The Bird Who Couldn't Land

shirt, belt, thin body
cigarettes, names unknown, but known
I meet you in your dreams
the forest is blue-grey with fog, palms, fronds
in the day of being wild
I read your hand
for signs
who knows you better than yourself?

sketch from 2008 while watching Wong Kar-wai's
Days of Being Wild (1990), © Brenda Clews

It's Not A Sure Thing

Am I writing? Sigh, I'm very good at avoiding and playing instead.

This image is silly, but I was messing with ideas for a background image for yet another website, which I probably won't develop. I'm looking for something that can do what I've done at Tripod, but which is more accessible (like a site Cooliris enabled).

This one's a Google homepage, which I'd like because then I can centrally locate it, but Google has set up the basic design, it seems, for a writing-based site, not for images.

Ah well, what's wasted time on the Internet River? Things flow on, and they flow on...

Larry Carlson: The Garment of Al Shaddai

I can't decide if it's her naked joining Siamese twin doubling, no quadrupling, breasts, though we can't see the other two, that disturb or that she is lying on some very stiff grass or a miniature forest, while a river flows past her, with a forest in the background and fuzzed edges so that she, who cannot walk, who has no womb or legs and could only roll if both twins are synchronized, is the focus. She is a beautiful digitalized woman with headbands. She's been cut up and recomposed with her mirror image. She is the creation of an artist. She becomes representative of chubby, mammalian life-forms 'out there' -"in Nature." She's helpless, but looking at the viewer seductively. Does she know she's been digitally altered and that her green screen has dissolved into a scenic outdoor scene in which she is the only representative of human life? Is she mutated? Is she dreaming herself in a totally weird Surreal dream of the 'commercialized woman' life?

This is an image created by the wild, humorous, brilliant multi-media artist Larry Carlson.

His art sets the imagination aflame. Does it for you?

Here she is again, cloned in the strange world of mutated images that are the hallmark of Carlson's art. Carlson has been famously described as the 'Salvadore Dali' of this century.



He calls this one, "The Garment of Al Shaddai." I found this: "Shaddai is one of the ten divine names quoted in the rabbinical legend of the angelic hierarchies. The essence influences the sphere of the moon: it causes increase and decrease and rules the jinn and protecting spirits."

Let your imagination wander in the fractal nautilus, around the Moon Goddess of eyes, the 'jinns' of the cloned mutated woman, the golden Ram and what is possibly a Lammasu, an Assyrian Sphinx, molecules that look like the grapes of the wild Dionysus, a red parrot that rests on a blue arm flung illogically out back of the 'Moon Goddess of Eyes' (is she perhaps a Hindu goddess too), the ground a pastel kaleidoscopic 'light table.' It is a world of the inner imagination, dream imagery, arcane symbols and hallucinatory visions. Carlson's work is 'psychedelic': "an English term coined from the Greek words for "soul," ψυχή (psyche), and "manifest," δήλος (delos)."

The soul manifest,
this is the garment of Al Shaddai.

A Face of Charms: Pierced Woman in Edinburgh

Now this is piercing! The art of the dancing face.

I found this photograph of a pierced woman at Holy Caw, a blog of a fellow, Guy Kawasaki, in Edinburgh.

I can imagine the jingling every time she turns her face, but not what it must feel like to have a face of jewelry. Or what the silver feels like in the skin in very cold or hot weather. You'd have to love attention, because you'd be noticed wherever you went.

Something tender about this image, the self-mutilation that's body art and a fashion statement in its own way.

Cleaning the skin and the piercings must be a ritual in itself.

She has a beautiful smile.

A face of charms.

View Out My Bedroom Window

Sigh, okay, playing just a little...

View out my bedroom window, with a little license.

(Droll, dull, yah but black & white is fun.)

(Neva mind the parkin' lot, yo hear?! It neva has more'n two cars in it, and it gives me open space, a view of the sky, way better'n facing a house of windows facing you. In my opinion.)

I am very lucky to have a little apartment in my favourite area of Toronto. In the Summer the 200 year old trees really are magnificent, and many of the houses date back a century.

There hasn't been a day since I moved here that I haven't woken up grateful.


(click on image for larger size)

flickr Earth Mosaic 2009

To commemorate Earth Day, I took this photograph for the flickr Earth Mosaic 2009 - the street that I live on. Nothing special about the photo, but it is home.

(click on image for larger size)

Thelonious Monk ...rhapsodic Jazz

Hours of Thelonious Monk, on earphones, close, intimate, syncopated piano, no-one plays piano like him, trombone, the eroticism of jazz, drums, beat of skins, hours and hours, immersed, deeply, his discography, and I find him unlocking my heart and taking me through the labyrinth of my feelings.

And I remember you. You are there in every note. You are the sensual rhythm. You are at the centre of my heart.

Love.

✵

Thelonious, and wonder why I only came to him now, but realize I have been arriving all my life.

His idiosyncratic complexity particularly appeals to me.

≈
sensuous complicated smooth syncopated improvised rhythms he plays as I like to dance without prediction knots and whorls flow and collapse sweeps passions trills the sweet edge of sex lush dark entering each other over and over passages long lingering ecstasies and sorrows

☯

Monk plays with sensitivity, feels every pulse, nuance of the music of his band, the rhythm of the piece being played, his pianistic response always changing, the room, the audience, the air, the touch of the keys under his fingerprints, the pedal under his toes, his whole body an instrument for the piano, notes, even when in a collection it seems to me notes rather than chords, responding, resonating moment by moment, an inner music singing inside the outer tune, sometimes stopping and standing while the other musicians continue to play, then resuming, but not where he left off, we are at another eddy, another turn, trill, witnessing our journey through his journey of the music of the song.

☯

Monk's extraordinary piano playing has brought me back to the clarity of my heart, exploring the labyrinth of my feelings through many hours of his Riverview recordings.

Monk's syncopated improvisational style is well-known, yet listening to his earlier discography, in the range of 184 songs or so, on a Nano iPod and great earphones, Bang & Olufson, is never boring, it's like traveling a long river to the ocean, the journey through his life of music remains exciting, vital, near.

I cannot say how this music speaks to me - it doesn't speak to me, it speaks with me.

It lets me sing my song even as I rhapsodize through the delicate and complex notes Monk plays.

Gratitude.




Thelonious Sphere Monk, Monk's Blues (1968)




YouTube URL: Thelonious Monk, 'Round About Midnight.'

Spit of postage-sized yard

Moi, moi, and moi, ho hum. Bo-ring! BUT. Cleaning up the spit of postage-sized yard out back, fun! In the Summer, full shade due to a tree. Perhaps throw some seed for grasses or ground cover - all in all, it'll be a nice place to sit with morning coffee or on hot Summer evenings! Happy, happy.

My son, who actually helped, had gone by this time. And my daughter, who didn't, took the photos. I've included one of her in this group.

(click on photos for larger size)















My beauty. A sweetie unparalleled.





Shhh. This one. What's Photoshop for if you can't de-age? I had given myself
a bright fuscia pink face but found the muted sepia tone nicer.
C'mon, an "art shot" alright!

(pssst -> ... the original untouched one)

::laughing:: xo

The Effects of the Recession

A restless night, too many of us in crisis. I feel myself falling into the flying apart.

My sleepless but drowsy concerns become like Surrealist images where components split apart, twisting in the distance.

A slow-motion spin of walls, wardrobes, kitchen drawers, bits of conversation, kalaidescope of images spanning years, remembered and loosened, geometric and organic, intersplicing in the distances between molecules.

It is a very tidy universe in magnified microcosm despite our messy realities.

Perhaps the holding together doesn't help; perhaps it's time to let go.

What is the mind if unfettered, uncomposed, freed of nervous culture?

No answers came, the warden was banished, the bars fell away.

In the tumbling of synapses firing randomly,

Was I freed?

Did I sleep? Fitfully, in relapses. When I woke the world was its illumined glossy enlightened place where warm sunlight spreads across bedspreads and there are hugs and warmth, French-press coffee and fresh bagels.

The world in its normal motion; everyone, fine.

Two Dascha Friedlova Photocollages

Dascha Friedlova, Photocollage, XXVIII Fallen Leaf

Dark, somber, like funeral flowers. A cold draft about the photograph. Feels like the funerary atmosphere of the death of a loved one, the passing of a life, the memories, even as flowers that will wilt and fade soon. One can almost feel the spirit that is looking back at life being here, in the viewpoint of the image. Though it is a warm, sunny Spring day outside, and my room is sunlit, this photograph definitely has a cold feel to it, as if I were in the house or funeral home where these flowers were laid.




Dascha Friedlova, Photocollage, XXXII Equinox Egg

What is being reborn out of what is dying?

It's disturbing, the human figure looks pale, perhaps dead, and the moth the way nature makes everything sustenance for everything else.

Or perhaps it is a surrealist image in which a moth is emerging from a face. The moth looks like its growing out of tendons in the face, that the skin has been stripped.

In the strange imagery of the dream, it is a rebirth?

What is being reborn out of what is dying?

__
Note: not meant in any way to be a discussion of Friedlova's oeuvre, only some impressions I had of two of her photocollages, neither of which are particularly representational of her work as a whole.

Pylon by Larry Carlson

PYLON from Larry Carlson on Vimeo.

Began exploring Larry Carlson's videos today. There is a driving simplicity to this one. Though there is an overlay of images, mainly we witness a pulsing, throbbing, multi-colored pylon. It's primal - that heartbeat. Powerful, technologized, loud, slicing the air with its sound wave, but steady, organic. A pulsing diamond in a scaffolding, a sacred geometry structure, a pyramid. The light is bright, luminous, visionary, the colours, rich, primary, vibrant, its beating, pulsing is hypnotizing, and encompasses opposites of calming and energizing. The man who holds the pyramid is still throughout. His steady holding of the pulsing, shifting, changing, transforming pylon works well as a framing to the vital energy of the heart-like beating. Something grounding in that steady hand.

Do I hear all of life's pounding pulse here? Even our sun has 'heartbeats' - maybe a dozen a century.

If the universe itself has a 'heartbeat,' it would sound and look like "Pylon."

A short, brilliant art video. A woman in negative appears near the end laughing. The light is an exploding dance of colour. It could become obsessive, beating in our ear like Poe's 'Tell Tale Heart.' Only the imagery in this film is expansive, visionary. The pylon goes through phases of beats, it's got a rhythm to its rich pulsing colours, returning to the simplicity of the original green screen occasionally; and the beat itself speeds up at one point, just like a real heart. It's like a highly-charged powered solar cell, this beating heart.

And what a gift to be able to download this! It's pulsing away in the corner of my iMac. "Pylon" is looped and playing endlessly. Like a bright eye: solar, oceanic; of crystal.

As I watch it, I think not only diamond, but exploding

atomic bomb.

Of the life force of the
seedpod.

_
direct link to Pylon

Nitter Natter

I'm writing a script this month, as you know. I can't believe how hard it is! Perhaps because I discover what's next as I write, it's a laborious process that is slow at best. I'm trying to polish it as I go, so when it's finished I can send copies to friends. I'm drawing inspiration from Surrealist art, which is fascinating since none of this was pre-planned. Trying, in between realistic scenes, to get into 'that imaginative space,' that strange 'dream-space,' is challenging and often my brain hurts! It's easier to be logical, for sure. The 'strange logic' of the Surrealist image requires neurons to fire a different way! Silly, I know.

I have a Windsor & Newton 'deep edge' 24"x30" primed canvas ready to go (bought with some of the deposit sent for my little painting) - but seem to have pulled or torn some tendons in my right elbow and the doctor says to rest it... though with grocery shopping for me & my kids, walking a dog who is strong and pulls on the leash, and general housework, I'm finding it's not healing very fast if at all. I may decide not to care and work on the canvas soon... thinking floral... though I do love to do figures, but then I should go to a life drawing session for some new images... and should I continue the quick 'line' drawings of figures that I've taken to doing, or try something more conté crayon, though that would require longer poses? I really like leaving my artwork somewhere in the realm between drawing and painting, then the figures are like a script, though also painterly.



"Prostrations," page-sized, India ink & watercolour pencil
on archival watercolour paper, 2006 (click to enlarge),
the little painting that's sold.

Granny's 86th Birthday

Granny's 86th birthday - My mother, Florence, is in the middle, behind her is my brother, Allan, and to the left my neice, Freya, and nephew, Shaman.

We were returning from a celebratory birthday brunch at Future Bakery.

My Son's 22nd Birthday

My sweet son turned 22 on April 2nd. My daughter, who's not in the image unfortunately, baked and iced the cake. We were unable to light some of the small candles in the middle, and it was one of those strange things - as I walked with the lit cake the unlit candles lit up! They were all burning! The cake itself was celebrating.

You can see my son, Adrian, my mother, Florence, and a bit of my brother, Raymond. And Keesha our dog. The image is a little distorted since I took it off my webcam, but it's still fun.

Philippe Sainte-Laudy's textured photostream

Philippe Sainte-Laudy: I love this photographer's work, especially these textured images. That I can embed this slideshow here is such a gift! Though do click on the link below and look at them in screen-size.

direct url to Philippe Sainte-Laudy's photostream

The Jade Heart

I joined scriptfrenzy.org where you undertake to write a 100 page script in the month of April. As is my way, I approach this project without any ideas for characters, plot or any other preconceptions, preferring to let the story tell itself. I begin where I am, the title riffing off of a necklace I recently beaded, the opening line off a line of a recent post. I am also presently taken with some of Bill Brouard's digital art images, which I find inspiring, and which form a visual core for the description of the two characters in this section.

If I complete the challenge, I intend to condense the hundred pages into about fifteen and perhaps make a little video of some sort, not sure. I'll only leave this up for a few days, Blogger stripping all the correct script formatting that it's written in. This is yesterday's effort - and to me, today, it reads more like a Greek play. It's meant to be a poetic dialogue, that's what I wanted to write. Anyway, sharing...


EXT. BEACH, OCEAN TO ONE SIDE, FOREST IN DISTANCE ON OTHER SIDE - NIGHT

A woman walks on a deserted beach. She is dimly lit by spotlight. To one side is the ocean; in the background on the other side we see the shadows of a dense forest.

She is wearing a mid-calf length white cotton dress that has a pale floral pattern; it is loose but revealing of her curves, cleavage. She wears a head-dress that is composed of partial faces, eyes, shards of mirror, images projected and pasted, like a lantern in that it emits light yet also lit from without. Whispering sounds that rise and fall with the waves accompany her.

She is laughing. She is speaking out loud to herself, and thus introduces herself to the audience.

ESMARELDA
I laugh hysterically like a hyena let out of the zoo. It’s as if I am about to fly apart into my components.

I am a kaleidoscope that spins and bits of colour and sound are reflected everywhere in ever-changing fractal patterns.

It’s as if I am not a whole but a composition of varieties held together aesthetically.

I carry spirits with me. I have many seeing eyes. The eyes are all around my head, some of them are men’s eyes, or women’s, or children’s. I don’t know how they came to be there. I have eyes in the front of my head that have dark brown iris’ and blink. The other eyes never sleep.

Everywhere I go voices whisper. Voices telling me about worlds I know nothing of. Voices telling me what is to become, what has been, what will never be, what has always been.

Was I divinely ordained to the sun, or the moon? Both of which glisten on my ear lobes in lustrous earrings, though I do not know where the jewels came from. Perhaps it is the ocean that is my compatriot spirit. My name is Esmarelda- a Spanish name meaning emerald, but mar means sea, briny, ocean, the blue, the deep, drink.

Was I born out of the ocean foam? Perhaps I was born under an artist’s hand.

I don't have blood or bones. I’m composed of images, translucencies and opacities, pastel pencil lines and oil paint, planes of motion move when I walk. The eyes all about my head watch. I am a vision become real.

Or perhaps I’m not sane. Or perhaps I am very, very sane.

Sometimes I hover above the ground in the forest, alone. I converse with angels.

I bleed like everyone else.

If you cut me, I’d fall away like paper.

Esmarelda leans to pick up a stray seagull feather on the sand. She brushes it over her wrist, holds it like a stylus.

ESMARELDA
Why don’t I have paper, a pencil when words form, already distilled? That I listen to even as I speak them, that appear like the wind of their own volition?

A male angel in silhouette flies towards her, lands beside her on the beach. He wears only a white thong. He is young and muscled, though he has a purity about him.

AARON
I have come from the mountains that are dissolving into sand deserts. Chameleons appear everywhere with their tongues flicking, eating sand bugs. Otherwise the terrain is empty. It is high up, in the place they call the Himalayas. I fly through the future and between peaks are hot deserts of fire.

ESMARELDA
Lie with me, angel. Lie with me here on the sand. Fold your wings around me.

Aaron moves towards Esmarelda, his arms open. They embrace. Their hands glide over each other’s bodies. They lock their bodies together, undulating with passion. There is fierceness in their lovemaking. As they slide to the ground, her legs open around him, and they make love. His wings are held high behind him; her headdress is visible. They are a beautiful, exotic couple.

Distant choral singing and natural organic sounds of ocean, sand and shells accompany their love song on the beach. After orgasm, Esmarelda lies back and speaks.

ESMARELDA
As beautiful as making love to a divine song… such passion on the crest of a wave, you bring me up to it, and then wash me blissfully over. You are my sea-light.

AARON
Angels are like bonobos, my dear! We make love anytime we wish with anyone we wish. It’s an orgasmic heaven!

They laugh. Esmarelda pours sand from her hand onto his thigh.

ESMARELDA
I like it when you fly by. You’re beautiful and fun. But who am I, Aaron? No one else sees you. They think I imagine you, that I am a troubled woman who is consumed by imaginary spirits and voices. When I told Cheri about you, she laughed. She said I was afraid of men, that men were afraid of me, that I made you up.

AARON
Only a few have the special sight to see the angels who protect all creatures who live in time and space and are subject to the whims of fate and to entropy, to decay.

There are many levels of worlds within this one. At one time they thought of it as hierarchies, stacked on top of each other, from the bestial to the angelic.

But we all exist in the same continuum, you and I, and all the other beings. The only true differences between us are that our perceptions are opened to varying degrees.

Your eyes, my beautiful Esmarelda, are more open than most.

ESMARELDA
I have too many eyes! No one else has so many! Yet no one but you and the other angels see the eyes in me which are always looking.

Aaron shakes his head.

AARON
People do sense what appears as a headdress that emits light and colour and seems to be composed of translucent moving images. They feel not watched, but witnessed. While they are fearful for you with your visions, there is also comfort emanating from you and this is why you are left to wander freely. You have a power about you. Everyone feels this.

Esmarelda, interjecting, points to a flock of angels approaching in the sky over the ocean.

ESMARELDA
Shhh… my philosophical angel! Where are the angels flying? There are so many.

Aaron’s massive golden wings open and as he lifts into the air, he caresses and kisses Esmarelda’s hand.

AARON
A gigantic tidal wave has swept over half the earth. There are many dead, many grieving.

The angels of the earth are congregating to help the dead in their mystical journeys, and to help sustain the spirits of the living so they may have the courage to continue.

Esmarelda waves to the airborne angel who turns in his flight towards the flock of angels and joins them as they fly along the beach. They fade into an altocumulus mackerel cloud sky - their wings becoming clouds - which fade out as they disappear. There is a deep sound of angelic music, choral voices in a Philip Glass-type composition of layering of similar sounds until a tonal density is achieved.

Introducing Opera Face Gestures for Controlling Your Browser

Opera Face Gestures for Controlling Your Browser. A droll tech Opera blog entry here. It's gotta be the best April Fool's joke I've found on the World Wide Net today. Or maybe they're seriously developing this technology.

Watch the video, then try the facial gestures out on your own screen, then imagine everyone in Starbucks doing this.

I laughed for a long time. I laughed hysterically like a hyena let out of the zoo.