The Red Road

Hopi Elder Speaks

You have been telling the people that this is the 11th hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the hour.
And there are things to be considered...

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.

It is time to speak your Truth. Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside of yourself for the leader.

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said,
This could be a very good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel that they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the
middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads
above the water.

And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey
comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do must now be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

Che la Ke goes to Sodak

Three weeks ago I moved to the Black Hills of South Dakota. I'm officially putting Che la Ke on the DIY map of Sodak, just waiting to get that all-important listing on the dodiy.org site!

That means travelers, singers, poets, bards, saints and the like crossing I-90 in vicinity of Rapid City, South Dakota are in my neighborhood.

Looking for a venue? A warm meal? A place to display some art? Other? Send me an email at chelake@gmail.com and we'll see what we can do.

Calling all Artists! Calling all Artists!

Like an Exhale, wait, then Spring

Valerie's work just came down from the walls of Think on the Bowery. It's like she's left me. The room is absolutely vacant without her.

I never met Valerie. She died last summer. She was a morning regular, I am the night manager.

Her partner Eric promised to put her work on display at our coffee shop here on the Bowery, because it was one of the last places left that Valerie felt was real, in this stretch of homeless shelters and  bourgeois shops.

It felt as though I began to know her. She has become a friend, a soul connection.

Eric said: There was a dialectical materialism and magic in everything she did. A heavy sense of freedom. That joy, that freedom, will be part of this show.

Tamara Wyndham, who curated, also had never met Valerie. After the show Tamara flew to Egypt to draw items from archealogical digs. Back to patterned animal spirits . Tamara, who paints human energy and menstrual blood.

And Eric wrote me, "Though there were few, those that came carry the eternal light. You are one of those special people."

Thank you Valerie and Eric, for opening a new facet inside of me, like an arterial vein feeling blood for the first time, remembering the way blood feels when it pumps and runs.

I am changed.

March 10, 2010 Metropolitan Museum of Art

Scribbles from notebook. Excerpts of plaquards. New York City.

Proto Elamite Period ca. 3100 - 2900 B.C.

Lowland plain of Khuzistan in southwest Iran. Heart of ancient state Elam with Susa as major urban center. Writing, invented in mesopatamia, apeared soon thereafter at Susa, but in a different script. developing.

Highly expresssive animal figures, sometimes in human postures. Bodies often covered with linear pattern....symbolized natural forces and or protagonists in myths or animal fables.

Inanna Sumerian goddess of abundence. 

Red black white

Cuneiform writing

"He fashioned his statue and set it up before the god in his temple, to pray to the god for the life of his father, for the life of his mother, and for his own life." -Meanesi ca. 2500 BC

[ancestral prayer]

Inanna "Queen of Heaven"

Goddess of fertility embodied in planet Venus

Appears in morning and again in evening

Her temple E-duranki : "the bond of heaven and earth"

Ritual and ceremony

[cigarette break]

Bridget Riley "Blaze 1"

Jean Tinguely "Narva"

Sputters, cranks, pulleys, levers. Working piece.

Paul Gauguin "Te Bou Rao II"

Washed in blue, something therein.

Mark Rothko No. 3 1953

transcendent emotional response / layered planes

That day, the city was our museum.

Die Botschaft Totentanz 8 Von Michale Brynntrup

Screening Tue Feb 23: Die Botschaft Totentaz 8
West Berlin Super 8 filmed 1989 
1 Bleecker St. & The Bowery NYC 7-9pm

Che la Ke is

Che la Ke is a multimedia performance collective. Behind the collective is Sarah Riley's visual artistry and curatorial work.

Che la Ke started as a film collaboration in 2006 between ghsts n guitars and filmmaker Sarah Riley. 

Their aim was to depict ghst's life as a subway performer in the New York City's subways. The natural partnership between music and film evolved into a live performance show.

With each new show, the collective undergoes an evolution. Ms. Riley strives to elicit a sense of place and time that is both of the moment, and deeply rooted in the past.

Che la Ke has since produced shows involving artists Matthew Nichols, Drew Drumz, Bucky, Jon Bozeman, Dave Treut, Candles of Paradise, and Brian Peck.

Che la Ke has performed at clubs, coffee shops, houses, anarchist and/or artists collectives, and on stages all across the United States.