Paint Tubes

From the book Color: A Natural History of the Palette:

Jean Renoir once told his son that without oil paint in tubes there would have been no Cezanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissarro.

Tin tubes containing oil paint were invented in 1842 and made it possible to take the canvas outside one’s studio. The medium of painting became portable and changed radically – Impressionism was born.

This reminds me of the Aboriginal idea that everything has to be dreamed to exist at all. Technology creates new possibilities for art, which in turn visualizes/creates a new dream, which in turn helps people look at the world in a different or new way. The centerpiece of that sentence is art. Art informs society. Art guides us to new ways of experiencing our world.

Tooth

Had a tooth removed today. The infection I had on a root-canal a while ago never really went away. I didn’t feel it anymore, but a recent xray showed that it was still there and affecting the bone. Instead of getting surgery and having amalgam shoved into the tooth and the infection cut out, I opted for having the tooth pulled and getting a bridge.

So, as of today I am 100% amalgam free as I had three other amalgam fillings removed last year.

I am a dental relic – a person with four fully developed wisdom teeth and a mouth large enough to contain them without pushing against my other teeth. My mother always said I did have a big mouth…

Very few people develop all four wisdom teeth anymore. One theory suggests that is so because people don’t eat a lot of grains anymore and don’t seem to need them. In any case I have learned quite a bit about teeth on the Internet last year. My x-dentist wanted to pull all four of my wisdom teeth – slipping them out he called it – because bacteria can grow in the shadow of those teeth, which are hard to reach with floss or brush… three of my wisdom teeth were in good condition, only the fourth one needed a filling.

I didn’t like the idea very much and started educating myself. I learned that pulling wisdom teeth after the age of 25 means a small chance of having nerve-damage and talking funny… and I don’t like the idea of sitting on stage and drooling onto my guitar in front of a couple of thousand people… And extracting those wisdom teeth is not slipping, but yanking and cutting, because those teeth have some serious roots…

I started looking around and found a dentist I love. She has practiced Natural Dentistry for over twenty years and is a great doctor. Over the last half year my new dentist removed the amalgam fillings I had had for years and showed me how to inject a Baking-Soda solution (most natural mouthwashes contain no alcohol, but Baking–Soda, which changes the PH in your mouth, which in turn makes negative bacteria unhappy without killing the good bacteria) around my wisdom teeth so they can stay healthy. The amalgam fillings were replaced with a very modern compound that is made from, if I remember this right, diamond powder, ceramics and a material that hardens almost instantly when light is added. In other words the filling is prepared, placed into the tooth and shaped, and then a UV light is placed right over the tooth which causes the compound to harden instantly. You can walk out of the office and bite into anything right away.

PS: Saturday – Anyway, I feel almost brand new. I have ingested only juices since yesterday and the hole in my mouth is starting to heal nicely. My teeth are in good shape and the studio is renovated. The tiny new recorder arrived on Thursday and a new guitar is arriving on Tuesday. I am ready to go.

Shut up about the SD722

But I can’t – yet…

Just ordered a 4GB 80x Flash Card to augment the internal drive. With a 4GB CF I can record about half an hour at 24/192k. The perfect way to gather sounds on the fly. No HD whirring… Other benefits: can take more extreme temperatur changes than the HD, increased shock immunity…

This is the most exciting tool since ProTools came out with their TDM system around 1998 or 1999.

What? Climate Change?

Two examples from Los Angeles and Florence:

Well, I’m Flying Back to Climate Change Central
Los Angeles is catching it. Hey, folks, look at me ‘predicting the present.’ You see this? This is what we call ‘climate change.’ No, really! Photos ‘borrowed’ from the Los Angeles Times, an actual, no kidding newspaper, which employs gifted, professional news photographers, and pays them.

Hollywood Freeway.
(Via Beyond the Beyond.)

Flurries
It’s snowing. In Florence. Only the second time in twenty years, and the last time was last year. This is getting a bit worrying: I didn’t come to the Mediterranean for it to drop below freezing. I came here to grow lemons, and drink tiny tiny coffees. And right now, my lemon trees are sheltering in the shed, and the coffee is being poured in pints.
(Via Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent.)

Well, 99% of the people must, by now, know that global weather is changing… rather rapidly. The other one percent will presumably continue to keep their heads firmly in the sand.