Sunday, February 24, 2013

Writings From The Month Of March







March 25, 2012

This time five years ago, while on the island of Sicily, . . .














March 27, 2011

Of all animals, only human beings can be absurd.














March 21, 2010


When I travel for extended periods I become homeless and a true wanderer.














March 08, 2009

Imagine living without water or food for nineteen days.















March 08, 2008

THE DREAM is giving me what I want and more. Here in Luxor, . . . 









Monday, March 19, 2007

I almost cried when I found the temple at Segesta after being lost, . . .














Sunday, February 17, 2013

Playing Tricks

Ice-cream Hangup, by Steven Boone

I enjoy surprise in life and art. Surprise is what challenges our perception, and makes us wonder. Most people prefer predictability because it offers a sense of safety of sorts, and scientists need the laws of nature to be fixed in order to compute and invent, but oddity and absurdity are never far away. In fact, chaos is ever present, and scientists must allow for it in equations. This is why weather will never be absolutely predictable. All living things depend on predictability to survive and prosper, but the universe will forever be playing tricks.

In art, the arena allows for chaos and surprise. The surrealists made paintings depicting melting watches, flying cows, or trees growing in mid-air. Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) painted bold portraits with faces that had two eyes on one side and a mouth on the other. 
Portrait by Pablo Picasso


I like the unusual, and it often comes into my artwork as well.

A man, walking past a billboard. Berlin, Germany.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Trading Books

Gondolas, Venice, Italy
These days are among the slowest of the year for tourist traffic on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the famed art avenue with more than 100 galleries. The weather is cold, and with far fewer world-class events scheduled in the city than in summer, sometimes only a handful of people browse the shops. My wife and I share duties tending our gallery—The Steven Boone Gallery.  It is almost a joke when we call each other and realize that not one person has visited. And then, there are days when of the four people who appear, two are trying to sell something or asking for donations.
Masai boys, Serengeti, Tanzania

The other day was like that. An older man came in, looked around cursorily, and asked about a large photo on my wall. I said it was taken in Kashmir, India. “I bet you do not have many people who see that and who have actually been there—like me!” We began talking and he took a card out of his pocket to hand to me. It promoted a book he had written  a few years back,
about his journey around the world in 1968. I told him that I had gone around the world in 2008, forty years after him,  and had lived in 19 countries. “I visited 27 countries,” he said. I responded, “Wow, you must have been moving fast.”

We ended up trading books. I gave him a signed copy of my award winning book, A Heart Traced In Sand, about the struggle of my daughter Naomi, who died of cancer at the age of nineteen. He promised to send me his book about his travel adventures around the world in 1968.


Dal Lake, Kashmir

Sunday, February 03, 2013

Carnival in Rio

This time of year, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,  excitement builds in anticipation of the start of carnival. The annual event is huge, and world famous. Visitors from across the globe flock to witness parades in the sambadrome, the venue built especially for the samba parades. The samba groups prepare all year long for one night of show and an opportunity to be listed among the best. The events begin on a Thursday night with novice groups, culminating on Saturday and Sunday night with the best groups—winners from previous years. The samba schools that comprise the groups number in the thousands, so that in one evening, over fifty thousand costumed people, walking, singing, dancing or on fabulous decorated floats, will have paraded.



The Sunday night that I went, I took the subway from my hotel, and it was packed. When I arrived near the sambadrome, I walked with the stream of people through the street until I arrived at the gates and was directed to my section. I had paid a high sum to be seated close to the action. Inside, the crowd swelled until about 8:30 PM, when the first group began their long march down the avenue, under the floodlights, amidst blaring samba music. The march starts at one end of the sambadrome, and finishes about ¼ mile at the other end. I was near the end . . . a good vantage point.


All night, the groups flowed past and orgasmic throbbing never stopped. The happiness level was at a high pitch. In fact, the groups are judged partly for the enthusiasm they display, as well as for creativity, skill and artistry. I took hundreds of pictures until dawn, when my camera battery died. The parades were not done, but after ten hours of witnessing the spectacle to end all spectacles, I had my fill.



Enjoy this:  My Carnival show on YouTube