GAS Featured Artist: Hananya Goodman, presented by Sylvia Van Nooten

Hananya Goodman’s work explodes off the page. His brush strokes create a complex vision of depth and color.  Each painting is like a poetic insight into the artist, the asemic letters creating emotion in the viewer.  He is a prolific artist, his almost daily sessions produce many pieces, each a standalone representation of the interpretation of beauty. ~ Sylvia Van Nooten  

 Hananya Goodman in his own words:

Most of my life I have been immersed in the world of books. My upbringing, education, career and passion have been driven and tied up with reading and writing. A few years ago the writing suddenly turned to scribbling with fingers dancing across the page with strokes, scripts, marks and drawings. At that time, I was trying to find some connection between textile and text. In contrast with the language in books, these asemic marks had minimal to zero cognitive intent or meaning.  Aesthetically though I recognized emergent novel values and pleasures.  When I started seriously doing this art for the first time a few years ago, I saw this as an integral continuation or elaboration of a larger project called Talmud Hananya. Talmud in Hebrew means "learning." Talmud Hananya is my personal life-long project to learn about life and the world.  It is a massive collection of handwritten scribbles, jottings, notes, words, phrases, and paragraphs from which emerges gestures and drawings of organic feeling and sensing.

The images created have now taken on a life of their own. Today doing art gives me a sense of control or creative accomplishment in my life, it adds meaning and value to my life, and it gives pleasure to me and others through play and display.

I hope to pursue in the future explorations of the relationships between asemic and semic, a character set based on asemic images, and something Talmudic or kabbalistic.

Each of my images is created in the moment, without any initial image, language or intent.  They are very visceral process oriented executions in the sense of automaticity and situational immediacy rather than imagined, constrained and verified in order to conform with some preconceived plan. The work arises from a continuous engagement with the medium, until some significant quality appears to assert itself and emerges from the paper. The very moment of recognition of a quality or character is the point I stop and complete a piece. I have a voice inside telling me: "stop this piece" and "stop this session."

I consider each image as a character, both in a personal identity sense, and in an ideographic/logography sense. As these characters are born and fill my studio and begin to interact in meaningful new ways, I hope one day to join them into a cohesive language family. They live with me and one another in a sense, so I have trouble parting with the originals.

Showing art has connected me with a community of like-hearted and like-minded artists and followers around the world. I am grateful for their friendship, and my images are glad to participate in this larger world.

My only real self-defined community are those doing asemic art and abstract art. There are many wonderful artist friends I would love to tell you about but I will only mention Floriana Rigo as the most important influence on me as an artist. I continue to find asemic art, and groups devoted to asemic art, to be a nourishing source of ideas, inspiration and receptive audience. I am most active there and have benefited enormously and significantly from its members who are loosely bound by the ever adaptive  definition of asemic writing and abstract art.

Most of my public works can be viewed on Facebook. 

I also have a nascent website with higher quality images. 

I have exhibited at BROLO Centro d’Arte e Cultura, Mogliano, Veneto, Italy and at the MAINSITE Contemporary Art gallery, Norman, Oklahoma.

Typical artistic materials are 50 x 70 cm, 250 gram paper, gouache, India ink and soft chalk. Tools: lulav (middle shaft of the palm tree), cleaning brushes, scrapers, tubes, rolling pins, pens/pencils, bamboo spoons, and other odd objects. I have over 8,000 pieces and do an average of 20 pieces at a time. Each piece is created during a daily session lasting about two hours. I have a particular atmosphere or ritual I create during a session which  is very important to me. All pieces are done in a fugue-like state where I interact with the media and tools. Once completed in the session, the pieces do not receive any further additions. I usually show all my work on Facebook the day after the session.

I am the Director of Libraries for an engineering college. I have been an academic librarian for over 20 years but before that I worked in education for 20 years. Originally from Racine, Wisconsin, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin where I studied biology. I did graduate studies at Brandeis and Simmons. I currently live near the Sea in Ashdod, Israel. 

Publications I am most proud of include a book,  Between Jerusalem and Benares: Studies in Comparative Judaism and Hinduism,

 Kabbalah: A Newsletter of Current Research in Jewish Mysticism, 

 "Geomancy Texts of Rabbi Shalom Shabbazi." 

 "The Legend of the Dull-Witted Child Who Grew Up to Be a Genius" (on Einstein) with Barbara Wolff 

Heidi Blakeslee's review of Su Zi's CHIRP (Hysterical Books Press 2019)

First, Chirp is a consummate work of art.  From the minimalist title to the quirky colorful cover, this book stands out visually.  But inside.  Inside is all of the nature bird magic I had hoped for and then more.

The entire work is wonderfully and lovingly crafted into strict haiku stanzas.  There are no titles, rather the work flows consistently from the beginning to the end.  All bird names and many words depicting nature are capitalized, while oftentimes new stanzas are not.  The effect is brilliantly jarring at times and achingly lovely in turns, much like a bird sighting.  It gives me the feeling that nature is being revered and deserves the extra dignity of a capitalized descriptor.

Digging deeper, some stanzas kept me saying “damn” under my breath.  The amount of restraint and imagination that it must have taken to write a book of this magnitude should be respected.  The selection of descriptor words chosen for each stanza is flawless.  I have never read a work like this, and probably won’t again.  No word is out of place.

I think of Basho.  I think of Adrienne Rich.  I can picture myself in the woods jotting down every bird call and every colorful wing I saw.  The work captures the spirituality of time spent in nature.  Jam-packed with honesty, color, and lyrical precision, “Chirp” is a joy to read.  Su Zi just gets it.

From page 21:

new leaves glow under

ambling clouds gray with promise.

Time past, parents wed.

at morning, scrubjays

collective conversation

matches the gray wind.

prodigal, their white 

elliptical strut hunts bugs

no regrets, Egrets.

afternoon, Mockingbird 

Griot of his odyssey

some lost, ancient songs.

SHOOTOUT AT THE POETRY FACTORY by Lawrence Barrett, reviewed by Merritt Waldon

 

Available on Amazon

Once I started reading Shootout At The Poetry Factory, I was thrown aback by the honesty with which this book was written. It begins with a quote by Walt Whitman, “Re-examine all you have been told... dismiss whatever insults your soul.” 

10 Cancer 

I am a cancer 

of white and purple T-cells 

generations
roasted like tits on a spit 

a cancer of bars
and woods, moonless 

I stop, pass, and lean; 

musing, gazing, hounding, 

the lone glare of hunting, 

frothing, stretch’d & stiffening, 

leathered and lathered; 

a procreant world 

inviting end days - 

hands press the dark 

From the start Barrett’s voice is strong and clear, sharing intimate details of his life during a time of grave physical illness. There are also many reflections on his past, his military service, philosophy of life, dreams, all in one perfect batch of poems.

31 Brood of Veterans 

Dressed
in camouflage
and a cool black hat -
I am real like the prickly edge 

and cut smell of new grass; 

real like three IDs,
GPS locations,
and digital fingerprints; 

real like sadness,
alien abductions,
no phone calls,
sleeping in my car;
like sirens seizing my testicles, 

like a black horse of anxiety 

swift born, hot and fast, 

upon this floor of paradise 

This book is a conversation between the man, the poet, the world and all which is invisible and near the heart of history, leading us to a better understanding of one being’s journey through life.  I hold this book up and offer it is a worthy testament of a human being who has seen war, and the hardships of major illness. In poetic expression he displays understanding, hope and acceptance that ultimately all of it is fleeting and beautiful.  I wholeheartedly recommend reading this book which has the poet/man/warrior offering a unique voice. Indeed in Shootout at the Poetry Factory, this poet gives us all of himself, without blinking.

40 Swing of Trees 

lifting steins of forgetfulness 

and drinking the world 

glimmering names 

songs of living myths 

I slip into union 

calm and refuge 

hawks and crows 

I hear tongues

 

of hurricanes 

speaking 

angry rain
and eternal life 

careening off 

a lean of trees 

INTERVIEW: 

Merritt Waldon: Tell us a little bit about Lawrence, please,

and what was the original catalyst that led you to poetry?

Lawrence Barrett:  I was born in Washington D.C., grew up in Maryland and spent 20 years in the Army. I’ve lived all over the world. I have three beautiful grandchildren and a wonderful spouse. I am truly blessed. I feel that a little longevity has allowed me to grow spiritually as perhaps mirrored in my verse. Regardless, poetry is my journey.

I cracked open my first book of poems around the age of 14, It was a little green book of German poems translated by Walter Kaufmann. I discovered a world ordered by the beauty, depth and music of words. It was love at first sight. I knew I was a poet before I ever wrote a poem. Schiller, Goethe and Rilke led me to Shelley, Yeats and Keats and so on…

 

MW: What, if any would you say is your poetics? 

LB:   A good first line, a couple metaphors, syncopated rhythm, homemade words, run-on sentences, modern topics, classical themes, humor, layers of meaning, naked honesty, haiku-moments, color, sweat, tears, farts, and a good ending. The funny thing is that this personal conception of a poem is ingrained or natural. When I put the first word to a blank page I have no clue where it’s going – it’s a mental journey where I get to experience the discovery of new thoughts. My title is always last. Whether or not it’s a good poem, that’s a completely separate issue.

 

MW:  In a search on Google, a name that popped up with yours on one of the search results I found was John Updike.  Have you ever read any of his work? 

LB:   I was never really exposed to the writing of John Updike except for an occasional poem or quotation. I am honored that Google somehow associates me with such a super nova as John Updike but there is no real comparison.

MW:  I noticed a lot of repeated subject matter in some of your poems: pills, adult themes, and seemingly aloofness at times in the rhythmic performance of life. Did you have fun working on this book? It seems a lot of your writing is spontaneous.

LB:  From beginning to end this book was a happening. The poems just poured out like never before. Writing poetry is always fun, but its work. At times it felt like a duty or calling. Many times I’d be sitting in my car in a hospital parking lot composing (writing) on my cell phone. My poetry is more of a spontaneous act than a pre-planned one. About halfway through a piece I can see where it’s going.The repetition of themes I accept as part of the natural flow of life, day to day, much like recurring musical themes in a symphony. We always gravitate back to who we are and what works. It was a really chaotic time to write with all the different issues going on: COVID, cancer, PTSD, diabetes, wearing masks, friends arguing about statues, BLM, the downfall of liberalism and rise of American fascism, acceptance of death, and the natural feeling to strive on and reach for something higher…Yeah, it was fun…

 

MW: if you had one statement or had something to tell the whole world before it was too late....  What would it be?

LB: Write Damn It!

 

Lawrence Barrett, a retired U.S. Army and Iraqi war veteran, as well as a native Marylander and transplant El Pasoan, is the author of nine self-published works: Letters from the Meat Market of Paradise (2009), Drum Song (2012), Radical Jazz (2014); Threads of Latitude (2017), Love Poems for the End of The World (2018), Cosmic Onions (2019), Yell Louder Please (2019), Theory of Stealing Bicycles (2020) and Shootout at the Poetry Factory (2021). He has an MA in Human Resources from Webster University and has resided in El Paso for the last twenty years. Lawrence has been published in El Paso Magazine (Nov 2008), Mezcla: Art & Writing from the Tumble Words Poetry Project (2009), Calaveras Fronterizas (2009), Dining and Fun (2010), An Anthology of Beat Texas Writing (2016) and online at the Newspaper Tree.  He has been interviewed by Paperback Swap; and three of his books have been reviewed by Unlikely Stories. Lawrence Barrett has been a featured reader at the Barbed Wire Readings hosted by Border Senses. He has presented poetry workshops for the El Paso Writer’s League and the Tumble Words Poetry Project. He has had the honor of reading his poetry twice on the Monica Gomez “State of the Arts” Radio Program. Lawrence has also published art in magazines and online and in a self-publication of his art, INNERFREQUENCIES (2019). His works are available at Amazon.com.

THE MERCY OF TRAFFIC by Wendy Taylor Carlisle reviewed by Ren Powell

The Mercy of Traffic
Unlikely Books, 2019

Available on Amazon

I’m not done with this book. Don’t get me wrong, I have read it—cover to cover—but there is so much more for me to find. The poems in Taylor Carlisle’s book The Mercy of Traffic speak to one another. Images return in new contexts, and images are repeated almost like leitmotifs. Hats, for example, pop up unexpectedly as in “Parsing the Nolo Me Tangere” where Jesus wears a Piedmont farmer’s hat. And in the poem “Little Hats” which begins playfully (and unexpectedly) with a rhyme:

    Six million bats,
    less or more,
    remember, they
    are not little
    Draculas or
    airborne felt hats […]

But ends with the prescient lines:

     Still, we must
     be careful
     not to flip
     our chicken
     bones into
     their cool cave.
     Who knows
     where a disease
     comes from,
     anyway?

Though I am careful as a reader to avoid conflating the poet and the speaker, many of these poems taken together begin to feel like a memoir of sorts. The arc from childhood to adulthood, the locations shifting – though Southern always. From “Juke”: 

     […] As soon as Dolly Parton’s done
            Singing, I’m getting out of here
            But before that, I’m going over
            To the Union Five and Ten
            And lay my good name down
            On a new        red        skirt

There are striking images here that I believe will stay with me: 

Grackle/on the lawn, shiny as spoiled meat (“What I’d Missed: An Ozark Sonnet”)

I shelter in empty rooms and touch myself//to find another knot of madness (“Things Burn”)

In the hot kitchen, I learned to take a punch. (“Say Yes: An Ozark Sonnet”)

I long for carnage//and an armpit with some sweat in it. (“Ferrous”)

The collection is rich with images and the details of food, of foliage and bodies in heat.  There are twelve Ozark sonnets. From “Blossom: An Ozark Sonnet”

      […] In the south of my childhood, time passed
             like a platter of chicken. Grandma made 

             fried rashers of bacon and piles of pork chops and
             presided over the hugging and sassing and eating 

             and telling and pulling of sticker burrs […]

While all the sonnets are 14 lines, Taylor Carlisle doesn’t adhere to traditional forms. She pushes and plays forms. The long sentences of the prose poems create long lines across the page and a unique tension within the context of a collection that consciously uses white space in each poem.

A few of the poems focus on images alone, for example “Lust”: 

[…] never ask how it would be/to have a man//with his heart/on the wrong side of his chest […]

--while others ground the images in an explicit narrative. She’s created a nice balance for the reader, in terms of tempo and subverting expectations. The collection is so rich that the (ostensibly) personal aspects never take over in a way that feels self-indulgent. It never becomes a pure memoir in verse. There is so much more here.  

From WendyTaylorCarlisle.com:

Wendy Taylor Carlisle was born in Manhattan, raised in Bermuda, Connecticut and Ft Lauderdale, Florida and lives now in the Arkansas Ozarks in a house she built in 1980. She has an MA from The University of Arkansas and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of The Mercy of Traffic (Unlikely Books, 2019), Discount Fireworks (Jacaranda Press, 2008) and Reading Berryman to the Dog (Jacaranda Press, 2000.) Chapbooks include They Went to the Beach to Play (Locofo Chaps, 2016), Chap Book (Platypus Press, 2016), Persephone on the Metro (MadHat press, 2014), The Storage of Angels (Slow Water Press, 2008), and After Happily Ever After (Two River Chapbooks, 2003.) Her work appears in multiple anthologies.

GAS Featured Poet: Igor Goldkind

 Igor Goldkind is an author, poet, and independent scholar. At the age of 14, Igor served as a volunteer Science Fiction Coordinator for the now wildly popular San Diego Comic-Con. It was in this capacity that he met Ray Bradbury, whom he asked for advice about becoming a writer. Through Comic-Con, Igor also befriended Theodor Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison, two of his major influences. He worked in the British comic publishing industry and is best known for having coined the Graphic Novel genre as a global publishing genre. In 2016, his award-winning multimedia novel published by Chameleon Publishing IS SHE AVAILABLE?, broke ground in combining Poetry, Comics, Jazz, and Animation setting a new bar in electronic publishing. He continued to blend poetry with art in his new work TAKE A DEEP BREATH, Living With Uncertainty, an illustrated collection of essays, poetry, and short stories confronting the pandemic in personal terms. Igor writes and lives in the San Diego, California but misses the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_G

Suicide Note

There are a still a few options open to you, apart from death.
Which is after all, inevitable and not so much an option as the fast forward to the point where there are no more options.
Living is dying anyway, so why speed up the process?
To avoid pain?
Many have endured much more than you and still clung to the delays to the inevitable.
Is it because you no longer feel of worth or of value?
To whom, yourself?

Perhaps your judge is drunk or wanting in discernment.
Perhaps your judge is just wrong and his judgement awaits over-ruling by a higher one.
Who are you after all, to judge yourself?
If you are so worthless then your judgement is suspect its certainly not worth acting upon. What if you went and saw a movie instead? or got drunk?
Or went to sleep?
Or made love until the dawn found another hanging judge to sentence you?

Do you want to die because life is absurd and void of meaning?
What took you so long to notice?
Does your slowness make you want to speed things up?
Trying to arrive sooner to the destination because you already know what’s there? Instead of death you could seek laughter,

which is really a form of dying;
a release from the known into the unknown by way of catching your breath in its own rhythm. Inward and outward.

What if you were about to hear a joke you had never heard before that made you laugh so hard that you woke up into the wide open world that contains this one?
If you die now, you might just die before hearing the joke that would wake you up
To a world where you no longer wanted to die because you had found yourself already here,

Where you belonged
where you were all along,
not living or dying but blinking and breathing like this, Like this, like this...

                                *****

The Line You Walked 

I am my father.
I am my father’s son.
I am my father’s father
I am my daughter’s son. 

I am the line that walks these dots
Connecting one Pole to another
One foot follows the other
From Lodz to Ellis Island to Brooklyn to Washington to Marseille, To the frozen thunder of L’Ardennes, 

Munchen, Salzbourg, Yale, San Pedro, Cham Kom, Chichin Itza Lansing, San Diego, Berkeley, Paris, Heidelberg, London
One arrow pointing to this hallowed ground
We stand on now. 

These dots, these stones, these memories We tread upon:
What you could not take with you,
You have left behind 

For me, for us
In the meaning you finally found 

Behind eyes glued shut
Behind my daughter’s eyes glued open
In wonderment, in curiosity
In the mind’s intrepid search for the reason in it all. 

Stepping forwards, stumbling backwards.
Looking up, looking down, looking sideways at the world.
Looking over your shoulder with a joke, with a laugh and a dimpled grin. Man makes plans while God laughs.
Student, soldier, teacher, brother, husband, father,
Grander father still. 

Between these dots
We can see the being of who we were, Who we become and who we are: One in the same. 

I am my father.
I am my father’s son.
I am my father’s father
I am my daughter’s son. 

Your work, my father, is not yet done.

    For my father, Dr. Victor Herchiel Goldkind 1924-2011

GAS Featured Composer/Producer and Visual Artist: Frédéric Iriarte, presented by Matthew Bowers

Trying to catch Frédéric Iriarte  between sessions is a full time job. Working with four bands and countless projects, I wonder when he finds time to sleep. He is as real, and genuine, as he is gifted.

     He has been working on Igor Goldkind's latest project - Take A Deep Breath.

It's an amazing collaboration of music and spoken word that is just brilliant! The collaboration of Igor and Frédéric  is as powerful as it is timely. 

    

His very recent recordings, that I have been privy to hear include Beat Poet Laureate, Carlo Parcelli  and his upcoming album on UNIC6's project Eurylochus (a fragment).

Here is an amazing adventure, where he has created the jazz inspired controlled chaos that enhances the poems and stories of Carlo as he recites in a heavy Cockney beautifully rich voice. Not just a musician, artist, but a brilliant producer with vision as well. 

     Frédéric is indeed an amazing composer. He has a unique, distinctive sound unto his own. He is able to record in his beautiful Home studio (his instruments are a collector's dream!) He's worked with a veritable who's who in the Modern Poetry Beat Scene.

Experimental Funky-

     Frédéric  has over 31 albums that he's produced under his belt, countless art projects, and several murals. Frédéric  is a very talented man, and has given much to the art community at large. As talented as he is, he's a humble, modest man. He does not see himself as a poet or feel that he has a story to tell. On the contrary, what he does with musical creation, electronic and organic, is indeed pure poetry in itself. Each song or musical poetry piece that he works on has its own story to tell. 

Amplified Heart of the Beat-

     I understand what he means by "I" don't have a story to tell though. Somehow not being able to take credit for messages, music, poems that come to us from the universe and the Muse itself. It feels like promptings leading us, and we feel like we're just following the direction of what a greater source has led us to. It is in some ways disrespectful, cheating in a way, to take such credit from inspiration.   

      Frédéric  has been doing art and music for forty years. He is a visual artist, designer, and composer. He lives in Stockholm Sweden and was part of the National and International Beat Poetry Foundation Festival, 2020 where this video was presented.

     Among the Great poets that Frédéric has worked with are:

Chris Vannoy

Paul Richmond

Bengt O Björklund

Ian Gibbins

Igor Goldkind

Dennis Renfors

Lefifi Tladi 

Rich Ferguson

Carlo Parcelli

People Dying in the Street

In Summary, I feel that it is best summed up in Chris Vannoy 's collaboration with Frédéric

In  "What is Beat."

Frédéric  Iriarte's You Tube Channel

and Band Camp site.

Frédéric  Iriarte's Art Page

Learn more about  Frédéric Iriarte on his Wikipedia page.

Prince: The Purple Reign by Kevin M. Hibshman

It was 1978. I was watching American Bandstand, the weekly dance show hosted by the once ubiquitous Dick Clark. Halfway through the episode, the musical guest, Prince was introduced.

It was clear to me this was an unusual artist. A young black man with a lascivious look playing a song that was two-thirds funk, one-third rock and delivered with one hundred percent attitude. When Dick Clark briefly interviewed the out of breath singer, Prince answered with flippant, one-word retorts. 

I later found out he'd been offended by Clark's opening line: “I can't believe you're from Minnesota!” 

        Not only was Prince from Minnesota, he would put his home state on the map by defining 80's pop and by becoming a living legend before his untimely death in 2016. 

        During his lifetime, Prince would release thirty-
two studio albums, four soundtrack albums, five live albums, nine compilation albums, star in five films and produce hit records for his notable proteges: The Time, Vanity/Apollonia 6, Jill Jones and Sheila E. among others. He worked with other musicians frequently including Kate Bush, Sheena Easton, The Bangles, Madonna and George Clinton. He seemed to be an endless creative force, inspiring many future pop stars. His talent was undeniable. He could sing, dance, act and play a multitude of instruments. I am going to play fan instead of critic and list my favorite albums from his vast catalog. I've enjoyed music from all of his releases but these are the records that remain must-haves for me decades after first becoming intrigued by his musical genius.

Dirty Mind,1980. This is Prince's third album and it's one of his most adventurous both musically and lyrically. Clearly influenced by new wave, this is his most daring album lyrically as he sings about incest, oral sex and threesomes in his falsetto voice, enhancing the androgyny of the album cover where he is clad only in a trench coat, black briefs and thigh high boots. As with the previous two albums, Prince plays all the instruments except for two synthesizer parts provided by long-term band member, Dr. Fink and a backing vocal from Lisa Coleman also a main stay as part of The Revolution, the band he would rocket to fame with. This record is a thirty-minute thrill ride and paved the way for sexually explicit subject matter as well as updating the sound of 80's rhythm and blues music.

1999, 1982. This was Prince's breakthrough album and set the stage for the enormous success of Purple Rain which would follow it two years later and catapult Prince into super-stardom. Originally released as a two-record set, it produced five singles. “International Lover” was his first Grammy nomination and the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. The salacious lyrics continued as did the new wave influence with most of the songs based on synthesizer arrangements. Prince once again, played most of the instruments. This maybe my very favorite Prince release as it's a showcase of his ability to adapt any musical style and make it his own. He also debuts the piercing screams he would begin using on the records that followed. 

Purple Rain,1984. Prince had been gearing up for world domination and in 1984, the double-whammy of Purple Rain, the film featuring his acting debut and the enormously successful soundtrack brought it home. This album featured full band performances courtesy of The Revolution and some of Prince's most memorable songs. It was the hardest rocking album he would make and united black and white music fans around the world. I'm not going to say much about this one because if you're reading this, I'm certain you own this or have at least heard it a few times. It sold 25 million copies world wide and is one of the most commercially successful albums of all time. Prince had arrived in style and now the whole world knew his name. 

Parade,1986. Like Madonna, Prince's movies often fell flat but he did turn out some great soundtracks. This album accompanied his film: Under The Cherry Moon. It traded his rock approach for a string-laden psychedelic sound. There are also subtle jazz elements sprinkled throughout. It's one of his most experimental records yet still produced the number-one single, “Kiss.” The French accents are due to the fact that the movie was based in France. Prince began referring to his music as “The Avant-Purple” during this period. Prince can still be as funky as it gets here and the pop melodies keeps the listener engaged.

        Prince broke the rules, pushed the boundaries and lived by his credo which he spelled out in a song from 1999: “D.M.S.R.: Dance, Music Sex, Romance.” For a time, he painted the entire world purple.