Cryptic Messages to Self

Cryptic messages to self. Do you do this? It's so easy with a cell phone to send memos back to yourself for later. I sent this message to myself by iPhone at the end of January, so it must mean something. But what? Clearly I was using the app, Dragon Speaking, which sometimes is a bit strange, and didn't correct the writing. Was I meditating? Did I just wake up from a dream?

Who knows. Seems to be instructions of some kind for recording a speaking, perhaps...


Now I know was thinking over in between the molecules recess voice and then become waves and then let it pass through and then let themselves to be become part of the speaking a care in the sound of the passes through the M waves like wave as you like service that glass that means of angels

Untitled(2) by Eduardo Cuadrado

direct link: Untitled(2) by Eduardo Cuadrado

Eduardo, I am moved beyond comprehension by your Untitled (2). Your sculptures? Realist, the realism of poverty. Yes, I know this world. A beaten world; people who are usually ignored in the busy city. The shadows. The shadows who you have given solid form to in metal and other materials appear everywhere, as sculptures. Magnified. They are worthy of focus. They have their stories. People stop and look for a moment. It is strange. They are the poor, lost, downtrodden, forgotten; it is as if they call to their gods in the moments of silent suffering you have represented. They ask the existential questions. Why? Why me? How did this happen? How do I rise from this place of despair? I am in tears. I want to protect all of these beautiful people from the harsh life they have been cast into by circumstance, drug abuse, violence, or a soft incessant falling away of belief in the status quo until there is only raw existence left.

This is a great video. You disabled comments, so I started writing a response here...

Besides the stark, troubling opening shot, a video of an installation on the street with a doorway, the figures are all male. They wear suits or trench coats: perhaps they are white collar workers who have fallen through the cracks in culture. Some of them are installed where they might have worked before getting laid off or fired for whatever reason; or perhaps it was bankruptcy. The men in Cuadrado's film, his sculptures, have intellects, you can see that. They are conscious of their predicament. They are worn down by life. But they have not blown their minds out with drugs or alcohol; they are fully aware of where they are. In their faces of despair, desperation, futility, humiliation, sorry we see a deep grief.

That grief burns in my soul; whether it does in all viewers, all of those who witness these works, I don't know.

Solstice Photos

Two Druids on Salisbury Plain at Stonehenge at Summer Solstice. I love this photo! They are wild; their outfits quite something.

A silly photo from yesterday's re-take of dance footage in High Park - taking a water break. My daughter, unseen, sits in a Director's Chair, reading.

Wishing you a beautiful Summer Solstice

direct YouTube link: "Green Goddess" Masque

Wishing you a lovely day as spring turns into summer! Midsummer Night's Eve, or Summer Solstice is a magical time!

For those of you who might like to read a longer post on the process behind making this video poem: "Green Goddess" Masque.

Terre Verte

Pale green stretch lace, shimmer of embroidery, like Japanese watercolours catching the spring sun through pale green trees.

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A Wedding Stone for Fiona and Kaspa's nuptials today.

Note: Besides 'Green Earth,' Terre Verte is a painter's paint colour.

Treats on Bloor Street

Since I may return to High Park to dance before the camera again, with the track of the video, Tangled Garden, on a speaker - the movement would embody the words of the poems in my own idiosyncratic way, I decided to go to Fabric Land for some notions, patterns, fabric.

On the way, on Bloor Street in Toronto, I passed some young, gorgeously dressed people, men in grey business trousers and white shirts and a woman in a small tight red dress giving out boxes from cartons on the street.

Naturally, I joined the line. The man behind me wore a purple T-shirt and cool mirrored purple sunglasses - I laughed that he looked appropriate for 'Mink Mile.' Never mind, he didn't understand either. Though I asked people in front and behind me, no-one knew what we were lining up for.

It was so Beckett. So Godot. I loved it.

"Perhaps a glass," a woman said.

I had to show my ID (haha) to the gorgeous lady in the tight, short, red dress, and she stamped the top of my hand with red ink.

Then I received a packaged bottle of Stella Artois beer in its own bag, which I'm enjoying now.

In the Hands of the Garden Gods

One of the poems I'll be reciting in the video poem I am still working on, "Tangled Garden." I wrote In the Hands of the Garden Gods when I was 27 years old, and it fits beautifully. I guess I've been working with the themes of a Tangled Garden most of my life. It will be the poem in the middle, after A Floral Opera, and before, Tangled Garden. The video poem is 21 minutes long, and I have been working on it for quite awhile. As many hours, days, go into it I see it emerge slowly, slowly.

You'll have to email me for the password.

Encrypted poem:

In the Hands of the Garden Gods

Still from my video poem, Tangled Garden, which I'm currently working on.
(click on image for larger size)


A draft form of the video is up at YouTube (update Thurs June 16th).


direct link: Garden Gods

This video is not finished. It has no title or credits and is 'Unlisted' at YouTube. The final version will be much higher resolution. I've posted it for critique purposes only.

It is a clip from a long video poem, Tangled Garden, that is 22 minutes. The footage is mostly all like this cut. There are three poems: 'A Floral Opera,' which I recently wrote; 'In the Hands of the Garden Gods,' which I wrote when I was 27; and 'Tangled Garden,' which I wrote in 2006. This clip is the 'Garden Gods' one. It's still quite raw. I am seeking feedback, critique.

From my perspective - the dance in the background needs to be re-done. I need to get my costume and myself back to High Park for another round, perhaps without my daughter. Though can I go and dance alone? I'm hesitating. There are very few people I'd feel comfortable with doing this. If I manage it, it'll be like the one here, only perhaps a little better (I hope).

The voiceover poem was done one night, reading straight from the journal I wrote the poem in so many years ago. It probably needs to be re-done too. I'm not sure about the saturation of the voice and whether it distorts. The reading itself, though, is just about right in emotional tone, so I'm not sure I should do another.

Since this is an 'art' video I am not worrying about catering to any kind of popular taste. Um, I guess I move to my own drumbeat, or something like that.

What I am looking for are responses, and ideas that I may incorporate into the final version.

Thanks.

_
Music, 'First Night (Lilith's Seduction)' from Catherine Corelli's album, 'Seraphic Tears': http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/79547

Another update:

I realized it's better full screen, also 720p. Tonight I walked by the house where I rented a small bachelor's back when I had the dream that became this poem. And as the dream itself comes back, I realize that the way I've done the footage of the Garden God (or goddess) is incredibly close to the dream I had so many years ago. That was a wow moment, on the street corner tonight.