9.30.2014
9.29.2014
dog_part_2
Let me tell you, mama, what that black dog done done to me
Let me tell you, mama, what that black dog done done to me
He cheated me from my regular, now he's after my used-to-be
Black dog, black dog, you caused me to weep and moan
Black dog, black dog, you caused me to weep and moan
You cause me to leave my, sweet old happy home
Black dog, black dog, you forever on my mind
Black dog, black dog, you forever on my mind
If you only let me see my baby one more time
So long black dog, I'm quittin' your hard luck line
So long black dog, I'm quittin' your hard luck line
'Cause you got me so blue, keep 'bout to love her sometime
Black Dog Blues, Blind Arthur Blake, circa 1926-1932
9.25.2014
nature_4
Historically viewed, wars were carried to relatively remote front. When the front was driven home to one side, that side gave in. As wars have employed the industrial complex by mandate and the industrial complex has come to be the total world resource, so has war become total. With the development of totality, war has come to be waged not as much on many fronts as on many spots. Differentiation of lands and sea has been lost in significance of the one-sky. Blitzkrieg brought the war everywhere as multiple focii of sky-diving planes and land-crawling submarines. Total war involves ultimate controlling of missiles from anywhere on earth to anywhere on earth. Long distance is total and the concept of the front has vanished.
War is dynamic and its two dynamic phase are offense and defense. An offense obtains omni-directional parity, supremacy lies in relative defense advantage. Relative defense advantage lies in the direction of relative mobility, in the ability to dodge widely and without loss of poise - not to dig in.
Excerpt: pg. 208, Ideas and Integrity. Buckminster Fuller, Collier Books, 1969 (second printing, 1st in 1963).
9.24.2014
nature_3
Usually when we look at the image of the speaker on our TV screens at home, we don't see the 'actual' person speaking behind the image. This confrontation, facilitated by the operator and his or her staff, is therefore unexpected; the story told by the staff's operator is interrupted and and even contradicted by the pre-recorded image which tells other stories and visa versa. This image on the screen may show the operator recounting a tragic scene or comic moment concerning his or her alien status; however, the operator who holds the staff, thus relieved of telling this story, presents another face. Standing next to his or her own history, the operator asks the viewer, who now appears to be the stranger, to tell their own story. At this point a new space is created by the operator/object in relation to the spectator. The distinction between stranger and non-stranger is problematic here, maybe around this staff everyone becomes a different kind of stranger.
Excerpt: pg. 158. Tectonic Acts of Doubt and Desire, Mark Rakatansky: Krzystof Wodiczcko: Why The Figural.
9.23.2014
nature_2
Creative power is ineffable. It remains ultimately mysterious. And every mystery affects us deeply.
We are ourselves charged with this power, down to our subtlest parts. We may not be able to utter its essence, but we can move towards its source, insofar as at all possible. In any event, it is up to us to manifest this power and its functions, just as it becomes manifest within ourselves.
In all likelihood, it is in itself a form of matter, although it cannot be perceived with the same senses as the more familiar kinds of matter. Permeated with matter, it must take on living, actual form. It is thence that matter derives its life, acquiring order from its minutest particles and most subordinate rhythms all the way to its higher articulations.
Excerpt: pg. 63, Paul Klee, Notebooks: Volume 2, the nature of nature: The Documents of Modern Art Series, Vol. 17. Wittenborn, NY. 1973.
Bonus Material:
Special Material:
Extra Content: Bruce Lee on Longstreet: Training the Blind Man (The Cup).
9.22.2014
nature_1
It was also around this same time that Dock became interested in playing the banjo. We do not know what kind of banjo he had in 1910. But we do know that he got it by trading his watch for a gun, then trading the gun for the banjo.
9.19.2014
ceremony_V
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
9.18.2014
ceremony _ 4
Kino's eyes opened, and he looked first at the lightening square which was the door and then he looked at the hanging box where Coyotito slept... It was very good - Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music. Perhaps alone he did this and perhaps all of his people did it. His people had once been great makers of songs so that everything they saw or thought or did or heard became a song...
Excerpt: pg 1. John Steinbeck, The Pearl.
9.17.2014
ceremony _3
Charles Ray
cat. no. 78
We confront a circular piece of the gallery wall, nine
inches in diameter, spinning so quickly that its movement
is almost impossible to detect. Instead, a stationary black
circle appears to have been drawn on the wall. The first
hint that the "wall drawing" is not what it seems comes
from the noise made by the work's motor in a moment
of near synesthesia, when sound suddenly snaps percep-
tion into focus. The gallery wall's normally neutral surface
becomes uncannily and anxiously animated.
With an intense interest in the work of postwar
British sculptors (especially Anthony Caro) and the early
minimalists, Ray literalized the corporeal metaphors of
lyrical modernism and exaggerated the abstract, aggressive
presence of minimalism.
Responding to the phenomenological imperatives
of minimalist sculpture, Ray's Rotating Circle subtly yet
disturbingly disrupts the rational relationships between
stable objects in space. The anonymous container of the
modernist gallery, on which minimalism is so dependent,
takes on the attributes of a feeling, moving body in Ray's
work. The circle, scaled to the size and height of the artist's
head, sets up a confrontation with the viewer.1
. Ray has said of the piece: "Another aspect of it
for me was trying to make something that was so abstract
it became real or so real it became abstract. You go
in so far you come out the other side."2
D.B
1. Charles Ray, in Lucinda Barnes, "Interview with Charles Ray." in Charles
Ray (Newport Beach, Calif.: Newport harbor Museum, 1990),
2. Ibid.
Excerpt: pg. 290, The Quick and The Dead. Walker Art Center, 2009.
9.16.2014
ceremony 2
Emptiness was completely achieved by Sen no Rikyu, the tea master who perfected cha no yu (the tea ceremony) during the Momoyama period (1573-1615). In cha no yu, master and guest engage in deep communication face to face in the chashitsu (tea room), an empty space of ultimate simplicity. The sole decorations are a flower display and a painted scroll in an alcove, as a unified whole. With the slightest changes to this simple arrangement, the chashitsu can become an alcove under a cherry tree in full bloom, or the seashore, awash in crashing waves. Cha no yu utilizes emptiness, evolving as a performance art that freely deposits imagination into - and withdraws imagination from- that emptiness.
p.13, WA: The Essence of Japanese Design. Menegazzo & Piotti, Phaidon Limited, 2014.
9.15.2014
ceremony
At three o'clock we parted in order to accompany Neruda to his sacred siesta, which we took at our house, following a number of solemn preparatory rituals that, for some reason, reminded me of the Japanese tea ceremony. Windows had to be opened, others closed - an exact temperature was essential - an only a certain kind of light from only a certain direction could be tolerated. And then: an absolute silence. Neruda fell asleep at once, waking ten minutes later, like children do, when we expected it least. He appeared in the living-room, refreshed, the monogram of the pillow pressed against his cheek.
'I dreamt of that woman who dreams,' he said
Matilda asked him to tell us about the dream.
'I dreamt she was dreaming of me,' he said.
'That sounds like Borges,' I said.
He looked at me, crestfallen. 'Has he already written it?'
Excerpt: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 'Dreams For Hire'. pp. 76 Granta Publication #41 Biography, 1992.
play the version:
9.12.2014
construct (a_series)
There is no art as impermanent as architecture. All that solid brick and stone mean nothing. Concrete is an evanescent as air. The monuments of our civilization stand, usually, on negotiable real estate; their value goes down as land value goes up.
-Ada Louis Huxtable, "Anatomy of a failure," Will They ever finish Bruckner Boulevard? Times Books, 1970.
9.11.2014
(__________)
Charlie Patton / Prayer of Death (1929)
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
Tao Te Ching (English Translation by Stephen Mitchell, 1987.)
9.10.2014
tonal verticality (construct series con't)
What goes on in your mind?
I think that I am falling down.
What goes on in your mind?
I think that I am upside down.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will work alright.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will be alright.
I'm going up, and I'm going down.
I'm going from side to side.
See the bells, up in the sky,
Somebody's cut their string in two.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will work alright.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will be alright.
One minute born, one minute doomed,
One minute up, one minute down.
What goes on in your mind?
I think that I am falling down.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will work alright.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will be alright.
I think that I am falling down.
What goes on in your mind?
I think that I am upside down.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will work alright.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will be alright.
I'm going up, and I'm going down.
I'm going from side to side.
See the bells, up in the sky,
Somebody's cut their string in two.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will work alright.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will be alright.
One minute born, one minute doomed,
One minute up, one minute down.
What goes on in your mind?
I think that I am falling down.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will work alright.
Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will be alright.
construct (a series)
"I would call it afro-punk," states Gillespie. "I think where we were at, we were into the whole improvisation, but built on strict rhythms. And at the same time, everything esles was pure energy, flying over the rhythm. It created a really great environment to dance to, because in your head, you're way out there, but your feet are locked into this rhythm. So it was a great partnering of punk and dance music."
Excerpt: The Art of Percussion, By Ezra Gale. pp. 69, waxpoetics #45 (dance issue)
9.08.2014
constructs (a series)
... in relation to natural signs, there is no difficulty, since the visible connection there is between such signs and things indicates clearly that when we affirm of the sign the thing is signified, we mean not that the sign is really this thing, but that it is so in signification, and figuratively. And thus we may say, without introduction, and without ceremony, of a portrait of Ceasar, 'This is Ceasar', and of a map of Italy, 'This is Italy'.
antoine arnauld and pierre nicole, port-royal logic, 1662.
9.05.2014
untitled (vision)
We are only beginning to exploit them; for - although photography is already over a hundred years old- it is only in recent years that the course of development has allowed us to see beyond
the specific instance and recognize the creative consequences. Our vision
has only lately developed sufficiently to grasp these connections.
Excerpt: p. 7, ' Painting, Photography, and Film,' Lazlo Moholy Nagy.(First English Edition. 1969).
9.04.2014
stone (part_IV)
The 100-year plus materials are lead, tile, slate, and metal. When lead finally corrodes after a century or so, it needs to be completely replaced. Tile and slate are heavy, expensive, and sometimes breakable, but they are fireproof and beautiful, and they will last the life of most buildings (often much longer, since they can be recycled). New concrete tiles are not as attractive as traditional clay tiles- a 12,000 year-old-technology- but they cost less. Slates are soulful. However, they don't hold up in sunny climates quite as well as tile (ultraviolet rots them), they need steeper pitches to reduce moisture damage, and they require stainless steel or copper nails if you want the fasteners to last as long as the slates.
Excerpt: pp 177. How Buildings Learn. Stewart Brand, 1995.
9.03.2014
stone (part_III)
The Elizabethan definition of "rogues and vagabonds"
included:
... All persons calling themselves Schollers going about begging, all Seafaring men pretending losses of their Shippes or goods on the sea going about the Country begging, all
idle persons going about in any Country either begging or using any subtile crafte or unlawful Games ... comon Players of Interludes and Minstrells wandring abroade ... all wandering persons and comon Labourers being persons able in bodye using loytering and refusing to worke for such reasonable wages as is taxed or commonly given....
Excerpt: pp.44, A People's History of The United States of America. Howard Zinn
9.02.2014
strike (section_1)
Alpha 60: Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along. But I am time. It's a tiger, tearing me apart; but I am the tiger.
Alphaville- 1965
play the version and reel it back:
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