Sunday, September 3, 2017
Saturday, September 2, 2017
Friday, September 1, 2017
Everything emptying into white
I built my house from barley rice
Green pepper walls and water ice
Tables of paper wood, windows of light
And everything emptying into white.
A simple garden, with acres of sky
A Brown-haired dogmouse
If one dropped by
Yellow Delanie would sleep well at night
With everything emptying into white.
A sad blue eyed drummer rehearses outside
A Black spider dancing on top of his eye
Red legged chicken stands ready to strike
And everything emptying into white.
I built my house from barley rice
Green pepper walls and water ice
And everything emptying into white
- Cat Stevens
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Still the best place on earth
Helmcken Falls, Wells Gray Provincial Park, B. C. (Canada)
(Sorry about the lack of sound! Click play, then click the Facebook symbol on the right for sound version.)
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Magic words!
Don't you wish you could do this?
Having absolutely no ability to draw, paint, or make any sort of art, seeing even this kind of clever doodling impresses me. I don't know how people do it. It must be innate, like being able to see maps in your head or doing feats of mathematics without a pencil. I can only look on in awe.
A duck's ass
There was this duck, see, and all I could see was its ass. It went on that way for a long time, so I filmed some of it. The duck's feet were coming right up out of the water, a strange sight, so its bill must have been touching the lake bottom. As humourous as all this is, it's a sign of something not-so-funny, and we all know what it is. Climate change affects everything, from falling lake levels to tropical storms, not to mention forest fires. We separate them out, push them away from us - because don't we have to laugh, once in a while? Especially when a duck keeps showing its ass.
Amazing predictions! (and why none of them came true)
This series of weird futuristic paintings was done around 1900, in an attempt to project an image of that War-of-the-Worlds-sounding, impossible date: The Year 2000. The strangest one of these has to be the device that fits on the kid's head to force learning into his brain. I guess back in 1900 or so, they predicted information would be beamed in directly, perhaps through electricity, or injected like so much brain juice.
These are interesting, but of course almost none of it came true. We didn't end up flying everywhere on bat wings, after all. It echoes what I kept hearing all through my childhood: "By the year 2000, we'll. . . " (be able to levitate off the ground, eat all our food as pills, have a talking robot to clean the house, etc.)
None of THAT came true either, but the phrase "by the year 2000" hung around until. . . well. . . you know.
Does anybody remember Y2K? Remember the panic and doomsday feeling everyone had, running around in tiny little circles waiting for the end of the world? Whole books were written about the mass rioting, famine, billions of refugees and general-all-around catastrophe that would happen when the date rolled over from all those 9s to all those 0s.
None of it happened.
My favorite moment in 2000, perhaps in my entire life, was when I looked in a remainder bin at Chapters and saw fourteen titles on the same subject: The Y2K Disaster, Millennial Catastrophe, Mankind's Final Hour, Goodbye to the Human Race, So Long It's Been Swell, and blah blah blah, pure bullshit!
My point is. . . if I have one. . . humankind does tend to brace for the worst, and it usually doesn't happen. I'd like to apply this to Trump, but it's difficult. When the "worst" happens, it usually jumps out of nowhere. But there are times, my friends, there are times. There are times we have plenty of opportunity to prepare.
And we don't.
Now that I look at it more closely, the schoolroom scene is even more sinister. Textbooks are being fed into a giant machine with a crank, presumably ground up, then fed into the brains of the zombie-looking children. They look to be wearing headsets. Did they have headsets back then? If not, then this painting at least predicts something about the future (though they left out the iphones).
Or are the kids' brains actually producing those textbooks? This is getting too weird.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
National Catfish Queen, 1954
I honestly do not remember if I posted this already. If so, here it is again. I refuse to believe that she caught this, and with that puny little fishing rod! But they made women tougher back in 1954. The fact this took place in New York City is even more mystifying.
Monday, August 28, 2017
Cactus flower
Fleur de Cactus, ma petite sœur, tu es choisie par le Seigneur
Pour fleurir en Sa maison tout au long des jours de ta vie.
Fleur de Cactus, ma petite sœur, tu es choisie par le Seigneur
Pour chanter la gloire de son nom sur les sentiers du Paradis.
Burning reels
I wish this were mine. . .
. . . but it isn't. It's the work of a filmmaker named Sam Spreckley, who has a number of interesting experimental films on YouTube. Some of them have only had 7 or 8 views. While this makes me feel just a little bit better about my own wretched, nearly-nonexistent total of views, it's a shame, and it shouldn't be like that. His sparse description of himself in the "about" section hints at a career beyond YouTube, which is merely a catch-all for his bits and pieces:
Description
Scottish video artist and film maker... here and there... dumping ground for assorted projects....
SURFACE ii is described as
Published on Feb 5, 2012
exploring sound and vision through the destruction of 8mm
It's one of the few which had a decent number of views, but that's after five years! Though the description of the film is very short, it appears to be old 8mm film which has been melted down or scorched and burned in some interesting way, with accompanying sound effects.
My own efforts at animation and making still things move are pretty weak, and I know it, but I work at it because it's fun. I can't draw or paint or do anything visual worth a damn, so to me this is new. But I need reminders of what real filmmaking is.
But seven or eight views? This is what is wrong with the internet, among many other things.
But seven or eight views? This is what is wrong with the internet, among many other things.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)