Well. I did make a foray into the high desert wilderness near Sycamore Canyon a couple days ago. Not far, however. Too much virtuality has left me stunned. Too much driving especially, that oh-so-virtual reality where, like with digital media, we are insulated by the silicon dioxide / amorphous silica, that of windows rather than IC chips … I figured once, some years ago, that I have spent about 500 24-hour days in a car, traveling about 50 mph, since I arrived in this in-car-nation, so to speak (ohhh, now there’s a pun for you…). But as it is ingrained in my existence, I must say that I do enjoy cruising across/through the western landscape in a vehicle. The unrolling vistas, the feelings of Power, more “to be grokked”
locust memory
Sitting by the window this morning, still in Stamford, I began watching the leaves falling through the crisp air outside. Nature is all around all the time, and I hardly see it. The impinging of the human desire for order is the most telling sign of our times. In the Christian creation story, humans were given dominion over nature, a kind of stewardship. Where has this gone? To mowed lawns and meticulously controlled gardens, raked yards, trimmed trees. I remember the experience of playing in the woods as a boy. How the wildness of it was compelling somehow. I remember the bramble thickets and how tough their stems and thorns were. I remember once, it was the Year of the 17-year locusts, giant reddish things that had grappling-hook legs and a horrible face mask and flew en masse around everywhere outside — once I found myself standing in the middle of a tall grass field (which is now the yard of a new house), I was locked in a terrified immobility. Each time I tried to move, hundreds of these thing would rise up from the grass and many would land on my skin, clinging, seeking to pull me down to feast on my body in Bacchanalian frenzy. I stood there for what must have been an hour, it seemed eternity. I don’t remember how I escaped, whether I simply ran screaming from the field, arms akimbo and windmilling the beasts away from me, or whether someone came for me. No memory of escape. Strange.
DayLight was going and the umber air Soothing every creature on the earth, Freeing them from their labors everywhere. I alone was girding myself to face The ordeal of my journey and my duty. — Dante
Later I gathered my things (I weighed them in at 56 pounds) and caught a bus to the train to Grand Central and took the subway to City Hall and walked to Stefan and Ellen’s place in Tribeca where I was going to meet Stefan. He was delayed at work, so I ended up cabbing it up to the opening with all my bags where I rather self-consciously, though very appropriately, entered the Sandra Gering Gallery for the opening of the blast5drama event.
no regrets
Sunday morning. Gospel radio playing. On board the yacht No Regrets at Port Annapolis Marina. Beautiful morning. SunLight streaming through the windows, crisp and chilly outside. Dreams last night were restless, falling through scenes of destruction, loss, movement, restoration and contact. As is usual for me at these critical points of movement, heading for NYC tomorrow, unsure of the future, a pillow for me head. Speaking with Greg last night at a noisy restaurant in Annapolis. I hadn’t seen him in many years. We spoke of the Apocalypse and the theology of living and the mysteries of the progression of being. Surrounded by noisy midshipmen from the Naval Academy celebrating a football victory that afternoon.
refined being
Flying in yesterday to this place from NYC. Been back in the USSA (as the Beatles would say) for a week now, longer. Too much movement to make any reflections or thoughts here … And dial-up access is expensive too. Spanish moss hanging from the trees, a palm in the back yard. I am in the South. It has been 15 years since I’ve been down this way in the US. It is different. I am in a different place. Last week, Helsinki, then NYC, and now here. I feel that I should be mining these cultural juxtapositions — to derive a special knowing from the differences and similarities. But I hardly have the time. I suppose simply showing a sequence of images — as I photograph all the time (well, only totaling 20-30 rolls of Tri-X 135-36 in a year) — is the only way… Savannah. I make a small foray out to meet Alyssa at an opening — paintings by the Vice-Chancellor of the College of Art and Design where she is teaching in the Fine Metals department. I walked down largely empty streets in the approaching twiLight. People take the form of small phantoms seen down leafy sidewalk tunnels. TwiLight and dawn are critical times to discover the true face of a city. Transition times. more “refined being”
time and space
Spending the day preparing psychically for the first of two performances in the next week. Tonight will be at the Time and Space (tila aika) Department of the National Academy of Fine Art here in Helsinki. I am unsure of the content, and how that content will develop and manifest itself from my memory. Formally, the performance is rather similar to what I did in Köln last May, but there is the change of fluid memory, and I am also adding images which may either corrupt the spoken word or be a positive contribution to the piece. My rough mental references are documented on the Blast website as part of the blast 5 drama project.
The title of the performance is Solstice to Solstice: a naming. It exist as a cycle, a continuation, a movement in Time and Space, so it will be perfectly appropriate to the location. The moon is full tonight, I think. Life is too short to be apprehensive, so I enjoy the anticipation of it all. Moments ticking by. Approaching the moment when I walk out the door. That is the critical moment, the initial going, overcoming of the static inertia, the friction of immobility. And the going is an endless thing. It can be on a continuous journey that moves the body across the various incarnations of the physical world, that is what any leaving of home is. Each and every movement from the home is a journey, and one becomes a traveler once outside the door. The door that guards the hearth from danger and the excessive wildness of the world. I have had many homes in the last months. Safe havens. With friends new and old. But none of them are mine. Does one need a home? Is not this existence a wandering in many forms? Can the sense of home take other forms than the floor-walls-ceiling-and-door?
At the door of the house, who will come knocking?
An open door, we enter
A closed door, a den
The pulse of the world beats beyond my door.
— Pierre Birot
And on the theme of networking, Tapio asked me to write a brief article for ValoKUVA, the Finnish Photography magazine. I titled it Manifestations of Networking — it explores some personal roots in my usage of the internet. It will appear in Finnish, so I wanted to post it here in the original.
beetles
Time moves so quickly I can only manage small realizations. Like, last evening I was walking home (to a new home — house/cat-sitting for Tapio and Suzanna for the week they are in London) and while watching a Volkswagen Beetle drive past and seeing a few of them parked on the street, I caught myself wondering why I was thinking it would be fun to own one again. The first and only one I ever owned sits in a junkyard outside of Amarillo, Texas — or, well, maybe it has been completely recycled. I rolled it 4-1/4 times in the middle of the night on Interstate 40 just west of Amarillo about 18 years ago … I survived but the car didn’t. It had all four wheels ripped off, the engine and transaxle were split, all the windows broken. Long story. But anyway. Nostalgia for the days I rebuilt the whole vehicle from the ground up, and destroyed it in about ten seconds.
eliminate chaos
Well, after hacking for 28 hours in 36, I am beat now … I was surviving on Rilke on the long (and delayed) flight over from NYC to Helsinki. And I was happy to recall this one favorite from the magnificent collection translated by Stephen Mitchell…
We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. — Rainer Maria Rilke
So it goes, I always say. Marvelous translation, and incredible, the crescendo it reaches, the roiling descriptive power, the shifting focus and awareness. I know this torso. I photographed it in a museum in Kässel some years back, and it figured in the Apocalyptic Dream work as one of the centerpiece icons. Then I stumble on this translation just a few years ago. Shaking. I am staying in one of the oldest reconstructed buildings on Suomenlinna, the old fortress island. It was a quarters for Russian or Swedish officers — which or both I don’t know as I haven’t really examined the history of the place. The entire island is on the short list of World Heritage Sites, and, indeed, it is an incredible place, I’ve seen nothing like it in all my imperial travels … The walls of the building I am in are over a meter thick, and it has huge windows that overlook part of the bastion and the dry dock that is full of old wooden boats. Other windows look out onto the courtyard where there is a monument to one of the Swedish monarchs. There are massive ceramic tile furnaces in each room, standing 12 feet high with gleaming white columns to each side. I have been struggling intensively to make a comeback from the recent removal of my main website from the server I was using in Iceland. I have no idea what happened, but whatever the case, I have to reconstruct my site as best I can very soon … I am getting more and more attention for the breadth and personal outlook of the site, but … Now the whole thing is gone except for this travelog work and some fragments. I only have access to three free Megabytes on this server, so I can’t reconstruct everything on it anyway. I wish I had one cheap/free server somewhere with ten or twenty megs on it … Wait a minute, I am having a deja vu at the moment. Sitting here at 01:22 in the morning, on the island, after two hard days work. Typing these very words. I had a dream about this. Somewhere, sometime ago. The feeling of trying to do things but not being able to eliminate the CHAOS from life. And almost wanting to succumb to it. Well, it isn’t really chaos, it is just the conditions of living itself, nothing that can or should be eliminated from living, for it is life itself. I cannot allow the failure of these machines, of my techniques deter me from a full enjoyment and engagement in life.
Life is what’s happening when you’re busy making other plans … — John Lennon
Funny, poignant? and True! He speaks and sings true things often, in spirit.
5 stars
Gerardo Yepiz writes:
La frase magica de hoy es: “Everything is true as long as you believe it…”
migraine headache for much of the day. This is not explained completely by a glass of wine late in the evening last night. Nor a lack of sleep. Nor the late drive to the airport and back. I haven’t had an eye examine in seven years, and I have a suspicion that this might be part of the problem, along with damaged lenses caused when Loki knocked my glasses onto the tile floor of the locker room at the pool in Dalvík.
… Was that today I kissed you goodbye and sped away in a yellow cab? It rained all day today in New York. the cathartic yet intensely melancholic type of rain that comes. Was it yesterday the Polaroid snapshots in my hand were taken?. … — Vincent Katz
Alyssa and I have breakfast at the famous Five Star Diner on Rt. 202. A favorite place of mine especially after I have been imbibing all sorts of travel-food and foreign breakfasts. I order a stack of blueberry pancakes, but can hardly enjoy them for my pounding head and watering eyes. I go home — well, where exactly IS home anymore? Where my hat is hung? Where my bags spring open, revealing a portable computer, important papers, video tape and slides (for lecturing), a portable tape deck, tapes, CD’s, camera, film — enough techno crap to … If I was only carrying my notebook and clothes, I would be a Lighter Man. Anyway, the issue of home base is all the more intense these days when I find I can’t really get anything done. I need a place, a base.
back in NYC
Well, sitting here in Stefan and Ellen’s apartment in Tribeca, at the southern tip of the island they call Manhattan, under the shadow of the World Trade Center. The noises of the City rising from the streets below. Two nights here already. Far away from Iceland at least in the physical environment. I wake up this morning with a hard dream, the theme which revolves around Them (the other characters in the dream, either former friends or enemies, and some family) removing my access to Loki for reasons that I am an unfit father … There is an atmosphere of oppression and Them vs me in the whole dream. At the beginning it seemed that I was able to work around Their wishes, and retain some independence, but things deteriorated until no one would speak to me at all and then there was aggressive action to simply remove me from the place … This dream leaves my morning with a rather heavy atmosphere. But I will be meeting with Adrianne for breakfast in SoHo soon, and will continue to forge ahead. No money in the bank. Yesterday, Cleo, a friend of Ellen’s from Washington and I went up to MOMA to see an exhibition of photographs from the New York Times archive as well as a rather interesting show entitled “Thinking Print”, of works on paper, book-works, multiples and so on, from the collection. Also went over to meet briefly with Amy, Randy’s wife, to say hi. Cleo went to go to Balducci’s to buy dinner fixin’s for Stefan and Ellen, and later we had dinner on the roof. A colleague of Stefan’s, Paul, was over for beer on the roof.
He was telling me about his anarchist web site and his accession from a degree in Art History/Baroque Sculpture to web-mastering things for Republic Bank.
solstice
Loki is up early because he is sleeping on the bed in the kitchen and there are only Light curtains on the windows. I have something of a rare hangover (timburmann, I think, in Icelandic, for wood-head). Shortly after breakfast we head down to the swimming pool with Rebecca Rún, Loki’s island playmate who lives next door. The pool doesn’t open until an hour later because the electricity is off somewhere. Friends Hoffí and Kristín arrive on the 1330 ferry, so MB goes to meet them. I stay swimming with the kids. Late in the evening, around midnight, after a big dinner of leg-of-lamb I head to the north end of the island on a too-small borrowed mountain bike that I know will give me sore thighs tomorrow. There is a dirt road all the way to the Light house that stands on the highest point of the island about two-thirds of the way north.
The north half of the island is private property, but MB called earlier in the day and got permission for me to ride to the end.
In general, visitors are discouraged, mainly to protect the vast number of breeding birds. The island has the largest single breeding population of arctic terns in Europe. These are incredibly fascinating and beautiful birds. I’m not an ornithologist or avian freak, but I can watch the terns for hours. It is unbelievable that they fly all the way from South African and Antarctic waters or so, each spring — although, watching them, you understand immediately that they represent a rare peak of efficiency and grace-in-motion. The entire ride I am accompanied by terns and other birds who swirl up from the heather and grass to run relay with me for one reason or another, all making their own characteristic sounds. I was wishing I had brought fresh batteries for my tape deck … The sounds are varied and mostly piercing, and in the case of the tern, they can actually presage a physical attack from the birds, whose sharply tapered beaks are potent weapons. Other birds on the island are Oystercatchers, Whimbrels, Curlews, Snipes (yes there is such a thing!), Woodcocks, Ptarmigans, Godwits, and Skuas. Birds comprise the vast majority of living things in Iceland, I both ignore them and concentrate on them. Although I don’t startle any Eiders, there are plenty of them on the island as well — usually seen segregated in the coastal waters — the brown females with a passel of chicks, and the black and white males swimming in a group. I recall once, out hiking on the east side of the island, I saw one of the score or so known White-Tailed eagles in the country doing some serious aerial acrobatics as it was being attacked by a group of terns.
I was last at the north end of the island four years ago, in the very spot with Nick, Chris, Debra, Chris, Stefan, and MB, who was, at that time, almost eight months pregnant with Loki.
On that night it was rather clear, or at least we got to see the sun make its transit, grazing the surface of the ocean direct to the north of us. Tonight, there is a gray pall hanging over the ocean, actually touching it just a few kilometers off shore, so the sun is not seen, except indirectly in the constant shifting of the Light omnipresent. I stay at the end of the island for a couple hours, enjoying the solitude, knowing this will be as far as I get to isolation in the coming months. The Solstice has taken on special psychic meaning for me since I moved to Iceland, and the Summer Solstice is actually a heavy time in that it is the moment when the days begin to contract until they vanish into the blue-blackness of the Arctic winter which is a complete immersion. Total immersion in a substance that is anti-Light, a Light that pulls one deeply into the earth from the other hemisphere, the one that is facing the Light … Somehow, although the landscape here is apparently vast and constantly receding from the eye, there is another aspect to it, that of closeness. When the wind dies down, and often wind still is characteristic of the midsummer sunsets, the surrounding space contracts until it appears as a room, a geometrically bounded space converging on the eye. It is knowable in a Cartesian way, within the span of the body. This is exactly what happens where I am restlessly pacing. The edge of the cliff 200 feet down to the ocean appears as clear as the corner of a room. The grassy hummock behind me is etched with a clarity that makes it sensually two dimensional. The sky is just … there. Waterfalls, where streams fall down the cliffs that line the outer few kilometers of the fjord, can be heard clearly though they are at least 6 kilometers away. They are … there. Distance is relative or just doesn’t seem to factor in perception.
splendid day
Except for a walk around the town in the morning, everyone hung around the summer house the whole long day which drifted into evening and very slowly into the blue twiLight of the Arctic summer. There was grass to rake, logs to stack, trees to cut down and such activities. Anything was a pleasant undertaking as the temperature were well into the 20sC (70sF). Absolutely splendid. Helena, with some assistance from Timo (on the grill), prepared a delicious lunch which was a festive family occasion, Erkki making a variety of toasts and, after dinner, he played the accordion and sang with Timo. In the early evening we set a net out in the bay. Floating in the row boat on a placid and shimmering evening ocean, Jim, Kaisu, and I talked about the materialization of the object. We made a huge bonfire on the beach in the late evening, burning tree-fall and stuff from the yard. I make a short video of Kaisu while we drink champagne. It was somebody’s birthday. I can’t remember whose.
![portrait, [?] and [?] with Erkki at the summerhouse, Kristiinankaupunki, Finland, May 1996](https://neoscenes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/1996/05/1000/19960511-06-32p.jpg "portrait, [?] and [?] with Erkki at the summerhouse, Kristiinankaupunki, Finland, May 1996")
Jim’s dinner
This day is spent writing, from early morning into early evening. I never even venture outside, content instead to look out the kitchen windows and experience outside that way, from the warmth. Plenty of email correspondance to take care of (at the Digital Chaos event in Bath I will do a dinner performance, among a few tens of other things to deal with). Anna comes over for dinner — I had wanted to give her some contact addresses in the US and talk a little more about her trip — we plan to meet in NYC the first week of July. Yet again Jim prepares a superb dinner — lamb, salad, potatoes, a nice Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon, coffee, and Belgian chocolate. I indulge myself and show the three of them parts of this web site, which, I nervously note, is expanding daily. I wonder when I will get in trouble with the ismennt sysop or server controller? Anyway. I continue.
I think when one is too involved in making strict rules about what is right and what is wrong, or this is art and this is not: when a wall gets set up, one is cutting out a lot of interesting experiences, maybe some important parts of ones self. Then if you realize that this or that prohibition doesn’t have to exist, you suddenly discover another dimension to your life. In a way this relates to how we must learn to live together in the world. — Geoffrey Hendricks
stupid thought
Kaisu made an appointment for me to use an Internet terminal at the Pori municipal library for an hour in the afternoon where I was at least able to check email. The situation with PC vs MAC is causing me some trouble — there are so very few public venues that are using Macs. I would like to be able to easily use Eudora between the two platforms — just to keep my mail in some kind of order. No such luck. I look out the kitchen window here, the sun is finally shining, although the air is still very brisk. The neighbor’s two black Labradors are wrestling in the back yard. Kaisu is off teaching photography at a local night school, and Jim is at her studio drawing. I write. Talked to Visa on the phone, but don’t get in contact with Tapio or Anders first off. (and fight the fear for the future) … I do finally talk to Tapio, and we will meet next week when I get to Helsinki. He’s been busy working on a series of essays and a dissertation, and so, hasn’t been around MUU Media at all lately, and is off until August.
is everybody in the same boat?
at what time does wisdom cry out in the streets?
are smiles sexy? — Robert Filliou, from Ample Food for Stupid Thought
darkness
Thankfully, this morning, Martin decided to drive me all the way to the Silja terminal, about 30 minutes away from Järfälla in Stockholm proper. It was raining heavily, and that would have been an added hassle to make the two train connections and a 500 meter walk to the terminal. At this moment, I am on the Silja Lines MS EUROPA, heading east across the Baltic which can barely be seen out the windows in a brilliant dense fog. I am happy that the boat has a few electric plugs available for me to use with this machine, as my battery only lasts about twenty minutes these days. (Somewhere in the background the World Cup in hockey, between the Czech Republic and Canada is playing itself into a frenzy). Strange energy running on the ship. Finns all around, of course, along with a real variety of folks. A tribe of freaks from the UK with dreads a meter long and jack boots taped together. Not a band, just a tribe heading god knows where. In the huge cocktail bar trimmed in granite, with laser Lights and all, a Finnish honky-tonk/tango band just started up, people are dancing! It’s early in the afternoon. The ship is moving through dense fog, and I have a bit of a feeling that I am in a TwiLight Zone. Downstairs is a shopping mall and, among other consumptive enticements, a MickieDees at which, to be truthful, I will probably have a Big Mac at later. The tango dancing is getting more frenzied, lemme outta here! The traveler, in this age, at least when moving by the techno means of the day, often must surrender him/herself completely to technology. Boarding a boat, a plane, a train, bus, u-bahn, subway, tram, and so on, at that moment, biological life is given over to an Other that is usually faceless and who, him/herself, navigates the space-time of movement in a way that is more or less mediated by technology. What of traveling with the old ways. Walking? I did have that walk from the Barkaby train station back to Martin and Selma’s place two nights ago, as the last train arrives after the last bus. Seven kilometers or so. Puts the reality of sore feet into the technological equation. (fog horn blows). After arriving at the port of Turku I make a quick transfer to the train to Tampere. The train ride puts me into a state of floating awareness. Perhaps this is because when on a train, either one sits so that all things are falling away or so that all things converge. Or, floating because I was on a boat for ten hours. Whatever, I suddenly was aware that I had re-entered the Arctic Realm again. Not sure where/when the dividing line was passed over, but it had been crossed. Perhaps it was the visual experience of watching the twiLight come to the land. I write:
Darkness is blooming from deep under the earth. There is not yet much of it to be seen, but it is there. Driven deep by the reversal of energies that comes each year. It starts at the base of the biggest fir trees, waiting for the right moment when no one, no thing is watching. Creeping upward at the instant one turns away from meditating on the possibility that it may get dark — at some distant future moment which might be an eternity or no time at all. There are times when any thought of darkness becomes impossible. Absolutely beyond the sensual capacity of a human be-ing (and only other things are left to know what will eventually happen, not humans). But, now, darkness is entering the houses, slipping up the trunks of the trees, and spreading through the loam of needles that receives in silence below the green canopy darkening above.
Changing trains:
Tampere
Darkness has consumed the railroad tracks, but the sky has not lost its Light. The Darkness will eventually consume, devour all things touching the earth — phone poles, even the high-strung wires will be turned to total blackness. But the sky will not succumb. Here in this Place. (I feel that I am in a place, a place new to me. A foreign place. A strange place. But a comfortable place.) I am a traveler. I travel. The artificial Lights outside the train window are being sucked into the Darkness. Man produces Light, or, perhaps, only concentrates it in one place or another. But the Darkness consumes it. (Still the sky is Light).
Vammala
My eyes are so tired that I cannot see what I write when the train is moving. My eyes start to jitter and shake. But now we slow to the station at Karkku. In this place, Darkness has almost won. The trunk Light of a car Lights hands and torsos loading luggage, but then all Light is consumed. The sky is now at risk. At 10:45 in the evening, five degrees south of the Arctic Circle.
Harjavalta
Perhaps the conductor of the train and I are the only ones in existence now, except the others who wait. The conductors wife, she waits. Perhaps watching teevee. Programs played by people who no longer exist or maybe never existed. She watches and waits. His children are already asleep, they have entered the Darkness of Night.
Pori, finally, Kaisu there at the station. Kauniita unia (Sweet dreams…)!
spectacle/multiples
Today, a long day. I planned to meet Björn by the aquarium in front of the ticket bureau of the Stockholm Central rail station at 12:15. I got into town rather early and decided to catch some of the scheduled festivities around the Kings birthday, at the palace in the Gamla Stan (Old Town). So I rushed down and was able to make a rather good audio recording of the 21-gun salute and the fighter-jet flyover, as well as the Royal Army Band playing some marches at noon. I then ran back to the Central Station and met Björn a few minutes late. Our first stop was Galerie Nordenhake, one of the more prominent galleries in Stockholm where we met Bettina Pehrsson and the gallery owner, Claes Nordenhake. We then stopped at another gallery, trE, after checking out the situation with the 400-meter-long smorgasbord on Kungsgatan — which wasn’t to begin until 15:00, exactly the same time as the King was scheduled to make another appearance at the palace. We opted to head for the palace after I bolted down a huge salad bar lunch at a tacky French restaurant while Björn had coffee. (I did eat too much today!) Well, not much to be said for the continued spectacle for the King’s birthday. He made another appearance, first on the balcony of the palace, then on the veranda with his wife and kids. One wonders about the aristocracies/monarchies of Europe, their function (if indeed they still have one other than something of a clowning sedative for the over-stimulated masses as they approach the brink of the Millineum). Enough said. I did get a few more audio captures
that are sure to come in useful in later days of digital production… Bettina did tell me exactly where the Art Node offices are on Skeppsholmen, so after saying goodbye to Björn, I walked over just to see where they are for future reference (of course, nobody was around…). I then headed back to the ‘burbs. I got back to the house around 18:00 and helped get a barbecue started — the special day of celebration features big bonfires all around the country in the evening, fireworks, and family activities. We took the Winnebago over to the nearest bonfire where we met Cristel (and I did a portrait of her and four of her friends). We had coffee and cookies in the Winnebago. The USA vs Sweden hockey match was won by the US, and Canada beat Finland, so Scandinavia is out of the competition, much to Martin’s dismay. Strange to be mixing spectacles like this, first witnessing (rather than watching) the King’s party (well, part of it, at least, including a 21-gun salute, two big warships moored in front of the palace, multi-jet fly-over, hipp-hipp-hoorah three times, yellow flowers decking the palace railings, a men’s choir, a women’s choir, and a children’s choir, and loyal subjects singing to the 50-year-old benign monarch), and then seeing the hockey match, then seeing footage of the King and Queen in a receiving line shaking hands and kissing people ad infinitum, and then going to the bonfire, and then back to the teevee watching first a bad English police series (extremely violent and graphic), then a bad American police series. Pretty numbing, the combination of activities. The today of one of the most “civilized” countries of the world …
On a totally different note (production of spectacle rather than consumption. I just had work (the book of 1000 Buddhas, as a video installation) accepted for a show in Uppsala at Ekeby Qvarn. I called Luciano Escanillo, the organizer, just to check in and see if I should go to Uppsala, he thought it would be a good idea, but do I have the time? Maybe Saturday, but I will be going to Pori via Tampere and Turku on the Silja Line boat early on Sunday morning to see Kaisu Koivisto, so, I don’t think I’ll have time… Tomorrow the Swedish Stock Exchange will allow trading via the Web. Wonder how that will go? Seems to be a bit risky.
night strangeness
I leave from the Wien Westbahnhof early, around eight, hoping that the train will be on time for the change in Nurnberg. It isn’t. I miss my connection to Hamburg by fifteen minutes, and in a vain attempt, go on to Wurzburg to see if it will catch up. No chance. So, what to do. I decide to hang in Würzburg until early evening and take the ICE train to Hamburg, arriving at 2300, then wait for the first early morning train to Copenhagen at 0235. I decide this based in the reputation Hamburg has as a night city with lots of strange characters wandering around. Nothing like the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof in the middle of the night. More pleasant and safe than the Port Authority Terminal in NYC, but … So, the afternoon in quiet Würzburg is spent drinking cappuccino, writing, and wandering around the town. Hamburg, on the other hand, was all action, which I tried to avoid. I arrived too late on the 280 kph ICE train to buy more water and had to repeatedly ask the guy at the McDonalds for ice in a cup to refill my water supply for the night before they closed at 0100. By that time I was sick and tired of sitting and writing and so sat on the platform and waited for a train which was coming from Paris; one that ended up being 90 minutes late. Nothing like the suspended state of being one enters after midnight waiting for a train in a foreign land. And the scenes that play themselves out before tired mind and eye. Two Spanish immigrants get into a fight on the next platform. Undercover cops, who I had seen previously and wondered who the hell they were, dressed so silly, appeared in seconds to intercede. When the train finally arrived, it was crowded and there were no first class compartments at all, so I ended up in a 2nd class smoking cabin with a couple kids who were heading for Lübeck. I was able to open the windows and stretch out alone after Lübeck, only to be awakened by the Police doing passport checks (who says there are open borders?) before the train got on the boat to Denmark. I guess I got two hours sleep all told. So much for easy travel and the Deutsch Bahn (German State Railroad) reputation for timeliness. Although, to be fair, the trains originated in other countries — and it makes me wonder how the EU (European Union) can survive.
RGB
I telephoned Julia at Artpool, and it looks like they won’t be around on Friday, so I decide not to spend the extra cash to go to Budapest. I’ve been overly worried about money, although I make sure I eat enough food, but the absurdity of the situation makes me cringe at every shilling/03k/pound/penny/kronur that goes out. Especially when none are coming in. Today I go early to the terminals at the University of Technology library to do some research on the Web. And the day washes over me in a series of visual impressions. From Heironymous Bosch (at the Gemäldegalerie), to works by Asger Jorn (both at the Akademie der bildenden Künste) to various Web sites (essay by Joseph Squier, new entries by Robbin Murphy at artnetweb, uh, drinking coffee and writing this mind-state-wave into the afternoon. Sun, brilliant and warm, finally, spring. No doubt. For what it is worth, I noticed how the work of Bosch was painted from three pigments that corresponded to the Red-Green-Blue (RGB) channels of a color television tube. Hmmm. The students at the Kunst Akademie were marching last night, and the strike involving teachers in some areas of higher education is approaching a critical point. It is unclear to me what exactly the issues are, but they relate to economics and layoffs and lowering of student loan subsidies. I break for a moment to record the birds out the window, they sing at the twiLight at both ends of the Day. Tomorrow I will make an audio snapshot of Vienna. Walking and listening. Today I made some images, but seemingly in a more retrospective mood from times in the past when I would wander aimlessly around whatever city I happened to be in. I was thinking of the two most powerful energy sources for me, sources that input direct into my life-energy, sources of regeneration. Light and Silence. How to source and reference both in work?
still gray
Still gray, but dry so far this morning. I try calling a number of contacts, but no one seems to be at home or work, so I sit back and write and read (Living Without Boundaries, a treatise on challenging conventional art form constraints within education written by Simon Waters, a teacher and composer in Bath, England. Mathias worked with him in Norwich, England a couple years ago.) At present Mathias is heavily involved in the planning of a major exhibition at the Kunsthalle on the theme of the Fantastic Machine — Wunschmaschine Welterfindung — (well, sort of fantastic…).
We are all condemned to silence — unless we create our own relation with the world and try to tie other people into the meaning we thus create. — Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music
heavy weather
At Mathias’ old student/artists flat south of central Vienna on a gloomy, rainy, snowy, sleeting gray day. I take some time getting settled, and aside from a short trip to the Westbahnhof for some food, I stay here, writing, and feeling heavy with the weather, and wondering what the hell I am doing here. It is hard to maintain concentration on anything when there is nothing sure, here on the edge of movement. Not that I have it rougher or anything. More so, I have it not so bad. Just unsure of future.
Es ist genug
Made it to Aachen in about 5 hours from London, not counting an hour layover in Brussels and the time change from the UK to the continent. The ride on the Eurostar was impressive though a bit disorienting when the train peaked speed in the French countryside at 300 kilometers-per-hour. I felt a bit queer and got worse when looking out the window. Other than that, though, it was quite the techno-experience. The tunnel was invisible in the darkness and mirrored windows except for the occasional small green light that flashed past. The terminals at either end were basically nice airport lounges with plenty of stainless-steel, white, and techno-gray accouterments. Staying with Günter and Christina (and their newest addition, Mary Manon, a sweet bonnie bairn, just born on January 4),
friends from Avantière days in the late 80’s, early 90’s, right when I was moving to Iceland. Avantière was an artist group loosely organized by the Aachener artist,
Hans Werner Berretz who I first met when visiting Maastricht with Stefan back in 1988. Manon is named after the daughter of Alma Mahler, the former wife of the composer Gustave Mahler, who was married at the time to the architect Walter Gropius. Sadly, Manon died at age 18. The composer Alban Berg was so taken by the tragic passing, he wrote a violin concerto in her memory, dedicated to the memory of an angel. He died shortly after finishing the composition.
In the spring of 1935, however, he interrupted that project to write his Violin Concerto that had been commissioned some months earlier by the Russo-American violinist Louis Krasner but was directly inspired by the tragic, sudden death, in April, of Manon Gropius, the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and her second husband, the famous architect Walter Gropius. Berg usually composed slowly, but in this case he worked quickly to create a memorial for the dead girl (the concerto is dedicated “to the memory of an angel”)—the complex masterpiece was fully sketched out by July and completed on 11 August. It is one of the greatest of all violin concertos and one of the most moving of all 20th-century compositions. Its four movements are paired into two larger parts. According to the composer and scholar George Perle, the first part “was conceived as a musical ‘portrait’ of [Manon Gropius], the second as a representation of catastrophe and, finally, submission to death, and transfiguration”. The vivacious second movement makes use of an Austrian folksong; the third contains the shattering climax that represents the girl’s death; and the fourth, based on Bach’s harmonization of the chorale Es ist genug (It is enough), is a prayer for deliverance from earthly suffering. By scoring the chorale for woodwind, Berg creates an organ-like effect. There are two variations on the chorale melody and brief, touching reminiscences of the folksong and the chorale, and then the Concerto ends quietly, like a soul finding rest. — Harvey Sachs
strolling
after making the week’s bread, Jim takes me out for a stroll through the local countryside, the manor house, the sheep, the abandoned tower.
sleeping with fame
Spent most of the day out in Oxford first to meet with the Master of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Stephen Farthing, and after a visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum, we had a few rounds with Brian Catling and Kate Davis. I was meeting with Stephen to find out more about an interesting position opening at Ruskin — as part-time Tutor of Fine Art with a specialization in IT (Information Technology) and Electronic Media. As I am under-employed except for occasional visiting artist gigs, I have some responsibility to job-hunt where-ever I go, right? Brian is a well-known writer (see March 26 entry with a short quote from a book of writings of his…), performance artist, teacher, and Head of the Sculpture at Ruskin. Kate is a Tutor in the Sculpture Department. We had an enjoyable tête-a-tête for a few hours before Joanna decided we had better get on the road heading north for her parents place. Good thing, as traffic was already getting to its usual crawl-state on the M1 — the rats of London streaming outwards for the week end. The car decided to begin coming apart, something we had to deal with immediately. At that very moment it begins to sleet, making the subsequent traffic even more dense. (We never did get to the Pitt-Rivers Museum — it was closed. But we did make plans to get together with Kate and Brian again on my way back through the UK in late May.) After a long drive we finally arrived in the town of Disley, Stockport, in northern England near Manchester now, where Joanna’s parent’s (Jim and Margaret) live. That evening, while I stayed home hacking, everyone went out to see Geraldine McEwan in her renowned performance as “Jane Austin”. It turns out Geraldine had earlier in the day napped in the same bed I slept in, and the sheets hadn’t even been changed! How’s that for a brush with British FAME? And I can’t tell you the DREAMS that I had that night.
Anyway, looks like I won’t be uploading this until the First of April at the earliest. So I stop for now, with burnt bread pudding on the sideboard and Albinoni playing in the next room.
Official histories, news stories surround us daily, but the events of art reach us too late, travel languorously like messages in a bottle. Only the best art can order the chaotic tumble of events. Only the best can realign chaos to suggest both the chaos and order it will become. — Michael Ondaatje
art@Dialogue
I gave a public lecture similar to the one I gave at Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts last month entitled art@Dialogue and other Realities where I explored the various aspects of dialogue in the process of art and life. I have come to understand, or at least, to justify my extensive travel as an “art” process in itself.
When God gave the first humans consciousness, he whispered advice under his celestial breath as they shivered their way out of Eden; ‘obscure theyselves’. Every tribe or half-simian with the ingenuity has since learnt to brew or distill fluids and vapors to occasionally relieve themselves of the intolerable jabber of thought; to numb their magnificent senses just enough to sensually smudge judgment and nerve.
A good bar is sanctum to this need. — Brian Catling
Bar-hopping here seems to be a regular daily pastime, although I suppose one never sees the stay-at-homes, those who don’t imbibe. The norm for those who do is to stop by the local pub for a few pints of the local bitter or stout in the evening after the workday is done. It involves a lot of standing up, and with my great weakness for Guinness Stout, it is dangerously enjoyable! I have become a bit famous for my drinking habits — markedly, when I order one water after the other, with an occasional Guinness mixed it. For me it is a serious question of remaining properly hydrated — between the ubiquitous tea (a diuretic) and the alcohol, I insist on consuming at least as much water as beer or whatever… And having a glass or two of water well in advance of the morning tea.
Dinner with David, Sarah, Michael, George
official launch of neoscenes travelog @ a facist manor
Here in the countryside village of Tilmanstone, Kent, in a Manor House once owned by a family who were Fascist organizers in the UK. I’m staying with David and Francis. Francis picked me up yesterday at Heathrow on my arrival from Iceland on an early morning flight. I was in Iceland for three days only, having flown there from New York on the 13th mainly to visit with Loki.
Everybody slept in until noon, something I haven’t done since I can remember! Usually up at 7:30 am. I was exhausted from jet-lag and a late night dinner with friends in Reykjavík and just the accumulated stress of travel. David had also just returned from New York City — on tour with a group of his students at the Winchester School of Art — we had already met at my friends Stefan and Ellen’s flat in Tribeca last week — but that’s another story…
Today we went to Deal, a village on the coast near Dover, for sandwiches at a caf.
There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.
“Make ’em dry” is the instruction buried somewhere in the collective national consciousness, “make ’em rubbery. If you have to keep the buggers fresh, do it by washing ’em once a week.”
It is by eating sandwiches in pubs at Saturday lunchtime that the British seek to atone for whatever their national sins have been. They’re not altogether clear what those sins are, and don’t want to know either. Sins are not the sort of things one wants to know about. But whatever sins there are are amply atoned for by the sandwiches they make themselves eat. — Douglas Adams
Then on to Canterbury for a stroll around the exterior grounds of the famous cathedral. We also visited with Lizzie and Jeffrey and their son Thomas not far from the cathedral. Jeffrey is a long-time member of the Brit-Rock group Caravan, is a member of Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and is currently touring with the French pop legend Renaud. Thomas is nine and is into hypnotism and Pharaohs and he showed me a family album of photos of his grandfather who brought the first Model T Fords to Chile in the early parts of the 20th Century…
waltzing thru NYC
fragments
simplistic sketches within the deep darkness of the Icelandic winter; evidence of some hand-wringing angst; and then watching a blustering and dour day of brief blue December twiLight go by all too rapidly.
Letter to Dan (RIP)
Well. Dan
“Lethargy is simply frozen violence”
What else? I sit in the middle of the Arctic Night (The middle always remains the same, no matter how long the night is). Waiting for sleep to fill my head, looking at a CRT screen. Eyes are getting crippled by the stress of focusing. Goodnight.
The next day late morning. All is gray. When I develop film here I notice the lack of contrast, especially after Colorado. The Light is different. I have taken to capitalizing the first letter of Light, and I have also quit using the Lord’s name in vain you know? Two changes from my previous life. You can look forward to wonderful things like this happening when you finish graduate school.
The work you sent arrived a bit worse for wear, and surely to the perplexity of the customs/postal people. They keep a close monitor on my post here, almost all packages are checked… A bit disturbing, but also amusing…
more “Letter to Dan (RIP)”