Back in Black, Again...

Good Mourning Broken Hearts Club Band,

I'm finally getting back to this blog and feel I need to start using it regularly! I haven't been too active in the studio. About 5 weeks ago, one of my housemates, Sil, died of a heart attack. He was 78 and had been diagnosed with heart failure earlier in the month, but he was still active and had traveled to visit his kids when it happened. It was unexpected but not shocking. We all miss him a lot as he was a wise and fabulous man. Here's a link to a great video montage of images of Sil taken a few years ago, with him reading a poem he wrote in the background. It's called "Running, Running, Running"

Somehow I THOUGHT I would throw myself into my work and make mourning jewelry as a way to process the grief buttons that this pushed. That hasn't happened and I've had a tough time focusing in the studio. I'm finally feeling the call (and the money pressures) to get my self in gear and get busy again. I've been dabbling in jet and metal minerals, as there's lots of alchemy going on there for me personally.

A little note of serendipity from the universe is also prompting me to jump back into the jet grind. This is my Real Astrology Horoscope by Rob Brezny for this week..."LEO: No one knew there was coal in the United States until 1790. A hunter who was wandering near Pennsylvania's Broad Mountain stumbled upon it accidentally when his campfire lit up an outcropping of pure anthracite. That discovery was both a blessing and a curse; since then, the mining of coal has yielded abundant energy but also environmental degradation. I predict a metaphorically similar event for you in the coming days, Leo. You will inadvertently find a potentially enormous source of valuable fuel that will, like coal, present you with both rich opportunities and knotty dilemmas." So I figure the best metaphorically similar event for me to find my enormous source of valuable fuel is to get busy with the fossil fuel jewels that I'm already working with and find my abundance there! I've been on this lignite black strewn path for several years now. There are several ways I can travel this path and I'll keep ya posted.

Here's some new work in Tennessee jet...The bottom heart, with the rough faces and rounded edges, is not drilled as a bead, but is meant to be a meditation stone to hold in the hand or put on an altar. Thanks for reading and looking!

The heart shape continues to be full of so much metaphor for me. I got news recently that my brother's mitral valve has torn and gone from just a regular old leaky valve (like mine) to a SERIOUSLY leaky valve. They're monitoring it but he'll need surgery some day in the not so distant future. In the meantime, it certainly gives my heart pause. My late father had a mechanical valve put in his heart and the manufacturer recalled it 4 years after he died! Thus, I'm back to the old grind...I continue on my heart worn ways. I just did another series of my gemstone jet, contemporary mourning beads in my "broken heart" series. The rough is all from Tennessee and all have 3mm drill holes so they can be worn on a thick chain or a cord...and I took this one heart and made a "keyhole" through the center and a 2mm drill hole that goes down the cleft into the keyhole. I envision some beader or jeweler making a necklace chain that would come up out of the cleft and 24 inches or so later connect with the key. The key fits ALL the way through the keyhole, so that it could dangle through the jet heart, creating a centerpiece clasp. Would that be what they call a "y necklace"? They key is from an old key collection that my late grandmother kept. One of these days I'll get off the grinding wheels and the computer long enough to make finished jewelry, in the meantime, I just continue making these goodies for all you beader and jewelery peoples out there....

I also made this nearly 700 carat "green" moonstone heart stone out of a single big chunk of rough moonstone from Tanzania. It's got an amazing, lightning like, schiller that is unrelated to the light blue adulaurescence that is the hallmark of classic moonstone. When I saw the piece of rough I knew I would make a "broken heart" out of it and leave the natural points with the cleavage planes of the feldspar crystal poking out the bottom. This is NOT A BEAD, but is a really fabu meditation aide or shamanic tool for scrying and healing work. That's it for now. I'll certainly be making more hearts and I would LOVE to see what kind of hearts others are making! Share your pics or your links.

Change Your Focus

Good Mourning Broken Hearts Club Band!

Many exciting things are happening with our Band! I'm thrilled to announce that MEMBERSHIP CARDS have arrived and are being dispersed! If you would like a membership card just request one and if you would like to recruit for the BHCBand, request a bunch! More on Membership cards later...

TODAY I will share with you the Daily OM Leo Horoscope, which is about our goals, our hearts, and ambitions...

March 2, 2009
Change Your Focus
Leo Daily Horoscope

You could notice a single-minded focus regarding your ambitions today. It might seem that accomplishing your goals rather than addressing the concerns of others is your most immediate priority. Perhaps today you can think about redirecting your go-getter energy to develop deeper, more long-lasting, and compassionate goals. One way to utilize your focus could be to create a greater awareness of the power of your heart center through meditation. You might consider bringing your attention to the area near your heart. As you inhale and exhale, send your awareness into this area and feel it expand with each breath. Concentrate on being present in the moment, and try to let the notion of reaching a final outcome dissolve with each breath. As you feel your heart opening, you may find that attaining your goals becomes less important then the journey you take to accomplish them.

By altering the nature of our focus, we become more open and have greater tools for reaching our goals. We might find it easy to become so involved in our goals that we forsake things that are most important—the lessons we learn along the way. But when we allow our determination to soften, we create space for a greater awareness of ourselves and the world around us and transform the way we live our lives. We engage in the progress of life and are not simply wrapped up in its outcomes. Placing your focus on your heart center today will allow you to work toward the goal of being present in your life.

I will be posting lots more regularly, so join the band, follow the blog, and let's get this show on the road (from a loving heart space, and letting go of our ego, of course!)!

Always,

Leo Sunshine

Death, Suicide, & Faerie Elders...

This is an article I wrote for RFD, "a reader-created quarterly celebrating Queer diversity," for the Death and Suicide Issue that was pu7blished in Fall 2008. The theme was "Death, Suicide, and Faerie Elders" so I wrote and submitted an article that encompasses all three subjects for me. Click on the image to enlarge it so you can read the text. The editors published it as a letter on the opening page of the issue. I blacked out the opening letter from a NYC Hells Angel sentenced to life in prison for privacy reasons!

RFD is the second oldest continually operating queer publication in the United States. It's been around since 1974 and only the Advocate has been published longer! Find out more about RFD and subscribe today!

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Good Mourning Broken Hearts Club!

I'd like to take a moment to remember Richard Waugh, my dear friend, occasional sweetheart, and biggest fan. He died 8 years ago this week and I miss him much. Richard was my studio assistant and he was always after me to cut my stones and beads into heart shapes. I never would because I thought heart shapes were too "contrived" or whatever. He finally convinced me. I relented and I told him that when I got back from a show I was going to that we would cut a bunch of "hearts of stone" beads to get ready for Valentine's Day. I got back and Richard was found dead in his apartment, at age 41, from a massive heart attack related to a side effect from his HIV meds. Fat in his body had migrated to his heart and the autopsy showed his heart twice the size of normal. Even though it's been 8 yearsI miss him terribly and I have been making ever increasing numbers of stone hearts and jet mourning jewelry ever since. I make beads in the shape of hearts that are broken and have started up Leo Sunshine's Broken Hearts Club Band as a place for the broken hearted to gather. I miss ya Richard and will always remember you.

I finally learned to embed videos in blog posts and the first video I'm going to post is related to Richard's favorite song, Breakfast at Tiffany's by the band Deep Blue Something. Whenever I was going to put 5 cd's into rotation while working in the studio I would ask Richard if he had any musical requests. He would also rasp, "BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S!" Sometimes I would put in the compilation disc that had the original on it and sometimes I would put on the cd that had the disco re-mix version and sometimes he got neither! While looking at various versions on youtube I found this comedy-theatrical version. It's funny and the theatrics of the lead singer (who is obviously a comedian and not a professional singer), well he reminds me a bit of Richard, who was a pretty funny and theatrical guy himself. I think he would appreciate this...

Much love, David Leo



P.S. ...and we here at the Broken Hearts Club Band have a nice selection of new jet broken hearts as we lead up to Valentines Day! Check them out in my eBay store....

Inside the Grieving Brain & Complicated Grief

Good Mourning Broken Hearters and Happy New Year! I'm just wanting to make sure that I get here/hear to Band practice on a regular basis. While looking for a lapidary catalog I found this Newsweek article I had been saving and meaning to post and share with folks.
It's a short and fascinating article about what researchers are finding from doing brain scans of bereaved people while they look at images of their lost loved ones. It's from the section "HEALTH MATTERS" by Jerry Adler...

Inside the Grieving Brain

Memories of the person they missed prolonged their grief, giving them pleasure as well as pain.

Mourning the death of a loved one is about as universal a human emotion as exists, and it's not even confined to humans; there's evidence of it in other primates and even elephants. From its beginnings, psychotherapy has recognized the special challenge of grief and its relationship to depression (or, as Freud put it in the title of one of his best-known essays, "Mourning and Melancholia").....

Good Mourning Broken Hearts Club Band and Happy New Year! I won't mourn the end of 2008 as there's a lot of icky stuff from this past year that I want to bury. Probably hardest was the loss of my dear retired racing greyhound, McGwire, who had been my constant companion and source of unconditional love for 6 years. I got a design idea in my head (and a sketch on the wall) of a jet "dog bone" with a heart on it. Maybe a better brooch than a pin. We'll see when and if it manifests here in the studio. Speaking of things that break my heart.....

I'm trying to break out some more of my classic jet broken heart beads as we see here, using material from Tennessee. I left both of these hearts with mostly "natural" faces as I was feeling particularly broken hearted over the holidays. This first one is drilled side to side....

and this other heart is drilled at an angle through the lobe so that it hangs off kilter....

My main grinder broke down a few weeks ago and the motor is still in the repair shop so I'm doing the best I can. I'm looking forward to heading to Tucson in a month and will be doing my best to keep on sourching jet rough and finished items. A bloke from Britain who is doing a University dissertation on jet mourning jewelry just contacted me recently and I'm curious as to what kind of information he has and what I can find out from him. I would really like to be able to source at least a small amount of Whitby jet to add to my jet black palette of lapidary materials!

I would also like to pick up some Asturian jet from Northern Spain as I have recently discovered a guild of jet workers based out of Oviedo.

HISTORY LESSON: In Northern Spain the use of jet is associated with the pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James at Santiago de Compostela. I have a booklet on jet put out by the Hispanic Society of America in 1930. It says, "Shells, the special badge of the pilgrimage, amulets, rosaries, and images of Saint James were the principal items.....The jet carvers formed a guild in 1443, but their period of greatest activity was during the 16th and 17th centuries....The amulets, for protection from the evil eye, take the form of the higa, a closed hand with the thumb held between the index and middle fingers." Here are two scans of an image of an higa in the booklet. It's from the 17th-18th Century and shows Christ Bearing the Cross carved on the "forearm" above the palm side of the higa, with a silver mounting to be worn as an amulet. The text says this is 12.5cm by 4 cm which makes it about FIVE INCHES long by an inch and a half wide! And people say *I* make big beads for big jewelry! Luckily jet is lightweight, similiar to amber, so you can get a lot of black bang for your buck with this material.

So while the "higa" isn't a broken heart, it has a rich history and can protect from the evil eye. I'm sure that the less evil eye that there is around the fewer broken hearts there will be!

That's it for now Broken Hearters! May 2009 bless you with lots of healing for your broken hearts and may any heartbreaks you receive in the new year not get infected and make you heartsick!

Regards, Leo Sunshine