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Are you out there? Can you hear me? Can you see me in the dark? |
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Today’s 2 or 3 lines is quite different from the usual, run-of-the-mill 2 or 3 lines. (Though now that I think about it, 2 or 3 lines is never really run-of-the-mill, is it?)
For one thing, there is no featured song. This is the first of the 1800-odd posts that I’ve written since giving birth to 2 or 3 lines a little over 12 years ago that features an entire album – not an individual song.
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I usually introduce each post by quoting two or three lines from a song’s lyrics. Today, I’m starting things off with one of the images from artist Kathryn Dunlevie’s Mistick Krewes series of photomontages.
That particular image is titled “Atchafalaya.” Its caption consists of three lines from a song called “Fallen Angel,” which was released in 1987 on Robbie Robertson’s eponymous debut solo album.
I’ve strewn several other images from the Mistick Krewes series throughout this post, which will also feature Kathryn’s thoughts on New Orleans and the Robbie Robertson album.
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| “Hurricane” |
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You may remember that in the fall of 2020, 2 or 3 lines was graced with a guest post written by Kathryn Dunlevie, a college classmate of mine who has been creating what has been described as “wildly imaginative” mixed-media art for many years.
That post featured “Girlfriend Is Better” by the Talking Heads – a song that Kathryn saw the group perform live on their legendary “Stop Making Sense” tour in 1983.
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| “Avoyelles” |
The post also featured a dozen images from the 2020 series of collages that Kathryn titled Women of Wonder.
About a year later, I started pestering Kathryn to do another guest post. She delivered a draft several months ago, but it took me a lot longer than it should have to format it and get it up on 2 or 3 lines.
But as good ol’ Geoffrey Chaucer once said, “Better than never is late.” (Today we would say “Better late than never,” of course.)
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| “Bayou Teche” |
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New Orleans is a hot mess – it’s the most exotic and decadent place that an American can visit without a passport.
Kathryn never lived there, but she has many family members and friends with close ties to New Orleans:
One of my best friends grew up in New Orleans, my best friend from high school has lived there since she finished college, the mother of my first goddaughter grew up there, my dad’s second wife was a New Yorker who spent her childhood summers there with her aunt, one of my brother’s best friends grew up there, and one of my daughters went to Tulane – as did the godmother of my other daughter.
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| “Charybdis” |
New Orleans – a/k/a/ “The Paris of the South,” “The City That Care Forgot,” and “The Big Easy” – inspired Kathryn to create the series of photomontages she named Mistick Krewes after the social organizations that orchestrate and participate in that city’s famous Mardi Gras celebrations.
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Several years after the Band broke up, Robbie Robertson – who had written the groups’s most famous songs (including “Chest Fever,” “The Weight,” and “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down”) – released his first solo album.
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| “Goose Girl” |
Kathryn immersed herself in the music from that album – which was titled simply Robbie Robertson – while she created the Mistick Krewes series of images:
I’m not sure when I first heard music from Robbie Robertson’s debut solo album, or how I came to own the CD, but as the images in my new series began to take shape, I knew I had to have that music playing in my studio as I worked.
Listening to it over and over got me, and kept me, in the mood to imagine a cast of characters who would have felt at home in the Crescent City.
Robertson’s poetic lyrics, fervent music and haunting vocals transported me to New Orleans and guided me through its different eras and its many dimensions.
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| “The Rebirth of Venus” |
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In the next 2 or 3 lines, Kathryn Dunlevie will tell us more about the history of the Mardi Gras krewes, and how the Mistick Krewes images are intended to evoke Mardi Gras traditions and create scenarios that “compel even as they mislead.”
The remaining Mystick Krewes photomontages will be strewn throughout that post.
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| “Spy Boy” |
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Click here to watch the official music video for Robbie Robertson’s “Somewhere Down the Crazy River,” which was directed by none other than Martin Scorsese. (Robertson had previously helped to create the musical scores for three of Scorsese’s movies – Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, and The Color of Money.)
Click below to buy the Robbie Robertson album from Amazon:
(All the photographs of Kathryn Dunlevie’s art that are included in this post are © 2016-2020 by the artist. All rights reserved.)
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