I had emailed a friend recently and mentioned that many years ago, my g/f had worked for Keith Richards and Patti Hanson off & on for several years, and that once my g/f had brought me home a single strand of Keith's hair that was on his otherwise pristine sink in the master bath... she brought it home to me on a piece of scotch tape. This was back in 1991, and since I have idolized Keith Richards since I was 11 years old (which is a REALLY long time ago, gang), I made a wee bonnie little art project out of Keith's strand of hair.

Well, I'm reading that incredible book right now, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, professor, tattoo artist, and sexual renegade by Justin Spring, and while it has nothing whatsoever to do with Keith Richards, it does have an amazingly profound and touching passage about Rudolph Valentino, whom I also worship & adore. Aside from the oral sex incident mentioned in the post somewhere below (oral sex that took place in COLUMBUS, OHIO, too, of all amazing places), Samuel Steward kept a lock of Valentino's hair (though not from the hair on his head) and he created a reliquary around the hair and kept it by his bed until he died in, like, 1993, I think? Now the reliquary is in a private collection in Rome. (Yes, an actual monstrance that contains a strand of Valentino's pubic hair, taken with permission & a pair of manicure scissors -- this really is a great book, gang...)

Well, the hair-art-hero worship scenario in the book prompted me to dig the hair-art-hero worship thingie I made in honor of Keith back in 1991 out of storage and hang it on my wall again... and so a photo of it is below!  The strand of hair is elegantly stapled onto the artwork & protected under glass! The poem stanza is taken from one of my very favorite poems of all time, William Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (you can read the entire poem here if you want; it's just magnificent, in my opinion). But the stanza I included in my hair-art-hero worship piece is the following:

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
          --Not for these I raise
          The song of thanks and praise;
     But for those obstinate questionings
     Of sense and outward things,
     Fallings from us, vanishings,
     Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized, 
High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
     But for those first affections,
     Those shadowy recollections,
          Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day...



Lovely, isn't it???

On another topic, in case you were curious, I positively hate to have my picture taken. I really, really do. Below is an example of someone trying to take my picture the other day! I'd forgotten that it was still stored on my camera and, lo & behold, there it was when I downloaded the photo of the artwork to my desktop. So I regale you with it here!)



Okay, on that merry note!! Hope life is taking good care of you, wherever you are, and that all the troubles on your mind are gradually drifting out to sea... we can only hope!! Have a great day, gang, and thanks for visiting! See ya.