Friday, June 13, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
text: nietzsche
Haven't you heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning, ran to the marketplace, and shouted unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!"? Since many of those who did not believe in God happened to be standing around there, he was the cause of great laughter. "Did he get lost, then?" said one. "Has he lost his way like a child?" said another. "Or is he hiding? Is he scared of us? Did he go for a boat ride? Did he emigrate?" They all shouted and laughed together.
The madman sprang into their midst and transfixed them with his gaze. "Where has God gone/" he cried, "I'll tell you where! We've killed him--you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done this? How could we have drunk up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to erase the whole horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this Earth from its sun? Now where is it going? Where are we moving? Away from all suns? Aren't we falling constantly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in every direction? Is there still an above and a below? Aren't we wandering as if through an endless nothing? Isn't empty space breathing upon us? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the morning? Don't we yet hear the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Don't we yet smell the divine rot?--For gods rot too! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!
The madman sprang into their midst and transfixed them with his gaze. "Where has God gone/" he cried, "I'll tell you where! We've killed him--you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done this? How could we have drunk up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to erase the whole horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this Earth from its sun? Now where is it going? Where are we moving? Away from all suns? Aren't we falling constantly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in every direction? Is there still an above and a below? Aren't we wandering as if through an endless nothing? Isn't empty space breathing upon us? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the morning? Don't we yet hear the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Don't we yet smell the divine rot?--For gods rot too! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
text: leonard cohen
I was about to email this to Asa, but then I figured this was just as good.
GIFT
___You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
___This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.
(Leonard Cohen)
GIFT
___You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
___This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.
(Leonard Cohen)
Cieslak
"When I left Grotowski's theater, Rysard Cieslak was already a good actor, but he wanted to be an intellectual. It was as though a great brain were getting tangled up with that body that was so full of life, and flattening it out somehow, reducing the life to two dimensions. I saw him again, two years later, when he came to Oslow with The Constant Prince. Right from the start it was as though everything I remembered, everything I had based my ideas on, was disappearing beneath my feet. I saw another being, I saw a man who had discovered his own completeness, his own destiny, his own vulnerability." - Barba
Cieslak said about the same performance -
"The score is like a glass inside which a candle is burning. The glass is solid, it is there, you can depend on it. It contains and guides the flame. But it is not the flame. The flame is my inner process each night. The flame is what illuminates the score, what the spectators see through the score. The flame is alive. Just as the flame in the glass moves, flutters, rises, falls, almost goes out, suddenly glows brightly, responds to each breath of wind – so my inner life varies from night to night, from moment to moment... I begin each night without anticipations: this is the hardest thing to learn. I do not prepare myself to feel anything. I do not say "Last night this scene was extraordinary, I will try to do that again." I want only to be receptive to what will happen. And I am ready to take what happens if I am secure in my score, knowing that even if I feel a minimum, the glass will not break, the objective structure worked out over the months will help me through. But when a night comes that I can glow, shine, live, reveal _ I am ready for it by not anticipating it. The score remains the same, but everything is different because I am different."
Cieslak said about the same performance -
"The score is like a glass inside which a candle is burning. The glass is solid, it is there, you can depend on it. It contains and guides the flame. But it is not the flame. The flame is my inner process each night. The flame is what illuminates the score, what the spectators see through the score. The flame is alive. Just as the flame in the glass moves, flutters, rises, falls, almost goes out, suddenly glows brightly, responds to each breath of wind – so my inner life varies from night to night, from moment to moment... I begin each night without anticipations: this is the hardest thing to learn. I do not prepare myself to feel anything. I do not say "Last night this scene was extraordinary, I will try to do that again." I want only to be receptive to what will happen. And I am ready to take what happens if I am secure in my score, knowing that even if I feel a minimum, the glass will not break, the objective structure worked out over the months will help me through. But when a night comes that I can glow, shine, live, reveal _ I am ready for it by not anticipating it. The score remains the same, but everything is different because I am different."
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Farm In The Cave
Gedney and I took a workshop on monday, they are performing at Yale this weekend. If you aren't in production, for the love of God go.
This is a clip from their production SCLAVI: the song of an emigrant:
http://infarma.info/page.php?lmut=en&nav=media
This is a clip from their production SCLAVI: the song of an emigrant:
http://infarma.info/page.php?lmut=en&nav=media
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
the holy grail, eternal life, and the monster without a name
It's never what's one might drink from the grail that's important, but the grail itself as a vessel.
Vessels. What could possibly give the eastward monster life, healing? The monster might crave a vessel that could sustain it indefinitely. Maybe the westward monster has found it, because what "vessel" could be so vast as to contain us and sustain us indefinitely if not the universe, present truth, acceptance, the heart broken open or the inside-out self?
A more tenuous thought: The monster looked for people who would give up their name and self... The association of the grail with Christ...
Vessels. What could possibly give the eastward monster life, healing? The monster might crave a vessel that could sustain it indefinitely. Maybe the westward monster has found it, because what "vessel" could be so vast as to contain us and sustain us indefinitely if not the universe, present truth, acceptance, the heart broken open or the inside-out self?
A more tenuous thought: The monster looked for people who would give up their name and self... The association of the grail with Christ...
Monday, March 31, 2008
Text: Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
This seems long... I don't know if there's a better way for me to post it...
From Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard:
The works of God made manifest? Do we really need more victims to remind us that we're all victims? Is this some sort of parade for which a conquering army shines up its terrible guns and rolls them up and down the streets for the people to see? Do we need blind men stumbling about, and little flamefaced children, to remind us what God can--and will--do?
... How many tons of sky can I see from the window? It is morning: morning! and the water clobbered with light. Yes, in fact, we do. We do need reminding, not of what God can do, but of what he cannot do, or will not, which is to catch time in its free fall and stick a nickel's worth of sense into our days. And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do; churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God's blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. Who are we to demand explanations of God? (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) We forget ourselves, picnicking; we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. "God is at home," says Meister Eckhart, "We are in the far country."
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of light uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it's time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it's time to break our necks for home.
---------------- more:
There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times. The god of today is a tree. He is a forest of trees or a desert, or a wedge from wideness down to a scatter of stars, stars like salt low and dumb and abiding. Today's god said: shed. He peels from eternity always, spread; he winds into time like a rind. I am or seem to be on a road walking. The hedges are just where they were. There is a corner, and a long hill, a glimpse of snow on the mountains, a slope planted in apple trees, and a store next to a pasture, where I am going to buy the communion wine.
How can I buy the communion wine? Who am I to buy the communion wine? Someone has to buy the communion wine. Having wine instead of grape juice was my idea, and of course I offered to buy it. Shouldn't I be wearing robes and, especially, a mask? Shouldn't I make the communion wine? Are there holy grapes, is there holy ground, is there anything here holy? There are no holy grapes, there is no holy ground, nor is there anyone but us. I have an empty knapsack over my parka's shoulders; it is cold, and I'll want my hands in my pockets. According to the rule of St. Benedict, I should say, Our hands in our pockets. "All things come of thee, O lord, and of thine own have we given thee." There must be a rule for purchasing communion wine. "Will that be cash, or charge?" All I know is that when I go to this store--to buy eggs, or sandpaper, broccoli, wood screws, milk-- I like to tease a bit, if he'll let me, with the owner's son, two, whose name happens to be Chandler, and who himself likes to play in the big bin of nails.
And so, forgetting myself, thank God: Hullo. Hullo, short and relatively new. Welcome again to the land of the living, to time, this hill of beans. Chandler will have, as usual, none of it... And I'm out on the road again walking, my right hand forgetting my left. I'm out on the road again walking, and toting a backload of God.
Here is a bottle of wine with a label, Christ with a cork. I bear holiness splintered into a vessel, very God of very God, the sempiternal silence personal and brooding, bright on the back of my ribs. I start up the hill.
The world is changing. The landscape begins to respond as a current upwells. It is starting to clack with itself, though nothing moves in space and there's no wind. It is starting to utter it's infinite particulars, each overlapping and lone, like a hundred hills of hounds all giving tongue. The hedgerows are blackberry brambles, white snowberries, red rose hips, gaunt and clattering broom. Their leafless stems are starting to live visibly deep in their centers, as hidden as banked fires live, and as clearly as recognition, mute, shines forth from eyes. Above me the mountains are raw nerves, sensible and exultant; the trees, the grass, and the asphalt below me are living petals of mind, each sharp and invisible, held in a greeting or glance full perfectly formed. There is something stretched or jostling about the sky which, when I study it, vanishes. Why are there all these apples in the world, and why so wet and transparent? Through all my clothing, through the pack on my back and through the bottle's glass I feel the wine. Walking faster and faster, weightless, I feel the wine. It sheds light in slats through my rib cage, and fills the buttressed vaults of my ribs with light pooled and buoyant. I am moth; I am light. I am prayer and I can hardly see.
Each thing in the world is translucent, even the cattle, and moving, cell by cell. I remember this reality. Where has it been? I sail to the crest of the hill as if blown up the slope of a swell. I see, blasted, the bay transfigured below me, the saltwater bay, far down the hill past the road to my house, past the firs and the church and the sheep in the pasture: the bay and the islands on fire and boundless beyond it, catching alight the unraveling sky. Pieces of the sky are falling down. Everything, everything, is whole, and a parcel of everything else. I myself am falling down, slowly, or slowly lifting up. On the bay's stone shore are people among whom I float, real people, gathering of an afternoon, in the cells of whose skin stream thin colored waters in pieces which give back the general flame.
Christ is being baptized. The one who is Christ is there, and the one who is John, and the dim other people standing on cobbles or sitting on beach logs back from the bay. These are ordinary people--if I am one now, if those are ordinary sheep singing a song in the pasture.
The two men are bare to the waist. The one walks him into the water, and holds him under. Christ is coiled and white under the water, standing on stones.
He lifts from the water. Water beads on his shoulders. I see the water in balls as heavy as planets, a billion beads of water as weighty as worlds, and he lifts them up on his back as he rises. He stands wet in the water. Each one bead is transparent, and each has a world, or the same world, light and alive and apparent inside the drop: it is all there ever could be, moving at once, past and future, and all the people. I can look into any sphere and see people stream past me, and cool my eyes with colors and the sight of the world in spectacle perishing ever, and ever renewed. I do; I deepen into a drop and see all that time contains, all the faces and deeps of the world and all the earth's contents, every landscape and room, everything living or made or fashioned, all past and future stars, and especially faces, faces like the cells of everything, faces pouring past me talking, and going, and gone. And I am gone.
For outside it is bright. The surface of things outside the drops has fused. Christ himself and the others, and the brown warm wind, and hair, sky, the beach, the shattered water--all this has fused. It is one glare of holiness; it is bare and unspeakable. There is no speech nor language; there is nothing, no one thing, nor motion, nore time. There is only this everything. There is only this, and its bright and multiple noise.
I seem to be on a road, standing still. It is the top of the hill. The hedges are here, subsiding. My hands are in my pockets. There is a bottle of wine on my back, a California red. I see my feet. I move down the hill toward home.
You must rest now. I cannot rest you. For me there is, I am trying to tell you, no time.
----------------------and, because I just noticed this:
How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone. There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the light is out, who needs it? ...
What can any artist set on fire but his world? What can any people bring to the altar but all it has ever owned in the thin towns or over the desolate plains? What can an artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut, and when that's burnt out, any muck ready to hand?
... So must the work be also, in touch with, in touch with, in touch with; spanning the gap, from here to eternity, home.
From Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard:
The works of God made manifest? Do we really need more victims to remind us that we're all victims? Is this some sort of parade for which a conquering army shines up its terrible guns and rolls them up and down the streets for the people to see? Do we need blind men stumbling about, and little flamefaced children, to remind us what God can--and will--do?
... How many tons of sky can I see from the window? It is morning: morning! and the water clobbered with light. Yes, in fact, we do. We do need reminding, not of what God can do, but of what he cannot do, or will not, which is to catch time in its free fall and stick a nickel's worth of sense into our days. And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do; churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God's blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. Who are we to demand explanations of God? (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) We forget ourselves, picnicking; we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. "God is at home," says Meister Eckhart, "We are in the far country."
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of light uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it's time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it's time to break our necks for home.
---------------- more:
There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times. The god of today is a tree. He is a forest of trees or a desert, or a wedge from wideness down to a scatter of stars, stars like salt low and dumb and abiding. Today's god said: shed. He peels from eternity always, spread; he winds into time like a rind. I am or seem to be on a road walking. The hedges are just where they were. There is a corner, and a long hill, a glimpse of snow on the mountains, a slope planted in apple trees, and a store next to a pasture, where I am going to buy the communion wine.
How can I buy the communion wine? Who am I to buy the communion wine? Someone has to buy the communion wine. Having wine instead of grape juice was my idea, and of course I offered to buy it. Shouldn't I be wearing robes and, especially, a mask? Shouldn't I make the communion wine? Are there holy grapes, is there holy ground, is there anything here holy? There are no holy grapes, there is no holy ground, nor is there anyone but us. I have an empty knapsack over my parka's shoulders; it is cold, and I'll want my hands in my pockets. According to the rule of St. Benedict, I should say, Our hands in our pockets. "All things come of thee, O lord, and of thine own have we given thee." There must be a rule for purchasing communion wine. "Will that be cash, or charge?" All I know is that when I go to this store--to buy eggs, or sandpaper, broccoli, wood screws, milk-- I like to tease a bit, if he'll let me, with the owner's son, two, whose name happens to be Chandler, and who himself likes to play in the big bin of nails.
And so, forgetting myself, thank God: Hullo. Hullo, short and relatively new. Welcome again to the land of the living, to time, this hill of beans. Chandler will have, as usual, none of it... And I'm out on the road again walking, my right hand forgetting my left. I'm out on the road again walking, and toting a backload of God.
Here is a bottle of wine with a label, Christ with a cork. I bear holiness splintered into a vessel, very God of very God, the sempiternal silence personal and brooding, bright on the back of my ribs. I start up the hill.
The world is changing. The landscape begins to respond as a current upwells. It is starting to clack with itself, though nothing moves in space and there's no wind. It is starting to utter it's infinite particulars, each overlapping and lone, like a hundred hills of hounds all giving tongue. The hedgerows are blackberry brambles, white snowberries, red rose hips, gaunt and clattering broom. Their leafless stems are starting to live visibly deep in their centers, as hidden as banked fires live, and as clearly as recognition, mute, shines forth from eyes. Above me the mountains are raw nerves, sensible and exultant; the trees, the grass, and the asphalt below me are living petals of mind, each sharp and invisible, held in a greeting or glance full perfectly formed. There is something stretched or jostling about the sky which, when I study it, vanishes. Why are there all these apples in the world, and why so wet and transparent? Through all my clothing, through the pack on my back and through the bottle's glass I feel the wine. Walking faster and faster, weightless, I feel the wine. It sheds light in slats through my rib cage, and fills the buttressed vaults of my ribs with light pooled and buoyant. I am moth; I am light. I am prayer and I can hardly see.
Each thing in the world is translucent, even the cattle, and moving, cell by cell. I remember this reality. Where has it been? I sail to the crest of the hill as if blown up the slope of a swell. I see, blasted, the bay transfigured below me, the saltwater bay, far down the hill past the road to my house, past the firs and the church and the sheep in the pasture: the bay and the islands on fire and boundless beyond it, catching alight the unraveling sky. Pieces of the sky are falling down. Everything, everything, is whole, and a parcel of everything else. I myself am falling down, slowly, or slowly lifting up. On the bay's stone shore are people among whom I float, real people, gathering of an afternoon, in the cells of whose skin stream thin colored waters in pieces which give back the general flame.
Christ is being baptized. The one who is Christ is there, and the one who is John, and the dim other people standing on cobbles or sitting on beach logs back from the bay. These are ordinary people--if I am one now, if those are ordinary sheep singing a song in the pasture.
The two men are bare to the waist. The one walks him into the water, and holds him under. Christ is coiled and white under the water, standing on stones.
He lifts from the water. Water beads on his shoulders. I see the water in balls as heavy as planets, a billion beads of water as weighty as worlds, and he lifts them up on his back as he rises. He stands wet in the water. Each one bead is transparent, and each has a world, or the same world, light and alive and apparent inside the drop: it is all there ever could be, moving at once, past and future, and all the people. I can look into any sphere and see people stream past me, and cool my eyes with colors and the sight of the world in spectacle perishing ever, and ever renewed. I do; I deepen into a drop and see all that time contains, all the faces and deeps of the world and all the earth's contents, every landscape and room, everything living or made or fashioned, all past and future stars, and especially faces, faces like the cells of everything, faces pouring past me talking, and going, and gone. And I am gone.
For outside it is bright. The surface of things outside the drops has fused. Christ himself and the others, and the brown warm wind, and hair, sky, the beach, the shattered water--all this has fused. It is one glare of holiness; it is bare and unspeakable. There is no speech nor language; there is nothing, no one thing, nor motion, nore time. There is only this everything. There is only this, and its bright and multiple noise.
I seem to be on a road, standing still. It is the top of the hill. The hedges are here, subsiding. My hands are in my pockets. There is a bottle of wine on my back, a California red. I see my feet. I move down the hill toward home.
You must rest now. I cannot rest you. For me there is, I am trying to tell you, no time.
----------------------and, because I just noticed this:
How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone. There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the light is out, who needs it? ...
What can any artist set on fire but his world? What can any people bring to the altar but all it has ever owned in the thin towns or over the desolate plains? What can an artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut, and when that's burnt out, any muck ready to hand?
... So must the work be also, in touch with, in touch with, in touch with; spanning the gap, from here to eternity, home.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
names
I found a question floating. Do we want to identify any ourselves by name on fliers/announcements etc. in relation to this play, as is usually done?
the scaffolding of life...
"With a terrifying lucidity she had the vision of her corpse and she drew her hands over her body to go to the depths of this idea which, although so simple, had but just come to her - that she bore her skeleton in her, that it was not a result of death, a metamorphosis, a culmination, but a thing which one carries about always, an inseparable specter of the human form - and that the scaffolding of life is already the symbol of the tomb"
-Pierre Louÿs, Aphrodite
(This was quoted in my reading on gay and lesbian family-making. Go FGSS.)
-Pierre Louÿs, Aphrodite
(This was quoted in my reading on gay and lesbian family-making. Go FGSS.)
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Jan Svankmajer
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_svankmajer
He's a Czech animator/filmmaker whose stuff is a really great blend of dark comedy and disturbing idontknowwhat that would be cool to explore. I haven't seen any of his features (he did a loose adaptation of Faust that might be worth watching), but his shorts I've seen are really good and most of them are on youtube.
This one in particular could be useful as far as what our space is (prison v. resting place) and how we relate to it
The Flat pt. 1
The Flat pt. 2
Some other good ones to search for on youtube:
Darkness/Light/Darkness
Dimensions of Dialogue
Flora
Meat Love
He's a Czech animator/filmmaker whose stuff is a really great blend of dark comedy and disturbing idontknowwhat that would be cool to explore. I haven't seen any of his features (he did a loose adaptation of Faust that might be worth watching), but his shorts I've seen are really good and most of them are on youtube.
This one in particular could be useful as far as what our space is (prison v. resting place) and how we relate to it
The Flat pt. 1
The Flat pt. 2
Some other good ones to search for on youtube:
Darkness/Light/Darkness
Dimensions of Dialogue
Flora
Meat Love
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Thank you Annie's psych textbook
From my "Abnormal Psychology" textbook:
Depersonalization Disorder
Its central symptom is persistent and recurrent episodes of depersonalization, an alteration in one's experience of the self in which one's mental functioning or body feels unreal or foreign.
Brief case study:
"A 24-year-old graduate student sought treatment because he felt he was losing his mind. He had begun to doubt his own reality. He felt he was living in a dream in which he saw himself from without, and di not feel connected to his body or his thoughts. When he saw himself through his own eyes, he perceived his body parts as distorted--his hands and feet seemed quite large. As he walked across campus, he often felt the people he saw might be robots ... In his second session, he was preoccupied with his perception that his feet had grown too large for his shoes ... He said he had hesitated before returning for his second appointment, because he wondered whether his therapist was really alive."
This feeling might be something interesting for us to play with.
Depersonalization Disorder
Its central symptom is persistent and recurrent episodes of depersonalization, an alteration in one's experience of the self in which one's mental functioning or body feels unreal or foreign.
Brief case study:
"A 24-year-old graduate student sought treatment because he felt he was losing his mind. He had begun to doubt his own reality. He felt he was living in a dream in which he saw himself from without, and di not feel connected to his body or his thoughts. When he saw himself through his own eyes, he perceived his body parts as distorted--his hands and feet seemed quite large. As he walked across campus, he often felt the people he saw might be robots ... In his second session, he was preoccupied with his perception that his feet had grown too large for his shoes ... He said he had hesitated before returning for his second appointment, because he wondered whether his therapist was really alive."
This feeling might be something interesting for us to play with.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Bill Viola
So there's this multimedia artist, Bill Viola, who does really interesting things with video. I really love love love a lot of his work, so I was searching for some clips of his pieces on youtube. Unfortunately the teeny tiny low-quality clips do him absolutely no justice. However, here's one I found that I really really liked. I don't know how we would use it, but there are a lot of aesthetic ideas in here that are fascinating. Again, the quality is horrible, and I've never seen this one in person.
Bill Viola - "The Reflecting Pool"
I will try to find more tomorrow, but now I am tired.
SO EXCITED.
(Those film clips were amazing, Asa.)
Bill Viola - "The Reflecting Pool"
I will try to find more tomorrow, but now I am tired.
SO EXCITED.
(Those film clips were amazing, Asa.)
Mark told me something cool
Mark was telling me last night that in Japan they are running out of grave space, like there's basically no gravespace left in Tokyo so people have to go far away to bury their loved ones.
Possible additional premise: There's only one grave left in Tokyo, and all of the people in the play are competing for it after they die. This is rough and pretty basic, but I think it could lead to a really cool structure. I just find the image of 6 dead people all looking down at one gravesite striking.
Only Asa will understand this: Would it be too cruel to look at text from the coffin is too big for the hole?
Possible additional premise: There's only one grave left in Tokyo, and all of the people in the play are competing for it after they die. This is rough and pretty basic, but I think it could lead to a really cool structure. I just find the image of 6 dead people all looking down at one gravesite striking.
Only Asa will understand this: Would it be too cruel to look at text from the coffin is too big for the hole?
The Monster without a Name
Here's the story that the title for the piece came from. Looking back on it now, in light of all of the actions we have, I think there's a lot there. I also found a link on youtube to an animated film version of it. I noticed:
a) how much the monster galloping down the hill looks like one of the contact pieces Jaime and I made (the one people said looked like a creature)
b) how much Asa and Noa's contact statues evoked the struggle between the vessel of the monster and the monster itself
c) the non-consumptive nature of Annie and Mark's, for the most part.
d) I love the japanese versions of munch munch! chomp chomp! gulp! maybe we could use these...
a) how much the monster galloping down the hill looks like one of the contact pieces Jaime and I made (the one people said looked like a creature)
b) how much Asa and Noa's contact statues evoked the struggle between the vessel of the monster and the monster itself
c) the non-consumptive nature of Annie and Mark's, for the most part.
d) I love the japanese versions of munch munch! chomp chomp! gulp! maybe we could use these...
The Text with Select Images from the Story:
A long, long time ago in a land far away,
There was a monster without a name.
The monster wanted a name so badly.
So the monster left to go on a journey to find a name.
But the world was so large that he split into two to make his journey.
One went to the west and the other went towards the east.
The monster who went to the east found a village.
At the entrance of the village there was a blacksmith.
“Mr. Blacksmith, please give me your name,” said the monster.
“You can’t give away your name,” the blacksmith replied.
“If you give me your name, I’ll enter you and give you strength.”
“Really? If you can make me stronger, then I’ll give you my name.”
The monster entered the blacksmith.
The monster became Otto the Blacksmith
Otto the Blacksmith became the strongest man in the village.
But one day he said,
“Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become.”
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
The hungry monster ate Otto from the inside out.
The monster returned to being a nameless monster.
Even when he entered Hans the Shoemaker…
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
He returned to being a nameless monster.
When he entered Thomas the Hunter…
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
He once again returned to being a nameless monster.
“Mr. Blacksmith, please give me your name,” said the monster.
“You can’t give away your name,” the blacksmith replied.
“If you give me your name, I’ll enter you and give you strength.”
“Really? If you can make me stronger, then I’ll give you my name.”
The monster entered the blacksmith.
The monster became Otto the Blacksmith
Otto the Blacksmith became the strongest man in the village.
But one day he said,
“Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become.”
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
The hungry monster ate Otto from the inside out.
The monster returned to being a nameless monster.
Even when he entered Hans the Shoemaker…
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
He returned to being a nameless monster.
When he entered Thomas the Hunter…
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
He once again returned to being a nameless monster.
The monster came to a castle looking for a wonderful name.
In the castle, there was a sick boy.
“If you give me your name, I’ll give you strength.”
“If you can cure this illness and make me strong, I’ll give you my name.”
The monster entered the boy.
The boy became well.
The king was so pleased! “The prince is well! The prince is well!”
The monster liked the boy’s name.
He also liked living in the castle.
So even though he was hungry, he endured.
Every day his stomach growled, but he endured it.
However, he was so hungry that one day he said,
“Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become.”
The boy ate the king and even his servents.
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
Since there was no one there anymore, the boy went on a journey.
He kept on walking for days and days.
In the castle, there was a sick boy.
“If you give me your name, I’ll give you strength.”
“If you can cure this illness and make me strong, I’ll give you my name.”
The monster entered the boy.
The boy became well.
The king was so pleased! “The prince is well! The prince is well!”
The monster liked the boy’s name.
He also liked living in the castle.
So even though he was hungry, he endured.
Every day his stomach growled, but he endured it.
However, he was so hungry that one day he said,
“Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become.”
The boy ate the king and even his servents.
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
Since there was no one there anymore, the boy went on a journey.
He kept on walking for days and days.
One day, the boy met the monster who traveled to the west.
“I have a name. It’s a wonderful name, too.”
The monster who went to the west said,
“I don’t need a name. I’m happy even without a name.”
We just have to accept that we are monsters without a name.
The boy ate the monster who went to the west.
“I have a name. It’s a wonderful name, too.”
The monster who went to the west said,
“I don’t need a name. I’m happy even without a name.”
We just have to accept that we are monsters without a name.
The boy ate the monster who went to the west.
The monster finally had a name,
But all the people who could call him by that name have disappeared.
And Johan was such a wonderful name, too.
But all the people who could call him by that name have disappeared.
And Johan was such a wonderful name, too.
Visual (Kiefer, Ryder, Icons), Audio (Pärt), Video (Tarkovsky), Grail Legend
Here are a number of things, some responses to previous posts, and a bunch of materials.
Jaime -
I really like the aesthetic coincidence of the middle phase Picasso with Sigur Ros. Somehow these two have always seemed similar to me and I think we should pursue this further. Recorded music is really interesting, I am somewhat opposed to using it as an environmental effect because of our space (like as if it's coming from nowhere, as part of the "mood" that the characters don't notice) but it could be really really amazing and interesting to use it as something that the characters notice and don't know the source of.
Also, that Radiohead song is gorgeous, singing together like that - that's one we could play, using the piano. It might be nice to have a good old sing along at the piano at some point, as if one character begins to play and others join. We shall see, yeah?
Okay, here is a film clip from Andrei Tarkovsky's the sacrifice:
Tarkovsky has the most incredible visual aesthetic ever. He uses houses really really well, combining the everyday and the surreal in incredibly shocking and subversive ways. Tarkovsky's work is theatrical in that he uses incredibly long takes, often 6-9 minutes, with insane detail, following characters through complex environments like houses and forests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Tarkovsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacrifice
Joseph Campbell, mythologist extraordinare, who everyone should read, says that the archetype or principle of a sacrifice is one of the great archetypes. He says that sacrifice is a metaphor for the death that occurs before rebirth, that we must sacrifice our lives and what we think we need in order to be reborn to new and more interesting possibilities. Here is a clip of the climax of Tarkovsky's film. Short backgroup - a number of intellectuals are in rural Sweden when they see an explosion in the distance that they fear is a nuclear holocaust. The film is their reaction to this event.
Here is another single-take clip, the beginning of Tarkovsky's "The Mirror". I don't know this film at all, but this is a really gorgeous clip just for aesthetic reasons.
THE GRAIL MYTH
Here is a nifty page with much about the Fisher King and the Grail Legend, including a number of images:
http://www.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/arthurian_legend/grail/fisher/
The most important book on the Grail legend is Emma Jung's, wife of psychologist Carl Jung. She spent most of her life researching the symbolism of the Grail and how it could be applied to modern life as a metaphor for the boon we all seek.
Here is something to look at regards to what a grail might look like in literal, historical form. But of course this really is a metaphor for embodied knowledge, the boon of Campbell's Hero's Journey.
Another interesting, more historical source on the Grail legend:
http://www.britannia.com/history/arthur/grail.html
RYDER:
Painting by Albert Pynkham Ryder, very interesting use of texture and light. Especialy light, with our large windows, and sunset (?), we have some really amazing opportunities to create image-tableaus in rooms, such as we have discussed with the Fisher King or with the Collegium Singers. I like Ryder's use of light mucho.
Russian Iconography, Arvo Part-
Arvo Pärt, the Estonian Composer whose setting of the 131st Psalm I sent to you all earlier this month (Called Slawische Psalmen, or Slavonic Psalm), is a really fucking big genius. One of the things that makes him this is the way he engages with text. Unlike a lot of composers, when he sets a text, and as an Orthodox Christian, he's really into setting Orthodox texts, he engages with the text word by word. He writes that he carries the text around with him, allowing it to change him and affect his world view. He then writes the music to fit and carry the text and the meaning underneath the text. For those who don't know, this is VERY DIFFERENT than the way that the art music tradition in Europe typically approaches texts. Typically, music is more important.
Pärt's approach has some correlates. In pre-Art music European music, especially Church-influenced traditions like Gregorian Chant, Corsican polyphony, and Slavic music from Bulgaria to Ukraine to Georgia, the words are typically viewed as the most important aspect of a song, because they carry the secret and inner meaning of the song, the ability of the song to transform.
This is also paralleled in the Russian Iconography tradition.
Icons were considered objects for spiritual meditation, not as art for art's sake. Art here is viewed as a vehicle for transformation. And this is the tradition that Pärt comes out of. Pärt in a way is composing ancient post-modern music.
This also reminds me of the way actors work with text. Engagement until transformation, allowing the text to play us.
Here's a clip of him speaking about the piano piece Fur Alina, and his composition method of Tintinnabuli. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintinnabuli
Anselm Kiefer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm_Kiefer
German Painter and Sculptor. Responds to themes of taboo and the holocaust. I am extremely attracted by his use of large heavy objects to represent and elucidate very "light" things. I saw a show of his "wings" sculptures in San Francisco a year or so ago and I thought that this was really the most THINGY, meaty, grounded, present, and yet incredibly light and poetic, sculptures that I'd ever seen. He has a certain presence that's amazing, a way of being THERE in both beauty and violence.
So, in conclusion, we have some really great possiblities for things to happen IN (Kiefer, that other installation that's down there, etc.) and some great materials to use to BE... text, music, etc. I really admire Pärt's engagement theory/practice, it's mirrored in traditional singing, Zen Koan work, poetry, yeah, delicious movements, yeah, well, frankly, most good art. So yeah.
That's all, mucho love, these posts look really awesome and I'm so excited!!
Asa
Jaime -
I really like the aesthetic coincidence of the middle phase Picasso with Sigur Ros. Somehow these two have always seemed similar to me and I think we should pursue this further. Recorded music is really interesting, I am somewhat opposed to using it as an environmental effect because of our space (like as if it's coming from nowhere, as part of the "mood" that the characters don't notice) but it could be really really amazing and interesting to use it as something that the characters notice and don't know the source of.
Also, that Radiohead song is gorgeous, singing together like that - that's one we could play, using the piano. It might be nice to have a good old sing along at the piano at some point, as if one character begins to play and others join. We shall see, yeah?
Okay, here is a film clip from Andrei Tarkovsky's the sacrifice:
Tarkovsky has the most incredible visual aesthetic ever. He uses houses really really well, combining the everyday and the surreal in incredibly shocking and subversive ways. Tarkovsky's work is theatrical in that he uses incredibly long takes, often 6-9 minutes, with insane detail, following characters through complex environments like houses and forests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Tarkovsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacrifice
Joseph Campbell, mythologist extraordinare, who everyone should read, says that the archetype or principle of a sacrifice is one of the great archetypes. He says that sacrifice is a metaphor for the death that occurs before rebirth, that we must sacrifice our lives and what we think we need in order to be reborn to new and more interesting possibilities. Here is a clip of the climax of Tarkovsky's film. Short backgroup - a number of intellectuals are in rural Sweden when they see an explosion in the distance that they fear is a nuclear holocaust. The film is their reaction to this event.
Here is another single-take clip, the beginning of Tarkovsky's "The Mirror". I don't know this film at all, but this is a really gorgeous clip just for aesthetic reasons.
THE GRAIL MYTH
Here is a nifty page with much about the Fisher King and the Grail Legend, including a number of images:
http://www.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/arthurian_legend/grail/fisher/
The most important book on the Grail legend is Emma Jung's, wife of psychologist Carl Jung. She spent most of her life researching the symbolism of the Grail and how it could be applied to modern life as a metaphor for the boon we all seek.
Here is something to look at regards to what a grail might look like in literal, historical form. But of course this really is a metaphor for embodied knowledge, the boon of Campbell's Hero's Journey.
Another interesting, more historical source on the Grail legend:
http://www.britannia.com/history/arthur/grail.html
RYDER:
Painting by Albert Pynkham Ryder, very interesting use of texture and light. Especialy light, with our large windows, and sunset (?), we have some really amazing opportunities to create image-tableaus in rooms, such as we have discussed with the Fisher King or with the Collegium Singers. I like Ryder's use of light mucho.
Russian Iconography, Arvo Part-
Arvo Pärt, the Estonian Composer whose setting of the 131st Psalm I sent to you all earlier this month (Called Slawische Psalmen, or Slavonic Psalm), is a really fucking big genius. One of the things that makes him this is the way he engages with text. Unlike a lot of composers, when he sets a text, and as an Orthodox Christian, he's really into setting Orthodox texts, he engages with the text word by word. He writes that he carries the text around with him, allowing it to change him and affect his world view. He then writes the music to fit and carry the text and the meaning underneath the text. For those who don't know, this is VERY DIFFERENT than the way that the art music tradition in Europe typically approaches texts. Typically, music is more important.
Pärt's approach has some correlates. In pre-Art music European music, especially Church-influenced traditions like Gregorian Chant, Corsican polyphony, and Slavic music from Bulgaria to Ukraine to Georgia, the words are typically viewed as the most important aspect of a song, because they carry the secret and inner meaning of the song, the ability of the song to transform.
This is also paralleled in the Russian Iconography tradition.
Icons were considered objects for spiritual meditation, not as art for art's sake. Art here is viewed as a vehicle for transformation. And this is the tradition that Pärt comes out of. Pärt in a way is composing ancient post-modern music.
This also reminds me of the way actors work with text. Engagement until transformation, allowing the text to play us.
Here's a clip of him speaking about the piano piece Fur Alina, and his composition method of Tintinnabuli. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintinnabuli
Anselm Kiefer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm_Kiefer
German Painter and Sculptor. Responds to themes of taboo and the holocaust. I am extremely attracted by his use of large heavy objects to represent and elucidate very "light" things. I saw a show of his "wings" sculptures in San Francisco a year or so ago and I thought that this was really the most THINGY, meaty, grounded, present, and yet incredibly light and poetic, sculptures that I'd ever seen. He has a certain presence that's amazing, a way of being THERE in both beauty and violence.
So, in conclusion, we have some really great possiblities for things to happen IN (Kiefer, that other installation that's down there, etc.) and some great materials to use to BE... text, music, etc. I really admire Pärt's engagement theory/practice, it's mirrored in traditional singing, Zen Koan work, poetry, yeah, delicious movements, yeah, well, frankly, most good art. So yeah.
That's all, mucho love, these posts look really awesome and I'm so excited!!
Asa
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Trauma
This isn't one of our sources, but that's OK. It's a book I'm reading for class called 'Trauma and Recovery' by Judith Herman. It has a lot of great text from people who have been through traumatic experiences. Much of it could be useful, I think.
Holocaust Survivor Primo Levi:
"For living men, the units of time always have a value. For us, history had stopped."
"We have learnt that our personality is fragile, that it is in much more danger than our life; and the old wise ones, instead of warning us 'remember that you must die', would have done much better to remind us of this greater danger that threatens us."
Other victims of trauma:
"I saw my father kicking the dog across the room. That dog was my world. I went and cuddled the dog. He was very angry. There was a lot of yelling. He spun me around and called me a whore and a bitch. I could see his face really nasty, like someone I don't know. He said he'd show me what I'm good for if I think I'm such a great piece. He put me against the wall. Things went white. I couldn't move. I was afraid I'd break in two. Then I started to go numb. I thought: you are really going to die. Whatever you've done, that's the sentence."
"I would do it by unfocusing my eyes. I called it unreality. First I lost depth perception; everything looked flat, and everything felt cold. I felt like a tiny infant. Then my body would float into space like a balloon."
"I recapture that moment precisely when my helplessness is so bottomless that anything is preferable. Thus, I unscrew my head from my body as if it were the lid of a pickle jar. From then on I would have two selves."
"Sometimes I feel like a dark bundle of confusion. But that's a step forward. At times I don't even know that much."
"I am icy cold inside and my surfaces are without integument, as if I am flowing and spilling and not held together anymore. Fear grips me and I lose the sensation of being present. I am gone."
"Did I truly wish to open the Pandora's box under my father's bed? ... Could I reconcile myself without bitterness to the amount of my life's energy that had gone into the cover-up of a crime? ... I believe many unexpected deaths occur when a person finishes one phase of life and must become a different sort of person in order to continue. The phoenix goes down into the fire with the best intention of rising, then falters on the upswing. At the point of transition, I came close to dying along with my other self."
This text is eerily reminiscent of the Kafka/Boy named crow story, and I think we could easily integrate them.
Holocaust Survivor Primo Levi:
"For living men, the units of time always have a value. For us, history had stopped."
"We have learnt that our personality is fragile, that it is in much more danger than our life; and the old wise ones, instead of warning us 'remember that you must die', would have done much better to remind us of this greater danger that threatens us."
Other victims of trauma:
"I saw my father kicking the dog across the room. That dog was my world. I went and cuddled the dog. He was very angry. There was a lot of yelling. He spun me around and called me a whore and a bitch. I could see his face really nasty, like someone I don't know. He said he'd show me what I'm good for if I think I'm such a great piece. He put me against the wall. Things went white. I couldn't move. I was afraid I'd break in two. Then I started to go numb. I thought: you are really going to die. Whatever you've done, that's the sentence."
"I would do it by unfocusing my eyes. I called it unreality. First I lost depth perception; everything looked flat, and everything felt cold. I felt like a tiny infant. Then my body would float into space like a balloon."
"I recapture that moment precisely when my helplessness is so bottomless that anything is preferable. Thus, I unscrew my head from my body as if it were the lid of a pickle jar. From then on I would have two selves."
"Sometimes I feel like a dark bundle of confusion. But that's a step forward. At times I don't even know that much."
"I am icy cold inside and my surfaces are without integument, as if I am flowing and spilling and not held together anymore. Fear grips me and I lose the sensation of being present. I am gone."
"Did I truly wish to open the Pandora's box under my father's bed? ... Could I reconcile myself without bitterness to the amount of my life's energy that had gone into the cover-up of a crime? ... I believe many unexpected deaths occur when a person finishes one phase of life and must become a different sort of person in order to continue. The phoenix goes down into the fire with the best intention of rising, then falters on the upswing. At the point of transition, I came close to dying along with my other self."
This text is eerily reminiscent of the Kafka/Boy named crow story, and I think we could easily integrate them.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
More visual research...
Here's leftover stuff that doesn't fit in the other posts.
First, nice quotations I found in galleries:
"Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier."
--Charles F. Kettering
"Art ain't about paint, it ain't about canvas. It's about ideas. Too many people died without ever getting their mind out to the world."
--Thornton Dial, Sr.
"We can do our best as mortals on this earth to try to progress as sane civilized creatures. However, life provides obstacles that we as mere mortals cannot begin to understand. Therefore we break down and begin in the most savage manner to dissolve -- it all seems so unnecessary."
--John Alexander
The Alexander quote was next to this painting of his:
I'm not exactly sure what to think......most of his paintings are equally grotesque, but what I do find interesting is that he calls his work a "glimpse of paradise before the wrecking ball hits."
Finally, one of the paintings that I was most drawn to on my visits:
"The Funeral: A Band of Men (2 Women) Abandonment!," Eric Fischl
I could've sworn this was in color when I saw it....maybe I'm imagining it. Anyway. I don't know what to start with, but I really think there's a lot in this we could use. I wish I could find a bigger version of this so you could see it more clearly. It's disturbing in so many different ways but I want to keep looking at it.
So that's everything I've got. I wait to hear what you guys think. Enjoy!
First, nice quotations I found in galleries:
"Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier."
--Charles F. Kettering
"Art ain't about paint, it ain't about canvas. It's about ideas. Too many people died without ever getting their mind out to the world."
--Thornton Dial, Sr.
"We can do our best as mortals on this earth to try to progress as sane civilized creatures. However, life provides obstacles that we as mere mortals cannot begin to understand. Therefore we break down and begin in the most savage manner to dissolve -- it all seems so unnecessary."
--John Alexander
The Alexander quote was next to this painting of his:
I'm not exactly sure what to think......most of his paintings are equally grotesque, but what I do find interesting is that he calls his work a "glimpse of paradise before the wrecking ball hits."Finally, one of the paintings that I was most drawn to on my visits:
"The Funeral: A Band of Men (2 Women) Abandonment!," Eric Fischl
I could've sworn this was in color when I saw it....maybe I'm imagining it. Anyway. I don't know what to start with, but I really think there's a lot in this we could use. I wish I could find a bigger version of this so you could see it more clearly. It's disturbing in so many different ways but I want to keep looking at it.So that's everything I've got. I wait to hear what you guys think. Enjoy!
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper really got me thinking about character and space and the relation between the two. I really like the connections (or lack thereof) he shows between people and the use of empty space.
"Nighthawks"
"People in the Sun"
"New York Movie"
"Room in New York"
"Nighthawks"
"People in the Sun"
"New York Movie"
"Room in New York"
Juan Muñoz
I saw this sculpture installation by this guy Juan Munoz, one of a series called "Conversation Pieces." This one was "Last Conversation Piece." I've tried to get as many different views as possible on this:
I think we could get more out of the ideas behind this work than from the work itself. This description I found says it best:
"In 1989, Muñoz began his figurative “conversation pieces”-a Renaissance concept, revived by modern sculptors such as George Segal, in which one or more figures interact with their setting to generate a mood or narrative. Muñoz’s works invite interpretation, but their meaning is never fully explained, as the artist strove to create an enduring sense of mystery......
The figures in Last Conversation Piece stand directly on the ground, inviting viewers to become part of the action. Initially inspired by a ventriloquist’s dummy, these curious characters resemble stuffed toys, particularly the round-bottomed punching-bag clowns that bounce back up after being hit....."
I think we could get more out of the ideas behind this work than from the work itself. This description I found says it best:
"In 1989, Muñoz began his figurative “conversation pieces”-a Renaissance concept, revived by modern sculptors such as George Segal, in which one or more figures interact with their setting to generate a mood or narrative. Muñoz’s works invite interpretation, but their meaning is never fully explained, as the artist strove to create an enduring sense of mystery......
The figures in Last Conversation Piece stand directly on the ground, inviting viewers to become part of the action. Initially inspired by a ventriloquist’s dummy, these curious characters resemble stuffed toys, particularly the round-bottomed punching-bag clowns that bounce back up after being hit....."
More Magritte
Mark, I saw you posted a bunch of Magritte paintings on the older posts. Here's another one I really like:
"La condition humaine"
"La condition humaine"
Picasso
There were two Picasso paintings I found that I really liked, both representative of two phases of his that I looked up online.
"The Tragedy"
After a close friend of his committed suicide, Picasso went through a period of somber paintings about death, poverty, destitution, the "underbelly of society," that kind of thing. He used almost exclusively shades of blue. It is called "the Blue Period." One thing I find really interesting in most of these paintings, especially this one, is that body language can reveal a ton about what is/isn't shown in the painting.
"Family of Saltimbanques"
After the Blue Period, he made a series of more colorful paintings portraying "saltimbanques." These were migrant circus-performer types that would wander around entertaining people. They were usually portrayed as sad social outsiders. I like this one especially because these people are all clearly bound together but they're all somewhat isolated, with different points of focus. I think the idea of the saltimbanque might be interesting to further research....
I hope I'm not coming off as knowing volumes about art. I don't know anything about this stuff, I just googled it!
Also, I don't know why, but I really like this guy. He was Picasso's first art dealer.
"Portrait of Pere Manyac/Pedro Mañach"
"The Tragedy"
After a close friend of his committed suicide, Picasso went through a period of somber paintings about death, poverty, destitution, the "underbelly of society," that kind of thing. He used almost exclusively shades of blue. It is called "the Blue Period." One thing I find really interesting in most of these paintings, especially this one, is that body language can reveal a ton about what is/isn't shown in the painting."Family of Saltimbanques"
After the Blue Period, he made a series of more colorful paintings portraying "saltimbanques." These were migrant circus-performer types that would wander around entertaining people. They were usually portrayed as sad social outsiders. I like this one especially because these people are all clearly bound together but they're all somewhat isolated, with different points of focus. I think the idea of the saltimbanque might be interesting to further research....I hope I'm not coming off as knowing volumes about art. I don't know anything about this stuff, I just googled it!
Also, I don't know why, but I really like this guy. He was Picasso's first art dealer.
"Portrait of Pere Manyac/Pedro Mañach"
Buildings
"The Lone Tenement," George Bellows
"The Fence," Camille Pissarro
"Building Facades," Jean Dubuffet
The last is an installation by Edward and Nancy Kienholz called "Sollie 17." The outside is of an old tenement hall or something:
You can poke your head in the open door and look into this dirty, rotting, cramped room with the sculpture of an old man (his face is a black and white photo) in three positions: sitting on his bed playing solitaire, staring out the window, and reading a book with his hand down his undies. A pretty fascinating but depressing depiction of living/aging in isolation:
Comment
This is something else we should do. If you've got a response to somebody else's text/images/music whatever, you can comment on the post and then we can discuss ideas/brainstorm in the comments section.
I love organization.
Srsly.
I love organization.
Srsly.
two songs
Hey guys, I know we're meant to be posting text and visual research, but I have two songs I keep listening to that we might be able to do something with. I don't know what. I just had an impulsive reaction to these, that they "fit" with what they're doing, but not much thought has gone into it....
Radiohead - "I Will (No Man's Land)"
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ssg7ja
i will
lay me down
in a bunker
underground
i won’t let this happen to my children
meet the real world coming out of your shell
with white elephants
sitting ducks
i will
rise up
little babies eyes eyes eyes eyes...
Sigur Rós - "Heysátan (Haystack)"
http://www.sendspace.com/file/t9r0w5
Heysátan
Höfðum þau hallí ró
En ég sló
Eg sló tún
Eg hef slegið fjandans nóg
En ég sló
Heysátan
Þá fer að fjúka út
Ut í mó.. (ég dró)
Heyvagn á massey ferguson
Því hann gaf undan
Og mér fótur rann... Andskotann
Eg varð undan
Og nú hvíli hér
Með beyglað der
Og sáttur halla nú höfði hér
translation:
The stack of hay
Had them all calm
But I mowed
I mowed fields
I have mowed fucking enough
But I moved
The stack of hay
Then begins to blow out the door
Out into the field (I dragged)
A wagon of hay on a Massey Ferguson
'Cause he gave in
And I slipped... fuck
I was first
And now rest here
With a folded cap
And now loll my head here, content
Funny how it's such a pretty song, but they snuck those "fuck"s in there...
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy these. Looking forward to reading everyone's posts!
jaime
Radiohead - "I Will (No Man's Land)"
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ssg7ja
i will
lay me down
in a bunker
underground
i won’t let this happen to my children
meet the real world coming out of your shell
with white elephants
sitting ducks
i will
rise up
little babies eyes eyes eyes eyes...
Sigur Rós - "Heysátan (Haystack)"
http://www.sendspace.com/file/t9r0w5
Heysátan
Höfðum þau hallí ró
En ég sló
Eg sló tún
Eg hef slegið fjandans nóg
En ég sló
Heysátan
Þá fer að fjúka út
Ut í mó.. (ég dró)
Heyvagn á massey ferguson
Því hann gaf undan
Og mér fótur rann... Andskotann
Eg varð undan
Og nú hvíli hér
Með beyglað der
Og sáttur halla nú höfði hér
translation:
The stack of hay
Had them all calm
But I mowed
I mowed fields
I have mowed fucking enough
But I moved
The stack of hay
Then begins to blow out the door
Out into the field (I dragged)
A wagon of hay on a Massey Ferguson
'Cause he gave in
And I slipped... fuck
I was first
And now rest here
With a folded cap
And now loll my head here, content
Funny how it's such a pretty song, but they snuck those "fuck"s in there...
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy these. Looking forward to reading everyone's posts!
jaime
Annie <3 Kafka on the Shore
I'm about halfway through and am utterly in love. Preliminary stuff I liked:
"I switch off the light and leave the bathroom. A heavy, damp stillness lies over the house. The whispers of people who don't exist, the breath of the dead. I look around, standing stock-still, and take a deep breath. The clock shows three p.m., the two hands cold and distant. They're pretending to be noncommittal, but I know they're not on my side. It's nearly time for me to say good-bye. I pick up my backpack and slip it over my shoulders. I've carried it any number of times, but now it feels so much heavier." (11)
"I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don't know, and I give up thinking about it." (44)
"But I'm scared, and my teeth won't stop chattering. Try as I might I can't get them to stop. I stretch out my hands and look at them. Both are shaking a bit. They look like somebody else's hands, not my own. Like a pair of little animals with a life all their own. My palms sting, like I grabbed onto a hot metal bar." (71)
"Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology...But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone." (98) <--This is something I'd really like to pursue...but not memories on an individual level, but rather on a human level...what things get "stuck" in the consciousness of all human existence, even when no individual consciousnesses are alive to remember them?
Hope you all are enjoying your breaks!
"I switch off the light and leave the bathroom. A heavy, damp stillness lies over the house. The whispers of people who don't exist, the breath of the dead. I look around, standing stock-still, and take a deep breath. The clock shows three p.m., the two hands cold and distant. They're pretending to be noncommittal, but I know they're not on my side. It's nearly time for me to say good-bye. I pick up my backpack and slip it over my shoulders. I've carried it any number of times, but now it feels so much heavier." (11)
"I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don't know, and I give up thinking about it." (44)
"But I'm scared, and my teeth won't stop chattering. Try as I might I can't get them to stop. I stretch out my hands and look at them. Both are shaking a bit. They look like somebody else's hands, not my own. Like a pair of little animals with a life all their own. My palms sting, like I grabbed onto a hot metal bar." (71)
"Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology...But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone." (98) <--This is something I'd really like to pursue...but not memories on an individual level, but rather on a human level...what things get "stuck" in the consciousness of all human existence, even when no individual consciousnesses are alive to remember them?
Hope you all are enjoying your breaks!
Nakata's wish
It's not that I'm dumb. Nakata's empty inside. I finally understand that. Nakata's like a library without a single book. It wasn't always like that. I used to have books inside me. For a long time I couldn't remember, but now I can. I used to be normal, just like everybody else. But something happened and I ended up like a container with nothing inside.
Nakata doesn't have anybody. Nothing. I'm not connected at all. I can't read. And my shadow's only half of what it should be.
If I'd been my normal self, I think I would've lived a very different kind of life. Like my two younger brothers. I would have gone to college, worked in a company, gotten married and had a family, driven a big car, played golf on my days off. but I wasn't normal, so that's shy I'm the Nakata I am today. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. But still, even for a short time, I'd like to be normal Nakata. Up until now there was never anything in particular I wanted to do. I always did what people told me as best I could. Maybe that just became a habit. But now I want to go back to being normal. I want to be a Nakata with his own ideas, his own meaning. (306-307)
Nakata doesn't have anybody. Nothing. I'm not connected at all. I can't read. And my shadow's only half of what it should be.
If I'd been my normal self, I think I would've lived a very different kind of life. Like my two younger brothers. I would have gone to college, worked in a company, gotten married and had a family, driven a big car, played golf on my days off. but I wasn't normal, so that's shy I'm the Nakata I am today. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. But still, even for a short time, I'd like to be normal Nakata. Up until now there was never anything in particular I wanted to do. I always did what people told me as best I could. Maybe that just became a habit. But now I want to go back to being normal. I want to be a Nakata with his own ideas, his own meaning. (306-307)
Kafka walks
I walk on for a while and reach a round sort of clearing. Surrounded by tall trees, it looks like the bottom of a gigantic well. Sunlight shoots down through the branches like a spotlight illuminating the ground at my feet. The place feels special somehow. I sit down int he sunlight and let the faint warmth wash over me, taking out a chocolate bar from my pocket and enjoying the sweet taste. Realizing all over again how important sunlight is to human beings, I appreciate each second of that precious light. The intense loneliness and helplessness I felt under those millions of stars has vanished. But as time passes, the sun's angle shifts and the light disappears. i stand up and retrace the path back to the cabin. (137)
Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love. Pretty much the same sort as the night before. But with two differences. After sex, she starts to cry. That's one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don't know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That's number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again adn drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those deatils of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them. (299)
Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love. Pretty much the same sort as the night before. But with two differences. After sex, she starts to cry. That's one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don't know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That's number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again adn drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those deatils of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them. (299)
Nancy-God
Nancy waded out to her own rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple look after themselves. She crouched low down and douched the smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan (she was still enlarging the pool) and slipped into the vast fissures of the mountain side. And then, letting her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the tree trunks which the smoke of steamers made waver upon the horizon, she became with all that power sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing, hypnotised, and the two senses of that vastness and this tininess (the pool had diminished again) flowering within it made her feel that she was bound hand and foot and unablet o move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in the world for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves crouching over the pool, she brooded. (75)
this would almost be better as stage directions...?
this would almost be better as stage directions...?
Kitchen table
Whenever she "thought of his work" she always saw clearly before her a large kitchen table. It was Andrew's doing. She asked him what his father's books were about. "Subject and object and the nature of reality," Andrew had said. And when she said heavens, she had no notion what that meant. "Think of a kitchen table then," he told her, "when you're not there."
So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay's work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in air. Naturally, if one's days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table (and it was a mark of the finest minds to do so), naturally one could not be juged like an ordinary person. (23)
So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay's work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in air. Naturally, if one's days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table (and it was a mark of the finest minds to do so), naturally one could not be juged like an ordinary person. (23)
Lily's Painting
Perhaps to be put in the first person:
The jacmanna was bright violet; the wall staring white. She would not have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and the staring white, since she saw them like that, fashionable though it was to see everything pale, elegant, semitransparent. Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who so often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at Mrs. Ramsay's knee and say to her--but what could one say to her? "I'm in love with you?" No, that was not true. "I'm in love with this all," waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was absurd, it was impossible. So now she laid her brushes neatly in the box, side by side. (19)
The jacmanna was bright violet; the wall staring white. She would not have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and the staring white, since she saw them like that, fashionable though it was to see everything pale, elegant, semitransparent. Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who so often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at Mrs. Ramsay's knee and say to her--but what could one say to her? "I'm in love with you?" No, that was not true. "I'm in love with this all," waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was absurd, it was impossible. So now she laid her brushes neatly in the box, side by side. (19)
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