Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Sunday, March 19, 2006
10 stories for 10 photos
Taking photos out of moving vehicles:
(This is my attempt to move into another kind of artist statement, for a package of semi-unrelated photos, meant for the albertan bienal, its really bloggy, I don’t know if it works.)
1. Before I went away to school, when my grandparents were still alive, they used to take me to my great aunts cabin in the shushawp. I would have a drugstore 35 mm, and it would take blurry, awful photos. Because we couldn’t stop as often as I would have liked, I would point and shot from the Buick my granddad drove. They were often of similar things to what I take photos of now, trains, rocks, interesting buildings, factories, and various water features.
2. The two years I was away at school, I often did not have a camera, and so photos were taken for us. On parents’ day, a recent graduate would put up a table with lists of photos he took, and samples. Because they believed that nature was good for a boy, in the 19th century Canadian way of noble canoes and even nobler hiking, the photos would be a combination of the spectacular (pine trees, lakes, mountains, rock strewn moonscape like summits) and the snapshot (eating, walking, the big group show at the end.) The photos I wanted to take, were pictures of school bus wells, the hitch that held a dozen voyager style canoes, the pick ups that came to meet us on the shores, details that were missed, details that were less heroic. They wanted us to be like the boys in the novels we read for English (White Fang, She, Dog Runner, Mrs. Mike) I had enough danger, I wanted to avoid it, or be an arms length observer.
3. When I came back from going home to school, my dad took me to Vancouver for the first time. It was a place where he positioned himself as a bohemian, a place where he lived for a few years, and then left to go back to Alberta, to get married and eventually had me. It was the first time I ever fell in love with a city and I took photos everywhere, from another cheap camera. I lost or dropped things, and my family didn’t have a whole lot of cash, so need turned into a vernacular aesthetic. I remember most, the photos I took from the windows of the monorail, the sky train. Even the name seemed like something from Buck Rogers, and I liked being above everything else. Technically this was impossible, and I got rolls of interesting blurs. Bad photographs were as pretty as Good ones sometimes.
4. I took some photos during high school, with one use cameras. I wanted to be Warhol. They were cheap and disposable. I felt cheap and disposable. They ere high trash, like how high camp makes the aesthetic of unfulfilled desire into political theater, this made being broke into something similar. That, and they were easy to shoplift. Packs of 6, with a French name, just outside the photo department, in the Superstore in Claireview, it made me feel punker then Warhol. The interesting thing about this was that this was the first time I tried derive, though I didn’t have the word for it then. I wandered the city, on buses as far north as Castledowns, and as far south as Ellesry,to Millwoods, down stony plain road, I would spend weekends doing nothing but taking photos from the windows of buses, with these cameras I stole from the supermarket. Sometimes I developed them, I must have developed all of them, but I don’t remember that part of the process. It was shooting a roll of film, like shooting a load of cum, that relaxed me. The solipsism of adolescence, or something like that.
5. After High School, I went with a tour group to spend 3 weeks in London. I spent most of the time away from the group, in pubs, restaurants, galleries, and museums. I took loads of photos, snapshots and artshots, the two were less separated in my mind. My favorite was a picture of Scotland, from the air, just 45 minutes before landing in Heathrow. The ocean, and green land, white trees, an abstracted pastoral. I have failed to take anything as good from an airplane ever since—looking at Wolfgang Tillimans, much later, I realized that his were better then mine because they looked uglier.
6. I didn’t take pictures for a long time, after London, because of some failures, and general boredom, and other business. I met Raymond in a class, and after a while, he invited me to take his camera, and shoot at the railway yards. It was a nice machine, with lenses and a case, and he was much more of a tech junkie then I was. But I got the thrill, I remembered how much I loved trains, and how much it didn’t matter what other people shot. I learned about technical ability, and figured out that shooting a moving vehicle, from the outside, when you weren’t in it, had a thrill that was different then being encased in the vehicle. Ballard talks a lot about symbiosis with machines and bodies, in Crash and I re read it a few weeks after my encounter with Raymond and his camera.
7. About this time, I went to a conference for Canadian University Press, with an asshole of a photog, who shot for the Gateway. He wouldn’t take pictures of me, and played keep away with my camera, because I didn’t have an SLR. I managed photos of him, squished in the back of a Civic, and of things on the highway, sometimes when we went out for piss breaks, sometimes from the windows of the car. I figured out that it was the image that mattered and not the equipment, and that the linguistic similarities between equipment meaning dick and equipment being camera were not cocncidental.
8. A little while later, during my second or third year of university, Raymond and I lived together. We would often go shooting, trading shot for shot, then roll for roll, as our styles became closer and closer. I developed two kinds of language for talking about film, the visual language of composition and the verbal slang that devolped between he and I. We would travel, driving around the city, out to the coast, up to wainright, once. He drove a mid80s Firebird, and the thing would make noise—sometimes we would take pictures out of the window of this firebird, but the best thing was saying STOP and jumping out, suddenly, to take a photo of a sign, or a post, or a building, or something interesting/ ugly/ beautiful/sublime/pretty/etc. The movemovemovesSTOPmovemovemoveSTOP pull and tug of our shooting became a new way to think of bodies, vehicles and machines. I collected these in little blue books, showed people at parties, proud of the odd shot, but didn’t think of myself as a photographer. A writer writes and a photog takes pictures, though.
9. In the year after I flunked out of University, I spent two weeks in a monstary in Kentucky. I took some pictures there, with a digital camera my sister bought me for Christmas the year before. It was too dark to take photos on the trip there, and leaving early, I didn’t know how to be polite enough to ask the monk to stop, so I could take photos of certain things, it even seemed rude to take the camera out in the minivan and take photos of the highways. I still remember the list of things I wanted to take pictures of: Robbie the Worlds Largest Rooster; Various Baptist Churches, The Cathedral of Bardstown, proof that there was a Stephen Foster Avenue, The Jim Beam hand painted brewery sign, 30 foot signs on the interstate advertising truck stops, bait shops, waffle houses, and Girls Girls Girls; the signs for interstates themselves, and the minivan itself. The grammar of unspoken signals, of things not shot from vehicles, I think was stronger then if things were left in the open.
10. A few weeks ago, a friend and I went from my house in the suburbs to Millwoods, where he lived. We were going to toboggan. To get there we had to pass all sorts of industry, refineries, warehouses, and the supporting infastructure that happens on the edges of industrial towns. I took maybe 40 photos out of the window of his Honda, and he asked me if I wanted to stop. I didn’t, because the kid would be restless, because it wasn’t the purpose of the trip, because taking photos with someone is intimate for me, and I didn’t feel that way about Gerard, because I finally felt confident about my ability to take a good shot, with shitty equipment in less then ideal circumstances, because there is something transient that’s important about traveling down hiway 21 and having to be quick in order to take a photo.
Taking photos out of moving vehicles:
(This is my attempt to move into another kind of artist statement, for a package of semi-unrelated photos, meant for the albertan bienal, its really bloggy, I don’t know if it works.)
1. Before I went away to school, when my grandparents were still alive, they used to take me to my great aunts cabin in the shushawp. I would have a drugstore 35 mm, and it would take blurry, awful photos. Because we couldn’t stop as often as I would have liked, I would point and shot from the Buick my granddad drove. They were often of similar things to what I take photos of now, trains, rocks, interesting buildings, factories, and various water features.
2. The two years I was away at school, I often did not have a camera, and so photos were taken for us. On parents’ day, a recent graduate would put up a table with lists of photos he took, and samples. Because they believed that nature was good for a boy, in the 19th century Canadian way of noble canoes and even nobler hiking, the photos would be a combination of the spectacular (pine trees, lakes, mountains, rock strewn moonscape like summits) and the snapshot (eating, walking, the big group show at the end.) The photos I wanted to take, were pictures of school bus wells, the hitch that held a dozen voyager style canoes, the pick ups that came to meet us on the shores, details that were missed, details that were less heroic. They wanted us to be like the boys in the novels we read for English (White Fang, She, Dog Runner, Mrs. Mike) I had enough danger, I wanted to avoid it, or be an arms length observer.
3. When I came back from going home to school, my dad took me to Vancouver for the first time. It was a place where he positioned himself as a bohemian, a place where he lived for a few years, and then left to go back to Alberta, to get married and eventually had me. It was the first time I ever fell in love with a city and I took photos everywhere, from another cheap camera. I lost or dropped things, and my family didn’t have a whole lot of cash, so need turned into a vernacular aesthetic. I remember most, the photos I took from the windows of the monorail, the sky train. Even the name seemed like something from Buck Rogers, and I liked being above everything else. Technically this was impossible, and I got rolls of interesting blurs. Bad photographs were as pretty as Good ones sometimes.
4. I took some photos during high school, with one use cameras. I wanted to be Warhol. They were cheap and disposable. I felt cheap and disposable. They ere high trash, like how high camp makes the aesthetic of unfulfilled desire into political theater, this made being broke into something similar. That, and they were easy to shoplift. Packs of 6, with a French name, just outside the photo department, in the Superstore in Claireview, it made me feel punker then Warhol. The interesting thing about this was that this was the first time I tried derive, though I didn’t have the word for it then. I wandered the city, on buses as far north as Castledowns, and as far south as Ellesry,to Millwoods, down stony plain road, I would spend weekends doing nothing but taking photos from the windows of buses, with these cameras I stole from the supermarket. Sometimes I developed them, I must have developed all of them, but I don’t remember that part of the process. It was shooting a roll of film, like shooting a load of cum, that relaxed me. The solipsism of adolescence, or something like that.
5. After High School, I went with a tour group to spend 3 weeks in London. I spent most of the time away from the group, in pubs, restaurants, galleries, and museums. I took loads of photos, snapshots and artshots, the two were less separated in my mind. My favorite was a picture of Scotland, from the air, just 45 minutes before landing in Heathrow. The ocean, and green land, white trees, an abstracted pastoral. I have failed to take anything as good from an airplane ever since—looking at Wolfgang Tillimans, much later, I realized that his were better then mine because they looked uglier.
6. I didn’t take pictures for a long time, after London, because of some failures, and general boredom, and other business. I met Raymond in a class, and after a while, he invited me to take his camera, and shoot at the railway yards. It was a nice machine, with lenses and a case, and he was much more of a tech junkie then I was. But I got the thrill, I remembered how much I loved trains, and how much it didn’t matter what other people shot. I learned about technical ability, and figured out that shooting a moving vehicle, from the outside, when you weren’t in it, had a thrill that was different then being encased in the vehicle. Ballard talks a lot about symbiosis with machines and bodies, in Crash and I re read it a few weeks after my encounter with Raymond and his camera.
7. About this time, I went to a conference for Canadian University Press, with an asshole of a photog, who shot for the Gateway. He wouldn’t take pictures of me, and played keep away with my camera, because I didn’t have an SLR. I managed photos of him, squished in the back of a Civic, and of things on the highway, sometimes when we went out for piss breaks, sometimes from the windows of the car. I figured out that it was the image that mattered and not the equipment, and that the linguistic similarities between equipment meaning dick and equipment being camera were not cocncidental.
8. A little while later, during my second or third year of university, Raymond and I lived together. We would often go shooting, trading shot for shot, then roll for roll, as our styles became closer and closer. I developed two kinds of language for talking about film, the visual language of composition and the verbal slang that devolped between he and I. We would travel, driving around the city, out to the coast, up to wainright, once. He drove a mid80s Firebird, and the thing would make noise—sometimes we would take pictures out of the window of this firebird, but the best thing was saying STOP and jumping out, suddenly, to take a photo of a sign, or a post, or a building, or something interesting/ ugly/ beautiful/sublime/pretty/etc. The movemovemovesSTOPmovemovemoveSTOP pull and tug of our shooting became a new way to think of bodies, vehicles and machines. I collected these in little blue books, showed people at parties, proud of the odd shot, but didn’t think of myself as a photographer. A writer writes and a photog takes pictures, though.
9. In the year after I flunked out of University, I spent two weeks in a monstary in Kentucky. I took some pictures there, with a digital camera my sister bought me for Christmas the year before. It was too dark to take photos on the trip there, and leaving early, I didn’t know how to be polite enough to ask the monk to stop, so I could take photos of certain things, it even seemed rude to take the camera out in the minivan and take photos of the highways. I still remember the list of things I wanted to take pictures of: Robbie the Worlds Largest Rooster; Various Baptist Churches, The Cathedral of Bardstown, proof that there was a Stephen Foster Avenue, The Jim Beam hand painted brewery sign, 30 foot signs on the interstate advertising truck stops, bait shops, waffle houses, and Girls Girls Girls; the signs for interstates themselves, and the minivan itself. The grammar of unspoken signals, of things not shot from vehicles, I think was stronger then if things were left in the open.
10. A few weeks ago, a friend and I went from my house in the suburbs to Millwoods, where he lived. We were going to toboggan. To get there we had to pass all sorts of industry, refineries, warehouses, and the supporting infastructure that happens on the edges of industrial towns. I took maybe 40 photos out of the window of his Honda, and he asked me if I wanted to stop. I didn’t, because the kid would be restless, because it wasn’t the purpose of the trip, because taking photos with someone is intimate for me, and I didn’t feel that way about Gerard, because I finally felt confident about my ability to take a good shot, with shitty equipment in less then ideal circumstances, because there is something transient that’s important about traveling down hiway 21 and having to be quick in order to take a photo.
the boys had a house party, then v for, then frans...its not their fault, and its pretty constant contact, and its emails, phone calls, and we are as close as we can, and we are working my ass to get me out their, and yet, here, 2 feet of snow in the last few weeks, still snowing, cold and miserable, ive been really really depressed...
today is the lonliest, the most desperate ive been all winter, the closest ive gotten to the worst of the royal alex, toronto western days.
the perverse thing is that with sucidal ideation, it makes it easier, there is a way out, from isolaion, desperation, exhaustion, etc...there is a release to thinking about killing one self.
i havent engaged in sucidal ideation, its not an option, with mom being sick, etc, so it gets worse, there is less and less of a release, and i sort of fall into my own entropy/needieness/anger/depression.
i need to clean the house, i need to sweep, mop, pick up the laundry room and my bedroom, which are getting so bad that i cant move with out jumping, clean my sheets, all of that, and its just not happening, since the double funeral, and the next big snow dump, i do what i need to do, i keep working, keep skating, but i barely have it together, im crying right now, and gerard said he would give me a ride out tomorrow, to the city and i like gerard but i dont want to be a hassle, i never want to be a hassle,
i cancelled lettner 4 times this week, because of buses and also because i couldnt handle seeing new people, and gerard has gone out of his way to let himself in, which i need but yeah...
im depressed, not the low grade fever that usually moves thru, but a hard, cold, obilette kind of thing, a box w/o breath holes
today is the lonliest, the most desperate ive been all winter, the closest ive gotten to the worst of the royal alex, toronto western days.
the perverse thing is that with sucidal ideation, it makes it easier, there is a way out, from isolaion, desperation, exhaustion, etc...there is a release to thinking about killing one self.
i havent engaged in sucidal ideation, its not an option, with mom being sick, etc, so it gets worse, there is less and less of a release, and i sort of fall into my own entropy/needieness/anger/depression.
i need to clean the house, i need to sweep, mop, pick up the laundry room and my bedroom, which are getting so bad that i cant move with out jumping, clean my sheets, all of that, and its just not happening, since the double funeral, and the next big snow dump, i do what i need to do, i keep working, keep skating, but i barely have it together, im crying right now, and gerard said he would give me a ride out tomorrow, to the city and i like gerard but i dont want to be a hassle, i never want to be a hassle,
i cancelled lettner 4 times this week, because of buses and also because i couldnt handle seeing new people, and gerard has gone out of his way to let himself in, which i need but yeah...
im depressed, not the low grade fever that usually moves thru, but a hard, cold, obilette kind of thing, a box w/o breath holes
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Friday, March 17, 2006
Thursday, March 16, 2006
so im sitting in an internet cafe on jasper and 109th, handling some email, before my meeting with employabilities...and kitty corner to me, they are finally recladding an IS medium size office block, adn they do it with two people, one on the floor above and one on the floor below, with anchoring ropes to the ground, and some kind of mechaincal winch...the windows are huge, about 10x8 or so, and its windy/snow...so i cannot imagine the job pleasent in the least, but the corrdination, is breath taking--my inner 8 yr old wants tthem to drop the glass all over the sidewalk, but thats most likely why there is cladding on the ground floor, aside of course from security concerns, dont know how i could take a decent photo of this...
Proposal for a Book Chapter on the Magnetic Fields:
Cowboys, Cowgirls and Other Problems of Genre.
Gender and Rural Culture in Stephen Merritt's Papa Was a Rodeo (and Kelly Hogan’s Cover)
Cover versions crossing gender lines become complicated creatures, and performers alterations of lyrics is often a disputed site of resistance. Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Field’s 3 volume 69 Love Songs, is even trickier, because Merritt works so hard on disrupting any possible gender or sexual clue. The version of Papa was a… in 69 Love Songs, on the surface, is a gay cowboy love song, unusual but not unheard of. The cover, on the surface, is a straight cowboy love song, casual in its banality. Merritt has claimed that Papa…was a straight country song and Hogan introduces the song live, plainly, as one of the loneliest songs she’s heard. It’s even lonely with a lover of the proper place and gender emerging in the third verse. A marriage in the third act is supposed to set everything right.
There is something confusing in the interplay between these two songs. Some of it deals with gender and personae mentioned, but there are also issues of geography. The song mentions no geographic place directly, unlike the Magnetic Albums country album Charm of the Highway Strip, so it discusses a Middle America, filmed, photographed, written about, and mythologized as archetypal and not “real”. Though this could be explained by Meritt being the archetypal, decadent New Yorker, how does it leave Kelly Hogan who’s record label Bloodshot was founded in Chicago, and knows a bit about all that space in the middle.
Starting with those intersections of aesthetics, sexuality and geography is to begin to slowly tangle and untangle sign and signifier, in these two songs, and in other country songs that Merritt may have sang. Using the theoretical tools as varied as Lacan on lacunae and phallic presentation; Judith Butler on the performance of gender; Howard Zinn and Wendell Berry’s concepts of urban and agrarian; the American travelogues of Baudillard and Bernard Levy, but also branch out from that.
I want to talk about how these two songs fit into film (Johnny Guitar; Paris, Texas; The Last Picture Show; Brokeback Mountain); fine art photography (American Surfaces by Stephen Shore; Los Alamos by William Eggleston); and country music (Patsy Montana; Roy Acuff; Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie)
Like Wayne Kaustenbaum’s recent articles for art forum, and books like Dead Elvis by Greil Marcus and late Barthes, the article will be in numbered paragraphs. I am doing this for several reasons, including Merritt’s fondness for the list form, the spare minimalism of the plot, and to extend the songs loose web of referents. Think of it then, as a long highway, and the prose being the gas stations, hotels, honky tonks, truck stops, weigh stations and churches one sees on its highways.
Cowboys, Cowgirls and Other Problems of Genre.
Gender and Rural Culture in Stephen Merritt's Papa Was a Rodeo (and Kelly Hogan’s Cover)
Cover versions crossing gender lines become complicated creatures, and performers alterations of lyrics is often a disputed site of resistance. Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Field’s 3 volume 69 Love Songs, is even trickier, because Merritt works so hard on disrupting any possible gender or sexual clue. The version of Papa was a… in 69 Love Songs, on the surface, is a gay cowboy love song, unusual but not unheard of. The cover, on the surface, is a straight cowboy love song, casual in its banality. Merritt has claimed that Papa…was a straight country song and Hogan introduces the song live, plainly, as one of the loneliest songs she’s heard. It’s even lonely with a lover of the proper place and gender emerging in the third verse. A marriage in the third act is supposed to set everything right.
There is something confusing in the interplay between these two songs. Some of it deals with gender and personae mentioned, but there are also issues of geography. The song mentions no geographic place directly, unlike the Magnetic Albums country album Charm of the Highway Strip, so it discusses a Middle America, filmed, photographed, written about, and mythologized as archetypal and not “real”. Though this could be explained by Meritt being the archetypal, decadent New Yorker, how does it leave Kelly Hogan who’s record label Bloodshot was founded in Chicago, and knows a bit about all that space in the middle.
Starting with those intersections of aesthetics, sexuality and geography is to begin to slowly tangle and untangle sign and signifier, in these two songs, and in other country songs that Merritt may have sang. Using the theoretical tools as varied as Lacan on lacunae and phallic presentation; Judith Butler on the performance of gender; Howard Zinn and Wendell Berry’s concepts of urban and agrarian; the American travelogues of Baudillard and Bernard Levy, but also branch out from that.
I want to talk about how these two songs fit into film (Johnny Guitar; Paris, Texas; The Last Picture Show; Brokeback Mountain); fine art photography (American Surfaces by Stephen Shore; Los Alamos by William Eggleston); and country music (Patsy Montana; Roy Acuff; Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie)
Like Wayne Kaustenbaum’s recent articles for art forum, and books like Dead Elvis by Greil Marcus and late Barthes, the article will be in numbered paragraphs. I am doing this for several reasons, including Merritt’s fondness for the list form, the spare minimalism of the plot, and to extend the songs loose web of referents. Think of it then, as a long highway, and the prose being the gas stations, hotels, honky tonks, truck stops, weigh stations and churches one sees on its highways.
A woman from nashville star last night yodelled and sang a bit of patsy montanna and was not evicted (she wont last of course, nashville is new country, and new country has no history)...but she was good. here here is a singer called elizabeth mcqueen, shes not bad at all, and i could imagine her yodelling (as did the singer on nashville
five soilders beat the shit out of some faggot in north carolina...the other side of the fort bragg gay porn story, and another reason why dont ask dont tell is untennable.
handmade masks worn by pretty boys, strange, erotic, with elements of childhood games, arts and crafts at summer camp, pink narcissus, and sunday morning boredom, because the masks tend towards nose peices, they attach themselves to a freudian tradtion v. loosely, and do not have the sinister, transformative, fetishistic, antropolgical terror that can be found in much mask work, they have a tender, careful, silliness, and i appreciate that. worth a click. (like the radical craft conference in pasedena this month, the work im doing for banff, allyson, etc)
this poor moose, shot near oslo, because he threatened to derail a passenger train. it makes me sad, though sentiment and anthropolgozation makes us forget danger.
five soilders beat the shit out of some faggot in north carolina...the other side of the fort bragg gay porn story, and another reason why dont ask dont tell is untennable.
handmade masks worn by pretty boys, strange, erotic, with elements of childhood games, arts and crafts at summer camp, pink narcissus, and sunday morning boredom, because the masks tend towards nose peices, they attach themselves to a freudian tradtion v. loosely, and do not have the sinister, transformative, fetishistic, antropolgical terror that can be found in much mask work, they have a tender, careful, silliness, and i appreciate that. worth a click. (like the radical craft conference in pasedena this month, the work im doing for banff, allyson, etc)
this poor moose, shot near oslo, because he threatened to derail a passenger train. it makes me sad, though sentiment and anthropolgozation makes us forget danger.
which reminds me
47) Atwood Penepoloid
it wasnt bad (she has never written anything bad, though blind assasian comes v. close) but its not very good, or not very funny. it seemed padded, the same points made over and over again, and she doesnt flesh out homers absences as much as she should have been. they should have given this one to carson
47) Atwood Penepoloid
it wasnt bad (she has never written anything bad, though blind assasian comes v. close) but its not very good, or not very funny. it seemed padded, the same points made over and over again, and she doesnt flesh out homers absences as much as she should have been. they should have given this one to carson
16 things that happened in the last 72 hours
1) hung out with gerard and jacob
2) there was sledding involved
2a) i am in horrible shape, and jacob is a quiet kid, but socialable in a way that i hve never been really able to be.
3) went over to gerads house
4) had dinner, saw some of claires art, talked to his mom, talked about god, borrowed books, ate dinner
4a) soup, salad, roast beef, vegetables, roasted potatos, apple crumble, ice cream.
4b) fuck was it good.
5) went to mass
6) saw lydia, graham, cam, jerry, amongst others.
6b) lydia is teaching, graham is UASU Pres, jerry is engaged.
7) Bittner gave an amazing speech, about power and love--i kept thinking about when bittner said, love is more impt then power in the works of paul, and i dont think thats true, reading derrida again about it, and about how power, mercy, strained and unstrained, i think that the rub is where infinte universal YHWH meets/interacts w. an eglitarian, humbled jesus, the mystery of something g. called it...must get back to him about it.
8) im nervous about meeting with graham, he likes me lots, and he appreciates my company, but i am never sure exacty how to talk to him, a bit of a politican, a bit gaurded, but shrug.
9) drove home and talked about being queer/catholic with gerard, and how isolating mass can be, and how erotic it can be as well (and not only b/c i want to fuck everyone in the room) and about how i dont trust my own body, and how god seems to come in and out in odd places and odd times, im in the midst of another god time...
10) marys funeral was on monday, mary is my grandmothers sister.
11) saw chip and barb, connected ray to chip but talking to him is a lot like talking to the mystics, different language, different power, and my inner marxist comes out screaming. talked to grandma a bit, she did the why are you doing that, keep doing t hat one two ninja psyop punch that makes me feel like shit. talked to scotts new wife, who was much too familar much too quickly, and sort of supportive, but frankly i dont need her support, and talked to scott. had several meltdowns, blisterbombed dad, grandma, the rest of the company, depression back.
12) big seizure (first seizure of any kind in weeks)
13) read and looked thru frielanders book sticks and stones, im settling into what it means, but one of the most impt books of photosgraphs ive looked at since maybe american surfaces or the new orleans fridge one. repositioned how i felt formally to my fotos, realised that my street photos are much more culturally/socially rigous.
14) got math books from rays mom, i have to set an hour a day to do that, cause if i dont they dont get done, methodically.
15) more money stuff with dad, but it comes down to his shit, his nerousis and mental illness and his inablity to get shit together, and finally settling into it not being my fault.
16) did some work for tcaf, and they really liked it, no money but excellent contacts.
friday will be a fone day.
1) hung out with gerard and jacob
2) there was sledding involved
2a) i am in horrible shape, and jacob is a quiet kid, but socialable in a way that i hve never been really able to be.
3) went over to gerads house
4) had dinner, saw some of claires art, talked to his mom, talked about god, borrowed books, ate dinner
4a) soup, salad, roast beef, vegetables, roasted potatos, apple crumble, ice cream.
4b) fuck was it good.
5) went to mass
6) saw lydia, graham, cam, jerry, amongst others.
6b) lydia is teaching, graham is UASU Pres, jerry is engaged.
7) Bittner gave an amazing speech, about power and love--i kept thinking about when bittner said, love is more impt then power in the works of paul, and i dont think thats true, reading derrida again about it, and about how power, mercy, strained and unstrained, i think that the rub is where infinte universal YHWH meets/interacts w. an eglitarian, humbled jesus, the mystery of something g. called it...must get back to him about it.
8) im nervous about meeting with graham, he likes me lots, and he appreciates my company, but i am never sure exacty how to talk to him, a bit of a politican, a bit gaurded, but shrug.
9) drove home and talked about being queer/catholic with gerard, and how isolating mass can be, and how erotic it can be as well (and not only b/c i want to fuck everyone in the room) and about how i dont trust my own body, and how god seems to come in and out in odd places and odd times, im in the midst of another god time...
10) marys funeral was on monday, mary is my grandmothers sister.
11) saw chip and barb, connected ray to chip but talking to him is a lot like talking to the mystics, different language, different power, and my inner marxist comes out screaming. talked to grandma a bit, she did the why are you doing that, keep doing t hat one two ninja psyop punch that makes me feel like shit. talked to scotts new wife, who was much too familar much too quickly, and sort of supportive, but frankly i dont need her support, and talked to scott. had several meltdowns, blisterbombed dad, grandma, the rest of the company, depression back.
12) big seizure (first seizure of any kind in weeks)
13) read and looked thru frielanders book sticks and stones, im settling into what it means, but one of the most impt books of photosgraphs ive looked at since maybe american surfaces or the new orleans fridge one. repositioned how i felt formally to my fotos, realised that my street photos are much more culturally/socially rigous.
14) got math books from rays mom, i have to set an hour a day to do that, cause if i dont they dont get done, methodically.
15) more money stuff with dad, but it comes down to his shit, his nerousis and mental illness and his inablity to get shit together, and finally settling into it not being my fault.
16) did some work for tcaf, and they really liked it, no money but excellent contacts.
friday will be a fone day.
Monday, March 13, 2006
From the Floor posted these, from the fielder gallery, of a german called Frank Bauer-unlike most new germans, the prints are tiny, up to a maxium of a meter,(which i think makes them more interesting, the juxtoposition, and i like that small prints are making a comeback)
from warehouses: (these are fantastic, cause they are so simple, its really hard to make things that big, that pure, things always get in the way, and this is the way the opposite of people like freidlander, maybe im just wondering about messiness, and concept and my photos)
from containers (compare the pure formalism, the shape and colour, and repetetion in these to judd like post minimlaism, and against seductive, imagist politics of people like burtynsky)
from telephone poles
(the smallest, b/w 30 and 50 cm) (and the latest, the messiest)
from warehouses: (these are fantastic, cause they are so simple, its really hard to make things that big, that pure, things always get in the way, and this is the way the opposite of people like freidlander, maybe im just wondering about messiness, and concept and my photos)
from containers (compare the pure formalism, the shape and colour, and repetetion in these to judd like post minimlaism, and against seductive, imagist politics of people like burtynsky)
from telephone poles
(the smallest, b/w 30 and 50 cm) (and the latest, the messiest)
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Liberal attitudes towards the other are characterized both by respect for otherness, openness to it, and an obsessive fear of harassment. In short, the other is welcomed insofar as its presence is not intrusive, insofar as it is not really the other. Tolerance thus coincides with its opposite. My duty to be tolerant towards the other effectively means that I should not get too close to him or her, not intrude into his space—in short, that I should respect his intolerance towards my over-proximity. This is increasingly emerging as the central human right of advanced capitalist society: the right not to be ‘harassed’, that is, to be kept at a safe distance from others. The same goes for the emergent logic of humanitarian or pacifist militarism. War is acceptable insofar as it seeks to bring about peace, or democracy, or the conditions for distributing humanitarian aid. And does the same not hold even more for democracy and human rights themselves? Human rights are ok if they are ‘rethought’ to include torture and a permanent emergency state. Democracy is ok if it is cleansed of its populist excesses and limited to those mature enough to practise it.
Zivek
Zivek
Saturday, March 11, 2006
I have been mildy obsessed with Ricky Nelson of late, because of how sweet/gentle/innocous his voice and reputation is (cf Ozzie and Harriet) . There is the strangely passive agressive Garden Party, one of the nastiest fuck you I used to be famous songs of course, but even better is a song called Last Kiss. Unlike most other teenage death/car crash songs, this one has much more detail. Fantastic and grisly detai. In a voice that sounds like milk and cookies--the best lines:we were out on a date in my daddys car/we hadnt driven very far/there in road, straight ahead/the car was stalled/so I swerved to the right/so i will never forget the sound that night/the grinding tires/the busting glass/that i heard last" There are also the lines about his babys warm blood, and how "shes gone to heaven, so ive got to be good/so I can see my baby/when I leave this world"--it actually is more melodramatic then that, almost more melodramatic then any of the girl groups.
it seems such a cliche, but has anyone written about the death impulse in these songs, the realtion between fucking and dying, in the cultural atmosphere before rock and roll, or in the safer edges of rock and roll?
(Sidenote: has anyone worked the dates b/w the golden age of the gore/exploitation dead teen in car song, and the golden age of the gore/exploitaiton dead teen in driver's ed film--are their any over lap?)
(sidenote ii: has warhol seen these?)
it seems such a cliche, but has anyone written about the death impulse in these songs, the realtion between fucking and dying, in the cultural atmosphere before rock and roll, or in the safer edges of rock and roll?
(Sidenote: has anyone worked the dates b/w the golden age of the gore/exploitation dead teen in car song, and the golden age of the gore/exploitaiton dead teen in driver's ed film--are their any over lap?)
(sidenote ii: has warhol seen these?)
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