group portrait, dancers
it may carry no name
That we are dancing around the perimeter of a Void is an allusive image invoked simply by being alive and considering—even incidentally—the fundamental questions of be-ing. The Void itself forms not a black hole but rather a shimmering, blinding nothingness whose edge is as well defined as our own sense of that be-ing. It is and it is not, and it takes no name.
All the while, all are dancing around it, pointing at it, exclaiming in adoration or apprehension, naming it in the varied languages of their own realities. Those names are Legion, at least one for every individual, though there is a deep suspicion among most that the naming can never be complete, can never adequately address the limitless impact that this no-thing imposes on our brief living. The act of naming is a salve to the implicit terror of falling in, as we watch others do just that. It takes no name.
The primary questions? How close might you get without falling in? What dances are appropriate? How settled does one feel with one’s personally-crafted name applied to it: the Void? Is it a name that is shared with others; a comfortable, comforting name that others recognize when one calls it out in the extremities of Life? Or is it a profane deviation, garbled, confused to those Others, at once looking on, then turning their backs to that demonstrated ignorance. It takes no name.
It would seem that some spend their entire—and perhaps brief—lifetimes on the brink, shaking in ecstatic union, breath resonant with the shimmering, balance is all, retreat sometimes necessary, unless capitulation and fall is part of the act. It certainly is the closing one. It takes no name.
The very inability to articulate a name drives some to accept what others invoke. This seems to keep it far away, a glow on one horizon, inserting presence on rare occasions, until it fills to an infinite half-space, and zenith shrinks to an event horizon of solitude, silence, and no-thing. It takes no name, and is gone.
dance party
André Gingras 1966 – 2013
I wanted to put something up regarding André’s passing. I didn’t know him well, but did catch one of his dance works that Sher took me to in Amsterdam back in 2007, and then the next evening André and I were guests of Sher and Janine on Waag’s KillerTV program. He impressed me as an incredibly empathetic and intelligent artist, and news of his sudden passing was sad.
Choreograaf André Gingras (1966-2013): vrije geest met fascinatie voor het lichaam
André Gingras, de man die zijn fascinatie voor de wetenschap van het lichaam in energieke en bekroonde podiumdans wist om te zetten, is zondagochtend overleden.
Dit weekend is choreograaf André Gingras (46) overleden aan een agressieve vorm van darmkanker. Nog maar twee jaar geleden nam hij als beloftevol artistiek leider van Dance Works Rotterdam het stokje over van voorganger Ton Simons. Hoewel het gezelschap door de bezuinigingen gedwongen werd dit voorjaar te stoppen, was Gingras voornemens door te gaan onder zijn eigen naam. Dat is hem niet meer gegund.
Free running
Gingras, geboren in Canada, was de man die in Nederland het free running naar het professionele danspodium bracht. Hoewel hij zeker niet de eerste was die de dans van de straat naar het theater haalde, wist hij er al snel een aansprekende podiumvorm voor te vinden. In The Autopsy Project, lovend ontvangen in 2007, liet hij dansers duikvluchten maken van beddenframes; ze sprongen en balanceerden op het staal om met een doodsmak te eindigen.
Gingras wist zijn fascinatie voor de wetenschap van het lichaam vaak om te zetten in energieke podiumdans. Hij was minstens zo veel met literatuur en kennis bezig als met beweging en choreografie. Gingras studeerde theater, Engelse literatuur en moderne dans in Toronto, Montreal en New York. Hij werd door theatervernieuwer Robert Wilson verkozen tot een van de leden van zijn creatieve team.
Laboratoriumexperiment
De doorbraak van Gingras in Nederland kwam in 2000, met zijn solo CYP17 voor het CaDance Festival. Deze even bizarre en grappige als ontregelende en onderzoekende solo over een wetenschappelijk laboratoriumexperiment met een man, toerde tot vijf jaar geleden rond de wereld, onder meer langs New York, waar danslegende Mikhail Baryshnikov persoonlijk een staande ovatie gaf.
Naast zijn wetenschappelijke fascinatie voor het lichaam, was Gingras ook gegrepen door de oververhitte adoratie ervan. In Anatomica (2011) maakte hij een ruige choreografie over de fysieke paringsdans van de moderne mens. In dat stuk roken zijn elf dansers seks en dampten ze lust. Hoe we de juiste partner lokken, was ook het onderwerp van Libido, zijn ‘open en bloot’-samenwerking met zijn landgenoot David St. Pierre, het enfant terrible van de moderne dans. Dit duet ging in première in Julidans en kreeg de kop: ‘Veel bloter kan het niet worden’. St. Pierre veegde in Libido een gespierde danser zijn blote billen af met een babydoekje onder de uitspraak: ‘Ik weet nooit waar mijn gezicht nog belandt.’
Vrije geest
Het tekent de vrije geest van de eveneens homoseksuele Gingras dat hij zijn naam verbond aan dit duet over vleselijke lust. In 2010 nam hij de artistieke leiding over van Dance Works Rotterdam. In dat jaar vertoonde zijn lichaam ook de eerste verschijnselen van kanker. Hij hield het, uit angst tijdens de harde bezuinigingen subsidiënten negatief te beïnvloeden, lange tijd verborgen voor de buitenwereld. Zijn levenspartner en echtgenoot maakte zondagochtend het overlijden bekend.
Annette Embrechts, die Volkskrant, 18 February 2013
dancing
back to B&B
Martin Buber and David Bohm — German-speaking Hasidim Jew phil-theo-logist/sopher and Anglo, McCarthy-black-listed quantum physicist. Unlikely combination, but in my practice, my pathway, they elicit a resonance unlike any others, although there are Legion sources of energized engagement that have made my trajectory a rich experience. All those Others who share the way(s). But I will work with these two as they both resonate. Simple, complex. One provoking an imaged-cosmos where there are no things, but only activated orders of manifestation, and this condition of being directly informing the way of interaction and relation between the Self and the Other. And the other thinker, sketching a cosmos which itself comes-to-be in the reality of relationship: within the encounter lies the source of all things.
Both these worldviews are highly idiosyncratic visions of the cosmos and also, consequentially, of human relation, but neither of them are mutually exclusive of the other. I find my own worldview shares at least this characteristic with both of them. But there are other ways in which our models overlap, and it is these pathways of flow which will stimulate the thesis.
The image of humans and their view of the cosmos that I always describe in a classroom setting is: (this after getting to know the students at least a bit) — “it’s as though we are dancing around the Void, each of us, in groups, pairs, alone, catching glances out of the corners of our eyes of it, calling out what is looks like in throat-tones frantic with fear, joy, and wonder. Sometimes a whole group will shout out in unison, the agreed-upon vision. Others stay to speaking the wind. Occasionally we turn to face it on, or are rudely pulled by the shoulder by another who is straying close to the edge. It has no name, yet we all insist on calling It something. Even when we turn our backs directly to it, we can feel it, perhaps even more than when facing it.”
So, idiosyncrasy is a way of movement (as point-of-view needs change), which leads to a clear, albeit self-relative, experience (impression) and the consequent expressions while regarding, receiving, that. Springing from these two pathways (im- and ex-pression) is a third which dictates, in part, the motion of the point-of-view. It is a feedback mechanism which generates, gradually or quickly, a worldview that touches on the Void if only by discrimination against what cannot be directly named.
Okay, working (or “working”) in the office much of the week and weekend, not too effective, but I think I did finally begin to imagine a framework to hang all these words on. And it feels like one that will work. Norie gave me a couple other theses of former students of hers — very interesting works. My intuition about her seems well-placed. And it’s a funny expression of the morphing social network that I’ve participated in the last 20 years. Connected.
And swimming. Hope to hit 100 km/3 months by the time I move on. That’s attainable, easily if I take care of things.
CLUI: Day Twenty-Six – Caxcanes Musical
More fire-exercises from the platoons who have taken up residence across the street. They have set up two camouflaged observation/guard posts and are firing from these positions towards the rail-road tracks, their comrades playing insurgents, firing pretend mortars from 200 meters away. The mis-en-scene is completed with colored smoke screens and a sniper who sets up in the tumbleweed.
In the evening I end up at the Wendover Night Club, what could be called a seedy joint in the corner of The Plaza strip mall that includes, what else, a stripper club complete with an Italian-looking bouncer sitting on a stool at the door, cigarette hanging from his mouth; there’s a Chinese restaurant, a smoke shop, and a computer gaming store.
I end up going to the Night Club because last week, one evening, I could hear some loud what I would term proto-Mariachi music playing within earshot of the residency. I put off going to check it out, but finally out of curiosity I drove in the direction of the music. End up four blocks away in one of the old airbase buildings. I pull up to see a group of swarthy-looking Latino guys hanging out. The music has stopped. I don’t know what they were thinking when I came up, gringo in shorts with white Crocs on, at any rate, turns out they are a band, Caxcanes Musical, most of the members are from the Mexican state of Zacatecas (the Caxcan are an indigenous group: Los caxcanes, lidereados por Tenamaxtle, peleaban bajo el lema ¡Ashcanquema tehual nehual! ‘¡Hasta tu muerte o la mía!’. Y el lema se cumplió, tanto en el triunfo como en la derrota. Ante la desproporcionada respuesta de los invasores, los guerreros prefirieron morir lanzándose al vacío.) I chat with them for a bit and though I’m sure they are thinking el gringo loco, they seem pleased at my enthusiasm and invite me to catch them at the Club in the Plaza.
I’m clearly the only gringo at the Club — at least I can order in Spanish! And I get there on time, as I don’t want to miss the show. On time from the time the guy gave me when I get to the empty Club at nine pm. He says the music starts at ten pm. He didn’t tell me there are three warm-up bands — or groups, not to be confused with bands. I hang out nursing a Coors. At any rate, I survived the first group, Tambura los Primos — audio is extant, then my memory card filled up on the H4 and I couldn’t figure out how to properly erase files to clear up space for the other groups. The whole scene was quite cool — clearly a rural audience, the guys with their really pointy shit-kickers and Stetsons, dancing with their gals in a stilted waltz move with the arms and hands never quite intertwined. Reminded me of country-folk in Finnish Lapland doing the tango on Midsummer’s night parties. Anyway, a fun evening, and I think they will play again on Cinco de Mayo which actually be on the second of May before I split for nether regions.
elevator pitch
Establish (via dancing around) the fundamentals of the cosmos; establish (by chanting a framework for apprehending those fundamentals) what individual presence seems to be; establish (by tracing lived experience) what the dynamic of interactions of human engagement are; situate (humanely) those encounters in the wider social system (or continuum of relation); examine the impact/role of technology on/in all of this; frame a creative praxis that might transcend the limits of those impacts while taking into account an energized world view, and, indeed, lessen those impacts in a sustainable way; open an empowered pathway to decode what is happening along this moment in history. These are the primary goals of the work.
at Bondi Pavillion
1992
scanning photos from 1992, mostly moving back in time. from the year that Chris and Nick visited Iceland; the year MB and I got married; and we celebrated the summer solstice at the north end of Hrísey; the year I fell into a geothermal mud pot and sustained 3rd degree burns on both my ankles; the year Loki was born; when I hosted Nan Hoover and her students at the Academy for a few weeks; when I had a huge photo exhibition in France, by far the largest public manifestation of my photographic work ever; the year my parents made a pilgrimage to Ice Land, uh, what else? scanning these hundreds of images dancing around the world, brings a rich intensity to daily life, though at the cost of a certain loss to the ‘be here now.’ I have more time, less money. so I wait for events rather than paying to make them happen. the transition from this blog platform to the new WordPress-based one is really confounding. I cannot yet duplicate features that I have come to enjoy and use frequently (like the randomly loading content), and I find the CSS design base combined with the php coding of WP still too cumbersome for me to control as I would like, it’s almost like being back in straight html coding days, before any WYSWYG editors existed. I did pretty much re-write the canned theme that I ended up using, but there are still too many issues. got the audio plug-ins working and several other items, but more work to be done! it’s interesting, but time-consuming. so, when unsure, I stop producing. thus the three-week break in content. but, the road opens up again in a couple weeks, and that will bring me to a location that I have passed through numerous times, but never have stopped except for gas. about half-way between Washington, D.C., and Golden, Colorado. I used to leave Clarksburg, Maryland, home, at 0500, so would invariably hit St. Louis at rush-hour, Colombia, Missouri another couple hours later, around sunset. and time for a gas stop or maybe a burger before heading on to Kansas City, and the wide, flat, and tiring darkness of Kansas itself. the Big Road.
funeral, et al
just back from Helga’s funeral service at the Seltjarnarnes Church and the reception at Hotel Saga after wards. sad to see the ones who grew up with that old way of living pass away, that long-ago generation. Helga was born in a dirt-floored sod hut in Svarfaðardalur near Dalvík on Eyjafjörður just shy of one hundred years ago. she was the matriarch to four generations of descendants who follow her on the pathway.
(00:40:06, stereo audio, 77 mb)
while I will always be an outsider in this close-knit community deep in the North Atlantic, I will always be bound to the place through the people of this family. bound in the living and the dying, the movements, the step-wise step-fool wanderings along the rugged sphere’s surface, floating in a suffused crystal darkness. where replication and desertion become forces driving Light and spare living. messages arrive from all corners of life. direct in the face, through this and that face rarely seen, age-lines and sagging skin characterizing it all. eyes peering out from under graying crop. young ones dancing around, some so young that the dance has not yet begun in the newness of be-ing. but where eyes wide open take it all in to map pathways across pure soul. they take it all in. and the living move on, the ones who have left are there in memory as the ones who formed us.
ubicomp
Inane story on NPR, dancing around the hype of ubiquitous computing (still?) — With the installation of a network of sensors on house plants that will send wifi info to their owner about their condition.
Who sets up this network? Who maintains it? Who interacts with it? When and why is it interacted with? Under what conditions is it necessary to interact with it? Or is it ever necessary to interact with it? Those people who are so interested in spreading digital networks somehow forget the necessity of manufacturing, deployment, installation, configuration, and, especially, maintenance. Not to mention the actual (life-)time necessary to interact with the data being gathered, tweaking it if necessary (or even possible) into a form that is understandable and usable to the idiosyncratic self, NOT the generic Everyman (who is the Grail of the data collectors).
These questions point back to the cultural (d)evolution which mandates a rolling over of systems from localized individual control to a centralized social command-and-control. Now, a big argument used by the ubicomp community is that the existence of these networks liberates the localized Everyman from the drudgery of some localized chore or another. Watering house plants, in this case. But there is a hidden factor — the subsequent reliance of the individual on the centralized system of production and (standardized control) — which creates and deploys these devices. It costs money to have these devices. And the greater the deployment, the larger the social infrastructure necessary to produce and deploy these devices and systems. Think, for example, of the mining and basic industry that provides the raw materials that go into the construction of the machines used to make and deliver the devices. The individual consequently must be participating in this larger system in order to receive the device. To participate in that system requires a payment of (life-)time (converted in the grind of social production to cash). So the (life-)time freed-up by the device is more than consumed by the (life-)time drawn from the individual in this general participatory process. Think of working at a long-term job so that you have the long-term income to pay for the apartment where you have the house plants. Stability is a core value here to consider here as well — without long-term stability (a stable environment), exotic house plants are imperiled. To have house plants assumes this long-term stability (which the social system relies on!). So not only is this further reliance on the deployed ubicomp system NOT about liberation — it is the opposite — it is about a subtle enslavement to a greater social system for which instability is anathema. The drawing-off of the lifetime (and life energy) of the individual into that social system is the primary source of power for the centralized social system.
All of this is on a sliding scale. But assuming that condition, there likely is a certain tipping point where one might go too far and not have the possibility of retrieving individual autonomy. Where is this point? Have we reached it? Clearly it is different in different social systems, despite the healthy state of global systems which draw their energy from widely-dispersed humans. Tolerance for autonomy is different in different socio-cultural systems. Intolerance for instability is generally higher in more organized systems (which came first, the need for organization or the intolerance for instability and dis-order?)
Simon’s Bar Mitzvah
head hanging, I have the distinct mis-pleasure of missing my godson’s Bar Mitzvah this coming weekend. hmmmm. lack of disposable income to increase carbon foot-print-stamp and head East. that’ll come shortly perhaps. but in the meanwhile, Andrea (Simon’s mum) shares her script for the evening (mind you, the photo above post-dates the beginning of this narrative a couple years — around the Buttinsky-Hoppy-Top & Armpit Dancing Era), that’s dad, Bill with big bro Zander along with Simon in his mother’s arms, lil’ sis Maxie is still in the oven):
Simon Arthur gracefully slid into the world on May 2, 1994. He had a powerful set of lungs, but he didn’t get much chance to talk those first few years. Zander was his big brother, and rarely missed an opportunity to speak on Simon’s behalf. Simon had to learn other ways to capture an audience. Silent, sly, comical ways. He innately understood the power of nudity to gain the spotlight, and used it regularly. It was the rare gathering in our house, or anyone elses house for that matter, that Simon did not make the scene if not fully undressed, then in his tiny little briefs. Whether it was his stunningly fast Ninja moves — which often had the unintended result of landing him on his own back — or his oddly endearing Armpit dance, Simon relished entertaining the crowd his way.
more “Simon’s Bar Mitzvah”
memories of fire
aren’t disco balls just enhanced simulators for dancing around a fire? what’s the dif? why not dance around a fire more often? gyrate under washes of starLight with limb warming fire to back and front as oscillations permit. in a crowd of like-smelling co-habitants, oscillating to rhythms of necessary presence.
what of having fun while living?
Modern man is insecure and repressed — isolated from his fellows yet desperately clinging to the collectivity which he trusts to protect him from the might of other collectivities. Divided within himself into instincts and spirit, repressions and sublimations, he finds himself incapable of direct relation with his fellows either as individuals in the body-politic or as fellow members of a community. The tremendous collective power with which he allies himself gives him neither relationship nor freedom from fear but makes his life a sterile alternation between universal war and armed peace. The modern crisis is thus a crisis both of the individual and of society at large. — Maurice Freidman (1976, p. 245)
barista songs
sorry — this is no longer available!
Marianne Murdock, Arizona-based author, singer, song-writer and self-confessed-but-reformed coffee-slave releases this straight-ahead rockin’ blues number about life as a espresso-maker in a world where java is the drug of choice. Everyone’s happy to see the dealer, but the desperation for the fix over-rides everything. Baristas everywhere will be toe-tapping to this one and no doubt Starbucks employees will be line-dancing on the counters to lyrics like
… some caffeine-depleted repeater causin’ trouble in the line …
and
… you don’t want no sleeve because you like it when it’s hot …
For a free mp3 preview or to pick up your personal copy, head to https://www.baristasong.com/. What’s an addict to do now?
Dance!
paint-by-number
Finally got around to reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, an overview of the New Physics. It’s somewhat dated, but still carries a nice historical narrative with observations on the uncertainty of the whole thing that is being dealt with. Watching a video (produced in Japan), on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Speaking with the Dalai Lama and others. All of whom were dying. Phone call from Nick, catching up. Possible travel plans to Missouri. Also talked to Greg, possible travel to Seattle and BC or Moab. Proposals off to NIFCA for a curators position, and waiting on the doctoral proposal. Reading more than I have in the last years, on average: wider, and deeper, note-taking, resonating with stylistic text forms across academia, science, philosophy, technology, engineering, and esoterica. But unemployed at the same time. Dog-sitting, using the riding-mower to cut some of the lawn; joined the YMCA since the college pool is closed now. Getting used to a different regimen. Lifting in the cybex room. Sore today. Getting my sunglasses replaced finally, ebay for a pair of artcraft round gold frames since they no longer make them. Gotta call Kate at IBM to see about her open source connection. What else? Weeding, and many emails to Europe for a fall tour. And the need to get back out to the desert on the moonless nights.
paint-by-number. Reminds me of summers at Aunt Mary’s house, she loved doing paint-by-number kits. Now she is an decent painter, starting to free-style after retiring to Florida.
flying
en route already again, away from this land, moving ahead with relative purpose, dancing. gray day, low clouds, rain on the inward-slanting airport lounge windows, Scottish accents drift in tour’s end quiet across the coffee shop / boarding hall. got here too early as well, but as the moving inertia took over from that of comfortable stasis in a certain place, rang up the taxi place. as usual, for the pre-boarding chill-out time. a pick-up truck drives the landing strip. English Football, the Euro corollary of the American League, entertains with silent subtitles.
sonic narco-rigors
Up in the morning. A lone trumpeter plays Amazing Grace somewhere out on the street. The May Pole in the Rats Laukums decorated with EU ribbons and fake over-sized daffodils is taken down. The center is small, a Maserati, many high-end Mercedes, three stretch Lincoln limos, and a TurboCarrera on the walk from the hotel. Extreme wealth. Boutiques and still-crumbling buildings. The CD in the breakfast place skips continuously for longer than famished memory records.
Last night the national hockey team lost to Sweden, fans with maroon and white jerseys cluster around the bank’s plasma screen.
Playful Baptist preacher-ish presentation this morning. Spins off many good conversations with former strangers, more than I would have imagined, outside the formal pathway of the conference so far. (Maybe 24 months in the US had a stunning effect) but the day is kind of shot. Sleeping here, room-mate snored through the night making sleep impossible. So, feeling like shit all day. Sitting in on Derek Holzer’s open source audio workshop, was hoping to get PureData installed on the Mac, but had to retreat to a pseudo-nap instead. Make it to dinner. But am heavily phase-shifted.
Building up the usual ball-point email address list. Hand-written, signed. Embodied self-evidence of presence and being. A small facilitation.
Western line dancing in the main square.
Move the bed to another location, behind the fridge and next to the balcony door this time.
soap bubbles
soap bubbles drift past my window. waiting to catch a ferry into town to meet Sanna for lunch at the Atheneum. the summer ferry schedule is on now, so three-per-hour for much of each day. takes the timing aspect away. Maria and David drop in for a bit yesterday evening.
the impending travel to ram5 is on mind. presenting a short set of ideas “the human need for open source space” as a participant presentation in “the practice of open source architecture.” fragments include:
in joining this workshop, I faced the issue of bridging between a series of phrases which I have yet to completely understand as a lived praxis, and my own understanding and praxis. This process is an essential part of open source, where a distributed system facilitates a set of flows that are not always subjectively related. In order to find a pathway across those often uncomfortable spaces of representational difference, one must sometimes let go of the actual symbolic content:
terminologies (need to remain open!) need to be fuzzy concepts that can accept input, crossover, and disruption from other directions.
and rather than a critique-filled, Luddite, anti-technological call for caution or complete rejection of these technologies which the military developed years ago and are only now trickling down for the intelligentsia to play with, (observation of this effect prompted Timothy Leary to come up with the conspiracy theory that “the KGB and the CIA collaborated to develop LSD and personal computers to keep the middle class intelligentsia busy and out of trouble”)
I would like to invoke a remembering of what these social systems are built upon, and what the goals might be in using them.
for me it’s still a question whether it is possible to deconstruct (or pick the locks on) the Masters house using the Masters tools. picking the lock is possible, but who wants to live in the Masters house anyway, it’s got a bad vibe and a bad smell in it.
recalling the basis of Open Source: the human exchange platform.
linguistic-based exchange is only the socialized framework, it is necessary to go beyond that mediated social space into the space of real energy exchanges.
this includes the abstracted space of finance (global capitalism being a subset)
Language, which includes
does not cover
split between linguistic/abstracted systems of exchange (which include legal codices, symbolic (vs real) monetary value exchange systems) and the ‘real’ space of energized exchange
(why con-fluence and con-ference and dancing afterwards are the meat of con-nection and com-munity)
should not end with movements of abstracted symbolic re-presentations of reality, but should be rooted in the real exchange… the adoption of these abstractions as reality is a core cause of alienation that is giving a very desperate edge to contemporary social systems
we must regain the root. (there must be an embodied corollary to each abstracted notion adopted)
this root is post-materialist, energized exchange that transcends at least at some points the limitations of abstracted re-presentations of connection and dialogue
it is clear that many implementations, sailing high on the hype of the dot.com days, are now merely the tools of state command and control.
we need situations that re-energize human connection regardless of the particular representative symbolic content. this is the essence of open source, it is more than a bazaar, more than a market place, more than any socialized system. it is about embodied be-ing and full-tilt presence, nothing more nothing less.
let’s dance!
Andrew shows up, along with Alison and John, we watch the neighborhood cat prance in with a live rat or voll, play with it, and theorize on the range of possible outcomes.
united we stand
half-way through. another year. slipping through the anterior and nether spaces of family. make a cursory foray into town with Marianne, after the parade (with the theme “united we stand”) was over and before the street dancing commenced. a Guinness on Whiskey Row, right there on Courthouse Square, and then a pizza.
creeping jingo-ism. many television programs about police and military training and tactics. guns. at the garage I pick up a copy of American Rifleman, the house blotter for the NRA. Charlton Heston is an asshole. and what was that song “Pablo Picasso was never called an ‘asshole'” (written by Jonathan Richman and performed by the The Modern Lovers). From the soundtrack of Repo Man, the cassette tape of which disappeared during a party I hosted for my intro photo students at the old Mapleton house back in grad school. at CU-Boulder. and I circle back, closely, to that point again. soon. fifteen years later.
until family trauma strikes (soonly or later-like).
Kone
sotto voce: passing along the fringe of the lake district. birch trees no longer showing any green at all. no, not true. a few retain a few, but most are now hanging the dregs of dirty yellow-brown leaves. this afternoon, evening will be spent stretching (from the spine-damaging Russian bed), and looking over email. a weeks worth. there were 300 on Monday when I checked from Media Lab, but now, five days later. back online, back in Finland. clouds top the trees. the dark forest mist makes the birch trunks at the edge gloomier. Dancing Queen plays along with a constant stream of Finnish elevator hits. the main elevator manufacturer in Finland being Kone — which means machine. atk, automaattinen tietojenkäsittely kone is a computer (counting machine). forested hummocks, kettles, and drumlins pass by. most trees are harvested leaving bouldered and scrubby underbrush and a few mostly branch-less trees sticking up at random. are they diseased? why did the thin-lipped and alcoholic reaper in his six-footed hydraulic tree harvester skip them? back to the neutral beige soil of Joensuu. deposited by floods of glacial milk. rich in kaolin and other complex silicates which behave strangely when wet. a sandy dune across from the rail station at Pirkkala. the rail line traces one paleo-terminus of a retreating ice sheet. after an icy maximum. later, this was the site of war, between Russians and Finns.
storms
sky dancing storms, and a brush of soft rain passing through. cool and humid all day. swimming at lunch, and again tomorrow morning, trying to get ready for the leap off into the unknown. as though this here is known. more soft rain in the night, and an early rise to head to the pool for 2000 yards or more. I could do that 6 days a week if I had a pool so close and convenient. feel 500 percent better when swimming like that.
sequence of null spaces
A day after catching the Gladiators (or who was it?) in Kaisaneimipuisto, so it goes: not surprising, but hardly any Finns dancing, it’s not that warm even though it’s the end of May. Heading west. Half-way across the Atlantic. 747. Simulator. Wonder who the pilot is? Chop is coming up. NYC tonight, actually it is night already, there in Helsinki where I used to be. Stupid Hollywood on the boxes lined up from stem to stern. And several tens of thousand liters of jet fuel starboard and port, or so the first officer told us somewhere over Belgium.
Nueva York, make it, a blur, through customs, and meet Stefan out front. He happened to be coming to the airport anyway this evening to pick Hildur, a relative who will be an au pair for them during the summer. Into the City, via a scenic tour on Conduit South, then Conduit North to Atlantic Blvd., the Brooklyn Bridge, and so on. So it goes. Shifting spaces, shifting cultures. Shape-shifting. Mind-shifting. Scandinavia to Manhattan. So different. But I am complacent about the differences, as a part of both cultures now. or neither. That’s more correct. Floating in a null space, convergent axis in a divergent cultural milieu.
dancing, et al
some condensed observations from the week in Riga.
the buzz
Friday afternoon, already sunken into the blue darkness of w-i-n-t-e-r. and so, back to counting days to southern climes. Stefan and I discovered, on a strange evening in Molly Malone’s Irish Pub in Helsinki along with Sanna and a crew of Brit football hooligans, that even Irish Pubs have their own Trade Magazine, “the buzz.” browsing Issue 10, one runs across phrases like “we look at how an integral part of Irish culture became the multi-million pound industry it is today and how Irish pubs can utilize its success.” and “Irish dancing tours offer a great opportunity for Irish pubs to boost sales.” did you know there is a tightly held franchise structure and a hotly-contested market segment for most Irish Pubs? sham.rock mac.donalds. and special retailers for Irish Pub Light Fittings?
oh well.
over and above. rain comes, blue-black darkness begins to settle in.
Sesshu
Art and culture. Before going to work, Sanna joins me in absorbing an exhibition of works from the Zen painter Sesshu, and his followers. How following shows the reverberations of being — the stone in the pool is probably the best metaphor to reflect upon. Disciples, followers. Not feeling well the entire day after a full-moon nightless sleepless standing up in the semi-dark walking around the three rooms empty of presence. Looking out old glass windows seeing a wrinkled night-world of halide orange and cold night-moon-shining-white.
Later in the evening there is Björn’s organ recital in the Berghall Church in Kallio. Meeting Icelanders. and others. And then a rendezvous at a club in Kaivopuisto for some long smokey close-clutch dancing with this partner that … fits … while wondering about men — partners of friends of this friend — who leave their partners at the dance floor to go gambling their money away alone. how it goes. I surely would never come to that, when there is that warm and very fine fit that persists all the way back home to a bed that also … fits.
joy
the ankle only causes me problems when I try to torque it with any power in the same direction that it was sprained. Loki and I make a 40 minute hike up the hill and around back down yesterday and this tires it out. wavering thoughts on the suitability of the schedule I have coming up and how to deal with this. but plane tix are plane tix and they are not changeable at this point. Loki has to get home, I have to get to work. nothing else will do. the way events are linked in living. and accidents, and chance meetings that lead to dancing for hours and hours which leads to talking and walking and trying to keep each other warm which leads to: I am here, I am not here. my body tells me I am here, I try to connect with the sun, the clouds (absorbing Light from voluptuous cumulus masses soft-filtered through sheets of gray-falling precipitation)
He who binds to himself a Joy, Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the Joy as it flies, Lives in Eternity’s sunrise. — William Blake
I have made a net, now what do I do with this admirable set of humans? is there anything at all theoretical to be done? or can it only be a praxis that ends in the grave? this thought crosses my mind as I compare the forms of existence that those around me are suspended within.
late night question
where are you? I ask her in the white night — lying intertwined on someone else’s bed in someone else’s flat at the north end of town — long after she and I stopped dancing at one of the beer-smelling clubs on the border between Finland and Sweden. Her profile softens the near-view, her breath smells of the chamomile tea with sugar we drank after the long walk home. The sap begins to run in the birch trees, the river ice almost broken, school is almost out. The night never ended, never began, stars long gone, weeks ago, years, eons, memory removed when they last faded into the summer sky so that there is only here, now, and the rising and falling of her breath, the heart-beat, felt through proximal warmth and mere layers of skin.
The Mountain Cows
1.5 km swim.
the live Mean Väyla broadcast goes out from a cafe in town; this is followed by a general retreat to Pressi for liquid libation; Antti’s Irish band, The Mountain Cows, plays at a local restaurant, they are quite Irish! the audience definitively Finnish! and then, much later in the evening, several hour of dancing (with Sanna!). but anyway, the whole weekend blends into itself after that. dates are relative, time uneven. and encounters are warm and languid.
there is the image of the long slow stroll up to the north end of the island, feeling the warming white night spreading into the roots of the birch trees, and re-radiating into the air through the waxing buds. a cup of hot tea, and reclining in the brilliant night Light.
Solstice
short-timing yesterday, it was the Solstice
a pilgrimage made to a hill-mountain a hundred kilometers away to think for the sun to fall dormant
it never does but only hovers far above the horizon for hours and with full moon weighing the other horizon in a tense and perfect balance of gravity and Light that leaves us in wonder and burning with a quiet energy of sight and vision and being and each spinning a particular way within the self of body-walls Finnish tangos and arias and beers and drunks and dances and mosquitoes and the Light
the Light
fir trees and aspen-birch branches in full green leaf used for fans to keep bloodthirsty humming at bay from body
a tower to climb we occupy it for a time and time again with occasional tourists Sweden and Australia and Finnish lovers who I see twice, once at the top of the tower then in the Lappish teepee they crouch near the fire hands and bodies entwined loving the others presence and the night that was all the darkest in that teepee with reindeer skins on logs around the skirting and two reindeer out back moulting with pink blood-close skin on their antlers
I stare at the sun so long that it makes a hole when I look at the moon, lacing it with fire and spots while the chill north wind blows I make my muscles relax to allow pulse to travel to extremities to bring heart-warmth
then driving a Mercedes van packed with travelers who came to this place at this time to marvel at the sun-ring-rainbow sky dancing with cloud and Light and rain and a blue sky that reflects in the eyes of many here who look at it even the ones who hardly pause to let it all seep into head through the clear wet lenses the green leaves that just exploded in the change time of spring that is only a week happening like one morning and there it is with the birch trees an empty landscape only green from evergreens and then comes the green from the new things growing greening everything and the new flowers planted in the cemetery with the ravens above in the trees being harassed by the little birds afraid that they will devour their nestlings so that same cemetery around the quiet wooden church is noisy
old ladies filling watering cans and talking gently to the dead when no one is near
is it that old ladies inhabit these spaces naming the old names and the days when those names stopped being when they moved themselves to that part of us that is called memory and is that part of mind memory which drives us more to what we are than any other part of us when nothing else is left?
Media Lab
Oh my head. Half the day is lost in a haze where I balance on the fringe of a migraine. Particular to the right eye, the usual remedy is to lie down and rest for some time. Instead of this, circumstances force me to be active all day, albeit in a half-real state. Finally recovered in the evening for a dinner with Pia at Lily and Kari-Hans’ place. It was great to really have some time and meet Lily, who was one of the participants in the Eight Dialogues project. Earlier in the day, I am first at the MediaBase lab and then a bus ride with Pia up to UIAH for lunch and an afternoon of presentations at Media Lab. I finally was able to hand-deliver a print to Philip — the one of he and his two kids in a grocery store in Helsinki that I took in 1995.
There were a number of interesting Media Lab projects presented. Now, the reason for the aching head was lack of sleep which in turn was directly related to attending a sumptuous dinner party at Johanna’s flat the evening before. Visa and Eva were there along with Johanna’s sister and four other friends. Mmmmmmmm. Starting out in her kitchen at 1900 and ending up nine hours later leaving a club after a couple hours of dancing … The full moon is always a good excuse for excess. It has been a long time since I was really dancing much at all, and although it was only a disco, not live, it was fun, well, because it was with friends! And these two Swedish gurls … hmmm, but that’s another story. Good thing Eva was chaperoning.
these boots
another one of those junctures where I’ve got to part with a pair of boots. not evident in the photo is the usual horrific slice that spontaneously propagates along the inner right ball where the bottom sole hits the side upper. like somebody did a razor cut. practically every shoe I’ve ever worn down ends up this way. these are/were a fine pair of Asolos acquired from mad-man climber amigo John in Golden, the North American distributor. after many miles/kilometers, they are ready to be buried or sacrificed somewhere, not sure where yet. all the stored up memories acquired across myriad terrains. dogshit, gum, vomit, and piss on the streets, mulch, dirt, sand, gravel, snow, slush, scarred by lava dancing and granite scraping.
David Byrne
Christmas over. I made a big breakfast for everybody on Christmas morning and then we opened presents. Janet gave me a copy of David Byrne’s book, Strange Rituals, which caught me somehow … I have always enjoyed the Talking Heads (one of my first concert and album reviews in the Oredigger was the Heads’ Fear of Music disk which, although I didn’t quite understand the scope of the minimalist urban perspective at the time, in retrospect was a great album. And of course, in-concert, the Heads were explosive: led by Byrne. I also caught a solo concert by Byrne, in, of all places, the national symphony concert hall in Reykjavík a couple years ago. I remember sitting, no, standing on my seat, dancing, while this older lady sat next to me and didn’t move a muscle—she was probably only at the concert because it was (literally) cool to be there. Byrne really has been all over the map creatively, and not in a spotty and dilettante-ish way, but in a struggling (and successful) movement testing, trying the responses of various media to see if they will be the proper vessel for his energies. Anyway, this book, Strange Rituals, is pretty interesting. It is a photography book primarily, with some text. I found it inspiring (not to mention that Janet posed the question in the accompanying card—When’s your book coming out?). I have been toying with the idea for some time, doing a book, and have made a few attempts at a beginning, although I haven’t had the time to make a more serious start. The images are there, and I guess the daunting task is the editing, layout, and treatment of text. I have gone through several working titles, the latest being Rituals of Movement, Rituals of Place. I guess it resonated, this Byrne book, the images had a vein of the raw and concentrated aimlessness with a thematic non-thema that concentrates energy on the flow and energy behind the images … A bit hard to settle upon, but striking. I have been put off of my own work by the over-riding need not to make a “best-of” type project, that is, searching for the images that are most accessible from the traditional photographic standpoint. Editing my own work has always been such a challenge for me. Some where, I have the wish that another person would come along and help me do the editing, be the Editor in the critical construction of this structure—a book—as I am unable, so far, to do it myself.
I am free to behave, to create, and to act in ways that have never appeared before on the Earth. Maybe. I am free to invent myself and my culture from scratch. I have, like Stephen Daedalus wished, cut myself off, released myself from the dead weight of history. The pressure of constantly having to build my own support system, my own philosophy, my own religion, my own unique way of life makes me slightly neurotic. It is more than one person, or even a living community or nation, should have to bear. America, for many immigrants, is the insane wilderness it always was. It is still the land of limitless dreams, boundless desires, and insatiable lusts. And of greed, psychotic outbursts, and subtle oppressions.
David Byrne, Strange Ritual: Pictures and Words (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1995).
On to work at LANkaster.com. Plenty to be done. And money to be made. I move onward into the day. Lawren left early this morning, driving to eLAy, to get back to work. Doug came up with Jason and Angelique after flying in to Phoenix from NYC via Las Vegas.
dancing
Uh. The day starts early (earlier than even I expected). I forgot to set my alarm clock one hour back when coming from Köln to London. I woke up ten minutes before the alarm went off at seven. Out of bed, shower, breakfast (quietly as to not wake Joanna up — she’s been working long hours at her new job as webmaster (or so) at New Music Express). Catch the Tube to Waterloo Station where I am a bit dismayed to discover it is only 0700 rather than 0800. But I am up and awake so there is no turning back. The train to Winchester takes just oven an hour, and it is a short walk down to the College of Art where I have tea and toast waiting for David to show up. I am not really here to teach, rather just to see how the graduating students are doing and so on. Ian, the Director of the College is leaving in June, and the College is being absorbed by the administration of the University of Southampton about ten miles away, so there are changes in view in the near future.
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…)!
possibility
Is work a vehicle for the transmission of energy, a vessel. or is it an absolute end in itself? (What is the form of the energy?) or so. Should it be concerned in both form and content to carry energy? How does a photograph carry (conduit) energy? How does anything carry energy? — by substance that holds energy. Black & White relates to intensity (power), not wavelength. Energy is modulated by tone. And in Content? How is energy modulated (or controlled)? The materials may be made to conduct energy in form. (Dancing around what is to be done). What energy? Creative energy, destructive energy, sexual, electric, (waveform), invisible: visible. And so on. What is the form of my energy? What way is it saved or spent? Communication is merely the transmission of energy. Information is the form of the energy. or so. But not energy itself. Words without action… How to communicate through action and not words.