Aquarius (January 21 – February 19) Many of your judgments have accumulated to create a fortune, a palace and a miracle. You choose again, and you choose the miracle. In your vast explorations of horizons rising and falling, the delight you bring and the fascinations you lead are the priceless seeds of revolution, thought up on a ferris wheel ride!
Pisces (February 20 – March 20) In dreams the water comes most. This mystery of you is everlasting, and rest comes from the sands. We take the sand as our character and our part. To feel the whole, we wash these small pieces through our hands. Return to the sand—walk on it, too!
Aries (March 21-April 21) Always beginning: the paradox of sublime sorcery. There is none more beautiful than the infant! Beautiful, perfect, divine, child. You are weeping new tears that we can drink. Thank you for the new dance steps, too.
Taurus (April 21 – May 21) Dear sweet power of thought: I now devote myself to your relation. The miracle of thinking and how magical this ability is to make reality—these thoughts guide my new world. I accept my leadership within this heaven of earth that is of my mind.
Gemini (May 22 – June 21) O my best friend, best friend of all life—the saddest and most funny—in your nature, human life rests its paradoxes. You are greatly loved as the keeper of the key as we enter the theater of utopia. Thank you for having carried this key with you all along!
Cancer (June 22 – July 22) You know everything! With this knowledge you also possess everything. The question is: how can you begin to not know things? Your perfect creative mind is manifested when you have the ability to choose what you see, what you hear, what you know, who you are. You already have this ability.
Leo (July 23 – August 22) Forgive the sugar. Forgive the salt. Forgive the beginning, forgive the end. Forgive what you’ve taken, forgive what you stole. Forgive when you waken, forgive when you’re old. Love is the beginning, love is the end. Teach me how to waken, teach me how to mend.
Virgo (August 23 – September 23) Do you remember when you witnessed the animals coming to drink at the pool below your rock? You sat for hours as they came, some smiling at you. You tell this story to a stranger and the two of you weep with its tenderness. Remember your tenderness: it is the revelation of music.
Libra (September 24 – October 23) If a stranger offers you candy, you should take it. If taking it makes you fear for your life then you should take two pieces. Then also you should start giving candy out to strangers, or maybe something more wholesome than candy.
Scorpio (October 24 – November 22) Hello children of desire! Be sure your passions are breaking upon the opening chances for life. Remember: choose ecstasy if it is new. When faced with the prison of before, choose the new ecstasy right now. You may experience this as the opposite of your previous or present body. Now prepare for your own power of god.
Sagittarius (November 23 – December 21) O sweet love of the perfect aim! I know that your arrows can go anywhere so you don’t like those targets anymore? Go beyond the target and make your arrows return. This is your new practice. Now we all fly on the wings of your arrows! See how we fly! Your cooperative nature is the sexy side effect of such skillful flight.
Capricorn (December 22 – January 20) If clowning was like flying, you are a kite! In this way, you catch electricity from the sky! Lightning travels to your paper and pen and we trust your words. This love is so strong around you that soon your comedies will manifest. Keep the comedies in your heart like you keep the money in your chest! If you are wondering, Hmm. Does it matter if my soul lives or dies? The answer is yes—it matters !! P.S. Your soul never dies.
“This print is the first in a series that Becky Stark and I are making together. We write slogans and turn them into prints and videos. This is the first print and is designed in collaboration with Jacob Ciocci.
Jacob is a founding member of the art collective Paper Rad and plays in the band Extreme Animals. Becky is the lead singer/songwriter of the folk pop band Lavender Diamond. We’ve been longtime collaborators and friends. We live across the country from one another and write these slogans via text message. It’s fun to get a random positive message, and our intent is for people who come across these posters to get the same feeling of unexpected joy.
Our work together is about giving off healing vibrations generated by humor and beauty. We hope it makes you smile.
Old people cry, young lovers smile and cynical hipsters get confused when she’s onstage. What is Lavender Diamond’s love-and-ecology frontlady BECKY STARK up to?
By Jay Babcock, with photography by Mark Frohman & Molly Frances Originally published in Arthur No. 26/Sept 2007
Recently Becky Stark and her mother dropped in on Arthur’s Thursday social at a pub in Los Angeles. Talk about the fruit not falling far from the tree: Diane Stark, an ordained minister serving at the Unity Church of Practical Christianity in Grand Rapids, Michigan, effortlessly owned the place. At a table of Becky’s friends, she told stories about her own mother, a spiritualist who gave public lectures on metaphysics in the ‘40s and completed an unpublished book entitled “The Meaning of Love.” She talked about working as a stripper on Sunset Boulevard in the mid-1970s; about witnessing Martin Luther King, Jr. give his “I Have a Dream” speech; about her own life philosophy (“I like to act as if I’m inside a fable”); about how you should hold a loved one when she’s asleep; and, of course, about Becky being born (“She was happy to be here”). Then someone put on Link Wray and it was time for the Stark women to dance—or, as Diane put it, “have a conversation at the energetic level.”
If that doesn’t explain Becky Stark, here are some other true stories. One of the first books she read was a collection of Gandhi’s writings given to her by a friend of the family who was active in the nuclear freeze movement. She joined the League of Women Voters at age seven and in seventh grade, traveled through the Soviet Union with 13 other American kids as part of a cross-cultural exchange initiative called Peace Child. The three-week tour included a stay with 500 Soviet kids at a Young Constables youth camp on the Volka River and participation in a youth choir performance opening for American poodlerockers Skid Row at the Moscow Peace Festival in Red Square. (“Peace Child” was the title of a hit song in Russia, and Becky can still sing it on demand.) From eighth to tenth grade, Becky was the head writer, anchor and host of “Kids’ Point of View,” a weekly 20-minute television show sandwiched on UHF between the World Wrestling Federation show and Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. At 14, she started a local youth chapter of the National Organization of Women. As a teenager, she developed her range by studying modern and romantic opera (as well as Tin Pan Alley and other classic American pop music), but her opera singing career was ended when her body failed to develop the large lung capacity required to sing at a professional level. She studied Russian as a Comparative Lit undergrad at Brown, and dance at the Merce Cunningham Conservatory in New York City. In 2000, Time Magazine published a photograph of Stark wearing a bright yellow dress levitating in front of riot police during a protest march at the Democratic Convention. In 2003, she toured across the country with Xander Marro, performing “Birdsongs of the Bauhauroque,” an operatic fable/comedic poem involving puppetry, keyboards and costume drama. Returning to Los Angeles, Stark worked a series of comical dayjobs and started performing solo as Lavender Diamond and doing stand-up at the Improv and other comedy clubs
Over the next two years, Lavender Diamond evolved from a one-woman act into a four-piece symphonic folk-pop band featuring composer Steve Gregoropoulos on piano, Jeff Rosenberg on acoustic guitar and Stark’s boyfriend, the cartoonist Ron Rege, Jr., on drums. The band’s sadness-and-ecstasy four-song EP The Cavalry of Light was self-released in 2005. At ArthurFest that year, they played into the sun with such beauty that left many (including poet Charles Potts) teary-eyed. During the next year, as they were recording with Vetiver/Brightblack Morning Light/Devendra Banhart producer Thom Monahan, Lavender Diamond were signed by the legendary Geoff Travis to Rough Trade in Europe and then to Matador in North America.
Imagine Our Love, Lavender Diamond’s debut full-length, was released earlier this year to the kind of divided response the band has often received live. Stark’s Lavender Diamond persona is unique: think of a cosmic grade school teacher, or maybe Mary Poppins, returned to talk to you later in life, heartbroken at first to have to remind her former pupils about the importance of sharing and respect for Nature, but happy to encourage you to do better, using music, humor and imagination. When Stark sings “You broke my heart” over and over, pointing her finger directly at specific audience members, it’s a loaded—transgressive, even—move in a culture built on evading responsibility; you can see how it might not fly with every jaded urban hipster. But Lavender Diamond’s music is for the entire school, not just the kids too cool to be there. It’s pop music for peace, simple songs pitched somewhere between Linda Ronstadt, Jefferson Airplane and Yellow Submarine. Or, as Stark says, “It’s lovesongs to the world.”
Here’s part of our recent conversation.
Arthur: So many people think you’re being ironic. Does that bother you?
Becky Stark: I thought our music was simple enough for anyone to get, and so it’s kind of confounded me when people think we’re joking. Why on earth would we do that? Every time anyone asks if I’m serious about celebrating peace on earth I have to say, “Are you seriously asking me that question?” For real. I’m the weirdo? For talking about peace? In the midst of a horrific insane war? What? What have things come to that people think it’s a joke to play music that celebrates peace? I guess that in the performance of Lavender Diamond I am trying to create an antidote to the degradation of our times—it’s like we are trying to run an interference pattern. It’s pretty extreme, and maybe that’s why people think it couldn’t be sincere. I think it’s our responsibility to be understood. Maybe some people think we’re kidding because we look silly. Well, I’ll have to work on my delivery and fashions so that we are taken more seriously. Maybe I’ll have to start wearing all grey and black and frowning! Seriously…maybe we just have to be more elegant…? More sexy? We’ll keep working on it. I probably need to be more dignified and not as loopy. If we’re being misunderstood, it’s because we’re not being powerful enough or intelligent enough in our communication.
Talk about the source for the title “Imagine Our Love.”
Ron [Rege, Jr.] was reading Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh and came across the phrase “imagine our love” in a passage about covering the world with loving prayer. Thich Nhat Hanh is a peace activist from Vietnam who was brought to the U.S. by Martin Luther King, Jr. in an effort to end the Vietnam War. Peace Is Every Step teaches how to cultivate the strength and power of a loving heart, about love and communication. How to be a peaceful person—a warrior of peace. He talks about how the people he was with in Vietnam had to heal from the war. It is very beautiful and inspiring and heartbreaking. He’ll be at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles leading a peace walk in September. Peace is every step!
Is peace enough?
Yes. That’s the definition of peace, I think: understanding that we already have enough. Peace, by definition, is enough.
What do you think music is for?
Music is for celebration, for having a great time. Music is like touch, language and medicine: it’s for healing, for uplifting. Music is a source of strength for people in a time of trouble. Music gives people a way of expressing joy and sorrow. Music is for communicating poetry and new ways of living and being, for communicating ideas of how we can transform our world and guide it into liberation of the mind and spirit.
The whole world seems to be getting stupider a la Idiocracy‘s predictions. Have we entered a new Dark Age, and if so, how can smart people—the ones who aren’t sharks or demagogues—survive in a devolving situation?
We have to be smarter. We have to grow. We have to evolve ourselves consciously—by being part of the consciousness revolution. We have to build the understanding of the nature of consciousness until it is understood as a fact like the world being round. People have to understand the reality that all of us have power and responsibility and that everyone matters. Everyone is you. The paradox of your own individuation—how at once your life can be whole and part, like a grain of sand—is a source of great pleasure and mystery. What a glorious paradox! It is liberating to discover that your life has meaning, whether you like it or not.
It’s a good thing that our terracidal economies are coming to an end, because our ways are not sustainable. We have to build new models that work so that when the current idiotic models come crashing down, we can be ready with the new ones. An end is a beginning. We have to build the new beginning! We have to be mischievous and intelligent. We have to build templates and demonstrate how to live in a sustainable way. That way it’ll be all figured out and everyone can just copy. We have to make harmonious living delightful. And exciting. And awesome. We should make eco-amusment parks. We could have rides like “It’s a Small World After All”—but everything demonstrating harmony with nature and sustainability. The energy sources for the rides will be transparently built as attractions. We’ll have the artists and engineers create gorgeous, exciting attractions around the energy sources, so that the kids are mesmerized! We’ll have murals, laser light shows. People can come with their families and have a delightful, uplifting, exciting, healing experience that is all powered by the sun and the wind.
I think that if we put our minds to it we can figure out ways to heal our environment. Sometimes I think about public healing rituals for the earth, holistic remedies for planetary toxicity, like our toxic urban rivers. Maybe baking soda would work? The best way to treat completely toxic water is to run it through a system of plant filters. A lot of ferns. Another powerful way to filter water is to run it down a path in the shape of a figure 8—it oxygenates the water. In China, they build gigantic figure 8 sculptures in the parks. I’d love to start an eco-village community that’s built around urban river water usage. That way we can figure out how to clean our rivers and live with them again and teach everyone else to do it too.
And—also—I think the way to progress/survive is to practice radical compassion, to relate to the world in a completely non-adversarial way. It’s a waste of energy to be against anything or anyone. We have to stop wasting energy. Change our energy source. Change our relationship to nature. Change our relationship to each other. Redirect our energy source from fear to love. From limited to unlimited. Perceive no enemies and no limitations. I have a feeling that we can come up with all the solutions we need.
But aren’t some people more responsible for what’s going on than others? Like the rich and powerful, for example. They seem fundamentally different to most people.
I love the rich and the poor just the same—it’s the middle class that’s the problem! Just kidding. It is true that sometimes it is staggering to witness the way that the rich go on with lives involved in the accumulation of power. But the rich aren’t the only ones in the death grip of the paradigm of domination and control—everyone is! Well, not everyone—but a lot of people are. Time to give it up! Sure, debutante balls and Wall Street culture are weird and corrupt but your question smacks of bigotry. Everyone needs healing and needs to grow. We have to stop dividing the world! Stop it! The only way to solve the world’s problems is for everyone to work together and love each other no matter what class you come from. I have friends who are homeless and friends who are billionaires. I used to have a lot of class rage but I’ve given it up completely. I grew up in a poor family, on the wrong side of the tracks (literally—the train tracks were down the block), but I can’t stand all this bigotry. It’s a cult mentality, a false reality. So, stop it. The most beautiful and gentle soul I ever met, who taught me chess and tai chi, inherited billions of dollars when he was 21. He died of a drug overdose on the street a year later. He was so lost. I think if people would have embraced him in our community he wouldn’t have gone astray. Who knows what would’ve happened if he hadn’t died? Maybe he would’ve used his money for good. It hurts my heart, all this dividing everybody up. If you think the rich are different from everybody else, you are operating in the paradigm of domination and control just like all the other idiots! When the earth becomes so toxic nobody can live on it, the rich die too! No one escapes!
Sorry, but you made me mad with that question. Don’t pull that shit. [laughter] There’s no time to fight.
Speaking of dividing up: why aren’t Lavender Diamond playing all-ages shows? It seems like all you played on your last tour were over-21 bars and nightclubs.
We realize that our music resonates for people of all ages so we’re playing as much as possible at all-ages places. We’re organizing a tour to schools where we’ll play with the student bands and choirs. But I do like club shows, though, because you can be more wild and dark.
You once told an interviewer “dancing should be the number one priority of the nation.” But I’ve never seen people dancing at your shows!
Maybe Lavender Diamond is part of the problem! [laughter] People do dance at our shows, but not enough. These days I always wish before the shows that we were making a dance party, but it’s true that we are definitely not making a dance party. That’s why our next record is definitely a dance party record. But yes, Lavender Diamond is part of the problem until we start to make better dancing music. Maybe we need help from the DFA, or M.I.A. Or I could help them, Donna Summer style…?
Who are your favorite dancers? What are your favorite dances?
In terms of historical dancers and choreographers, I love Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, George Balanchine, Maria Tallchief, so many great dancers from the 20th century. Busby Berkeley! I would love to make a musical film with David Parsons’ choreography. I love Ryan Heffington. I want to do some Gene Kelly-style duets. I really love the Singing in the Rain dance, the dance from the end of Lili, and the dances from West Side Story. I love the dead doll pas-de-deux from the ballet coppelia. I love the Balanchine Firebird dance—it’s psychedelic! Twentieth century ballet is so extreme. I like folk dancing too: the polka, the waltz, the do-si-do, square dancing, all the hip-hop dance grooves. I like West African dances—they organize their dances according to ritual purpose, so there’s a marriage dance and a crop dance and death dance and so on. And in Mali they don’t differentiate between the word for language, medicine, and dance. Everyone dances, it’s like yoga—healing codes and positions for your body. It’s like the opposite of ballet. West African dance is all down and ecstatic; ballet is lifting up and is really masochistic. I like ballet but I like the folk kind, not the masochistic high art style. Although I do really love to watch the great ballerinas, with them it doesn’t seems to be about suffering but is about ecstasy. And I want to dance with Patrick Swayze! The dance from Dirty Dancing. That reminds me that tango is the best dance ever. I also like meditative dance like tai chi.
And—I love Mecca Andrews. She is my favorite dancer, she dances in our video. I can’t wait to make more dances with her. Also I love the way Miranda July dances, she’s a great dancer. I love the way my sister dances and my mom dances. I love the way Ron Rege, Jr. dances, he’s a great dancer! I love the way Maximilla [Lukacs] dances!
I guess I really love the way that everyone dances. Everybody is a great dancer!
Here’s something you don’t think about too often: blind optimism. Stop for a second and think about all those things that are encroaching on your life. Now bend your mouth into a smile. Whether you’re chuckling or rolling your eyes at this point, the sound of Becky Stark’s voice encapsulates the energy it takes to do that. And not by singing about puppy dogs and ice cream. We couldn’t resist lifting our jaded fingers and asking this glowing singer, who’s performing with her band Lavender Diamond on Friday, if peace on earth was really possible. She told us – via e-mail – about working at a Mafia front, being betrayed by the church and getting fired for wearing silver shoes.
What is Lavender Diamond and how did you come up with it?
Lavender Diamond is a description of a resonance, a pure crystal sound. It came to me in a dream!
I read you used to be a magician’s assistant. What was that like? Had any other weird jobs?
Being a magician’s assistant was a perfect job for me. I had been developing a comedy act where basically I would be very delighted and that was pretty much the entire idea of the act. So it wasn’t that great of a comedy act because I would just be outrageously delighted at pretty much anything … kind of like Goldie Hawn in “Laugh-In”! But then my friend Christopher Wonder asked if I would be his assistant, and as a magician’s assistant, it’s your job to be delighted at all the tricks. So I finally found a perfect place for the comedy of delight. Within a magic act!
I’ve had a lot of weird jobs. Some of the weirdest and most awesome ones included taking pictures of antique watches; being a play therapist for a newly adopted child who had been traumatized in a Chinese orphanage (my job was to sing and dance with her); collecting petition signatures on the street in San Francisco (corrupt!); preparing files for standardization by a massive insurance conglomerate (I got fired for wearing silver shoes); working as a waitress at a restaurant in Providence, R.I., that was a front for the mafia (There was no kitchen. We washed the utensils off in a bucket and grilled food from the freezer so it was both frozen and burned — disgusting!); working as a manicurist in a men’s hair salon (lasted only one day until I was solicited to be a prostitute for the mafia by a crazy thug); jazz singer (my favorite job!); teacher of comedy to second-grade class of boys (the craziest thing I ever did); fit model for clothing manufacturing company (I am just the right size that clothes are manufactured). Oh, the list goes on. I guess that every job is crazy!
People might not guess you were inspired by noise and punk bands like Lightning Bolt and Fugazi. How do you think that shows up in your music?
Well, I feel very free and passionate when I play music. I think that is the nature of musical expression. Passion and freedom. In my life I have been very inspired by the unlimited source that seems to power and connect with Lightning Bolt and Fugazi and Black Dice. The energy that flows in this music is stunning. We aim to be like this — to share energy! Only the music sounds different. It is soft and melodic but still for the purpose of sharing and changing energy.
When you sing, every note is savored. I find it very cathartic to listen to. What’s your favorite song to sing on this album and why?
Wow. Well, when I sing, I do savor each note. When I was younger and I would sing with my mother, she would tell me that each note is as important as the other — none are less important. So I think of this when I sing … that each and every note is meaningful. I love each note the same. And I love all the songs on the album! Although right now I really love singing “Bring Me a Song” because I love the way it feels to sing this song. Right now it feels like the most direct expression of love.
The words “joy” and “peace” are used a lot when people describe you and your music, but there are songs off “Imagine Our Love” about disappointment and disillusionment (I’m thinking about “I’ll Never Try Again” and “Side of the Lord”). Are those more based on personal experiences? How does it fit in with the larger vision of Lavender Diamond?
Well, sorrow cuts the cup that fills with joy. The deeper our sorrow, the deeper our joy. Which makes now a perfect time for peace. We already have enough sorrow, war, devastation — we’ve learned our lesson! I guess that those songs are based in personal experience but I feel like personal experience is political and metaphorical. Our experience of individuation is a learning experience that brings us back to an understanding of our wholeness and inseparability.
“Side of the Lord” is about my experience feeling angry and betrayed by patriarchal language in the church. My grandmother was a minister and so is my mother, and I remember the dawn of my outrage when I realized that we were praying — in my grandmother’s church! — to a god that was represented as a man! The Lord! An outrage! And yet I have always felt an abiding connection to the Lord or to God, to the divine which is in every person. But language is important! We musn’t characterize the divine as masculine. In the larger vision of Lavender Diamond, we dedicate ourselves to bringing healing energy through music, and so the places where we are wounded are the best places to learn and experience healing and wholeness.
Is peace on earth possible?
Absolutely! Peace is already here in the hearts of so many people. Peace is already real. We just have to make it grow. The only thing holding us back is the lie that our lives don’t matter and we don’t have any real power. This is a lie! Everyone has power, whether you like it or not. Everyone is waking up to this understanding, and as we wake up to the reality of our own power and responsibility, our lives and our world are transformed by new meaning. The more we celebrate peace, the more we magnify it and make it grow.
What’s next for Lavender Diamond?
Hmm … more touring! And we’re going to make a movie. And more videos. And another record.
Any other L.A. bands you think we should know about?
A million! Blackblack, Silver Daggers, Chapin Sisters, Winter Flowers, Soft Boiled Eggies, Bird and the Bee, Mika Miko, No Age, Gwendolyn, Entrance, Let’s Go Sailing, Elvis Perkins — so many! There is so much great music in L.A. right now! Everyone is very open-minded! I wonder if it’s the same in other cities.
Tell San Diego anything you want below.
I love you, San Diego! Your city is the most beautiful and gentle of all the cities. I love the soft warm breezes that blow here.
hello dear friends and neighbors! how are you? oh i hope you are well as can be! what are you doing saturday night? well… if you are looking for a great time… come to our show! the most beautiful show that ever lived!! also known as califunya! a musical variety show with songs, dances, comedy, love! with becky stark (that’s me), miranda july (!), jim drain(*), peter glantz(^), ron rege jr (%), josh fadum($), eleni mandell (!), paloma parfrey (!), mecca andrews (?), darcey leonard (+), steve g. on piano (!!) and many others! with spectacular costumes! a dance chorus! a beautiful child! this show is a night for epic celebrations!!!! please, oh please, come join us with your breath to lift the wings of the world~! in laughter~ the address is
at the steve allen theater- 4773 hollywood blvd. LA, 90027 the show begins at 8:00 pm and tickets cost $10!! it’s possible to buy them ahead of time if you like to see into the future! you can call or go to plays411.com
Bring peace! Laugh long! Hooray for love! i love you and we do forvever and ever, love, becky
Hello to you- Please remember to still yourself and be centered in calm today – and remember that your mind is so powerful for creating peace!
Ok!
So- in the spirit of peace and the vision of love- I would like to invite you to come out on Tuesday night and hear some new music- If you are in the mood for election night musical gathering- on tuesday the 2nd of November there will be music at Tangier- My new band is playing and we are very excited for this day! Jeff Rosenberg is on the guitar, Steve Gregoropoulos is on the keys, and Ron Rege is on the drums, and I’m on the singing. We are playing every tuesday in November! I will send you another message with the full schedule but I will tell you that it’s going to be so fun because- did you know- that if you use your imagination it will lead to you what you imagine ? Ok- remember that -especially tonight and tomorrow and use yourself as a filter for courage the same way that trees filter carbon dioxide into oxygen- you filter out and fill the world with strength of the heart- love, becky
the address of the show is : 2138 Hillhurst We’ll play at about 9:15 and then Laura Veirs will play after- I hear she is great! She has a new record out on Nonesuch records that also is home to the magnetic fields and KCRW is hosting this show. Oh – also – I will have 7′ (inches not feet) records for sale- Ok – remember that you are a radiant being of living love-
Arthur Magazine 