we now return to a rockey home companion

It's been a bit since i've given any updates regarding the house sitch and/or otherwise. The fact of the matter is, summer times have been just plain crazy pants. Things have been slow-going as we attempt raising the sag in our first floor with a couple of car jacks and evicting old insulation between our ceilings and roofs. We've gotten all kinds of intimate with our crawlspaces and attics. Bow-chicka-bow-wow, y'all.

In the meantime, baby jane started her third semester of preschool before the summer was even half over. We celebrated her fifth year with a string of parties and a slumber party with her pal bella. The two stayed up late eating popcorn and watching a movie about a girl named Saige who makes paintings of horses and watermelon-coloured mountains. Baby jane got inspired to continue pursuing the arts with a reignited passion. A few days later, we surprised her after school with some new paints and turned our front porch into a makeshift painting studio.

The doctor even got in on the action...

While he was discovering his inner pollack, baby jane dazzled us by unveiling her newest masterpiece...

Voila!

The bat loses its wings

My four-year-old daughter and i collaborated on this conceptual piece of music about a baby bat who takes flight for the first time, loses his wings, and then must reattach them before flying home to be reunited with his mother. The whole idea included making CDs accompanied by activity books and t-shirts under the title, "The Bat Loses Its Wings". We did that; and it all originated in the mind of that tiny little lady of mine. Over the course of several months, the two of us drew all the pieces of our little project together. We then decided, after much deliberation, that we would christen our little creative outfit/band: Call Me Kitty. 

And it was so. 

These two tiny friends helped lay the instrumental groundwork for the flight of our titular character. They are the major players in the Call Me Kitty arsenal.

Here are some stax of bats and bat-related activities that have since been distributed to the people with whom we shared holiday festivities.

Feast your eyes upon this pair of masterpieces completed by two of Baby Jane's young pals. This is the young artist's dream realized. Voila!

And now, without further ado, please enjoy the following ten minutes of musical whimsey which we call...

Movement I: It Was a Lovely Day

Movement II: Taking to the Sky

Movement III: The Bat Loses Its Wings

Movement IV: Falling

Movement V: Searching...

Movement VI: Glue

Movement VII: The Bat Loses Its Wings (Reprise)

Movement VIII: Going Home

Movement IX: Mama's Wings

Thanks for listening.

Indy refugee at the earth house

Ladies and dudes, the Earth House is closing shop, but our little project instigated by the rad ms. katie basbagill  known as INDY REFUGEE will be opening and closing our exhibit at the Earth House this saturday night, y'all.

Along with the gorgeous photographs of our beautiful refugee friends, you can enjoy music by Old Thyme Eskimo and yours truly. Did i mention snacks? Oh yes, there will be snacks.

Check some press on the event: NUVO News

If you're in indy on saturday night, please come out for this one night event as we bid a fond adieu to the Earth House. Check the deets here, you lovely people you: FACEBOOK EVENT

Inspirational sayings

Evolution of an artist

This morning, after a bowl of oatmeal and honey, baby jane presented us with this representation of her and the good doctor picking apples at the orchard. Apparently she woke up this morning and decided she was moving past her abstract period to a season of realistic portraiture. Good for you, kiddo.

One thursday afternoon

If you're going to get a job done, don't get it done alone. Have some help. My helper is Stanley. I drink his blood and it ignites my go-gettums. Thanks, Stan.

Sweet Judy Blue-eyes is always hanging around to wish us all a good day. Judy, you really know how to point a fella in the right direction. Stay positive, kid.

Nothing inspires creativity like a four foot stretch of plywood fresh off the sanding block. Baby jane urges that i change out of my better trousers lest this coat of paint gets the best of me.

Goldilocks and the Ghost of Sweet Judy Blue-eyes.

Art rock.

Portrait of a little girl and her little dog. Behold the wonder and find yourself. Now it's your turn. Go make something.

While you were away

It's been a whirlwind of a month or so since we last corresponded. That's my way of explaining how lazy i am about typing words on this thing. I'd like to say that i'll be more frequent with the updates, but i can't promise that. After all, there are more pressing issues at hand. In case you missed one of the greatest nights EVER, you can read the recap at INDYREFUGEE(dot)COM. Needless to say, it was an amazing night of art, frivolity, and bringing awareness of burmese refugees to those in attendance.

Due to a smorgasbord of projects (and two kiddos) already demanding my attention, this holiday season's offering of sonic morsels was a collection of random, previously unreleased home recordings spanning the past five years or so. You can download all  twenty one tracks at NOISETRADE(dot)COM/JOELROCKEY so you might as well go ahead and do that right now. Feel free to leave me a tip, but if you don't want to, that's cool too. Listen for baby jane chatting in the background of a few tracks. The cover art features what mama jane lovingly describes as a 'naked potato' shakin a tambourine. You make the call...

Now, a few random thoughts and observations from the past several weeks:
-We need more black licorice twists.
-Three-year-olds talk smack.
-Three-year olds think they're in charge.
-We can't have nice things.
-Families are messy.
-I'm really more of a sheep dog than a bear.
-Repurposed desktop art is still en vogue.
-The one with the beard is the one who leads.
-Sometimes what appears to be chicken pox is simply a possible case of hand, foot, and mouth.
-No one knows as much about anything as my friend JD does about Saved by the Bell.
-If you want a baby to poop don't feed him bananas.
-Love is realized fully only in its being shared with someone else.

That last one came out of the brass tacks discussion my pops and i have been chewing through regarding the apostle paul's letter to the corinthian church known more specifically as 1st corinthians. By the way, if i haven't mentioned it before, my pops is rad.

Finally, i was honoured to make the acquaintance of one miss jennifer (aka turquoise feathers) upon her request of my involvement in her short-run, handmade mag featuring five handmade artists. She's a rad lady with a pretty rad guy in his own right. Below is a snapshot of the piece she had me write up about the mustard room. You can take a look at all of the pages of the mag titled 'pen & needle' on her blog at these precise coordinates.

One last thought: It's much more fun to refer to muffins as 'M, U, double-F, Ins.' Try it.

Where you need to be

Peeps of all shapes and sizes, may i have your attention? Remember that time when you were asking me where you needed to be on the night of December 2nd, 2011? Well, i'll be a panda's pancreas if i ain't come to and suddenly up and remembered. Here's the skinny:

WHO? YOU, SUNSHINE!

WHAT? Photography, art, screening of Burma VJ, food, convo, jamz, photobooth, all in the name of raising awareness of Burmese refugees and their stories

WHEN? Friday, December 2, 2011 from 6:00 pm to the break-a-break-a-dawn (or around 10ish)

WHERE? Gallery 2 at The Harrison Center for the Arts in Indy(anapolis) (directions hizzle)

WHY? To change the world

HOW? Teamwork

If you're on the facebooks, soar on over to our page and punch "LIKE" right in the kisser. Also, you can read more about the whos, whats and whys at our website: INDYREFUGEE(dot)COM.

We can't wait to see you there.

P.S. You are the shiz.

Holla at yer bros

Get your holla for fifteen dolla. Choose your colour and we'll make it happen. Give a shout out to holla(at)themustardroom(dot)com to get the proverbial ball rolling, y'all.

Any guesses?

Nope. Try again.

Ooooooh! So close.

It's obviously a depiction of bunnies in the forest. And there's Yoda.

At least that's what the artist tells me.

Wished our dear friend K-baz fond bon voyage from the olde homestead as she prepped to travel the world once again. We spent an evening catching up with seasoned pals and acquainting ourselves with new ones. Check out our friend Zih chilling with Dr. Sugarman as Biak tries to pretend that he doesn't mind having to share. By the by, keep yourself up to snuff with what's going on with all these aforementioned folks involvement in the INDYrefugee project at indyrefugee.com. 

All right? 

Moving on...

This lil chick 'n' tiny dude are bros for life. 

The shape of things to come

Or else what?

I could think of myself a victim of my own folly if not for grace and mercy. I find or rather have found myself time and time again torn between listening to your voice and giving in to the illusion of such. My condition demands confession. It may be more for myself to die to those wrong perceptions than anything else. I guess for a very long time we have tried to manufacture a freedom in regards to living in your love instead of simply living at first in that freedom.

I am in a place where i feel somewhat yet not utterly alone. Perhaps we (and by we i mean me) have allowed ourselves to be placed beneath the tyranny of the expectations of our man-made institutions rather than found at the feet of grace listening for the voice belonging to only you. I'm coming to the realization that this letter could be thus far defined by the rathers. Is 'rather' the word which best describes my existence thus far? That may be a bit melodramatic. However, I can't deny that i've spent a great deal of my life declaring, whether by word or by deed, that i'd rather my predicament look a bit different. I am speaking of purely selfish things here. Sometimes these desires are rooted in the depths of complex emotions. Often they are strictly self-serving and trivial.

I imagine a great deal of folks who talk of or claim allegiance to Jesus find themselves compromising that devotion for their own ambitions. If we are living in that space between Christ's victory and the healing of all things then what does that mean for the church? What does that mean for those who align themselves with Jesus? What does that mean for you and me? Where do our stories fit into God's story? The thing is that the more i think about those questions, the more i believe that the answers mean a great deal. They matter a great deal, not because we are all destined to be gameshow contestants or rock stars or astronauts, but because our stories are a part of God's story. They matter because our stories are connected. Your story and my story fit together into the story of God's love and creation and redemption and recreation of all things.

We should matter to one another in ways that we often don't allow ourselves to matter to one another.

(photo credit: zack bent)

The following is a paid political advertisement

How was our night you ask? Tacos by roscoe's and a small reunion of former stonegate personnel made it mighty fine indeed. A triple shout out to our girl wendy!

Late nights are when olivia gets to chill with daddy. And by chill I mean chug a couple ounces of soy peppered with a healthy dose of burps and bellyaches. It's hard to resist when she burns a hole through your soul with those baby blues. Consider my heart fondue.

Activity for the home viewers:
Congratulations to mr. andrew who was the only participant and therefore by default the winner of the last create-your-own-adventure montage. His winnings were not, however, unmerited. His story will be published in a future post. Mrs. fields is waiting for you sir.

Here's this weeks create-your-own-adventure montage. The winner receives a surprise. Step up to the plate y'all and tell us what's goin on in this series of dramatic photographs...

We interupt your regularly scheduled blog posting for this important bulletin:

Don't forget to come out to the second annual indieana handicraft exchange at the harrison center for the arts in downtown indianapolis this friday and saturday. Your own joel rockey will be sharing a set of handmade songs, tee shirts and digital music discs on saturday morning at 11:15 am. The harrison center for the arts is located on the corner of 16th and delaware in beautiful downtown indy.

Later in the evening, my pal katie basbagill has an opening reception for a showing of her photographic work at B-Java. More live tunes.

In other news:

Just over the horizon is the fabled return of a rockey home companion's beloved podcast known affectionately as the aural supplement. To satisfy your appetites in the following days, I will be posting links to previous episodes for downloading and trading with your friends.

Podcast Archive: Episode 9:
The ground grows colder by the hour as we construct our masks and ask to devour the candy corn cobs turning to dust in the wake of Autumn's final gust. Chilled to the bone, guest host Senor Hector LaVeta tempts the recesses of your ears with hallowed tones of excitable stones being thrown in the dark of night.

MP3 Download: Episode 9

Cheers!

Share the hair

The reluctant hermit emerges from his cavernous dwelling once again in another attempt at assimilation.

He carefully walks his ever thinning line between social butterflies and social lepers.

What was never more than a glimmer of hope has all but surrendered to the already deafening cries which he imagines from women and children on the street.

"The beard! Destroy the beard!"

He will not be shaken.
He returns to the fold of silence and empty pages.

Brew monkies

In celebration of post number one hundred of A Rockey Home Companion, we are pleased to announce the birth of the newest member of the Strange Brew coffee house family delivered by the Mustard Room!

Stayed tuned for episode 8 of An Aural Supplement.