"She told me more about me than I knew myself"

Singer-actor Cher was born Cherilyn Sarkisian in El Centro, California in 1946. Her father was of Armenian descent; her mother claims Irish, English, German and Cherokee ancestry.

My first memory of Cher was when she and her former husband Sonny Bono had the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, which ran on the CBS network from 1971 to 1974. Before that, Sonny & Cher were voices on the radio, singers of duets like "I Got You, Babe" (1965) and "The Beat Goes On" (1967), the only one-chord song to become at Top 10 hit.

As the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour progressed (it went off the air at the height of its popularity, when the couple divorced), so too did Cher's solo career. With each song she sang she was someone new. In 1971 she was a gypsy; in 1973, an indigenous woman; and in 1974 -- a gypsy killer!

GYPSIES, TRAMPS & THIEVES

(Bob Stone)

I was born in the wagon of a travellin' show

My mama used to dance for the money they'd throw

Papa would do whatever he could

Preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of Doctor Good

Gypsys, tramps, and thieves

We'd hear it from the people of the town

They'd call us gypsys, tramps, and thieves

But every night all the men would come around

And lay their money down

Picked up a boy just south of Mobile

Gave him a ride, filled him with a hot meal

I was sixteen, he was twenty-one

Rode with us to Memphis

And papa woulda shot him if he knew what he'd done

Gypsys, tramps, and thieves

We'd hear it from the people of the town

They'd call us gypsys, tramps, and thieves

But every night all the men would come around

And lay their money down

I never had no schooling but he taught me well

With his smooth Southern style

Three months later I’m a gal in trouble

And I haven’t seen him for a while, uh huh

I haven’t seen him for a while, uh huh

She was born in the wagon of a travellin’ show

Her momma had to dance for the money they’d throw
Grandpa’d do whatever he could

Preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of Doctor Good

HALF-BREED

(Al Capps, Mary Dean)

My father married a pure Cherokee

My mother's people were ashamed of me

The Indians said I was white by law

The White Man always called me "Indian Squaw"

Half-breed, that's all I ever heard

Half-breed, how I learned to hate the word

Half-breed, she's no good they warned

Both sides were against me since the day I was born

We never settled, went from town to town

When you're not welcome you don't hang around

The other children always laughed at me

"Give her a feather, she's a Cherokee"

Half-breed, that's all I ever heard

Half-breed, how I learned to hate the word

Half-breed, she's no good they warned

Both sides were against me since the day I was born

We weren't accepted and I felt ashamed

Nineteen I left them, tell me who's to blame

My life since then has been from man to man

But I can't run away from what I am

Half-breed, that's all I ever heard

Half-breed, how I learned to hate the word

Half-breed, she's no good they warned

Both sides were against me since the day I was born

Half-breed, that's all I ever heard

Half-breed, how I learned to hate the word

Half-breed, she's no good they warned
Both sides were against me since the day I was born

DARK LADY

(John Robert Durrill)

Dark lady laughed and danced and lit the candles one by one

Danced to her gypsy music till her brew was done

Dark lady played back magic till the clock struck on the twelve

She told me more about me than I knew myself

She dealt two cards, a queen and a three

And mumbled some words that were so strange to me

Then she turned up a two-eyed jack,

My eyes saw red but the card still stayed black

She said the man you love is secretly true

To someone else who is very close to you

My advice is that you leave this place,

Never come back and forget you ever saw my face

Dark lady laughed and danced and lit the candles one by one

Danced to her gypsy music till her brew was done

Dark lady played back magic till the clock struck on the twelve

She told me more about me than I knew myself

So I ran home and crawled in my bed,

I couldn't sleep because of all the things she said

Then I remembered her strange perfume,

And how I smelled it was in my own room!

So I sneaked back and caught her with my man,

Laughing and kissing till they saw the gun in my hand

The next thing I knew they were dead on the floor,

Dark lady would never turn a card up anymore

Dark lady laughed and danced and lit the candles one by one

Danced to her gypsy music till her brew was done

Dark lady played back magic till the clock struck on the twelve

She told me more about me than I knew myself

Artist Visit

Lots of snow in the Okanagan Valley yesterday. But snow was not a problem for flights departing Kelowna Airport, only for those departing for an equally snowy Vancouver.

Geoffrey Farmer, a guest of UBC Okanagan's Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, was scheduled to return to Vancouver yesterday, but his flight was cancelled, so he flew out this morning.

Geoffrey arrived in Kelowna on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday morning we drove to Brian's ranch for lunch. After that, back to Kelowna for Geoffrey's artist talk at the RCA.

Here are the full-length versions of the three videos that Geoffrey showed as an overture to that talk:

Last night Geoffrey and I attended the opening of Fabrications at the Kelowna Art Gallery. Below is a detail from Libby Hague's mural, a quote that I thought was from The Matrix (1999) but, as we found out later from the work's directory, is from an unattributed film by Woody Allen. Could it be this one?

A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

Laid out before me are postcards from yesterday's visit to Pandosy Books. Fifty of them -- at 50 cents apiece. Most are ghastly hand-tinted photos of the craters, geysers and pools at Yellowstone National Park.

Castle Geyser and Crested Pool, Morning Glory Pool, Crater of Mud Volcano, Oblong Geyser, Mammoth Paint Pots, Riverside Geyser, Lone Star Geyser, Orange Geyser, Crater of Grotto Geyser, Sponge Geyser...

I keep playing with them, arranging them in grids of four, nine and twelve, hoping to find something worth framing.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

The Quiet American

According to Immanuel Wallerstein, World War II was the end-stage of a hot war between the United States and Germany to see who would control the capitalist world economy in the wake of an ailing Britain. The U.S. won that war and, as a result, entered into (and instigated) a number of conflicts of variable temperatures -- Korea, Iran, Palestine, Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, to name a few.