Amor de mel, amor de fel

In 2001, I discovered Misia ("Ritual" http://www.misia-online.com/).
I since have bought all her records.

A few months later, another (gentle) tsunami entered my life, Christina Pluhar and her magnificent "L'Arpeggiata" ("La Tarantella: Antidotum Tarantulae" http://www.arpeggiata.com/).
I also have all the records from that essential ensemble.

I should have guessed those two would eventually get together, they both have a deep grounding in tradition and a need to explore.
They both at times have been under attack from the ayatollahs of the musically correct, be it of baroque music or fado, but (thankfully) "the dogs bark and the caravan moves on...".

It's done now, they came together on a beautiful CD ("Mediterraneo" http://www.arpeggiata.com/archives/portfolio/mediterraneo).

This sketch is yet another attempt at listening to music with my eyes, avoiding as much as I can the facile "solution" to "animate" by way of (what I call) "cartooning."

As a painter, I have long seen the fallacy of figure - ground differentiation, at least the linear "fixed" kind.
Perception (which drives all, as Merleau-Ponty said, it is "constitutive") for me is made of constant reversals: figure becomes ground, ground becomes figure, and if there is a point of balance between those two poles, it is not available to the discursive mind, but may leave traces (of its existence) in our work if we can proceed without being constantly dominated by the conceptual (another facile "solution").
Those traces are found in/created by the work we do "without knowing" (so many artists have acknowledged that as being the source of their best work).

So, to paraphrase Fernando Pessoa / Alberto Caeiro, "I don't know what I am doing, and I don't want to know."

Nice translation of the lyrics of this song (lyrics written by Amália Rodrigues) here: http://lyricstranslate.com/en/amor-de-mel-amor-de-fel-love-honey-love-bitter.html