“When we were young we were Diamond Sinatras like something I saw in a dream.” The Gaslight Anthem
Diamond Sinatras
Diamond Sinatras is part painting series, part unfolding myth, deeply inspired by the music of The Gaslight Anthem and Brian Fallon along with several other artists.
The story unfolds on three levels: a fictional myth, a cosmic love story, and my personal life, all intertwined through synchronicities and guided by music.
What began as a hobby turned into therapy and has become a living story in both real life and fiction.
Painting for me came out of nowhere. I was invited on a whim to a beginner class and I came within seconds of not going. But walking in instead of walking away changed my life in a way I could not have predicted.
I don’t exactly create these paintings or their stories. I witness them and record them. The process is intuitive and it lives somewhere between intuition and imagination. At its heart it is a collaboration between paint and music, but what emerges from it surprises me constantly.
The pages here show the evolution of the paintings. Most are still in progress. The notes and essays are the stories I see in the paintings—some real, some fiction. They will sometimes be more like field notes from what I experience day to day. What happens in life informs the paintings and what happens in the paintings seeps into life.
Synchronicities have become an expected part of every day. Synchronicities that defy logic—so specific, layered, and constant that I’ve stopped trying to explain them. They happen too often to be dismissed or fully recorded. Some are so impossible they border on absurd. I document some of them, but it’s not realistic to document them all. I notice them and thank them for the nudge, the validation, or the confirmation of the moment. It feels like my entire life is one long synchronicity unfolding in real time. It’s a wild ride.
How the Paintings Come to Life
Each painting begins with a thick layer of gesso where I scratch lines and grooves into the paste with pallet knives, brushes, kitchen tools, and pretty much anything I can reach. The strokes are guided by music. The canvas becomes an instrument. I play it like a drum or a washboard. I let the rhythms direct and what comes out on the canvas is completely formed by the music. I often scribble lyrics into the under layer and into the painting like a prayer.
I start with a few colours in mind and the music and the painting do the rest. I sit alone and listen and sing excessive harmonies—vibrations that feel euphoric in the body and bring me into presence. I watch the images as I talk out loud to myself as if I were explaining what I see to a friend. Sometimes I record these conversations if there are things I really want to remember. There’s so much to forget.
I study the colors and honour what is trying to come through. I bring out the painting rather than impose on it anything other than love and emotion.
I don’t plan or sketch compositions. I just follow the sound and the painting itself.
I don’t waste paint. That’s a rule I made when reading The Creative Act. That advice from Rick Ruben has led to the most incredible images and illusions. If I pour out too much for what I’m working on, the left over has to go on one of the many canvases around the studio. There is always one that calls for it. When it’s down to just a thin layer of color on the mixing paper, I take the paper and stamp or swear it somewhere. It always reveals part of the story. This is just one of the ways Rick has been a mythic guide.
They evolve over time. Many sections are painted over and reworked and the under layers are always present and foundational. They’re never truly finished and nothing is too precious to let go. There are no mistakes.
When balance appears, I stop, but I always stay open to what could come next. I may set aside a painting for months and then it will call for some attention. All I do is pay attention.
Even the earliest paintings—when I believed I was just learning techniques, now feel like part of a much larger pattern that was always revealing itself. The songs are maps. The lyrics are codes. They lead me into places and timelines I never expected.
The Myth Unfolding
A layered story has emerged from lyrics and across the works. I didn’t set out to write a myth, but it keeps appearing in three distinct but interconnected levels. The fictional story of Eden, the cosmic story of twin souls—Jackson and Mae, and stories from my real life and family.
Eden
At the centre of the fictional story is Eden, a girl chasing her personal version of the illusion. For Eden, that dream is Hollywood. Each painting rotates to tell a four-part story from her life. Each panel reflects a different time or version of her. Some are alternate timelines. Some are dreams. Some are memories. Her path is about transformation, longing, and the way illusion shapes us.
One of Eden’s stories is a painting that I came to know as “In the Mist of Mulholand.” (It’s not exactly the right words from the song Mulholland Drive but it seems right). This painting is where I discovered the four sided stories.
When telling someone about this they were struck that I had never seen the movie, Mulholand Drive because of a whole bunch of similarities between the painting and the movie. I had to watch. The similarities and synchronicities between the movie and and this series gave me chills.
David Lynch once said get yourself a pack of 3x5 cards and you write a scene on each card. When you have 70 scenes you have a feature film. It feels like I am writing a David Lynch movie but on canvases instead of cards.
David joins Rick Ruben, Brian Fallon, and Jackson Pollock as one of my spirit guides on this journey.
Jackson and Mae
Two cosmic figures—Jackson and Mae—keep showing up. I have learned they are twin souls, caught in an endless reunion across time, space, memory and the multiverse. Their love story threads its way through nearly every panel. They communicate through music and their story emerges from the lyrics of The Gaslight Anthem and Brian Fallon. I’ve found them in 1920s Harlem, 1940s Queens, 1950s Hollywood, on the Titanic, and on the beach where I grew up. Wherever they go, they are always trying to find and communicate with each other through music. “Keep your singing voice golden and your red shoes on” is an instruction.
There is a VR connection. They may communicate through VR in the future. That part is not completely clear yet but VR keeps popping up. I’ve found many clues through my own VR games. And this summer when I was working on a tangent project called Jackson Summer, (which will eventually be posted here) life turned into a quest that I realize I was trained for through VR.
“With a flick of the wrist and a turn of the key you’ll just fall in my arms.”
Real Life
The third layer is my own life. The paintings have revealed so many haunting images of family members who have passed and who show up for me in the most beautiful ways. They sometimes show stories and images of family histories and futures.. Recently visiting my childhood home the boundary between fiction and reality became blurred. Working on the paintings for Jackson Summer I started seeing clues around my childhood home and seeing images and things in nature that correspond with the paintings.
Working on the Diamond Sinatras series I came to recognize who my own twin soul is in this lifetime. The reasons I believe this are specific, coded and unexplainable. To my knowledge this person doesn’t know. Or maybe they do on some level. There is no doubt in my mind he is my Jackson. The other half of my soul and he became my muse.
Eden also has a cosmic twin, revealed in a painting. Her twin is inextricably connected to Gaslight music. The myth, the personal, and the cosmic are all reflections of the same story.
Breadcrumbs and Maps
Brian Fallon has been precisely narrating this project through his lyrics, sometimes songs he covers, decades old interviews and concerts that show up at the exact right moment. His words seem to reveal what I’m feeling and what I’m painting. They reveal parts of the story just as the paintings do. It’s more than inspiration it’s conversation with the energy that is the source of art and that connects through art. My work would not exist without his and so many others’. His work would not exist without so many others.
It’s all connected
I have a few favourite podcasts but Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton has become a kind of guide. His interviews are almost always the insight I need for the next stage. As an example, the Lost in Hollywood that fit perfectly into the series, was born directly from his conversation with Daron Malakian. That’s just one example, there are so many others. Rick’s face has even appeared in the paintings a few times.
Synchronicities follow me everywhere now. They appear constantly. They are specific, layered, absurdly precise. Some are visual. Some come through music. Many are in nature. Others are names and faces that appear in the work without me consciously placing them there. They can be in old episodes of sitcoms and in daily talk shows. They are in instagram posts, on the beach and in literal signs on the side of the road. They are everywhere and they teach me to trust the process.
Diamond Sinatras
Brian Fallon once shared that Diamond Sinatras were words that together formed an image that made sense to him and that he loved at the time. He didn’t necessarily know exactly what it was, but it made sense to him and he needed it. “An image that put together a feeling.” That’s what these paintings are. Each one is a Diamond Sinatra—"like something I saw in a dream.”
They are images that make sense to me and make me smile. They have got me through the most difficult time of my life. They’re beautiful things formed under pressure.
I know I am not the only fan who feels almost spiritual about this music. There is something about it that hits us like no other music can. It’s on a different frequency than other music and it inspires us to create and heal and love and that is what great art should do.
As much as this project is a love letter and a thank you note to the artists, it is just as much a love letter to those fans who get it. I can be brought to tears by a YouTube comment from 10 years ago written by someone who feels it like I do.
I am just the first audience member of this story and the story is for them.
It’s all connected.
The site is part archive and part blog and it’s definitely not linear. It’s an ongoing ride, not a completed thing. Since I’m not really creating it, it’s creating itself, I have little control over it.
In a world that is hard to see the good in these days, it gives me more joy than imaginable.
They have loved me back to life and maybe they will ignite something in you, too.
Art heals. Music saves.
@djlovesyou33
