Plus one sound man, and we're still legal. After much begging, pleading, negotiating and hand wringing, the fire marshal allowed the show to continue as long as the entire audience sat outside and we stopped by 10. In fine surreal fashion, we played 90 minutes to an empty house, several dozen appreciative listeners just outside the door in folding chairs. Very strange experience indeed. Oddly, highly successful. Too bad for the folks who arrived at 10:15 or so expecting Rrake to start late. Lucky we were able to start at all.

If Santa Fe doesn't find a way to speed High Mayhem through the zoning process and sanctify it as a legitimate venue, there's something quite rotten in the City Different indeed. It's unacceptable for the most adventurous, multifaceted, progressive not-for-profit producing organization in town to be shut down on technicalities. Performing arts are fragile enough in the area without having a bucket of ice water dumped on High Mayhem. So I expect to see the City of Santa Fe step up and make good on its "different" reputation, and very quickly and painlessly find a permanent solution. How 'bout it Mayor Coss and City Council?

Rrake, flowers, etc.

This Friday at High Mayhem in Santa Fe:

"Rrake (Santa Fe)
This manifestation of Rrake consists of Chris Jonas (compositions, tenor and soprano sax), Joe Fiedler (trombone), Jeremy Bleich (electric bass), Paul Brown (acoustic bass), Milton Villarrubia III (drums) and Peter Breslin (drums).

An audience favorite in the High Mayhem Festival 2006 and 2007, the “supergroup”, Rrake (in this version a six-person double trio), is Jonas’ latest Santa Fe ensemble project. Considerably louder, more electric and brash than his previous projects, Rrake is an outburst, a conniption fit, a tantrum, a racket, a feast, a riot, a wassail, a spout, a rant, an exultation. To add more girth to the sound of the group, Jonas has built this group to consist of two drummers, two bass players, two horn players (trombone and saxophone). The music is distinctly rhythmic at core with melodic lines superimposed atop a complex of asymmetrical block rhythms."

Always glad to "add more girth." Looking forward to hearing CJ's NYC ensemble, Sun Spits Cherries, too.

Here's another message from some beautiful compatriots:

Echinocereus rigidissimus rubispinus:


Thelocactus bicolor flavidispinus:



Epithelantha pachyrhiza:



Mammillaria viridiflora and Escobaria leei:



The etc: lost filling, fractured molar. $500 dollars later (thank ye gods for sig others with plastic) and a bit of grinding and polishing and I'm right as rain. (What the hell does that mean anyway, "right as rain"?) A couple more weeks in the regular school year, with legions of students having checked out mentally about 4 weeks ago. You try teaching a bunch of hormone-addled adolescent artists Algebra 1, I dare you. Finally mixed down Duology 3 and will post tracks soon, probably on my own website which I hope is up by late June, peterbreslin.net. Picking up the D4 recording up in Santa Fe this weekend too, so look forward to hearing that one.

This week's radio show DUKE including Art Ensemble's take on Creole Love Call, Braxton from Creative Orchestra Music '76, side two track 2, his sort of Duke-inspired piece, WSQ's A Train/Lush Life, the entirety of He Loved Him Madly from Miles Davis' Get Up With It (remastered on Complete On the Corner) Albert Mangelsdorff's Mood Indigo, Thelonious Monk himself doing Solitude and Caravan. Streams live 1-3 pm Mountain Time from KSFR, Santa Fe.

More Cactus Flowers

Another bunch of cactus flowers. It's been a great spring here in the furnace:

Escobaria missouriensis:



Echinocereus dasyacanthus:





Mammillaria theresae:



Epithelantha bokei:



Echinomastus johnsonii:



Escobaria laredoi:



Escobaria minima:



Echinocereus nivosus:





Discocactus buenekeri:



Echinocereus pectinatus 'coahuilense':



Astrophytum capricorne v. senile, top and side view:





Echinocereus baileyi:



Echinocereus fitchii:



Thelocactus bicolor v. ?:

Alabama In Between

"Pennsylvania is Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other and Alabama in between."

I've always heard that quote attributed to HL Mencken (or James Carville) but it turns out no one is quite sure who originally said it.

The Democratic primary reminded me of it. Listening to the execrable warblings of the shallow fatheads on NPR this morning, drumroll please, "Race was a factor in Pennsylvania." Oh my, really?

An aside: Why aren't Democrats in general blushingly proud of the fact that their party offers up both a woman and an African American? At a time when the best the Repubs can do is float yet another old white guy?

The good folks at ImprovEverywhere offer this brief meditation on race in America, set in Aspen, Colorado but just as trenchant for, say, State College, PA.

a floral interlude

Astrophytum asterias


Echinocereus laui


Strombocactus disciformis


Echinocereus russanthus


Toumeya papyracantha


Escobaria leei


Escobaria sneedii


Mammillaria viridiflora


Echinomastus erectocentrus


Escobaria organensis


Echinocereus papillosus v. angusticeps


Closer view of E. papillosus v. angusticeps


Escobaria orcuttii v. koenigii


Escobaria guadalupensis


Thelocactus bicolor



More about Jazz soon. The culture around here has been mostly cactacean.

Tabula Rasa

In brief: Rex Harris carefully sets out the following general theory of the origin of "jazz" in his book, Jazz:

Slavery in the US completely erased African culture. "Jazz" originated from the resulting blank slate. It did not originate in other slave holding areas because those areas allowed for more African cultural expression.

This seems like an innocent enough claim, and sounds so familiar as to be nearly aphoristic. But the general thesis also lays the groundwork for Harris's fetishizing of the rough, raw, untutored, masculine, artless, nearly "savage" Black Man, who is the ideal practitioner of the only phase of the music's history Harris acknowledges as "Real Jazz." (Roughly, 1918-1938 or so). It's a double edged sword, because he does a certain justice to the outrage and inhumanity and reality of slavery, yet seems to use this same historical reality to develop an essentially racist (no matter how "positive") musicology.

This seems such a reflection of the history of people writing about the music. One reason I find Harris's book so fascinating is it's more than 50 years old, yet echoes many of the tropes encountered in current and intervening "jazz" writing. "The problem of slavery" is always dealt with in some way or another, as is "the problem of technique" and "the problem of education" and "the problem of improvisation." It's usually a fairly easy matter to uncover the bias behind a theory of the origination of improvisation as an art form born out of ignorance, necessity and a sort of romanticized/fetishized primal stupidity.

Getting and Spending

So, over here in my corner, a sudden outbreak of employment has definitely put a pinch on blog time and on time in general. A huge ramping up of certain cactus activities also. 1,500 cactus seedlings and the beginnings of a population study for a taxon soon to be listed as endangered, for example. Plus there was Duology 4. And the visit to the poet's parents' farm/ranch in Northeast Texas. The 14,000 words of copy generated for the Santa Fe Reporter's Annual Manual special issue. By comparison, what seemed to be my "real job" teaching Algebra 1 to extraordinarily reluctant art students shifted into being a fairly pleasant, regular part of the day.

Those of you who freelance on deadline, writing or otherwise, probably know what I'm talking about. Maybe I'm drawn to freelance work because I dislike being on a schedule in the first place, or think I do. So the task at first stretches out before me, the deadline often many days away. No problem, I figure. Not liking being on a schedule leads to...not making a schedule. Then the work gets done, but under pressure and just in time. As if I actually do have a boss after all. Maybe just because I'm familiar with the pattern, I re-create it in areas where it doesn't necessarily have to manifest. Who knows?

Back to cacti. Spring has definitely settled in here, but the first wave of seedlings was sown on Thanksgiving. So there are about 500 sexy looking little plants from that. Then on February 12 I sowed two more trays, about 1000 seedlings from that.

The Echinomastus erectocentrus acunensis population out near Florence AZ started kicking flowers.







I had been keeping population data with GPS coordinates and so on for a few months and ended up forwarding the info to the chief plant ecologist at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (the type locality for the species). By coincidence, the US Fish and Wildlife Service was collecting data for possible listing of the plant for federal protection, and the plant ecologist there, friends with the plant ecologist at OPCNM, was lamenting that no one had been out to check on the Florence population. So the data that I put together will be included in the listing proposal. It's good to be even marginally useful without really intending it.

My own little backyard cactus farm has been showing a lot of flowers already as well.





The trips to habitat consume entire days, usually on weekends.





As if in spite of relatively enjoyable happenings, a strangely intense jag of despondency definitely settled in from roughly January to roughly now. A gray beast. Consciousness greeted with utter resentment. The simplest of tasks seeming enormous, casting long icy shadows. Perhaps a feature of my existence for a long time, especially in winter, but masked in the past by intoxicants. Raw and naked in sobriety. Maybe I should get it checked out. Thing is, I feel better. I feel better enough to contemplate giving the depression some attention. Isn't it ironic? Don't ya think? Maybe if I just make sure shotguns, knives, ropes and toxins are out of the house from January to April?

Then there's music. A universe of conflicting realities for me. I want to be in it but I've been totally sick of it also. Soaked in it like brine for a while. The sheen goes off, and music just seems like a ridiculous chore or an activity utterly without consequence. I'm deaf, the world's deaf and it's no great loss, really. Scorched earth feeling. As if, since there are no words left for what I'm passionate about, there might as well be total silence. There's that part of me like a flailing child, tantrum-ed out and completely frazzled over something incommunicable. So, good luck writing anything about it.

But first things first: a return to JAZZ by Rex Harris. In particular, some uneducated reactions and responses to what constitutes his initial argument in the etiology of the music, namely, slavery and its ramifications. But not this morning. I have things to do.

This stuff SUCKS

well, hmm...looks like I haven't posted since February 12. I've been meaning to. I swear.

This just a quick note, in preparation for some sort of longer post "soon".

Lately I've been announcing my email address at KSFR, where I do my weekly show called Inside Out, streaming from ksfr.org every Thursday from 1-3 Mountain Time. I've been hoping for listener feedback. I haven't gotten any for several weeks. Last week's show prompted this email with no text in the body, simply the subject:

This stuff SUCKS, man....very NON-musical.

the email (from a Los Alamos National Lab employee) was sent shortly after 2:30 pm, which I think was the segment where I included Ohnedaruth from the Art Ensemble recording Phase One, in its entirety. Admittedly, a stretch for many.

And this, my friends, is the *only* listener feedback I've gotten (outside of friends and family) after 6 weeks of repeatedly mentioning my email on the air.

Highly motivating!