Through the Gate: The ToeKnee Show

www.ARTintoLIFE.com

http://www.myspace.com/originaltoeknee


The ToeKnee Show... "Through the Gate"


www.ARTintoLIFE.com

... has come back into my life,
Yes folks!, I have regained some territory!

UN f**k*nbel**v*able

The website address of ARTintoLIFE.com was the original website I founded in 1995, right after starting the Toe Knee Show access cable tv show in 1994...."to change the world".... or at least to contribute my share towards giving it an honest try... anyway... at least if anything to see if we could find a world change we could all be proud of.

Thanks to "emo" (mark Langbehn) , someone who I met while I was a volunteer at a meditation university 24 years ago... thanks to Mark, ARTintoLIFE.com is now mine again... as of this week.

Holy S**t... I still can't believe it.

anyway, you can get to know Mark Langebehn a little more, by seeing/hearing his work.

Like me, he has a catalogue of original music.
And similarly, he has also produced many others... helped to contribute to our planet by moving them a little closer to their dreams as musicians, specifially.

His website has many free MP3's of these various successful indy songwriters and performers.

www.EMOsonic.com

.........

Now, back to my creative expansion... ARTintoLIFE.com is symbolic of a full below the ground re-organizatioin of my priorities, projects, dreams, artisitc endeavors, and also finding new wasy to release the great stuff already created.

So...yes, it's true... I'm finding new ways to release the paintings, as prints mugs and t-shirts....

www.Zazzle.com/ToeKneeStanger*


and also

www.CafePress.com/ToeKneeStanger


And, as many are discovering, my ToeKneeShow TV segments are being released in small clips on YOUtube.


Yuucan clic on the windows below and get there, or us this(copy and past URL in your browser);

The Toe Knee Show


This is the website URL of my main playlist of original indy productions,

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7A8319073BABE579

and her's the direct play window, of that batch...




So... the bouncing ball has bounced back into my own court...

could this be?


I am standing on about 6 mountains of created work.

I think I am ready and have a better, wider vision... due to life's experience, I don't think I could mess things up if I actually made a living again.

So.

As goofy as that sounds.


You all get to decide if I was worth saving.

IN any case, I finally completed the painting;


"Through the Gate" (the first image of this blog entry).

It's a real place... a place where a person used to loft her dreams, for years, one after another.

She'd asked me to go there and do a ceremony to help release the house to sell.

Big changes... I guess everybody gets them... unique to each.... those were hers.



The painting was symbolic as well as a witness to reality.


That gate (gateway) in the paintng exists, still there ... and is now someone else's back patio...(the house sold)...


For her, it was the place where she made her wishes known to the Universe.


And while I visited with her there, then... to bless the house,

We sat in the back...Watched the sun set slowiy across the Valley.

In silence.



I couldn't help but notice that in another time and place, or if I had been totally alone, I would have been in tears... but with her that day, we both watched the sun set slowly... the air was thick with a sense of privacy... and retreat... too sacred to even notice... just enough to experience... becausse it was free... and may leave... you didn't want to stir it.

3 years later, I finally finished the painting I'd promised her, this one...the one that you see in the beginning of this blog entry.

And next week she gets that painting in her mailbox... because I found the ddress , yesterday.

So, you see it here...

sort of frozen in it's process.

the real art is in the surprise she has, when she gets the package...

And how it brings her to that place she showed me.

and that sunset...

glory be.

I sometimes feel an artwork has not one real purpose, unless it hits all these notes.


The more real if it is filled with life,or fills itself wiht life, each and every step...

The meaning in this piece is the full spectrum of where it symbolically resides, including here... seen by you.



For her, it's gonna be a bringer of memory...and a letter of gratitude.


........

A few weeks ago, I called my friend Lon, who is finishing a production of his next door neighbor's music.

Like me, he found a way to get it done on a shoe string of a shoe string, of a shoe string...

I think this is gonna be Lon's masterpice prodiuction.

already the neighborhood is abuzz with expectation ...back there in Portland.

When I called him, and he answered the phone, ...as is my specialty, on auspicious occasions... I get really metaphorical.... this means sometimes/usually, just rolling into a conversation...sometimes even forgetting to say hello.. in that gap before anyone speaks...saying that one subconscious idea thaat first pops into my head...so... yeah...one subconscious idea sprang out... yet so obvious... and exactly right on time.


"through the gate"

"?what?"

"through the gate"


... "oh , hi , tony" (toe Knee) .. how are you doing...?" he asks...

"I'm walking through the gate, Lon..." , I say



... and then, he patiently listened while I walked him through a line of thought... a long diatribe about "a clearing in the fog, and the distant views comkng back into focus"...

... in the psace between me catching my breath, Lon speaks;

"sounds just like what I am going through... working on this album for my next door neighbor... it's sounding so f**king beautiful, tony...Jesus...!"


............So...

I am revising this blog entry posted a couple weeks ago.


I found out , yesterday that all my YOUtube playlists, formerly included in this post, only look good on this loaned computer, with cable internet... most folks do not have enough bandwith... I'm told "the white squares never quite filled in"... by lots of folks struggling with "dial-up" connections...


So.

Once again, I have to go back, and revise what I have already done.. again... and slow it down a little while Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Larry Ellis and all those other folks find a way to perfect whats already here... who knows, maybe by next year, at this time, I will be able to add the links, viewing windows... etc... and not cause delays.

It's quite interesting to me to notice that a real clean HD style image played fluid through wone of the major sites I visited last night, researching a couple indy actors... the stuff was high resolution...played fuid, tight images and smooth...no gaps...

Meanwhile the average uploader can't seem to quite get close to that... without jumping thorugh a lot of hoops...

Don't worry... they are going to have to meet u more than halfway...us indy producers, artists, writers, directors... so they can actually keep up with the artist's creaive vision... the industry is starting to notice that there's huge money in it... so they'll have to upgrade us...

and, along with those sentiments... I also,

...have to say,

The only future for us 60's artists-musicians-writers-composers-film makers- guerilla media folks/ visionaries, clairvoyants, baristas/esses ....is to be part digital, part human....


At this point, I have to quote something one of my art instructors taught me, many years ago...


Which is this,
..."a real artist is not limited by the media, or materials or even circumstances... a real artist creates with what they have on hand... where they are standing...

...Therefore..."a real artist can create a masterpiece with sticks and mud...film a blockbuster movie with the cheapest super 8 or web cam, can write a symphony or tv series beyond "Friends" with a stolen bank pen or pencil.../post office pen... and a few scraps of paper found in any trash can....


But if you want to make a living fro that level... it's a different story.

The 21st century demans that if you intend to be able to SELL or show something created with raw real talent.... or throw a decent party about making it, you need to embrace technology.

"Ouch" says the human artist... "Ce le vie" say the wise. Every era has it's parameters... and those who get into "the flow of the era they inhabit"...they seem to get to eat... and live indoors. amazing.

So... if you want to sell it..you can do it a damn lot faster, easier and more efficiently through just 1% technology... 90% talent... the only real essential is the technology... I am sorry to say. The talent part is up to you... and a matter of conscience, for me...but how you approach it...well that's your path!


You don't have to be 100% technology.

a human heart is better.


If necessary, it's concievable tht you can beat Buddy Holly's best , even make the hit record on a bargain box 3.00 cassette recorder, with built in mike and some previously recorded cassettes @ 10 for a dollar.... if you had content to match, it wuld easily outdo the quality of recording...

I once heard a masterpice played off a back porch in Mississippi, an old black Master played a broomstick with one string of bailing wire... his own song, deeper and truer than anything Clapton'[s done, becasue it was REAL... and not for a recorder or a tv show...or anything but human ears.

The only problem with that, ...in my view, ...is that I can't cue up the recording so you can hear it.... It was live...one time only.... no technology was around...no evidence it even happened except in my story here. but I guarantee you that that guy would have been glad to share the song with you... and if he had, maybe he'd also have a new car and some great food.. .and medical care...

Meanwhile, it is also true that a certain amount of fame would destroy the authenticity, don't youthink?

Proven by they guys answer, ehn I suggested it ws a hit record..

He said..."already is a hit record... don't need to be played on no hit parade to be a hit record... the birds and the cars driving by...and this wind... they all know it's a hit record right here... me too"

anyway.

that wasn't easy to heear...

I still think that if you are a Celine Dion.... or if you are a Salina... or a John Lennon... or a Leonard cohen or a Muddy Waters or an Al Jarreau... etc. etc. etc..... you'd still have a masterpiece.... whether it were heard by one person or 10 million.

It's all about how well you can deal with any other place to play the thing, beyond your own back porch.

So... if you can't get to a production facility...work on the song more, anyway...and record it with whatever you have...your phone machine...or some cheap cassette recorder from a resale place.

Folks might say, "did you record this in the 50's?" and they might laugh at the first part of it...but if it's worth anything it's gonna reach right through the scratchy sounds...


...and they would hear the masterpiece...


...Meanwhile... that's the bottom of the barrel, you say?

Well, most folks have far more technology... as well as talent... and if they can't create anything...bu they want simon cowelll to do it or somebody else... then... maybe, maybe, maybe they actuallly should just be sellng groceries or something...

Most of our ideas aobut being famous doing anything are tv driven.

don't be confused.

don't waste your life iwht a dream.


Do it or move on. simple.

but let's say you accomplish some sort of basic recording or a decent song... That's helpful if you are breaking through to your potential... becasue we need to hear your song...the earth does...

Yet...you'd still need something like the internet to get it to the people.

Hence the formula...90% talent...or even 99% talent and hard work...1% technology...and you'd get heard.

Let the people decide if it's their cup of tea.

If nothing else, you would get the ideas of fame as a goal out of your system. Fame is a by-product...of a job well done...that folks enjoy ...

Choices of your past/ our past... they've all been revised.

You can get heard/seen right next to Eric Clapton or any other major player...

I think that's a good thing.

Your one string banjo.

Sometimes I get this feeling that we all haven't noticed that music is right here, right here in our back yards and our own kitchens... inside our own hearts, among our own families...

Isn't it time your voice is heard among your own tribe?
.........


Back when i was learning the various basic technigues in all these range of processes... basically when i was just a kid, I did have the skill to create a hit record... but... the truth is... I hadn't had the experience in the world, for any song I wrote to matter...

Luckily I backed away from the fame portion...but nnot away form life or music.

6000 songs later and probably 50,000 pages of lyric later... I look back through/listen back through... and notice that life is infused in the process... and the good songs ring with that.

but I can't deny it took all htese years to be able to see it right where it already was.
...........

When I called Lon.... a guy who had hlped me learn the basics of recording 20 years ago... also a guy I walked out of an indy contract with...I hear an expanded version of Lon... jus like me, he grew with it... or, maybe I should say that his life demanded he gorw with it...just like me...and just like everybody's life always will.....if you let it.

He also brought the music along...and now, he tells me about producing an album for his next door neighbor, and it makes complete sense.... complete sense... as a worthy expedition... bringing somebody's excellent fireside songs to the people...
First of all, we know it's gonna be real.
Secondly, Lon is a good producer who also grew deeper as a human...


What a team.

So... I have no problem believng Lon when he says, he feels like he is going "through the gate". I can hear it in his voice. And then, when I hear him say, "it sounds like you made it through another set of turns in the road, tony (toe knee)... "

...the tone of his voice, convinces me.... I hear reflected what I sensed was true....no bs... another phase has shifted...again.

...another bounce of the ball.
....................


The only part missing for me, thes e past few years...was solid footing, sinc ethe floor dropped out beneath me in Silly Con Valley.

That's what i say now...but i had plenty of rocks and dirt.

I coulda painted many masterpieces on the hill in Arastradero preserve.

I chose watercolor paper over the materials at hand...

so... it's a breakthrough to finally notice I will be able to slide a few treats on over to you.

ARTintoLIFE.com

no s**t.


I still can't believe it.

Treats in the form of jpgs of the paintings I did among the mountain lions and bald eagles up on skyline boulevard...

And, yes, some video of the various artworks built out of sticks and mud along trails, and creeksides in nature.

And a little of the stuff I had to deal with living out of my truck after the bottom fell through.

..................

It's Christmas EVE.

I accept where I am today.

And I have to feel blessed that I am warm indoors, at least.


Inside, with my 1% technology. I can't say that limitations hold me back.
Instead, I get to notice something I never expected... that hesitation you get to expereince when you aren't sure if you can actually trust anything working out this time.

Well, I said I wanted to learn about the reality... the reality of why suffering holds folks back... i guess I get to see that it's hard to put the shields down, when you had to survive as a daily expereince day in day out... on your own.

And i guess I get to understand why "on your own" is the biggest sign of the damage done.
.............

This Christmas time, while I am still here...

There are no parties, no shared time with friends and family...just enough warmth and safety and time... just enough and an internet connection...and a YOUtube site to upload to... and plenty of clips to upload...and ARTintoLIFE.com ...has come back...too!
so...
I am going to embrace it...
I am going to be uploading clips from the ToeKnee Show, and will be online... maybe with some rum and eggnog...
while the rest of USA celebrates.

It's sort of a Christmas present from me to the world.
Symbolically uploading some of what i created all these years...

Along the way,
I made all these promises to our creator, and to people... of doing my part with my talnet, reflecting it all back to the people. Hopefully with something at enriches..

You get to decide if it was worth it.

Anyway... my path seems to have brought me here...with the idea is to discover right use of creative thought and energy...right use.... to be helpful and to do no harm.

................

So... interestingly for me, I have this whole batch of stuff I'd aired on my TV show in the Bay area, from 94/95 to 2006.

This weekend, I am sending off (uploading) a few gifts to the ether (YOUtube); these are some you get to see...if you so choose. they explain a lot of what I believe in about people... and hold true to the reasons/intent I tried to explain here...,

"Dr Bronner's soap (the pope of soap) & Rosemarie Landry" parts 1 & 2 a Stanger film
"Lori Petty" interview cinequest 2001 a Stanger film
"Auntie Shirley's Nephew, Hawaiian performer "Key Aaloha KIh Hay Leh" in their back yard parts 1 & 2
a stanger film
"the Drifters" with Lori Scott, World Concerts for Humanity feauring Bobby Warren (RIP) a Stanger film
" Uncle Frank's BarB Q" with Leonard and featuring the Will Roc band a stanger film


And a few more, as well, by the time this Christmas day (tomorrow) , is over.

That reminds me, I didn't buy any treats for myself... while I am dong all this... oh well...the stores are gonna be closing early... maybe some raisan bran and a half gallon of milk... we'll see...

So.

Dreams can come true.

And sometimes they take years... so.

Hooray!

.....

This year wouldn't be a real year if we hadn't all did some sort of self-review, while figuring out a better way to do next year... so go off and do that...or if yo want to see inide of my view on it...read on... hasta la vista... babeeee.


..................
so...

1. don't say you are going to do something.

2. do it.

3. then show us you did.

a. Nothing else is real.

b. Make a difference.

4. Out perform all your expectations...

5. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY!!!
a. It's no good unless you can share it!...
b. and it's no good unless, after you share it, you can see the folks you shared it with, adding themselves to it and sharing it with others...

... and if it's a song, it's music , you can hear fading as it rtavels the distance, performed to the same standards and beyond!

c. So, remeber... if it made you famous today...that isn't proof of anything... perfect it, perfect it perfect it and then let it proove itself... that it deserves to and lasts... through time... showcase it's lasting value... on it's own!

6. So INVITE , and Include others, showcase their talent... step back...

7. Follow through... stop pointing fingers and get busy!!! we need you!

a. if you don't bring us your full potential...who will ????
..............



The Toe Knee Show


http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7A8319073BABE579





..........

So!....Make a difference!.

then let time go by , then taste it, and .... most of all! ... test it...

If it was ever worth a s**t... it will remain, the best part of it will be forever...


... yeah... I admit I used to say stuff like this off-hand...

...yeah I admit... each new bounce of the ball includes a phase of disbelief/struggle...


But we all know the ball rolls as it bounces...rolls in the air.


Each time it hits, it finds a new way to bounce, against a whole new edge... with a spin included. A world Champion wrestler taught me that being thrown isn't the REAL issue. It's teaching yourself a way, practising it and perfecting the ability; to always land in a better position, far better than you were before you were being thrown.

And when the other dogs won't let go... you dig deeper... deeper, deeper... until they run beggin for mercy.

........

And if you get to sail it like a parachute or a ship, then call it grace... and cherish the glide... let it be gaceful... go with the edges of the wind... you'll get plenty other times to debate it and to study it for the joureny it was/is.

Everybody gets their share...in a different order.


Just like you... I'll be surprised if I get there...

Meanwhile, I'm rolling with it,

studying the spin and the bounce.

happy New Year.

May it be all you deserve.

With less hardship, more glide.

.......................



www.ARTintoLIFE.com ... is just one of the many so called losses that have come back in focus

Feel free to consider these sites:
www.ToeKneeStanger.com
and the new Marketing sites; -t-shirts etc.: www.Zazzle.com/toekneestanger*
www.Cafepress.com/toekneestanger

...and of course, those of you who might be interested in watching some classic segments fo the Toe Knee Show, follow that link above...

I have the first Shana Morrison videos online (Van MOrrison's daughter...these are clips of my films of the past 8 years...) Also, I have some great excerpts of Willie Nelson visits/interviews, as well as a couple clips of Kris Kristoffeerson/Joan Baez interviews... as well as some of the groundbreaking Reality TV excerpts from the toe Knee sho while i was oepneing up phases of Indy Tv in the Bay area... 94-2006


www.ARTintoLIFE.com


http://www.zazzle.com/toekneestanger*