Heartforward

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Heartforward

My purpose here is to record the unique influence my 12-track album "Heartforward" is having on the world.

Camaron Ochs
singer/songwriter
www.CamaronOchs.com

When Camaron was born she was about the size of a glass mustard jar. Small enough in fact, that her proud father carried her home in his front shirt pocket that first afternoon as he sang out to the world to share the news of her arrival. Fortunately for us all, the close proximity of Camaron’s teeny-tiny ears to her father’s resonating chest left her with a strong association between music and happiness.



As she grew, she began vibrating her own vocal chords to recreate that feeling of belonging. By the time she entered high school, she could sing in over fourteen different languages (thanks to an organization called Contra Costa Children’s Chorus). She traipsed across Europe with different choirs, singing in famous cathedrals for momentous occasions that only a teenager could take for granted.



At age sixteen, she began arranging music. She co-founded both high school and a collegiate cappella groups to afford herself the opportunity to write and perform harmonies to her own taste. At age twenty, she bought a guitar while studying abroad in the Netherlands. She played it (poorly) in the parks and squares of Amsterdam a few months later, hoping to sell it before returning to the States. No such luck.



The unlikely pair traveled to the mountains of Nepal, crooning old standards such as “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” for a group of unruly fourth graders, and “Don’t Think Twice” to a crowd of fireflies and two Canadians. A small warmth began to develop between them.



Upon her return to the US of A, one of her best friends from college, Lisa Figone, had the good sense to marry a man who has more recording knowledge and owns more recording gear than any normal human being. The wish for a record was born and her once distant relationship with the guitar soon became a partnership that would carry her first twelve original songs to completion.



Under the influence of her musical friends Jason Shafton, Hamilton Ulmer, Patrick Shipp, Michael Sherry, Emily Bergen, Gabriel Sherry and Andrea Poetzsch; Camaron sculpted her first solo piece of art and will be gifting it to the world in the form of a record. Titled after a philosophy she hopes to live by, “Heartforward” is now available at www.CamaronOchs.com, iTunes, CD Baby, Amazon MP3, iLike, etc...

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  • The Compact Princess: A Fairy Tale for Adults - Part 1(The Myth) by Nick Corcorran

    There is proof of her presence throughout history.

    *


    True legend has it that the Olympic rings did not always represent the five continents. The legend goes back much farther, to the first Olympic games. After competition, she took each champion to bed, each pleasing her less and less, so she left. Upon discovery that each was no better or worse than any other, and overall she found them to be mostly bland, they all fought furiously over her curled golden locks left on the afghans and blankets where she had slept. There was a great skirmish, a flurry of feathers and quilted cloth, and in the end, every competitor found themselves handcuffed by her golden curls, which is why today, you will find the five Rings linked to each other.

    La gioconda
    By now art historians have identified the subject of the Mona Lisa to be Lisa de Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy silk merchant. But this painting has not always gone by this name. And in fact, it looked quite different after da Vinci finished it the first time. In the summer of 1503, Da Vinci happened to walk through a town square, home to an incredible fountain. At the time it was the largest and most famous fountain in all of Italy. But what made this fountain so incredible was that the statues of serpents and sea monsters, of horses and chariots came to life, whenever a certain young blond girl appeared in the square. When the stone began to breathe men throughout out the land, would rip off their shirts, flex their muscles, and profess their love for the woman. They vowed to slay the dragon, and vanquish the monsters. They would dive into the fountain, wrestling great whales and fishes with scales made of the shiny coins tossed in by children.
    Da Vinci was, by nature, a very inquisitive man, and he stayed in the town for months trying to determine what caused this great magic fountain to come to life. Finally, when he could stand his curiosity no longer, he approached the young woman, drenching himself as he passed the splashing and lapping waves of the fountain en vivre. Politely he tapped the young woman’s shoulder, she turned to face him, and the moment lit up the golden in her hair like a halo, he saw what all the fuss was about. Her face was set in the most enigmatic expression he had ever seen. A look a of discontented bemusement, the kind of mythic embodiment of eternal femininity, a face that has lived a thousand lives, has been dead and reborn many times and learned the secrets of the grave.
    This expression would haunt Leonardo for the rest of his life. Immediately, he returned to his studio and produced a portrait of the woman standing in front of that magical fountain. But the woman you see in the painting today is not the same as that woman from the fountain. For the fountain girl was blonde and curly haired. He stayed up four nights taking no food or water until the thing was finished. He called upon all of his closest friends to come to a private viewing of the painting. Standing cluttered and cramped in his attic studio, he withdrew the cloth from over the painting, and the room erupted into a frenzy. Immediately the men demanded to know who she was, declaring their love for her, having only seen the painting. The women in the room, spat out epithets of jealousy, vowing to kill her on her sight, to rip her limb from limb with their bare hands. Naturally, a fight broke out over the painting and it was quickly ripped to shreds, each person in attendance taking a piece of it with them out into the world, where they would look for this girl everywhere they walked until the end of their days.

    But Da Vinci made sure to keep one piece of the painting for himself. The most inflammatory piece- it was the stretch of canvass on which he had painted her mouth, in that most quizzical of expressions. Da Vinci would go on to work on a second portrait for years and years, and not until near the end of his life did he find a way to paint her without causing the world to throw itself into upheaval. He was commissioned by a wealthy Florentine silk merchant to create a portrait of his wife. This woman so paled in comparison to that girl from the fountain, that he was able to execute one of the greatest pranks in all of history. He painted the wife with her straight black hair and large forehead, sitting in a rather demure and common pose. Nothing like that girl from the fountain. But he painted one difference, so monumentally unlike the merchant’s wife. He gave her the mouth of the girl from the fountain. Giving her lips the look that has sent complete strangers into mad fits of jealousy and envy. The wife’s name was Lisa de Giocondo. Privately, he called the painting not the Mona Lisa, but La Gioconda, a play on the woman’s last name, which carries a special double meaning. It is a word that also means happy joke. So, from the grave Da Vinci laughs quietly to himself, much like the woman in the world’s most famous painting.
    And one last little note: The Mona Lisa is famous for being the first portrait to depict a sitter before an imaginary landscape. But this notation is not entirely accurate. While it is true this landscape does not appear anywhere in the known world, if you happened to live in that Italian town in the year of 1503, you would immediately recognize the landscape. It was the place where men fought dragons when a certain magical fountain came to life.

    **

    She’s the girl better musicians write albums about, make a career from.
    The girl painters put a skyscape across the vaulted ceilings of the world’s most famous cathedral,
    That send mariner’s across entire oceans,
    That makes the world’s strongest man cut his hair and become weak.
    So right now,
    We can’t write about all the ways that you’re the right woman to make him a better man, can’t show that hand.
    When you told Zeus it was time for you to move on, he struck his fist against the golden gates to heaven a sparked the first lightning bolt,
    After your time in Nepal, when you told Shiva you were leaving, he grew 8 arms in hopes to hold onto to you for just one second longer.

    Posted on July 17, 2009

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