To mark its 21st annual observance of Day Without Art and World AIDS Day, l.a.Eyeworks invited dozens of clients, friends, and supporters from the arts communities to suggest one song they would like us to play during the day on December 1. Each person was invited to submit not only a song, but a description of themselves and a note about the selection if they liked. The playlist was then offered as a takeaway brochure for our visitors.
Our storefronts also featured beautiful vessels where visitors could light incense as a personal gesture of remembrance and hope. Red ribbons were provided as part of The Ribbon Project.
Here are few highlights from this year's DAY WITHOUT ART / WORLD AIDS DAY Uncensored Visions Playlist 2010:
Catherine Opie / Artist Every Breath You Take • The Police
“In 1983 I was living in San Francisco and photographed the first Candle Light Vigil. It was a somber affair which transformed our community forever. The number one song in 1983 which you would hear in clubs and on the radio was the Police, "Every Breath You Take" which seems appropriate.
Elizabeth Streb / Extreme Action Choreographer Learning to Fly • Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
“Well, I have been trying to Fly for my whole life so far, and the tone of this song is why I favor it, sound-wise and concept-wise it states matter-offactually:
'Learning to fly, but I don't have wings- coming down is the hardest part'...both of which I have discovered vividly. The failure of flight, the end
of the air, is where all of the information hides.”
Neil Denari / Architect Heart of Darkness • Pere Ubu
“Pure anxiety about possibly everything.”
Liz Young / Artist As Usual • Brenda Lee
“After my dear friend Jim Reva died, I experienced life in much the same way: the sun came up each day, I moved thru the city as I had before, things seemed the same but something had changed forever. Many people who saw me knew nothing of my loss and others had experienced it too. I carried Jimmy with me, I still do, his name is tattooed on my arm. This song reflects my feelings of loss, the difficulty of acceptance and the ability to carry on with life in those painful moments. I love the songs of Brenda Lee, sweet, sentimental and sometimes sassy....much like Jimmy although he resisted being sentimental which only made me turn it up. I loved Jimmy so. We talked everyday, about life, about art, about nothing. It sometimes seems so unfair that He is gone and that I have lived all this time without him, his love and guidance and his beautiful spirit...but then have I?”
Greg Gorman / Photographer Rattlesnake Charm (Dream machine) • Sean Hayes
Gai Gherardi / Co-Designer, l.a.Eyeworks Anthem • Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen (song by Leonard Cohen)
Allee Willis / Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Webbie winning and nominated songwriter, artist, multimediaist, director, collector, party thrower and curator/social director of The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch at AWMoK.com September • Earth, Wind & Fire
“I wrote it and it’s an eternally uplifting song.”
Rose Apodaca / Co-founder of design retailer A+R and pop culture writer:
The World’s A Mess; It’s In My Kiss • X
“Ok, not the most optimistic of lyrics. But the charging drive of the music is enough to shake us out of our complacency and clean up the mess.”
Rollerskate • Blanca Apodaca
“This song makes me and any one who hears it move! Addictive melody and beat. It makes me happy and not simply because it is written, performed and recorded by my talented sister.”
Let’s Stick Together • Bryan Ferry
“The title says it all.”
Carole Ann Klonarides / Independent Art Curator and Artist Galbi • Ofra Haza
"Back in the mid-80s I was introduced to contemporary middle-eastern music by the French video artist Thierry Kuntzel. I particularly liked Ofra Haza and her amazing soul-touching voice and in particular the songs that embraced the music of her ancestry (her parents were Jews from Yemen). Ofra Haza died in 2000 at the age of 42, of AIDS-related multiple organ failure and Thierry died in 2007 at age 59. The first line of the song translates, "You stole my heart, you stole my soul, you take my breath away." I find it fitting."
Roy Dowell / Artist Mi Nina Lola • Concha Buika
“A song that brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.”
Connie Samaras / Artist You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) • Sylvester
“When I moved to LA in 1989 to teach at UCLA, among the things I missed about the Midwest where I'd been living were the big dance clubs in Detroit and the sort of everyday queer communities beyond the walls of academia and the art world. Knowing this, a friend took me to Jewel's Catch One in south LA where many musicians have performed including the great disco divas like Sylvester. The first event I went to there was a memorial service for Sylvester who had died a few months before in late 1988, one of the many early casualties of the epidemic pre the hard won political and medical victories of Act Up. Whether I heard "You Make Me Feel" at the service or later on the dance floor at Catch, I can't remember. But I do remember the first time I danced to it in 1978. And, although grief is one of the feelings I now have whenever I hear this iconic disco song, I also always still continue to feel the heat of his voice and the incredible transformative power of passion as though it was yesterday.”
Marc Pally / Art Worker Sligo River Blues • John Fahey
“John Fahey is the Pied Piper of emotional ambiguity, I follow him into the melancholic and I follow him into optimism (not as often unfortunately) - the simplicity of the acoustical guitar, one player, one instrument, creates a pitch perfect elegy and strikes the right notes for the unfathomable reality of AIDS - Fahey's poignancy is persistent, it catches the largest pulses of all our systems.”
