Fluxionesque

Sunrise, Sunset

2011-12-18T14:27:00.000-08:00

Sunset Memorial Cemetery, Chester VA. January 2009

As I was leaving Enon after my winter 2009 visit to see my parents, I became compelled to drive by the cemetery where other relatives are buried and where Mama and Daddy bought plots. It was just after dawn. I walked out to the stone that is shared with cousins and photographed it and the neighboring stones where my grandparents and numerous uncles and aunts are placed.

It was bitter cold. The sun was just coming up giving the frost covered ground had a crystalline appearance in places.

I stared at the plots and thought to myself, one day they will be here. The idea was so abstract, so unbelievable… I simply couldn't wrap my head around it. I just wasn't real to me in any way.

In hindsight I knew things were getting rough, and were likely to get worse very soon. I was determined to hang on to my life out in California.

Had I not been so paralyzed by the situation, the decades of her reminding over and over how disappointed she was (and I read: in me), had her expectations not been so high, had I not become so absorbed in staying away, I might have seen that this was the point that I should have started to prepare myself to come back to help. I didn't think I could stand it.

I can't help but think how, if I had been able to see past all this, if the relationship hadn't been so stagnant from the stress of mental illness, I would have wanted to be there for them.

It's hard to remember the blunt force of her constant fury now. I never thought anything would dull that.

At the time I was convinced she would live forever, that perhaps I was trapped in some weird continuum with her.

I knew that Daddy would go first. He was already so exhausted. He refused help if asked, but that was his generation. Had I insisted he would have accepted help and been proud that I offered, and would have gone along with it.

I didn't though.

An obvious foreshadowing, yet I kept my back turned.

I still feel that chill.

Nothing will ever be the same again

2011-12-09T09:54:00.001-08:00

Daddy's garage

July 2009

This was the last "normal" visit I had home. In hindsight, I remember little of distinction.

I know I made notes. I always did, but I could tell you where those notes are now...
When I find them they will shed some important detail.
I had stopped making photos of them mostly, or myself while there. It's sad to me. It was then too. Mama's illness made everything so difficult,I didn't even try. I was so lost in my head, just trying to deal with her on a minute by minute basis. That took all my concentration.

Now, three years later I am finally getting around to looking at these again... I see them in a completely different light...

In the photo (above) of the garage, all is see is that empty chair.
A premonition.

Home, July 2009

Distance. Looks innocent enough... a wide shot, a lot of yard.

Underneath, what stands out is the distance between myself and everything there. I defend myself now by saying I had to keep it all at an arms length just to function in my own life, even 3000 miles away.

To anyone else this must look quaint enough, calm and quiet. A tidy little home. I am blinded by the howling anarchy of her illness and how it obliterated everyone around her, like trying to stand your ground during a violent hurricane.

When I look at this I have a split vision... a kind of x-ray vision... the surface is normal bu what flashes through my mind isn't the house and yard and summer afternoon. I don't see the house at all. In my mind I look down in defeat. I look away from the rage, the frustration, and crushing misunderstanding that tarnishes every word spoken, every gesture, to the point of emotional blindness.

layers of defeat

Daddy kept everything he though he might be able to use. He fixed everything, and had every tool you could imagine and used them all.
As the years passed and Mama became more ill, the garage became more and more disordered, until finally he was too worn down, to tired to deal with it.

I see it all in a blur

I would take little breaks and walk around the yard for a few minutes. Glimpses of sky, ground and the overgrown trees mingle. All unconnected.

If I close my eyes I see the the different views, seasons, and stages of decline. The poor house a shell, an event horizon.

Daddy's last garden

Early girls

Hopewell, the nearest town, 2 miles to the East, just across the river, was always so depressing me. With its polluted river, billowing smokestacks and sour chemical smelling air, and sad demolished downtown. Everything in Hopewell had collapsed. The population devolved, local businesses mostly closed or were overwhelmed by the sprawl at the towns fringes, with it's monstrous Wal-Marts and fast food.

I started to look at the towns decline and the decline of the lifestyle my parents worked so hard to build as a story of it's own. A story I want to explore and tell.

Route 10, East bound, approaching Hopewell

Home sweet home

2011-12-06T08:22:00.001-08:00

Home, October, 2011

This is the home I grew up in, in Enon, Virginia.

It's been one year since Mama died, and a year and a half since Daddy passed.

I can hardly believe it.

Nothing seems real to me in the same way anymore. I am calmer, quieter, and certainly not stressed like I used to be, but I haven't shaken this melancholy, this sense of futility that I have now.

Things that are abstracted (in life) are revolting to me now. I want connection– in work– for it to be real work– with a concrete value, in people– quality time with friends, substantive conversation with folks... I have a need to be present in a much deeper way than I have perviously understood. I used to think I was being "present" but more often that not I wasn't, not like I feel it now. Very curious.

I find that when I am "present" now, everything feels like it is simultaneously in both slow motion and incredibly sped up– and kind of timeless too. I get emotional very easily, los my breath, or am really moved, often by simply things that seem to have a vibrant vitality that I hadn't seen or been aware of before.

It's a strange adjustment. Loss changes you in such odd unexpected ways. I see things so differently now. Still trying to figure out how to articulate this better, specifically.

I used to dread going home. I feel very sad about this now, but that was the truth.

Mama's illness made things so difficult. It was exhausting, she was exhausting, and being enmeshed in that distorted my perception of it. It had a gravity all it's own. I dreaded the sense of paralysis I felt when I was there, that nothing I did could change things or make it better. I felt crushed under expectations I could never live up to. Those anxieties eclipsed everything else.

Now I feel a deep connection to that home and the area I grew up. I spent my whole life trying to escape these places, and now I want to explore them in great detail, want to be there. I miss it on a physical, visceral level.

My dear friend Tina made this image at my request in October. I love the way the leaves look, the rich color. The house looks peaceful. We are both still in a strange limbo. When I look at the house this is what I feel most clearly.

I feel very protective of the house, and on a gut level want to be near it, to tend it. I think it's part of the grieving process.

I haven't been able to start editing the thousands of photos I made earlier this year while I was there. I tried to make use of every available second. I made photos every day for months, savoring as much as I could, knowing it was all going to change forever.

Thats my work now, sorting through all those images and thoughts while I was cleaning out the house, making sense of of it all, from this new perspective.

As of this past Saturday, the one year anniversary of Mamas death, the house is officially rented. It is now, in a sense, going to be someone else's. It's going to change.

Home isn't going to be home anymore.

Do you ever get the feeling...

2011-12-05T16:40:00.001-08:00

Found, at the corner of Selma and Wilcox ave.

... you can't get enough air in your lungs?

Not like a panic attack, or stress, but something vague and undefined?

When I saw this I thought what an interesting juxtaposition... so much street art has this feeling to me, of sadness, of loss, of frustration.

Funny how you see most what speaks to you, and that it is always out there on the streets waiting...

Quiet Days

2011-12-05T16:33:00.001-08:00

Los Angeles skyline November, 2011

Spending a lot of time with friends, reading and writing... but mostly reflecting.

When I drive through the city now if feels like a different place to me. So much has changed... been transformed. So many familiar places I have known are gone, and I feel so much older. OLD. I feel like my time here is passing... that the time to move on is approaching. Maybe a phase.. IDK.

This view though never ceases to amaze me. At sunset with the grid emerges all lit up...

This is what it looks like in my head...

2011-12-05T16:29:00.001-08:00

...these days. I have so many photos to edit and it has just been overwhelming. I tend to graze tumblr instead and post there. I've found it hard to concentrate since I got back.

Time for Art

2011-08-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

Back again.

Where to start?

I feel like I am starting over. I feel like a different person.

Loss has a way of changing you permanently. I don't feel like this is negative, just still so unfamiliar.

In the past I was inclined to post frequently about political issues, but I am so burned out on all that right now. Everything feels pointless, especially political grandstanding (and it is ALL theatre), and pop culture.

They have become intolerable to bear.

I shouldn't be surprised. I've been through an incredibly traumatic few years, and I really want to concentrate on creative ideas and expressions, rather than get angry over shit I can't change or do anything about.

I guess I'm in a nesting mode.

Spending time with my partner, friends and family, cooking, eating, slowing down and appreciating how lucky I am to have wonderful supportive people in my life.

On the artwork side—

I have thousands of photographs to sort through, process and edit, tons of writing to do and books to read. and very soon a class to teach.

I'm working on several photographic series too, which I will post working versions of images occasionally.

I'll start with this portrait of my Mother:

Mama, in her room, November 2010.

This was made three weeks before she died.

It breaks my heart every time I see it.

It was a spontaneous shot.

She normally wouldn't let me photograph her unless she made herself up, but I think she knew at that point time was short and when I asked this time she said okay.

I knew I couldn't hesitate. The cancer made her mood unpredictable. One minaret she could be fine and the next in a fury or in incredible pain.

I had borrowed a good digital camera so I grabbed that. Unfortunately the battery died while trying to make there first shot. I was so frustrated.

Their wasn't enough light to shoot film, so all I had was a cheap point and shoot camera. I paused, almost defeated, but took a deep breath and pressed forward with what I had.

Technically, this shot is compromised. It suffers from a low light source environment, too much image compression— typical with jpg format and the limits of a point and shoot level chip. (11 MPX with a panasonic lumix)

However,

Viewed purely as an image, on an emotional level, I think it does capture something and I am thankful that I have anything from this very delicate and difficult time.

She could be a holy terror, but I miss her so very, very, much…

Hiatus, continued

2011-03-01T05:41:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update.

Just for the record, I haven't completely abandoned this blog, I've just been decompressing from a really traumatic experience and loss.

I haven't really had the patience or ability to concentrate to compose the kind of posts I like to do here. I expect to start again in the Fall...

Peace.

A Strange Wilderness, Grief

2010-12-08T14:35:00.000-08:00

My Mother passed away On December 3, 2010.

A graveside memorial service was held today in Sunset Memorial Park, in Chester VA. at 11 am in the bitter cold (29 degrees).

I decided to deliver the eulogy myself.

I felt that to speak of Mama's life authentically, I would need to speak about her pain. So I spoke candidly.

Eulogy for Ruth McLeod Harvey

by Mark Christopher Harvey

I don't know how to talk about Mama's life without talking about her pain, because it so dominated her life.

Most of you who knew Mama may remember her as distant or worse, exceedingly difficult.

She suffered inconceivably in her own mind.

She struggled to make and sustain connections with other people, to go and do things that most people do and enjoy with no effort. but she became isolated from those joys in recent decades in almost every way. It was heartbreaking for me and Daddy to see her suffer and not be able to do much of anything to ease it.

I'm convinced she suffered from an undiagnosed condition known as a Borderline Personality Disorder.

BPD causes one to become so convinced that others are about to hurt or abandon them that they are compelled to behave in ways which, paradoxically, are provocative and alienating.

She never wanted to do any harm. She fought so hard against it her whole life.

Fear drove all her behavior, and eventually it drove everyone away, though she did not intend that. She didn't understand it, and that hurt her even further.

One exception to this is Tina, who so wisely stepped in just ahead of disaster so many times in this year. She comforted mama in ways I could not and devoted endless hours to her care and to my assistance.

It was in the Hospital on Mama's last day, when she was far from coherent, during or after a hug from Tina that Mama finally let go of her suffering. It gives me incredible comfort to know her last experience of life was a loving embrace.

Thank you Tina, for your love and support.

Almost everyone who knows me knows that I have spent most of my life agonizing over how to understand Mama's pain and trying to find a way to ease her suffering and her disappoint in life. It was nearly an impossible task.

I always knew a time would come when I would have to come and take care of her. and honestly I dreaded it, because I wasn't sure I could manage it, but it has been a truly transformative experience, beyond anything I could have imagined.

The english poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in his play "Prometheus Unbound" on the transformative nature of pain and I want to share a few lines of his that I thought spoke to this experience especially:

“To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy power which seems omnipotent;

To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck

the thing it contemplates”

and until Daddy became ill and I came to take care of her I indeed felt wrecked and hopeless to understand or really help her, but in the doing of it, in all the tedious little daily tasks that all changed, miraculously.

I know she appreciated what I was doing, and once I was here I was so glad to be doing it. It wasn't easy, but so very worth the effort.

I understand now that caring for someone who is ill, and bereavement itself is an integral part of the experience of love.

I am humbled and deeply thankful for this time with her. Already, I miss her terribly.

I can truthfully say it has been the best, most fulfilling experience of my life.

I wish everyone could remember her not for her suffering or her behavior, but for her profound love for daddy and I, and for her years of dedicated homemaking (Homemaking is such an under appreciated effort in our society) and for her utterly selfless devotion to that ideal, even after she became too ill to practice it. She did the best she could with what she had.

She often choose suffering out of fear and that familiarity with fear in a perverse way actually sustained her in ways no amount of love or effort could touch.

Faced with such a situation, all we can do is accept and be in awe of the burden that some are brought to bear in this life.

Despite her suffering, she had a deep faith, and despite her continued suffering was assured in God and Jesus for support.

All we can do sometimes is accept and be there for someone, to try to ease others suffering and to treasure the time we have with one another, whether it be easy or difficult because in the end it is so very brief, and in the end sharing love is what matters most.

Unfortunately much of this didn't become clear until it was too late for me to share with her, so I wanted to share what I learned from her with you all in loving tribute.

A Fable of Deconstruction

2010-09-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

I decided to post a loose rough draft of some observations of my experience trying to care for my dying Mother...

An exercise in syntactic, spelling, grammatic and stylistic errors mostly and I know in need of extensive editing, arranging and revising... but it is only a start. I really need to get some of this outside of myself.

In another form, this work in progress will be called "Exile in the Broken Heart of Dixie."

***********************UPDATED OCTOBER 23*************************

I've been in Virginia now for over 19 weeks.

Daddy has been gone for only just under four months, and still every time I think of him in the ground I lose my breath.

Mama was diagnosed with late stage oral cancer three months ago.

I haven't been able to get her to any of her appointments for tests or to discuss possible treatments. I've postponed and rescheduled all of them 4 or 5 times each.

I finally just gave up. She didn't even notice.

She won't consider Hospice, or even try the stronger medication that may help with her increasingly intolerable pain. Fear.

She consistently chooses suffering.

She demands constant attention. Her old routine has unraveled, and our lives have wound down into a claustrophobic limbo.

Worse, time no longer has distinction like days or nights, it's all her own weather. Up and down at all hours.

I promised her I would come if something happened to Daddy and I am honoring that.

For years she has harangued me with her disappointments and fears about being alone… so now in her last days I'm trying to salve that.

Still, for a long time she would still accost me with things like:

"I've done a lot for you in my time!" "I'd do it for you and I did it for my mother."

She wears me down. If I dare get frustrated and say so she will exclaim

"You can't be as tired as I am!"

"I've done more for you than you'll ever do for anybody else!" she repeats.

I do get flustered and tell her she's pushing to hard and asking to much of one person.

During a bad spell she bristles, incredulous "What DO you think you do anyway?" She asks.

I look at her astonished.

Oh nothing, I think, just everything that gets done now. But know better than to say anything. I know she doesn't mean it, but her fear speaks louder and more harshly for her.

When she is immobilized in pain she is almost tolerable, but when it subsides for a time her monstrously deformed personality comes roaring back.

Constantly accusing, forever punishing—for an ever flowing stream of imagined offenses.

She thinks herself the unfair and hapless victim and martyr of everyone else's selfishness. She has been this way her whole life.

This I am convinced is due to an long undiagnosed condition. I believe that she suffers from a severe borderline personality disorder.

It's traits have been best described by Marcia Sirota:

"People who suffer from a severe form of Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, are extraordinarily sensitive to any perceived slight or hint of rejection.

They lack insight when it comes to relationships and are unable to calm themselves when under stress. They can become enraged when they believe, often incorrectly, that someone has done them wrong.

Sadly, the individual with severe BPD is so convinced that others are about to hurt or abandon them that they are compelled to behave in ways which, paradoxically, are provocative and alienating.

In their efforts to manage what they imagine to be inevitable betrayal or abuse, they inadvertently create exactly the situations which they most dread.

The person affected with severe BPD has an uncanny knack of bringing out the worst in those that they interact with. This just reinforces their belief that most people are going to hurt or disappoint them.

Sufferers of severe BPD have a powerful need to get back at those who've been supposedly attacking, rejecting or shaming them. Paradoxically,it's the Borderline individual who ends up doing all the real harm in their quest to punish the so-called offenders."

This matches her behavior to a tee.

It would also help to explain how in years past not one, but six mental health professionals all gave up on her or were rejected by her or asked her not to come back.

"They don't know what they're doing." She would say dismissively. "I've seen Dr. Phil I could do better than they can. None of them ever helped me, thats for sure."

But all that was long ago already. And none of this helps me deal with her now.

As long as she is reasonably in her right mind and refuses help I can get her none.

Though I have tried to force it—when I thought she was having a heart attack I called in an ambulance. She threw the EMTs out, and so I called the police to help.

I found that her skills are more formidable than I suspected. In front of a police man she is rational, calm and clear headed as safe cracker. The policeman sided with her.

It's my mind thats coming unhinged. "You're CRAZY!" she screams. I can't believe the way you treat me!"

All I can do is back down or agree with whatever she says, do whatever she asks and take what fallout comes, and it does and often. No one else would put up with her and I can't just abandon her even though she has accused me of it my whole life.

She has always held a paralyzing influence on me, which is now in it's fullest effect.

I am dulled by all the constraints and must block everything and everyone else in the world to deal with this. I t requires more energy than I really have.

***

Late summer

The light is changing. The days each a fraction shorter. The sun lower is in the sky in the afternoon. I notice it only because the shadows are different. The lower aspect of the sun affords more ambient light in the south facing rooms, given them a warm glow through the discolored curtains and crumbling long drawn shades.

It is joined by the solitary song of the cricket, intoning as it does with an irregularly that has the unique cadence of late summer.

I can sense that she feels everything closing in as her waning energy reveals, in her stumbling and shuffling each day slower and with increasing difficultly. Her movements now restricted from bed to couch to bathroom, and now only possible with my assistance.

The decline frightens her as it would anyone. Worse for her as she is so cut off and alone with herself as she is. Her fear is even greater than her pain, as she will accept nothing that could help because it is all unfamiliar.

I pleaded that I need the help to— to help take care of her, but in her fearful estimation I guess she reasons that she gets no relief from her suffering, why should I get any relief in helping her. Thats her behavior at least.

More of that "YOU OWE ME" mentality that she has always assaulted everyone with.

She has always impressed upon me what she feels —insists— is MY responsibility toward her and Daddy with a religious fervor.

She's told me since I could remember. "I got you so I wouldn't have to be alone when I was old.

( I am adopted)

"we RAISED you! Don't you think you owe us ANYTHING?!" she would sometime exclaim to me as a teenager. I forget what would provoke these outbursts, but I certainly remember her repeated ominous assertions.

She acted like it was something to look forward to. I never understood it, and even as a child quickly grew to fear it.

As an adolescent as I started to try to stretch my own wings she began a permanent campaign to clip them and keep them clipped.

That conflict has always been at the source of the friction between us.

I kept going farther and farther away, and she got sicker and sicker ( much of it by her own diagnosis) and tried harder and harder to shame me into coming back.

But now Daddy is gone and I have come back to help, yet there is still her resentment.

Part of her anger toward me now is her insistence that I didn't do my duty by coming home years ago to help them.

She always kept us, as a family, in a vacuum. And in that isolation with her constant needling and manipulation you start to believe her insistences. You lose your bearings.

***

Each time she has to give up some detail of her old routine it's as if it were torn from her and she responds with fits of crying or infantile rage.

My friend Tina, the only other person who Mama has allowed to help, noted with amazing accuracy that Mama's behavior was the same as that of a spoiled child.

It was a chilling realization.

Even after everything I have been through with her over the years it is torture to watch her suffer so horribly.

She hates to alone at all now, and prefers for me to sit in her room with her, or close where ever she is, especially when in pain or discomfort.

This is how each day now begins.

She lies on her four poster bed, on that old worn out mattress, on threadbare linen, fussing with the slack elastic of the fitted sheet as it slides loose at every shift of her body. She cries in exasperation like a child trying to adjust the seams on the pillow cases. A princess suffering the indignity of creases.

I try to get her to take her medicine.. this can take upwards of an hour or sometimes much longer. "I can't swallow those right now!"

She has been having terrible hot flashes and repeated panic attacks.

Constantly demanding the thermostat be adjusted… in the summer 76 was too cold, 77 too hot. I would sit and shiver at both. Now in autumn 74 is too hot.

"It's just one degree. I said once.

She was outraged. "One degree MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE!"

"Okay, okay" I retreat, closing my eyes.

Now I just do what she says, but it still isn't enough.

"I'm about to burn up!" Did you cut the air condition on!?" she asks bruskly.

"yes it's on it right now."

Its 55 outside, but who cares.

"Are you SURE? I can't feel it. Give me something to fan with."

"yes, It's on." I say without looking up.

She won't use any of the new or clean linens, blankets or pillows that still sit the bags they were brought home ages ago.

There is only one chair in the bedroom. It is where I bookend my days and often sit in shadow of night, until she settles. Full light is starting to bother her so we sit by the gloom of several little low watt night lights.

It is a rigid saddle back chair that once intended to be used at the dining room table, but like so many things in the house, was never used.

Their decline, Mama's and Daddy's, is marked in so many ways.

Inside the house, Mama's vigilant housekeeping is now painfully absent.

Everything is under a thickening veil of dust. Mildew seems to blossom on the base boards, cobwebs adorn the corners of the ceiling, new cracks constantly spread along the seams of the sheetrock. The carpets fray at the edges and are flattened along well worn paths.

I keep getting caught up in the long loose threads of her hair all over the house, like spiders silk. I dust the parts of the house that are still used but even that I can't keep up along with everything else.

Daddy's absence is felt in every object, in every one of his possessions I might chance to see. Nothing of his has been moved. I can't bear it yet.

Outside, where the yard has become ragged, the shrubs have grown gangly and misshapen. There are more weeds than grass, and where it remains, is brown and brittle. Dead limbs litter the yard and hang from the long untended trees that bow and lean as if in an attitude melancholy themselves. The walk is overgrown, the gutters are starting to sag, and in the garage his tools are already sprinkled with rust where ever he laid them last.

oddly, His mower won't even start now.

The yard will never look the same.

Everything in the rooms, shrouded in gloom against the other wise warm glow of August sunshine, fade in spite of the insulation. The cloth of the furniture is brittle, and in places dry rotten. The color in the candles drained and pale except for a hint of dull hue at their bases. They have never been lit. Everything "saved" for special occasions that never came. The decorative glass ware is all clouded, the chandelier tarnished and strung with dusty cobwebs, the mounted silverware buried under dark, turbulent indigos accented with hints of violet over expanses of deep umber.

The air is heavy and very stale. The piano sits almost indistinguishable in the low light, never played more than once or twice, and then only as a demonstration.

The piano may be silent, but there is a music here, I feel it begging to be born, broken and out of tune though it would be.

I hear it in my dreams frequently, but have no ability to articulate it. This pains me as I often walk through the house, hearing notes, all in fragments and unfinished phrases in my mind, as if struck on many varied phantom instruments.

If only I could play just one.

Even the little kink-knacs on the end tables, of kittens, birds, rosy cheeked children and revolutionary pilgrims in cheerful postures, are betrayed by the discolored glue and the rough and sometimes awkward reconstruction from multiple misfortunate fracture.

The grand old clocks long since wound down, stilled at different hours.

Once, walking her through the hallway after some pointless argument she remarks "One day all this will be yours, that should mean something!"

She says this as if she were bequeathing me Tara itself. and I suppose in her mind she is.

This is the house I have grown up in. It has long deep roots in my memory.

While it is grand in it's decay in my mind, and no less haunted in my imagination, it is really only a half acre in an old postwar neighborhood bordered now on all sides by subdivisions, apartment complexes, a interstate by-way and the ever expanding intrusion of franchise commercial development.

The house is utterly unremarkable to set eyes on. Simple one story brick. featureless.

It is ironic that it sits next to a true example of eccentric folly gone to seed.

What some would that house a real redneck Versailles.

Complete with several cars lost in the overgrowth of the yard, a great gazebo in the back yard packed to the rafters with debris and refuse, but it is the house itself that really stands out.

The elaborate addition to the original house had began as grand vision, that is clear, with two distinct wings built on the edges of the once simple one story frame, now bearing the weight of numerous high gables, balconies, porches, arched windows, even a widows walk.

But something went terribly wrong and all the work stopped at the height of shaping it, and was never resumed or completed. Grand larceny on behalf of the contractor I think.

Now, 25 years later, it is a dramatically sagging three story ruin in peeling Tyvek and tarpaper over warping plywood. Theres even a porch swing on cinder blocks sitting in the front yard. The east wing has been cobbled into a small apartment, other porches have been converted to little rooms, doors boarded up, a patchwork of lesser ideas diminishing it further as time goes on. But that is another story.

To hear my story you would think it belongs in that house, not the sunny nondescript little brick edition next door, with it's sparely planted yard and shuttered windows… nothing of the otherwise pleasant exterior to indicate the depth and duration of grief that has been endured inside.

It's as if the house has never been able to breathe. I certainly feel like I have been holding my breath all my life.

The house does emit an occasional architectural groan, evidenced in the occasional settling of wood and mortar. Instinctively it responds to gravity, which tugs at it, pulling it closer to it's earthly bosom, and without intervention, to someday swallow and consume the burden of it's existence as with us all.

***

We have been up much of the night.

Her with unrelenting hot and cold flashes moaning softly, and I trying to sooth her anxiety. I get a feeling the end may be near, and I wish we could share some genuine quality time, but I accept that it isn't going to happen like I imagine.

I am so tired of arguing. she turns everything into argument. It's the only way she can relate, sadly. And if she can't lure me into engaging her she is content to have the argument without me as if she were responding to what she imagines I would say.

I can't help but sit restlessly, try to agree with her, or tell her what she wants to hear and remembering wave after wave of unhappy days past, relived at the sight of every item and object on display, as nothing has been moved or changed in decades.

She gets agitated if I shift too much, taking offense and no matter what I say I end up more uncomfortable and she covering her face or reaching for one of the several wadded damp tissues that litter the edge of the bed by her pillow.

My back is sore, my foot keeps falling asleep.

"Talk to me!" she demands desperately. "Can't you say something? anything?"

I'm convinced she already has the conversation she wants imagined in her head, and anything I say can't live up to it and thats the reason it is always a fight. she gets irritated at the disappointment.

What she imagines I don't know. TV dialog? She's obsessed with movie stars and the like. All I know is anything I say leads to an argument.

I stubble, and feebly offer… "I'm sorry, I just don't know what to say right now…"

"Just be yourself!" She pleads not realizing what irony this stirs, what frustration.

She is oblivious that she has obliterated by deliberate degrees at every opportunity, everything that might be "myself" leaving only the hollow shell of her unrealized expectations of me. And if course my resentment.

She has always wanted to tell you what to do, what to say, how to say and when. If you assert any country facts or opinions she will just step up her assault until you give in. She will keep it up for days or weeks or years. She has no boundaries to her emotional marauding. Her illness has the the pitch of this behavior to a maniacal level.

My natural curiosity has always been threatening to her, looking naturally out toward the wider world, whereas she is interested in nothing beyond the town of her birth and, it seems, the limited experiences of her youth, or more honestly herself.

She mutters her dissatisfaction whenever I leave the room, or under her breath, sharp criticisms. The same is true if I dare pick up a book or my laptop unless she is asleep.

She has always required of everyone that she be the sole and constant center of attention.

and now that everyone else is gone she seems to demand it of me all the more.

I can't tell what is hurting her more, the natural progression of her mental illness, some derangement from taking the same anxiety Meds for so many years or the merciless advancement of the cancer.

More is claimed from her everyday. She has let go of almost all her old habits and insistences.

She's stopped bathing, not having the energy, and rejecting my attempts to get the aide of a nurse.

If you stand very close the sweet sour smell of decay and bodily stagnation lingers around her, like a fog, like a grotesque pheromone, that, were it in the animal kingdom, would ward off any who might come near, being a natural signal of illness, and the unmistakable harbinger of approaching death.

I have learned to move as if submerged in a thick, viscous or mucilaginous fluid that resists and erodes every motion.

the same with speech.. to minimize upset I must speak very slowly, glacially, in an even tone regardless of whatever harsh admonition that assaults my ear. Strangely, this seems to help a little.

Still, I fail in my efforts often. Failure is my new mantle of achievement. Only in this I am free to revel.

Sometimes I fancy that I am living out these days of claustrophobic limbo like a Butoh dancer in a faithful repetition of an homage to the burden of existence… a blunt, gray reverie. Rude and absurd. An insect twitching in slow motion.

It's all one motion really— a restless waiting.

An all encompassing waiting as solid as the granite mantle under which all the soil of the earth presses, and in it's harshest aspect, under duress of mind and spirit, a crushing reminder of the futility and transience of our being. It being forever unrelenting and featureless, and we being so tender to it's indifference.

***

She won't ask for anything… likening it to begging. Instead she will stare at something, or pout or look disgusted until you figure it out. Asking her offends her too.

She finally complains about currently a layer of dust on the dresser.

"I don't know what you want." I say.

"Well if you don't know by now then you never will." she blurts.

"Please tell me what you want done." I say frustrated.

"You don't understand…. (sobbing) I don't expect you to keep this house clean… I don't expect to do like I did, but the obvious things…."

"You put things off…" she continues "and then you get so many things to do at one time… even when you were a little boy."

I say nothing.

"I hate to have to ask you to do anything."

Finally, slowly. "Okay. I'll do it now." I say wearily.

"JUST FORGET IT!" she interrupts.

"Ma, I can't sit here with you and keep up with what needs to be done too…"

"OOOOOOOOoo I wish you'd hush! Why do you TRY to hurt me!" shaking her fists and shaking her head like an angry thwarted child. "lets both just stop. Don't saying anything else!"

Yet she continues to criticize, tossing barbed comments for another half of an hour.

She craves a bright continence, light conversation, distraction. Be cheerful! she demands without saying it plainly. But I am decidedly cheerless, despite all effort.

I can appreciate her need for this, and am pained that I so often fail in my attempts.

but every offering is cast out, no matter how well intended, and becomes just another facet to her aggravation.

I am struck dumb and silent… in fact prefer silence, requiring it now as a kind of sustenance, though it is daily denied me, and I am rewarded instead with this festering tension and her constant need for reassurance.

She says you can say, do, watch, whatever you want… but anything that deviates from the singularity of her taste is met instantly with stinging disapproval.

This being pretty much anything. I've learned not to bother or admit any interest, and even this can not escape her constant criticizing.

Everything in her estimation is too much or too little. She seems to have no capacity to qualify any satisfaction.

So why not walk away, consign her as a ward of the state and go?

Because all this is punctuated with moments of genuine appreciation, kindness and a such desperate, desperate need for love.

It doesn't hurt that she has made it very clear since I was very small that she expects this from me, this is my responsibility, to take care of her.

She doesn't mean this to be as blunt as it sounds, but it sure seemed that way when I was younger. Now I recognize it as just another facet of her fear.

"I love you so much, she will often sob, I don't know what I would do without you."

It breaks my heart. I know she means it.

Nothing really exists for her, outside of her own desperate wanting.

What little that is left of the immediate family are all estranged, embittered and have long abandoned her. She provoked this herself over the years, an unfortunate consequence of her illness

There is no one else. After so much pain and sadness, even as result of her own misguided actions, I feel compelled to follow though, to witness and walk the whole distance to it's very sad end.

The real danger, never seen directly, but only felt by it's exacting effect, is the black hole of suffering in whose wake is the ruin of too many souls of her family, and I would argue, most recently, the very life of my father, who stood by her in her lifelong illness at the expense of his own happiness and potential in the world.

Now I stand in that place, hugging so close to real destruction at the very edge of her event horizon, a howling anarchy of whatever the infernal source is of her suffering.

Sometimes I imagine it to be like a virus, one with a consciousness of it's own, looking for a way to transfer it self to me by driving me mad through her.

Whatever the derangement is, standing so close to something so terrible changes you, alters and distorts your being. I will not see for a long time what might be it's lasting impact.

I can only see only surface disturbances so far. I have lost almost 50 pounds (which I won't be hurt by losing), maybe a little more grey in my hair, the dark under my eyes, the bloodshot, a deep twitch and tremble in my gut, the pressure an uncomfortable tingle that flickers across my skin, like heat lightning across the sky in a summer storm, and a heaviness that pulls in at me like anvils tied to my heart.

Sometimes, while lying awake at night, when she is moaning and crying and begging God for a reason for her existence of suffering, I wonder, is it my witness to her affliction, which has chipped away at my life until now it is my sole focus and work, to translate this collapse into something?

Such a purpose would be a blessing, and I am cling to the possibility, even if it is just for myself, to get it out of me, to survive it, to escape this lifelong shadow.

Perhaps this is why ruins have always drawn and held such a vivid emotional fascination for me, perhaps this has always been my destiny, and that being my only way of recognizing it as a child.

I feel like I am stumbling amid the litter and debris after a great fire for some salvageable and precious memento.

Even my own miserable failure in the attempt would be preferable than the utter desolation of life and spirit that would remain in the absence of trying. I don't want to, can't, carry the burden of this experience inside myself alone for the rest of life. I must exorcize it.

***

It is said that the body holds onto pain. I certainly feel it in me. Attempting to translate it is my way of exorcizing it from my body.

She has held onto her pain. She was once very beautiful, though gravely flawed emotionally. I can see how the pain in her has deformed her, distorted her into the stereotypical image of a crone (minus the wisdom) as described in folklore, from her bespotted complexion, hardened scowl, sunken features, and deep wrinkles, to the coarse whiskers sprouting on her chin, to her stooped posture, to the wild chaos of her long gray hair and ragged, ill fitting clothes and vitriolic voice.

Only her eyes betray this, revealing such a profound sadness, and abyss of sadness. Also an intense vulnerability, and a childlike softness as can been seen in children of starvation that begs for forgiveness, kindness and affection.

It is the greatest challenge I think I will ever face.

The worst of it is when the demands of her care and voracious need of attention require every creative impulse to be delayed to forgetfulness, or suffocated by the insatiable maw at the center of her wounded being, dulled only slightly by propinquity.

I am reminded of an observation from a Franz Kafka short, "Resolutions":

"So in the end it remains advisable to accept whatever comes, to behave like an inert mass, even if one feels oneself being swept away, not to be lured into a single unnecessary step, to regard others with the gaze of an animal, to feel no remorse, in short to crush with ones own hand any ghost of life that subsists, that is, to intensify the final quiet of the grave still further and let nothing beyond that endure."

It is excellent advice for coping in an extreme situation.

In the meantime we follow this routine, a little more frayed each day and evening to it's inevitable sad end, though to me now, in the midst of its violence, it feels like it will never end.

***

She lies on the couch at supper time immobilized in pain and spiteful refusal for outside assistance. I walk along the dark house turning on the night lights along the hall.

I tend her as best I can, but more and more we sit mostly in tense silence. Once in a while she might tolerate an old movie, but only one she already knows, and has memorizes every line and scene. The plots hold little interest for her. I suspect she longs only to imagine herself the heroine and star, being rescued, swept away, or for a few minutes, the master of a brighter destiny.

As the autumn deepens, and she gets weaker, and after a few unattractive fits of my own about the need for help, I think she is finally considering it, but she is so very afraid.

" I know you need help, that you're trying to do whats best for … I know I need it too.. but I wasn't raised like that…. It's just so…." She shakes her head back and forth and sobs.

She's also trying to be more considerate. She apologizes when she is cross sometimes and tells me more often that she knows I'm doing the best I can, and to remember she is too.

"I know you're trying. I appreciate it more than you know. I don't know what I'd do with out you. I love you so much. I do… and I'm trying sooo hard… if you only knew how hard I'm trying…." she say weakly, with tearful emotion.

"I know Mama, it's okay." I say and rub her shoulder, smiling.

These little moments help a lot toward getting through the rougher ones.

Finally, I end my day the same way as I started it, sitting in the rigid chair in her room, regarding her as she lays in pain holding her hand to her face where, underneath her thin skin, enmeshed in tissue and bone, the tumor silently spreads.

Hiatus Extended

2010-08-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

Titian's Sisyphus

It's been a very difficult year.

My Father became ill in March, was hospitalized and then had to go to a nursing home in April and passed away in July.

Right on the heels of that my Mother became ill too.
I lost one job to come take care of her and then had to give up my other job when she was diagnosed with stage 4 oral cancer to extend my time caring for her in another state.

Being a full time caretaker for any one is difficult, and for a difficult parent with whom you already have a strained relationship with only makes it harder.

Needless to say it is a humbling full time job. Everything else in my life is on hold.

So the hiatus for this blog is now extended indefinitely.

Be well everyone.

Peace.

Tumbling

2010-06-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting here of late...

I have decided to put this blog on hiatus until September.

I'm dealing with some intense family issues which is requiring more and more of my energy, and is about to require my full time attention.

No surprise, in the midst of all this, I haven't had the concentration or frame of mind to organize my thoughts much less post.

One thing I have kind of lost myself in is tumblr micro blogs...

11:11

...one of the latest platforms to satisfy our collectively shrinking attention span...

I can drift into interesting stuff and graze in and out of people's public persona's and not feel so isolated in my own head.

It's kind of compulsive, but satisfying in a big way.

For The Love Of The Beard

The Tumblr interface is much easier, you can pick from a wide variety of custom themes (alternate page structures), images can be much bigger, and that has a lot of appeal.

Blogger seriously needs to address some of their long standing code bugs and formatting problems.

So in my compromised state of mind I shift my feeble attention to microblogging whenever I have my wits about me or any time to do it.

Every post is a mix of appreciation, astonishment, outrage, desire, folly, personal expression, or acknowledgment ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Quinnford and Scout

I get inspired when I see other peoples original work- and I have run across quite a few amazing portfolios in my drifting from Tumblr, to Flickr, to Deviantart, other blogs, public pages on various social networks to personal sites.

Love Me, Love Me Not

Not to mention the blur of explicit images intermixed into everything too.

Fuck Yeah Goths

It makes me want to go back and dig through all my old stuff and scan and post... if only to remember that I used to have ideas too.
I still have ideas, I just have no time to develop them.

This has been my bane for two decades, now that it's reaching a fever pitch it's not surprising that I would find solace in immersing myself in glimpses of others creative imagination, curated pics from around the web and familiar favorites that comfort my stressed present life.

Is this simply getting in touch with my inner teenager? Pathetic distraction? Another mid-life crisis? Acting out of my age?

Maybe a little of all...

Ohhzz

In the Seventies watching network television had a kind of collective culture experience to it... in that the day after whatever was broadcast everyone would be talking about whatever was on- and since there were only three choices there was a lot of cross-over.

I miss this in the age of internet, video and 500 channels of cable.

As odd is it seems Tumbling reminds me of this collective experience... the way people comment, reblog or follow one another... it's a different experience for a different time with a much broader sweep... I don't know why I'm experiencing this with Tumblr and not so much with Blogger...

These are the contents of my head

... it seems we speak more and more though our shared visual memory... descriptions are almost unnecessary, and few have much in the way of further identifying information.

Each blog curates its own emotional landscape and personality. Doesn't matter whether they are serious or irreverent or explicit they all function the same way.

They are all snapshots of ourselves, abstract portraits of a new kind...

Ulterior Motifs

At their best they remind me of that feeling of possibility that comes with youth... a feeling I've largely lost.

They makes me feel connected at a time when I feel utterly disconnected.

They are arguably a visual indulgence, a waste of time and a cultural phenomenon that allows me to participate in a very random way.
I can drift in or out... spending 5 minutes or 50... and they eventually push my imagination back to my own ideas, if in a convoluted way.

Perhaps I can look back at some point in the future and glean something of the unspoken of this time, maybe it is a long coded message, mostly meaningless, that will comfort me or reveal some detail that I can't see at the moment?

or maybe it will all be lost or forgotten... or maybe someone else entirely will go though all these and make some sense of it that I can't see.
In an case...

Animal Instinct

It's helping me get though a difficult time... so peek in if you like, or if you are wise go outside and enjoy the beautiful summer that's almost here.

Here is mine: Perpetual Collapse

Perpetual Collapse

Rebrand BP

2010-05-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

Greenpeace launches a campaign to rebrand BP.

Check out the flickr page!

Here are some of my favorite entries:

and my own entry.

BPs True Colors: Beyond Pathetic

I actually made this a few weeks back, delighted to add it to the other creative ideas being compiled.

Now if someone could just get BPs charter revoked. That would be a real acheivement.

José Parla

2010-05-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

José Parla

Visit the artists website.

From the Artist's Statement:

"My work is inspired by the anonymous art found in the streets. The art is often in the form of calligraphy or the actions of torn and stripped posters. The inscriptions in my work are used as a form of drawing, and to maintain a record of my observations. In my travels I have encountered a similar dialogue that takes place in most cities. I find compositions on surfaces of deteriorated walls, and remnants of construction markings.

...

I am using my imagination to capture the psychology of a segmented reality. These realities, which are deposited into our subconscious everyday, are the basis for a dialogue that goes mostly unnoticed. Once these "segmented realities" or images are transferred and converted into paintings they become a "memory document," a sort of time capsule for my experience in history."

Chelsea Museum Curator Manon slome writes of Parla's work:

"The haunting beauty of Parlá’s dense calligraphic line often dissolves into
organic and abstract shapes that resemble drawing rather than writing. In their
multi layered complexity José’s paintings draw the viewer into their
indecipherable depths, but once there, once we have given up the attempt to read
for “content,” we are subsumed in the play of line and color – blues, cool whites,
rusts, reds and umber – drawn further and further into a mesmerizing depth
where stories both happy and sad play out, summoning emotions about life, love,
friends, politics, and sex."

Greg Tate writes:
"There's a saying that goes 'if walls could talk'. Parlá's art arranges means
for the walls to speak in several tongues simultaneously via his 'diaristic' mode
of 'handstyle' glyphs that embrace the calligraphic futurism of graf, and through
well-worked loquacious patinas that elegiacally address the glorious entropy
of urban collapse, anarchy and civil regeneration. The artist's own conceptual
take on his art is embedded in descriptions of it as 'psycho-geography', 'a
segmented reality' and as revelations of the 'memory in the walls'’.

New Antony coming soon

2010-05-12T19:18:00.000-07:00

Swanlights

New Antony and the Johnsons LP coming this fall. Details on their site.

King of the Ironoclasty

2010-05-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

The curious case of Mr Brainwash.

How Ironic! Actually, no.

I finally got to see Exit Through The Gift Shop, Banksy's doc on Thierry Guetta's doc on him.

I loved the film and found it thoughtful and provocative.

Guetta's attempts to document the graffiti underground were both a success and a failure, much like his own new career as an artist. He got a lot of footage but was unable to make
sense of it. Banksy stepped in and did just that—and impressively so.

But in the process he helped to create a monster of a sort, when Guetta transformed into Mr Brainwash. A kind of art hispter gone really, really bad.

Banksy encouraged Guetta to become an artist himself. Guetta did just that, depending on how you define 'artist' these days.

He definitely has established himself as a commercial success. So the question becomes: what do you make of what he has done? Is it really art? Is it pure sellout?

In truth it is a curious, if disappointing, hybrid.

This of kind of work is utterly derivative. The worst abuse of irony we have yet seen.

New York Magazine called his recent New York debut "Icons":

"...so wretchedly derivative, repetitive, and insultingly insipid that we felt it could only have been an intentional prank: With its prints of famous figures Mr. Brainwash said he couldn't name from memory, and art made out of broken LPs (a staple of junk sales), it was as if they were taunting hipster collectors into buying the worst possible art to prove their hideous, herd-following taste."

Guetta seems to be totally sincere in his passion for the artists he followed, and in the pursuit of his own emergence as an artist, but something very important got lost in translation.

He may have been inspired by Shepard Fairey and Banksy and other street artists, but he has become more like Mark Kostobi or Jeff Koons—definitely in the lineage of art monsters begat by Warhol.

This is not a slight to Warhol. He was the original, and he remains the most relevant of this line of artists.

Like art whores before him, Mr Brainwash employs a leigon of crafts people to produce his art for him.

On the surface Mr Brainwash is copying the styles of the artists he admires, and at his best approaches interesting territory but ultimately falls short of actually saying anything most of the time.

Mr Brainwash's portrait of Michael Jackson

by way of Warhol's portrait of Marilyn Monroe

When asked about his moniker he responds:

"I think life is about brainwashing, like when you go somewhere, you drink a chocolate in the morning, your mother brings you this yellow box and you get brainwashed from it. I got brainwashed from what I see. I thought it was a cool name and I don’t know, I just like the sound of it, and I guess it has a meaning with what I do."

WTF?

The artists he helped and who helped create him aren't sure what to make of him, and other street artists don't feel he is legitimate, yet he has been embraced by the general public and the art market.

This points out a sharp falsehood on the part of many art collectors and some dealers and perhaps fewer critics.

Many like what they are told to like or are expected to like. They often can't tell the difference between an authentic piece and a copy.

When I went to MBW's massive Life is Beautiful exhibit here in L.A. in 2008, I was overwhelmed... there was an explosion of ideas- some stunning installation pieces and some interesting work—but there was something that didn't sit right.
They were all visually ironic at first glance... but with no real point. Like much of the food product that lines the shelves of corporate grocery stores, there was nice packaging but little or no substance.

Bansky said himself in his own "endorsement" of MBW:

“Mr. Brainwash is a force of nature, he’s a phenomenon. And I don't mean that in a good way.” 

BP's True Colors

2010-05-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

Beyond Pathetic

BP is one of the worst corporations in the world.

This is just the latest in a long history of corruption and deceit.

Don’t take my word for it… do a little research… you’ll be surprised at how deep and dark this hole is… Companies like BP and Monsanto should be broken up for their crimes.

Here are a few links to get you started. From Alternet, Foreign Policy Magazine, Huffington Post, and Wikipedia.

If you are feeling especially angry about it, write your representative and demand BPs charter (what allows them to do business here) be revoked.

Fat chance- but at least express your discontent. But based on previous behavior- they will not clean this up- they will lie and shift blame and wait until people forget and then do as little as they can get away with…

Oh- and remember Haliburton? well then check out this possible connection.

Light Sweet Crude anyone?

New Autechre: Oversteps

2010-05-03T18:11:00.000-07:00

Deluxe vinyl edition

Available from Bleep, or your favorite record store

The Dollar Redesign Project

2010-05-03T18:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the fascinating entries in the Dollar Redesign Project. Many more on their site.

Adrian Chesser and Timothy White Eagle

2010-04-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

Beaster Bunny and Bear

I ran across this image and followed it to the artists site Mercury Vapor Studios. Very interesting photography. Check out their Portfolio.

From the artists site:

"We are a team of two artists who work together under the name Mercury Vapor Studio. Adrain Chesser was given his first camera more than 20 years ago and has been taking pictures ever since. He is a photographer who over the years has developed a working style which often involves using aspects of ritual to capture his photographs. Timothy White Eagle spent his twenties involved in theater, visual and performance art. He spent his thirties diving deeply into ceremonial ritual, working extensively with native American, pagan and Haitian traditions."

"Together we explore the intersection between art and ritual. We use ritual to create an environment of opening and safety. Together with our subjects we go into an undiscovered country. We ask our subjects to expose their truth. Through our lens we seek that same truth. We do our best not to expect anything in particular from a shoot. We play the sacred fool stepping off the cliff, trusting that we have everything we need."

Willy of the Trees

Juniper

Ligger Lounging

Aids Boy Takes One for the Team

The Deification of Bear

In Shadow

It's So Pretty It Looks Artificial

Video explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop

2010-04-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

Anthroposcenes (Equivalents)

2010-04-19T22:45:00.000-07:00

Gregory Crewdson

The work of Gregory Crewdson also comes to my mind strongly when I think of landscape photography- albeit a sort of emotional landscape. His constructed tableaus look more like film stills, yet are open to a broad range of allegorical possibilities.

When I see his images I view them as extensions of our emotional conflict as a civilization at this moment in time. Exteriors and Interiors are fused together in a kind of dream state.

Each image seems poised at the moment of revelation or pivotal decision, often imbued with a kind of catastrophic atmosphere.

Strangely this feels "natural" give the chaotic speeds at which our live are propelled forward. When viewing his images it is like stepping into one of those dreams where you are lost and can't remember how you got to such a place, such an impossible situation. I feel like this in my waking life too and it is disconcerting.

Crewdson's tableaus are anchored on the individuals who inhabit them. These people often appear exhausted and drained. A new kind of everyperson for the visually over stimulated.

His images are haunting not for their odd collisions of nature and human surrender, but because they are so familiar to our emotion experience of the stresses we encounter everyday through their own visual narrative.

In the past the stresses of civilization drove the poetic among us back to nature to balance mind and body.

For most of us the concept of "escaping to nature" is now a pretty fiction. It was possible at one time and numerous writers have given us eloquent accounts of their experiences, such as Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, among others. But for most of us, we are tied to our debts and jobs and numerous responsibilities. Civilization has eclipsed nature in many ways, or at least our access to it.

Even national parks require fees and have camping restrictions, almost everything else is private property. Where are we left to go?

We "escape" to virtual places. Landscapes each with myriad individual emotional flora and faunas to navigate.

Landscape as inhabitations experienced by people of various socio-economic status, race, and class...

Landscape as spiritual or allegorical visages and the detritus in our wake...

"Landscape" itself has become a mirror of the many psychic alignments of civilization.

Emotional intersections that have indistinct borders as much on actual land as they do in our experience of our environment, whether it be and exterior or interior space.

"The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences." —Aurthor Rimbaud

Minor White spoke of his theory of equivalence:

"Equivalence is a pregnant discipline. Hence the photography that grows out of its practice is bound to develop and change with the photographers and writers on photographic criticism who become mature enough to understand the nature of the theory or approach. The Equivalent is one of those ideas that in practice grows by the efforts and accomplishments of the people who explore it."

Robert Polidori

"...photographs originate in a known feeling state. They are not self-expressive, or self-searching; they are self-found. Communication is of no importance, evocation of little significance, competition nonexistent. They are shown as an event out of which Equivalence might occur. The possibility of the reader's being confronted with something of himself is their only reason for being reproduced. They will function as mirrors of the viewer, whether he admits it or not. It will not be pointed out which of the images knows happiness, the one that knows anger, or the one that knows sadness because viewers of photographs need the opportunity to learn faith in their own feelings."

Joel Sternfeld

Sally Mann from What Remains

"Mann asks us in What Remains to contemplate the beauty and efficiency with which nature assimilates the body once life is over. Here she seamlessly connects the landscape of the earth to the topography of the body and examines how both are tightly interwoven."

—Philip Brookman

Anthroposcenes (Part 10: Steven B. Smith)

2010-04-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

In my research for this piece, I accidentally ran across the work of Steven B. Smith.

Smith photographs landscapes in the midst of development.

Sculpted Fence #8, Bloomington, Utah, 2007

I thought it was interested that he focused on developments where the design of the structures and surrounding spaces attempted to integrate with the local environment.

As with the slow food movement, the rise of eco-concerns in recent years has shifted the ways many people view their own position and participation in the radical transition of so much natural land into spaces for use. Softening the contrast of natural verses man-made seems to be one way of convincing ourselves that all this new devolopment isn't entirely destructive, regardless of the evidence that it is.

Too few are really interested in the long term solution- which is restraint in continued development, but details like this are evidence of the emergence of the consciousness of our increasingly overwhelming footprint on the land.

Smith zeros in on the biggest issue (in the west) over development— water. Without access to water development is not possible, yet for decades municipalities have appeased developers and have managed to steer water toward new development at great cost to local waterways, wet lands, and eco-systems which will have long term consequences.

From his Close To Nature series:

Saratoga Springs, Utah, 2009

North Salt Lake, Utah, 2006

Bio info from his website:

Steven B. Smith is a photographer whose work chronicles the transition of the Western landscape into suburbia. For this work he was awarded the First Book Prize for Photography by the Honickman Foundation and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. His book The Weather and a Place to Live: Photographs of the Suburban West was published by Duke University Press (2005). He has received Guggenheim and Aaron Siskind Fellowship.

Sculpted Fence #7, Ivins, Utah, 2008

"The idea I had of using conservation methods as my language helped me step up to the plate and work with a subject matter that had been explored a lot, and well. While I felt a little nervous about photographing in a similar vein, I also felt there was something more that needed to be said. The landscape continues to evolve. The technology for restraining the land, as well as bringing in water, has changed dramatically in the past ten years—in fact, it changes every couple of years."

Herriman, Utah, 2007, #3

"I started trying to use the landscape as a still-life. I remember reading about how Walker Evans would go on scouting trips during the summer and winter, because he didn’t like the light those times of year—he was very particular about the kind of light that he wanted."

from Weather and a place to live series:

North Las Vegas, Nevada, 2003.

"I don’t want these issues to overwhelm the form and content of the physical photograph. The politics is in there, but I’m trying to take a tone that isn’t accusatory. There aren’t any easy answers. Sometimes it’s scary, and beautiful, because the land is all torn up and being completely reconfigured. But once the landscaping grows in, it looks like a pretty decent, well-managed, well-thought-out place. And then there are examples that are not nearly so nice. I’m trying to show the complexity of what is out there, what these water and soil control systems do to the land. One of my main issues, that I’ve tried to point out directly, is how water is used and channeled, and how water in these areas is imported."

Las Vegas, Nevada, 1997

La Mirada, California, 2003

"When I encountered developers or other construction people, they tended to be pretty conservative, and they’d let me know my views weren’t really appreciated. [Laughs.] But I tried to avoid asking them what they thought—politically, I’m not in favor of this massive expansion and development."

Exit Through The Gift Shop

2010-04-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

voyage périlleux

2010-03-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

No posts through 15 April.

Anthroposcenes (Part 9: Sze Tsung Leong)

2010-03-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

Sze Tsung Leong

From Guernica magazine:

"[Leong's] History Images frames the tragic beauty resulting from global modernism’s disdain for history and evinces all that recurs in Leong’s other works, including a series of oil paintings: the loss of historical space, the nuances and specificities of cities around the world, and the hierarchies represented by urban architecture."

The Artist on his work from a lecture series at ICP.

"The photographs in History Images are of histories, in the form of cities in China, either being destroyed or created at this juncture in time. They are of past histories, in the form of traditional buildings and neighborhoods, urban fabrics, and natural landscapes, in the process of being erased...

...They are of the absence of histories, in the form of construction sites, built upon an erasure of the past so complete that one would never know a past had ever existed. And they are of the anticipation of future histories, yet to unfold, in the form of newly built cities...

Cities are the largest, most enduring, and most encompassing documents of history, uniquely recording the variations and residues of time.

Substantial urban change is generally expected to span over prolonged periods: decades, generations, centuries. The evidence of these changes is usually gradual and cumulative; residues of history are slowly left in built form, giving physical shape to the accretions of time.

There are moments in history, however, that accelerate the rate of urban change: warfare, changes of regime, transformations of social structure, economic prosperity. These moments force societies to evaluate their relationship to their own history and their attitude to their future, in turn affecting their relationship to their environments.

China presently finds itself in one of these moments, as its recent transformations in politics, society, and economics have triggered changes to its cities to a degree not previously seen in its contemporary history. . ." — Sze Tsung Leong

Anthroposcenes (Part 8: Richard Misrach)

2010-03-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

Richard Misrach's photographs have always emphasized the enormity of nature to me, an in contrast how trivial our presence here is.

He is best known for his continuing series Desert Cantos studying human intervention in landscapes.

“I’ve come to believe that beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas.”—Richard Misrach

Misrach is represented by Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco.

Anthroposcenes (Part 7 David Maisel)

2010-03-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

David Maisel

From his site:

"David Maisel’s large-scaled, otherworldly photographs chronicle the complex relationships between natural systems and human intervention, piecing together the fractured logic that informs them both.

Maisel’s aerial images of environmentally impacted sites explore the aesthetics and politics of open pit mines, clear-cut forests, and zones of water reclamation, framing the issues of contemporary landscape with equal measures of documentation and metaphor. As Leah Ollman states in the Los Angeles Times, “Maisel’s work over the past two decades has argued for an expanded definition of beauty, one that bypasses glamour to encompass the damaged, the transmuted, the decomposed.”

His images appear related to the earlier work of Emmet Gowin, though more richly complex in color.

Maisel sees this body of work as a collection of "Black Maps". As grim testaments to what we've done, they are uncomfortably beautiful. Strip mining, clear cutting, leaching fields, firestorms, and other devastations look like patchworks of unbelievable color separated by the brushlines of tiny vehicle tracks.

These images also remind me of the canvas meditations of Mark Rothko.

Maisel is inspired by the apocalyptic writings on the Great Salt Lake of Robert Smithson.

From Green Museum:

"Smithson wrote that "the sense of the earth as a map undergoing disruption leads the artist to the realization that nothing is certain or formal." Maps, like photographs, are designed to offer an objective overview, a means to comprehend our location; they are both place and concept, figurative and abstract. But a map that is black, as the title of this work suggests, is a kind of negation. Black maps are indeed unknowable and unnamable; they are ciphers. Perhaps these are the only kinds of pictures, with their compelling ambiguities, with which we can mark the demise of these landscapes."

Anthroposcenes (Part 6: Laura McPhee)

2010-03-09T06:45:00.000-08:00

Laura McPhee

In her collaboration with Virginia Beahan No Ordinary Land, Mcphee explores the ways people interact with the landscapes in which they live.

In River of no Return She focuses on Idaho's Sawtooth Valley. From Yale Press:

"McPhee depicts the magnificence and history of the Sawtooth Valley in central Idaho. Her subject matter includes the region’s spectacular mountain ranges, rivers, and ranchlands; its immense spaces and natural resources; the effects of mining and devastating wildfires; and the human stories of those who live and work there."

New Harvey Milk coming soon

2010-03-08T21:05:00.000-08:00

New Harvey Milk, A Small Turn of Human Kindness

coming in May from Hydra Head records

March is Women's History Month

2010-03-08T20:44:00.000-08:00

Slate has a slide show titled Literary Lionesses of some of the most influential women of the last century. Celebrate them!

Overdrawn

2010-03-08T20:29:00.000-08:00

Foreclosures in 2008: whether you intended for it or not

this is how you will be remembered, Mr. Geithner

The New Yorker has a great piece on how Timothy Geithners policy recommendations "saved" the economy... at least the fortunes and futures of the 4 big banks. For the rest of us... I'm not so sure... interesting read.

"When President Obama came to office, the Bush Administration had already committed two hundred and thirty billion dollars of taxpayers’ money to big banks—a policy that Geithner, as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, helped to enact. During the transition, he warned the incoming President that more “repugnant” actions would be necessary to shore up the financial system and restore economic growth. (In the first three months of 2009, G.D.P. declined at an annual rate of 6.4 per cent.) “We knew it would be politically costly, but not nearly as costly as if we hadn’t got it right,” Geithner said to me of the financial stabilization plan. “And we didn’t think we had other options available that were credible."

The argument is that if they hadn't done what they did things would be much much worse. I don't doubt it, but then then not come down hard on the offending executives, managers, and practices too?

"Geithner seemed exasperated by these critiques, and by the idea that the Democrats were now viewed in some quarters as beholden to business interests. “I don’t think the Democratic Party is seen as the party of Wall Street,” he said. “I think there are some in the Democratic Party that think Tim and Larry are too conservative for them and that the President is too receptive to our advice.” The reality, Geithner insisted, was that the Obama Administration had given just seven billion dollars to banks—mostly small and midsize banks, not big Wall Street firms—and it had proposed the biggest regulatory overhaul in seventy-five years. “Some on the left have fallen into a trap set by the Republicans, allowing voters to mistakenly think that the biggest part of the bank bailout had come under Obama rather than Bush,” Geithner said. He suggested that his critics draw up a balance sheet comparing the Administration’s expenditures on programs that benefitted Wall Street with those that benefitted Main Street. “By any measure, the Main Street stuff dwarfs the Wall Street stuff. Compare money for housing versus money for banks. Measure tax cuts for working families versus money for banks.”

Something just doesn't add up. Can't put my finger on it, but as long as the banks are behaving like pirates I will remain deeply suspicious.

"Geithner’s figures are accurate. But he and the Administration have failed to persuade the public. For whatever reason, a large chunk of the population—from liberal Democrats to right-wing Tea Party activists—does indeed believe that people who used to work for Wall Street firms, particularly Goldman Sachs, run the Administration. At Capitol Hill hearings and other public events, Geithner himself, who has been a public servant for almost his entire career and has never worked on Wall Street, has sometimes been identified as a former investment banker."

I don't know what to believe.

Regardless, I still recommend people to move money out of the big banks.

If the government did act in good fail hoping that the banks would behave in the greater interest, then the banks have betrayed them as well.

Closing our accounts is our only way to tell them what we think of their response to their use of public funds and their greedy business practices.

R.I.P. Mark Linkous

2010-03-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

Mark Linkous

Tragically, Mark Linkous (of Sparklehorse) took his life yesterday. Rest In Peace.

LATimes reports.

Amon Tobin: Live In Brussels

2010-03-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

Just saw this and downloaded.

Amon Tobin is giving away the live recording performance of his latest effort The Foley Room.

From his site:

"Recorded by Studio Brussels at the world famous AB theatre in Belgium - which arguably has the best sound system in Europe. After months of back and forth and despite everyone’s best efforts the mix was in danger of being edited into the ground to accommodate big labels and publishers. Rather than release a compromised version commercially, the decision was made to give it away for free instead."

more from around the interwebs

2010-03-08T07:27:00.000-08:00

Restless, can't concentrate, moody.

Tired of working all the time and making so little progress. I refuse to give up and just chip away at my little art projects.

Tired of the same excuses I make to myself for making rationalizing bullshit.

But then the dishes need to be washed and the bills paid and, and, and...

Tumbling, drifting, amazed at how others manage to do balance art and life. I'm not talking about the million dollar "successful" ones, but the rest of us who are still toiling away for the that elusive carrot.

In my head everything is ruins, in perpetual collapse.

I used to go to art galleries to see new art, but now all you have to do is roam tumblr, or surf personal blogs, flickr and websites to see an astonishing array of incredible work... humbling and incredibly inspiring.

"If God is a DJ
Life is a dance floor
Love is the rhythm
You are the music

If God is a DJ
Life is a dance floor
You get what you're given
It's all how you use it..."

—Pink

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained."—Mark Twain

“Men appear to prefer to ruin one another's fortunes, and to cut each other's throats over a few miserable villages, than to extend the means of human happiness”—Voltaire

Sometimes letting silence speak is best you can do.

"A Tale of Love and Darkness"

2010-03-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

Excellent article in the Sunday New York Times:

"Six years ago, when violence was the order of the day here, Elias Khoury’s 20-year-old son, George, was killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack. The Khourys are Palestinian, so the murder of George — who was out for a jog and shot from behind by gunmen in a car — produced an apology. Sorry, the killers said, we assumed the jogger was a Jew."

"So, in memory of George, a charismatic law student and musician, Mr. Khoury did something that shocked many in his community. He paid for the translation into Arabic of the autobiography of Israel’s most prominent author and dove, Amos Oz."

Someday, someday...

2010-03-06T12:32:00.000-08:00

The Los Angeles Times has a great feature called "Homes of the Times". I love seeing how some people create their personal spaces. Here are a few of my favorites:

Peter Gargagliano's Koreatown apartment

Aaron Rose's Silver Lake home

Ryan Brown's dream kitchen

Wendy Harn's rescued craftsman

Walter Hubert's Altadena home

Mala Vasan's Hollywood bugalow

and my friend Tim Campbell's Echo Park Modern

Anthroposcenes (Part 5: Toshio Shibata)

2010-03-06T10:53:00.000-08:00

Toshio Shibata

From Laurence Miller Gallery:

"The photographs of Toshio Shibata convey a powerful drama generated by the conflict of natural forces against man-made structures. Water spills, crashes, glides, and pours over walls, sluices, concrete blocks and channels, in an endless gravity- propelled dance. Huge structures wind around highways and grasp the hillsides on which they are built."

"Under Shibata’s eye, the man-altered landscape becomes a mysterious abstract composition in which the shapes and patterns intrinsic to both the natural and artificial forms becomes visible."

"Shibata began his career in Japan, and the photographs he made there explore the inherent visual contradictions of a land relinquishing its natural resources to structures meant to contain and preserve them."

"His sublime portraits of public works projects in both countries show that human intervention on a pristine landscape need not be jarring but can, in fact, be in exquisite harmony with nature."

Anthropscenes (Part 4: Peter Bialobrzeski)

2010-03-05T07:25:00.000-08:00

Peter Bialobrzeski from his monograph Lost in Translation

Peter Bialobrzeski's images look like they may have come straight out of some vision of Orwell or Huxley. They are epically surreal.

This collection includes images of 28 cities across 14 countries. An exploration of mega-cities such as Dubai, New York, Kuala Lampur, New Delhi and others...

Neither utopian or dystopian...

They are everyday reality... simply seen here in an extraordinary light.

Just like ruins, these cities seem to assert a curious competing nature of their own.

Logorama!

2010-03-03T22:28:00.000-08:00

Still from Logorama

If you get the chance check out this brilliant Academy award nominated short film. All the characters, backgrounds, everything really, is corporate logo art, all of which is used without permission.

Anthroposcenes (Part 3: Stephané Couturier)

2010-03-03T07:31:00.000-08:00

StephaneCouturier

French photographer Stephané Couturier blurs the line between landscape, architecture, humanity and dissolution.

Intersections of transformation and reflection...

between past and future...

exponential destinies and probabilities

of what we are becoming

and what we have lost.

VIVA DOOM METAL!

2010-03-02T23:28:00.000-08:00

The best torrential riffing and free form psychedelic jams. Dorset UK's Ramesses.

Ramesses Baptism of the Walking Dead

Khali Mist from the forthcoming Take the Curse

Master your Demons from We Will Lead you to Glorious Times

Ramesses live in Antwerpen

Ramesses live in gothenburg 2009

How did you live without this information

2010-03-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

The solitude of Beautiful Book Covers

2010-03-02T22:28:00.000-08:00

New Massive Attack

2010-03-02T22:19:00.000-08:00

Heligoland

Legacy of betrayal

2010-03-01T18:56:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading Stephen Kinzer's All the Shah's Men about the CIA led coup that overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran in 1953.

It isn't unreasonable to say that If we hadn't interfered then, Iran would likely have had a mature democracy today. The fact that it does not is not only a tragedy for the Iranian people, but for the rest of the world.

I found it to be a moving account, and an enlightening glimpse into one the grandest mistakes of post WWII American foreign policy.

For anyone interested in foreign policy issues, or for a better understanding of Iran's hostility toward the United States this book is a must read.

It's a riveting and complex story... It's important to note that the US didn't act alone... it was the British- and the greed of what would become British Petroleum that plotted relentlessly to remove Mosaddegh after he nationalized the nations oil industry. To convince President Eisenhower the plotters framed the concern around a fear that Iran may fall to the communists. And sadly many Iranians also worked unwittingly against their own best interests to help overthrow Mosadegh. In the wake of this BP got their hands back on the oil and the Shah consolidated his power and became a cruel dictator. And, well, you know the rest...

The CIA was a fledgling organization at the time and the success of "Operation Ajax" as the coup was called lead to many other covert coups from Guatemala to Cuba to Chile to the depth of our involvement in Vietnam and later Nicaragua ... all disasters for those nations, with thousands of lives lost and decades of civil war, and decades of blowback. It's no wonder so much of the world has come to hate the US.

More on the coup visit wikipedia and for more on Mohammad Mosaddegh visit the Mosaddegh project.

On of the saddest things about this whole episode is that Iran had looked to the US to support it's budding democracy, and instead we betrayed them.

Anthroposcenes (Part 2: Edward Burtynsky)

2010-03-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

Edward Burtynsky: Exploring the Residual Landscape

From his website:

"Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. "

"Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis."

"These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success."

"Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."

One reviewer said Burtynsky's film Manufactured Landscapes: “Taken as a whole, Manufactured Landscapes is a mesmerizing work of visual oncology, a witness to a cancer that’s visible only at a distance but entwined with the DNA of everything we buy and everywhere we shop.”

"...in a way when you look at a work of art there isn't a narrative, you are left to your own devices you are left of your own baggage to complete the meaning of that image..."

"This is a new form of epic history painting. Turning his camera lens to a fever dream, Burtynsky forges a new mythology for the 21st century from the lexicon of realism. With stunning detail, from improbable perches, in strange and beautiful colors, these pictures show their subjects with clinical accuracy, and with definitive force. But they also tell a parallel and more inchoate tale: a critique of civilization, and a foretelling of human ends."—Paul Roth

Hidden treasures

2010-02-19T18:08:00.000-08:00

Stefan Chinof

I need a break.
It's important to have time to wander
time to think and absorb ideas, time to not be doing something.

I roamed the interwebs for awhile to simply graze. Amazing what you can find. Here are just a few recent curiosities...

Heirloom tomatoes at shutterstock

I like to take afternoon tea and read when I can. These days I often don't have the attention to read one thing, instead graze through several books or articles or images online...

I hate it when I can't figure out where something came from... especially someone's artwork. Sometimes I can extrapolate or search my way to it, but often some images remain mysteries...

? (amazing tattoo work!)

Technology was supposed to give us more time for leisure...

but it feels like we are more and more like modern slaves...

Interesting comment from an article on corporate abuses... lost the link:

We the people have to do two things:

-- disengage from corporate America, no more Walmart, no Chinese goods, no big banks, no Wall Street 401k investments. Buy things from your neighbors, trade, barter, reuse, re-purpose anything that can be made to work again. Find the community banks and credit unions and start moving your business there. Buy local food, no imports.

-- vote out all incumbents in all offices from the local to state to national level. They have ceased to work for the taxpayer, they are owned and operated by business interests. Getting elected has become an industry that has perverted the process of running for office. Vote 'em out, even if you have to write in a candidate in single candidate races.

We the people have to go on strike. Keep working, yes -- but stop feeding the machine that grinds us down. It is a major lifestyle change. Stopping smoking, drinking, drugs, overeating are easy compared to the task that faces us. If we do not rise up and walk away, we will be diminished serfs in a modern version of feudalism.
-R Matthew Songer
Atlanta, Georgia

Liu Bolin

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.
—Franz Liszt

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum—of both books and money! But especially books, for books represent infinitely more than money. A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold. —Henry Miller

Mrs Beale

There is a story that as God and Satan were walking down the street one day, the Lord bent down and picked something up. He gazed at it glowing radiantly in His hand. Satan, curious, asked “What’s that?” “This” answered the Lord, “is Truth.” “Here,” replied Satan as he reached for it, “let me have it –I’ll organize it for you.”—Ram Dass

somewhere in Italy

Andreas M. Wiese

Quinnford+Scout

Got something to say?

Entropic destinies

The heat death is a possible final thermodynamic state of the universe, in which it has "run down" to a state of no thermodynamic free energy to sustain motion or life. In physical terms, it has reached maximum entropy.

The idea of heat death stems from the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy tends to increase in an isolated system. If the universe lasts for a sufficient time, it will asymptotically approach a state where all energy is evenly distributed. In other words, in nature there is a tendency to the dissipation (energy loss) of mechanical energy (motion); hence, by extrapolation, there exists the view that the mechanical movement of the universe will run down in time due to the second law.

make time

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
—Michel de Montaigne

"Written over the gate here are the words 'Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.' Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself." —George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903

“When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities" —David Hume quote

"What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out” —Alfred Hitchcock

The key to joy is disobedience —Anonymous

Handiedan

2010-02-19T16:57:00.000-08:00

Interesting artwork from Dutch artist Hannke Treffers, aka Handiedan.

Forage

2010-02-13T15:32:00.000-08:00

The new Forage restaurant on Sunset in Silver Lake.

I love the idea of this new place!

The LA Times explains:

"Central to the restaurant's concept is its "foraging program," through which Bacon and Kim, along with the help of a friend named Eugene Ahn, encourage diners to bring in fresh fruits and vegetables from their gardens. Then, Kim and Bacon will create a dish, pastry or drink around those ingredients.

"We ask people to come in and we'll do a tasting in the kitchen, then we can figure out how to use it that day -- maybe in an agua fresca -- or maybe we give it to our pastry chef and it becomes a pie tomorrow," says Bacon. "Or it's super fresh and we throw it in a salad right there. Then we work out a little barter and trade system with the forager."

Mmmmmm... I'm gonna plant plenty of extra heirloom tomatoes and chili's this year!

Visit them on Facebook too.

Jeff Sheng

2010-02-13T15:19:00.000-08:00

Don't ask, Don't Tell, Jeff Sheng's new collection of portraits of Gay and Lesbian service persons. More on the Artist at wikipedia.

The book can be ordered here.

The Myth of Bipartisanship

2010-02-10T07:41:00.001-08:00

Don't wait til it's too late

2010-02-08T07:28:00.000-08:00

Maybe you have been reading about the gridlock in Congress, about how a single Republican senator is holding up all of Obama's nominations until he gets his pet projects funded. Or how in a effort to compromise, democrats have allowed Health care reform devolve into a pathetic joke, or how The entire republican Party is committed to obstructing all business unless they are running it- THEIR WAY.

Maybe you saw the rousing conversation President Obama had with GOP representatives recently. Did it make any difference? Chances are slim to none.

It doesn't matter that a Republican President and Congress nearly destroyed the country with their tax cuts to the rich, twenty years of deregulating everything (Clinton did this too), selling off public interests to corrupt and evil corporations under the lie "small government is best" or that that both parties gave the banks the entire country while sentencing the rest of us to be wage slaves in debt for the rest of our lives... people still vote Republican.

If you earn less than a half a million a year and you vote Republican you are voting against your interests. PERIOD.

Republicans have proven again and again they only people they care about are (besides themselves) are corporations that will bankroll them, and the very wealthy who run those corporations that will help keep them in power. Almost everything else is a lie or some backhanded tactic that does little (like vouchers) while STILL providing a fat profit for some lucky company or rich person. (there are always exceptions, but too few)

Now, I've lost all faith in the Democrats ability to make hash of such obvious greed and incompetence, so this is not to say that they are the answer... both parties are corrupt and do many of the same stupid things that cost real people lost jobs and income, but the democrats will usually make compromises to GET THINGS DONE. The Republicans just say NO to everything, and get away with it.

The country is becoming ungovernable with this kind of gridlock. California is already on the brink. Mismanagement at the state level has bankrupted the state and turned one of the worlds largest economies into a case study in failure.

What can we do? you ask.
Make your voice heard.
Write your representatives at every level. Demand an end to this abuse. Demand they start working with one another and remember whey they are in elected office in the first place!

Too general? press them on specific issues. Be sure to educate yourself first. Do research, get multiple opinions and check facts- get your own opinion on solid ground.

Democracy means participation. We must Participate!

Mass engagement would send a signal to our representative that we care, that we are getting involved- that we won't put up with obstructionist grandstanding any longer.

******

other resources

Alternet explores actions needed to end corporate dominance.

Votesmart- keep track of how your representatives are voting.

Anthroposcenes (Part 1)

2010-02-06T16:02:00.000-08:00

Its funny what we "see" and what we don't when we are looking at art or anything in front of us. I started thinking about landscapes when I was growing up in Hopewell VA. I watched as the town essentially disintegrated into urban blight and suburban sprawl, consuming the land as it went, leaving ugly swathes of debris, vast empty parking lots, and more than a few shuttered shopping malls in it's wake. The center of town was flattened. Only a few buildings remain of the original "downtown." I was simultaneously repulsed and attracted to these ruins. Repulsed by the thoughtlessness of it, and attracted to them for the purpose of deciphering what really happened.

Only later when I encountered works by Laura McPhee, Stephen Shore, Sally Mann, Richard Misrach and David Maisel did something click. A bigger picture began to emerge.

What do you see?

David Maisel

Richard Misrach

Sally Mann

Laura McPhee

My first impressions were simply renderings of the epic defiling of nature by civilization, but it has since broadened to be something much more. More subtle, and strange.

So many artists doing incredible work...(future posts will focus on some of these)

I know there is much discussion of this topic, classes devoted to it, and plenty of media attention, but I have yet to see a major museum mount a curated exhibit of the most intriguing work in this area. If you are aware of one, please let me know the details.

In the mean time I've decided to curate something myself.

I am exploring different bodies of work for a dry run on this blog, and if that is successful, then perhaps a more formal presentation and text in the upcoming issue (5) of my art journal Fluxion.

David Maisel

In Geological history we are in the middle of the Holocene Epoch, a division of the Quaternary period.

Recently, the term "Anthropocene" was debated by some scientists to describe the most recent period in the Earth's history—and the notion that civilization is now reshaping the earth more than nature itself.

In my view many of these photographers are giving us glimpses of this new reality.

wikipedia explains:

It has no precise start date, but may be considered to start in the late 18th century when the activities of humans first began to have a significant global impact on the Earth's climate and ecosystems. This date coincides with the 1775 commercialization of the Watt steam engine.Other commentators link it to earlier events, such as the rise of agriculture.

The term was coined in 2000 by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological era. Use of this concept as an official geological concept gained support in early 2008, with publication of two new papers supporting this idea.

Andreas Gursky

Toshio Shibata

David Maisel

Peter Bialobrzeski

Joshua Lutz

The iPad Cometh...

2010-01-27T17:59:00.000-08:00

Apple's iPad

I've been looking forward to a device that may capture the imagination of the public in a way that the kindle or the nook or the Sony reader hasn't.

This may be the device.

I still think it will take a few years and at least two updates to the device (no flash? no video conferencing, no GPS?) but you gotta start somewhere.

The multi-touch technology is impressive as is the apparent speed. I can't wait to try one to see what it can do.

Could this user in a whole culture of new hand gesture symbology? This demo made me wonder. I can only image what app developers may come up with...

and how long before flexible technology is integrated?

While I'm in no rush to lose physical books, I do look forward to when I can read books that I have no interest in owning a physical copy of... text book, topical books, etc.

Incommunicado 1/15- 1/24

2010-01-13T18:30:00.000-08:00

Re-Framing Landscape Photography

2010-01-09T09:30:00.000-08:00

Landscape photography has come a long way.

I could appreciate the arc of landscape photography as it evolved through the 20th Century from the early plates of Matthew Brady and Timothy O'Sullivan to the majestic perfection of Ansel Adams to the experiments of Steiglitz, Minor White, and Aaron Siskind of nature as an allegorical path to spiritual rejuvenation.

Yosemite by Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

to more playful explorations by John Pfahl, Jerry Uelsmann, and Andy Goldsworthy.

John Pfahl

Jerry Uelsmann

Andy Goldsworthy

To the somber aerial surveys by Emmet Gowin. Gowin's book Changing the Earth was the first I had seen to serious look at the ways mankind was altering the landscape from an artists eye. The images are haunting duo-tone abstracts.

Emmet Gowin

It wasn't long until I started to see similar work by other artists like Robert Polidori and Edward Burtynsky.

Edward Burtynsky, cover image to his collection
Manufactured Landscapes which is also an amazing documentary.

Edward Burtynsky

Robert Polidori images focuses on the spaces and impacts of civilization.

Polidori from After the Flood

from the Havana series

Polidori from Zones of Exclusion, photographed in the Chernobyl zone.

These images highlighted the perverse majesty of the destruction of the landscape by civilization.

by comparison, the spiritual experiments of Alfred Steiglitz, Minor White, and Aaron Siskind
also seem quaint.

One of Steiglitz's Equivalent, which almost

echos the paintings of his wife Georgia O'keefe

Stieglitz emphasized pure abstraction, based on modern ideas of equivalence, that abstract forms, and color could represent inner emotional states and ideas.

One of Steiglitz's pictorialist landscapes

Minor White

Minor White did his own series of Equivalents (inspired by Stieglitz)

White went on to found the Aperture Foundation.

Aaron Siskind focused on details in surfaces

Aaron Siskind

It was a short distance from these experiments to those Photographers in the New Topographics Exhibit in 1975, which essentially redefined the scope of the visual discussion of "landscape."

from Wikipedia:

"The shift from craft or self-teaching to academia had somewhat been started by photographers such as Ansel Adams and Minor White, but the new generation was drastically turning away from the photographic tradition they stood for...

...The New Topographics chose as well as their commitment to casting a somewhat ironical or critical eye on what American society had become. They all depicted urban or suburban realities under changes in an allegedly detached approach."

I was stunned by the timing of the remounting of the New Topographics exhibit (see previous post) which framed the beginning of the discussion and exploration of what constitutes "landscape" and our place in it. Looking at those images from the mid seventies and then at contemporary images opens up a new horizon in landscape photogrpahy...

A Single Man

2010-01-07T07:20:00.000-08:00

A lot of people have been talking about A Single Man as an important film.
I've learned to be cautious in any expectations of a film, and this was no exception.

While the film has gotten generally good reviews, I was quite disappointed. The film is an achievement of sorts, the same way some music videos capture a certain spirit or sensibility. But ultimately this film is all about Tom Ford and his sensibilities. Ford's sensibilities as a fashion designer are prevalent in every aspect of the production and costume design. There is no subtly, and style and I felt that so much exacting fashion overwhelmed the film.
Make no mistake, he does these things very well and they add to the film in many ways, but excessive. The story was originally about an average middle class man, but there is nothing average in this film.

The real strength of the film are it's leads, Colin Firth and Julianne Moore, and they are both are really wonderful.

Firth is more handsome than ever and his restrained performance will likely earn him numerous awards. Personally, I felt he was being directed to be overly maudlin and it didn't feel authentic.

Moore is a vision of 60s stylish decadence... WAY over the top, but truly stunning to witness. The two also have a nice chemistry. The sequence where they dance together is one of the visual highlights of the whole film. Extremely memorable.

Every frame is a set piece, and every detail in every shot is hyper—stylized. In this regard the film really is well crafted and art directed, but the actors become part of that scenery too and that costs the film any emotional connection the audience may have.

It's all too perfect. No one had such a complete and perfect material life as is portrayed. I can appreciate the stylization to a certain extent, but it needs some imperfections to be believable, and unfortunately everything is too new, too exact... not a single thing is out of place.

I suppose you could look at it as a nostalgic love letter to the illusion we have come to believe was the quintessential everyday life of the early 60s, but it could have easily been so much more than that.

Every person in the film is achingly beautiful, perfectly groomed and dressed as if they are going to their own wedding or about to walk a runway. After a time it becomes caricature. Felliniesque even. Even when they are mussed, they are mussed just so...

To younger audience members who are not aware of how much this is over done it may appear like devotional tribute to those times. To those who know better and tire easily at overwrought nostalgia, it can appear farcical.

Ford does come close however at one point to really pulling it all together and out of the cliché pit, then he does something SO ridiculous, so cheesy (in my opinion) that it sinks the whole thing.

************SPOILER ALERT***********

Like the book, In the last scene with the young student, George's will to live is restored, but Ford takes the unnecessary step of actually having George die of a heart attack rather than go through the stream-of-conscious "what-if" approach that the book takes. And of course it is a spectacle. OH THE IRONY, THE TIMING! OH, PLEASE!

It was bad enough for him to be forlornly carting around a gun all day, but this was too much.

I thought the heart attack sequence diminished the film, reducing it to a melodramatic cliche.

Ford simply tried too hard. WAY to hard.
All the scenes where George is alone almost all the color is drained from the scene, then when there are flashbacks to his perfectly fit handsome young lover everything is saturated and bright and full of color. This happens all through the film.

Emotionally everything is behind a wall of artifice, which is a shame. The characters feel distant, everything is played too precious and overly sentimental. Too many lingering pained expressions, too many PROFOUND comments, too many ironic incidents and lots of unbelievable behavior that is supposed to be every-day routine.
Almost nothing of his daily routine feels authentic. In the book this provided the momentum... in the film these details are reduced to flourishes of self pity.

If Ford had only art directed the film and someone more well seasoned was in the directors chair it could have been a masterpiece. He made a valiant effort.

It is beautiful to look at and is composed and acted lovingly. It really just needs a little dirty realism to ground it.

A note on the marketing of the film:

both posters play up the relationship between Moore and Firth, making it look as if it could be a straight romantic drama.

Firth actually was responsible for demanding that he appear on the reissue of the book alone, which is admirable, since the story is about accepting loss.

I would suggest to anyone really interested in this to read Isherwoods original novel. It is short, rich in subtle detail and is very moving.