Randy Elrod's Blog, page 6

We Are Becoming Spaniards

It really hit us when we had American guests this past year. Afterward, Gina and I commented that we felt different. It was intangible then. But as I pondered it, a few thoughts began to form. The Spanish lifestyle is so radically different that after a year-and-a-half of immersion, it can’t help but affect us. ...

Saturday–AI (Artificial Intelligence) Changed My World Forever

Five times in my life, technology changed my life forever. I call them “cracks in time.” The first time I heard the silky sound of a cassette after a lifetime of scratched LPs (1966), the first time I listened to the digital sonority of a Compact Disc (1978), the first time I heard the weird...

Unholy Yearnings

My tender and urgent longings as a sensual adolescent soon clashed with the harsh reality of a prudish religious upbringing. And for over forty years, I suppressed my gnawing hungers, my incessant desires, and my carnal fantasies.  But a single touch of a friend sent courses of electricity through my being and cast a hot...

An Easier Way To Be

For the past two decades, I have been learning that it’s all right not to do everything people expect of you. This idea has been positively liberating for me. The way we were raised—the way our institutions raised us, I mean—trained us to think it’s our job to be correct in everything we do. Others’...

I Survived Hell

As anyone who knows post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will tell you, days and nights can be unpredictable. It can be the brightest day, in the loveliest place, or the most cozy night, nestled in cotton sheets, and you still feel like your being is sucked dry. I fight a relentless battle with shame, fear, guilt,...

The Artist as Dionysus

Let us give masculinity back its flowering wand of reciprocal relationship with the natural world.Let us call Dionysus to the gates of our cities and homes.A man who can dance with plants and honor beasts, a man who can be a woman and an androgen and an animal, is more than a gender.He is a...

Dionysus

Original Graphite Sketch with Watercolor 60 x 46 cm Dionysus, the son of the virgin, bringing the counterpart to bread: wine and the blessings of life’s flowing juices. His blood, the blood of the grape, lightens the burden of our mortal misery. It is his blood we pour out to offer thanks. And through him,...

What Grabs Your Attention?

In 1817, Robert Owen coined the slogan: Eight Hours’ Work, Eight Hours’ Rest, Eight Hours’ Recreation. However, today, it feels like more and more leisure time is being coerced from us and not enjoyed by us. If paying attention is essential to life, then what (and who) grabs our attention determines who we are. In his book The...

I Lost A Hero Yesterday: A Tribute

On this messy journey called life, if we are fortunate, there comes a person who changes our lives forever for the better. I remember, as if it were yesterday, in the Spring of 1977 (48 years ago), walking into the office of the Chairman of the Music Department of Lee College in Cleveland, Tennessee. My...

Hermosa

Watercolor Wash and Graphite on Handmade Paper 26 x 36 cm Hermosa is Spanish for beautiful.