roman signer on the brain

this was summer on the oregon coast.*.

*note famous rocks in the distance.
** before avian flu was part of the collective paranoia

if you're in Germany

If you happen to find yourself in Heidelberg, after checking out the oldest Apothecary in Europe, and sampling the local Reisling (the only white i can stomach), do check out the following show that I'm in:

Click the link embedded in the above title for more info..

close your eyes and .....

This is James Casabere. He creates these miniatures of stark and desolate spaces which are then photographed and printed (in large sizes..). I haven't seen one in person. I just ran into his work for the first time a few weeks ago so I'm not familiar with it at all.

july and it's hot

This image is incredible. I'm not sure the distance from the explosion that it's shot from, nor the altitude of its top (10thousand to15thousandfeet?).

Sabre-rattlers out there take note, and be wary of your war mongering.

I just began reading Kevin Brockmeier's new collection of short fiction, The View From the Seventh Layer. After Things That Fall From The Sky, and A Brief History of the Dead I've developed a real appetite for his work.

In an effort to save cash, more frequent trips to the Library have temporarily added these books to the coffee table:

1)Phaidon's SCULPTURE TODAY

2)The Architectural Unconscious (James Casabere + Glen Seator)

3)The New Urban Landscape , edited by Richard Martin

4)PAUL McCarthy, published by the New Museum of Contemporary Art , NY

a great list...I'm suddenly very interested in James Casabere's photographed miniature spaces, especially the flooded ones. I'll have to look for an image to post here.

Inbloom

The sausage tree on lincoln road is blooming.

from the wit of the staircase

So here I am, in the middle way, having had

twenty years -

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of

l'entre deux guerres -

Trying to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind

of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better

of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or

the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so

each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what

there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already

been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom

one cannot hope

To emulate - but there is no competition -

There is only the fight to recover

what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now,

under conditionsThat seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither

gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not

our business.

--T. S. Eliot

East Coker

Four Quartets

missing, sort of...

Where is Rob?

bulletproof

The above link is to a video of Radiohead's Bulletproof. We saw them a few nights ago in West Palm Beach at the Cruzan Ampitheatre. It was an incredible show. Nothing short of amazing. There are already dozens of videos slash songs from that night posted on Youtube, for your (our) viewing enjoyment.

This picture was taken with my phone. It's of the stage moments before the show started.

y'all fixed her gallbladder, right?

From the acidic & animated comedy of Squidbillies,
its intro diddy:

"my dreams are all dead & buried
sometimes i wish the sun would just explode.
when god comes and calls me to his kingdom
i'll take all you sons a bitches when i go...."

hilarious.

this is nowhere too

I've been thinking about the precise center of nowhere.

(Negative Space)

I offer a non-sequitor to begin with (above):
A DC10 full of well-behaved, though understandably impatient, horses.

Second:Things I am taking in at the moment:

1) too much Vetiver,Sufjan Stevens, the new Of Montreal, Greg Ashley and/or GrisGris
2) Peter Doig, late 70s Chris Burden, plus Eva Hesse's formal compositions (among others things)
3) Just read Chuck Palhniuk's (sp) Survivor, and save for a few interesting chops here & there I thoroughly hated his writing. Deeply, horribly, terribly hated it. He tells & retells the same story over and over again from book to book.
4)watching on the telly anything to do with ghosts or UFOs (as usual)
5) Debating whether to read Flannery O'Conner or F.Scott Fitzgerald
6)Jerry Saltz's reviews
7) the games our cats play


morelater...

(more) Minor Transgressions....

We saw Michel Gondry's new film last night, Be Kind Rewind. A lite comedy about two videostore goofs who ,after filming short and glib low-budge remakes of well-known movies , reclaim their town's past and in turn their own. Propoganda for relational aesthetics, and a democratization of the art making process, the film insists - as does so much of community based art - that there is redemtion through art, and that feel-good conclusions are an inherent product of these all-inclusive formats. Gondry's film falls subject to the fluff that dooms so many egalitarian / community participation based projects: It is overly sentimental and sappy.
Despite moments of genuinely funny moments, it wasn't Gondry's best.

And, a last word on relational aesthetics. I just don't buy so much of this kind of work that seeks to branch out and include "everyone", that seeks individual epiphany and growth via communal experience. Harrell Fletcher, Miranda July, and all others alike, I don't buy it. Their comes across as genuinely insincere and, frankly, lazy. I'll admit that the organizational abilities of these and like-minded artists is applause worthy, but their works (and i realze i'm generalizing here..) tend to leave me feeling empty, uninspired, bored.

and to combat said boredom, I give you the above....

the sun as seen

"The Sun is ball of incandescent gas, a gigantic helium furnace."
I can't remember who sang the song.
I took this picture from the Wilson Observatory's Solar Telescope last year.

haunt?

this is the view into the hall from our new apartment. 3 minutes driving time to the studio.

time to get a bike.

more frequent postings upcoming.