Notre dame de paris | Collapsed Crane | 籠屋 | something that lasts

 

carry into the future something that lasts. like accidents, disasters, and cruelty do.

 

 

there too – i think about lean-ness and efficiency. desire to cut down ever-further toward a solid hardened state. confusing venture, no less impossible and vile.

 

 

little left but to take away is an irredeemable position. i wish no more. i take all. once it is mine. i surely dream.

 

 

they were just constantly flying in circles.
constantly flying in huge circles.
(laurie anderson, the beginning of memory)

what about the ten thousand year clock, or the pyramids of germany, the practice of caving. these mass projects of human dominance, in which we take into the unknown (profound or unfounded) the meager seed of our ingenuity. keep mine my own. let it be said that i was there once. such and such. as it were.

if we fit everyone in – just how much could we think, together? the box in the home becomes the home. and what if we stopped living entirely? i was recently told about tangential metamorphosis – how i could no longer be human only without transformation – a neutered permanent alter-state. conniptive reluctance. trespassing human crowding by removing ourselves from humanity.

 

 

and if it all went ahead, and then came to an end? do we have the chance to really see it through? lines drawn like aching joints do. by lsd

 

Guilt Ridden | As it was | Tangle-drain

 

drawing around to rediscovery. trying to legitimize a known document, or maybe revel in its acknowledgment that extends past those it concerns. that it would be truer then if others agreed. it could congregate so sweetly i would think, cemented as having happened were a record be made easily available to the document in front of us. at once great, and so always so.

then how disappointing to find no such thing. at a grasp only closed doors, something not so quite itself since it lacks the exact piece that makes it whole. that is, the one sought after. burning hay stack like upheaval. nestling itself in disbelief is also anxiety. that we cannot trust our senses, they are unfulfilled by the realization of our mind – nowhere else but here is this true. fact only in presence. the skeptics worst nightmare. do without them, i whisper. then what. you know. such conversation would surely liberate even the most stubborn of grievers.

 

 

and i had a lovely evening. i spent it in friendly company. testing each other out – digging deeper outward, and so, in the most revered sense, inward. it could have lasted a second, or kept going into further eternity, without changing its effect. it was perfect. i’m happy to share with others in this solace – that hidden, protected, room. it becomes so much more that way, i think.

and it’ll keep happening for a long while, at least. by lsd

 

beethoven’s ode to joy | burne-jones’ golden staircase | it’s june now

the golden staircase, edward burne-jones, 1880

 

 

in no way do i feel remotely like this toward any of this.

but after the last post it only felt right.

 

i don’t care about the 21st, i don’t care about your seasons. this is summer. because anyway it’s all fake, julius and augustus – more like julyuck and augussuck as far as i’m concerned. june is the last real month preceeding five months of lies and smokescreens. september, october, november, december. you do the math.

and i can’t capitalize on this godforsaken website. they won’t let me.

and it’s beginning to become too hot for my morning bike ride through the park to my studio if i wear my backpack (which i must). so now i have to invest in a panier but the rear rack will have to be compatible with a mud guard, and both need to be quick release. that means making a big decision as to getting disc brakes or keeping my pad brakes that barely work (but do work). and i’m thinking of switching both cassettes and both derailleurs as they don’t work (for real), and i want disc brakes but that move away from pad brakes is spiritually akin to getting the new iphone every year. and what if my frame can’t house these things, and then i have to get a dumb new bike that i won’t love nearly as much.

my brakes work. i could use the work-out of not being about to shift gears. who cares if my back sweats i’m tall and strong. i want to use capital letters. they’re fine. capital letters work. i need a mudguard. it’s summer god damn it.

 

is what i would say..

 

but after looking at the golden staircase and resting my eyes on the masterpiece for a few moments – i want to wish you a great first day of june. i hope that you enjoy it and look forward to the months ahead. rocking and brimming.

the painting itself is perhaps the most potent representation of hope and tenderness in burne jones’ body of work. his pre-raphaelite ties are wonderfully displayed in the painting – yet he grounds himself firmly in the ideals of the movement, we can identify a master pressing to the edges. moving away from what was too often a retread of old virtues de facto we have here a painting of true invention. a thought that careens toward contemplation. then, true observation. wherein the players and their environment are in harmony. sublime. by lsd

Amyl and the sniffer | guided by angels

 

thought to end may with the outlier good contemporary punk song ..

 

 

ksenia dronova paintings, lull me into june sweetly, and forever ..

 

 

 

and they are taking me – hummed softly only. that is the case here, anyway. by lsd

Guibert | Satrapi | Tardi | Grandes Planches et Petites Planches

 

last year it was announced that emmanuel guibert had received the prestigious position of head of drawing and etching at the académie des beaux arts. two years prior another cartoonist was also elected to the same post. these two position elections mark the first time in the school’s history that artists from the world of bande-dessinée earned academic leadership positions.

 

 

guibert himself behaves rather atypically for a cartoonist, such that his work extends often off of the drafting table, and at times is not present in the bound product. his work is first and foremost reportage. reintroduction and rearragment of historical documents, biographical passages, and journalistic endeavors, to the greater public.

 

 

 

tooling with mark-marking then becomes a gesture in time-appreciation and time-depreciation, as the main bodies of the work (foreground, middle-ground, background, character) each behave with different autonomies. a beachy bank is not substitutable to the soldier warring along it. In the same way that the soldier to his enemy. and yet they are kindred in kind, just like the bank and the soldier are kindred in matter. the problem of representation and depiction in historical/biographical bd is taken head on by guibert in a rhythmic, systematic (bordering just so in an aesthetic) manner.
the relationships between the bodies goes beyond form alone. it all coexists, and yet is appreciable only when it is acknowledged as belonging to different planes.

 

 

 

marjane satrapi opens up the conversation in a wider manner with her seminal work persepolis.

 

 

autobiographical, belonging to her child-self, returning to far-away and long-away. the line in satrapi’s work is her hand, it is not representative in that sense – it depicts events. in that way then she is able to go wherever she wishes. she has flattened the dimension of time and space such that they are her’s to recover and pry into freely.

 

 

not much more needs to be said here about her work itself. it would be a disservice to the already extensive conversation that has surrounded the comic.

finally we get to tardi. who reaches past guibert’s body of work and satrapi’s persepolis. his work, if we are to continue holding these three together in our arms, neighbors satrapi’s later broderies. As both communicate with the deep past (the past not lived by the author) in an emotional capacity. both authors are trying to assess the past. such that the factual nature of either of their works is structure not content. it braces the emotive potential, the oniric potential of polemical and anecdotal issues, of their works.

 

 

tardi, son and grandson of soldiers, bears little resemblance to the patriot of today. for he knows it is person that makes country. it is then country that severs, massacres person. country is not an identity, it is a set of behaviors imposed on person. war happens upon person, not country.

 

note the slight gray variations in scenery, and even characters

 

tardi’s line is exquisite in its trustworthiness, it is free to wander with surgical accuracy the depth of human expression. he builds (seemingly from day one) a robust vocabulary of line that continues to serve him throughout his career – changing only to improve and clarify, not to reinvent. in that steadfast manner, tardi opens himself up in a way that an american might understand lynchian routine. do the same thing, eat the same food, appreciate the same landscapes, everyday – dream then, whole and free. ultimately tardi is the progenitor of sturdy lines out which limits seldom cross the reader’s mind.

 

 

each of these artists, i want to make clear here, operate with comparable sturdiness. the matter does not change between either. they are cut from the same cloth and it is a wonder that their sensibilities are so closely tender, for as reader it is the great gift of opening any of their books.

 

 

they are cut from the same cloth and it is a wonder that their sensibilities are so closely tender, for as reader it is the great gift of opening any of their books. by lsd

i had to do it to them

we talk about constraints as shape-potential here. we think about what we make, especially when it’s given to us – in a sense. i never wonder about what i don’t do, only what’s yet to be done. so, yesterday i received a package from my printer, and after many mishandled attempts they’ve finally gotten it right. the result speaks for itself. i get to look at my shelf and see the work accomplished so far, with immense pride. it was at one point reviewed by the boss and some crucial feedback led me to tighten my systems down. it pays off i heard. it payed off. breaking into runways. carefully carving the embankment and seeing the stream take shape. managing the estuaries. such and such.

i’m starting a whole new dostoïevski and raking in my good boy points by dutifully tending to my work. so leave me alone. i can’t stand this time you draw for me, let me asphyxiate in my own routine. i’m in full discovery-mode, collection-mode. i got stuff to put away neatly, you’ll see it soon. such and such.

lots of rambling. lots missing here that i’m not saying. but it’s a greater urge than discipline so i ought to leave it here. by lsd

Belkacem | Fontaine | C’est normal

today, i really just need this song. it’s a gloomy passage that’s livened by the pleasure of aresky belkacem and brigitte fontaine’s incredible collaboration. their song c’est normal stands in a class of its own, and, since my earliest memories, has been at my side. je ne connais pas cet homme is an achievement in songwriting, pacing, and a testament to all avant-garde album structure.

it is rue barbette, saturday maybe, and i can see maman spraying a cleaning solution to wipe our parquet down. the name has long since escaped me and i hold the smell tightly against my chest – hoping that it remains mine to keep always. when she is done she’ll also use it to wipe our black lacquered china table with the ivory relief safely protected under a thick glass pane. the apartment is entranced by fontaine and belkacem, and for a few brief moments we both sing along to the burning building leading them to their impending/inevitable/obvious peril. it is death that’s found at the bottom of the rubble. the courtyard in my building is cobblestone. mom has painted her new wall pink. i use papier calque to trace my favorite cassette covers rented from the video store. we do this for years i think, then we move. far away. and now we are here. i am happy that is the case. by lsd

Sakamoto | Borges | Basile | seek further into the intra-place

we lost ryuichi sakamoto this year. he left us with 12, a wrestled arragment of piano pieces that extend into the ultimate vision of his late-career desire – to make music outside of time. the pieces are grounded in the earth, they rustle sound and speak at a geological pace that might fulfill his desire. though his time is the time of all humans. nonhumans, like rocks and tables, behave differently. albums like 12 exist among them. it is with hope that we conclude our thoughts on the work of this brilliant musician.

i wish to return then to a profoundly human time scale. a song, in an otherwise largely instrumental lp, that is so sensitive and intimate it has to be spoken in a handful of languages. a song then for humans, not humanity. ‘fullmoon’ is first and foremost a poem (like all work where capital b beauty is the chief concern) repeated by various speakers in their mother tongues. here goes :

because we don’t know when we will die
we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well
yet everything happens only a certain number of times
and a very small number, really
how many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood
some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive your life without it?
perhaps four or five times more
perhaps not even that
how many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
perhaps twenty, and yet it all seems limitless

a heartwrenching admittance by a composer yearning to extend the realm of his consciousness by conceiving outside of mortality. sound then as prolongation. sound not as wave but as matter itself. here though we have a complete recroquevillement into the human stratum. the poem operates like a laurie anderson poem, or a björk lyric. it is plainly apparent – the joke is that there is none. the gift is that it is all yours. it is all yours. and if you listen closely you’ll note that each reading gives, by the various language structures, entirely different tones. begging then to forever wonder how well can one text hope to keep its integrity? who’s to say? and yet, ryuichi sakamoto is clear. it is memory that lasts, not our ability to maintain its sanctity. i hope he was well aware of how much reached out to his listener, and how warmly his listener embraced his music. how solid his grasp was on matters of the heart.

 

 

 

continue the journey into intra-place with a link to an actualized, albeit digital, library of babel. here, the inconceivable magnitude of borges’ celebrated thought experiment is contained to within the maddening pace of a single screen at a time. in jonathan basile’s ever so thoughtful digital rendition find also the exploratory purpose that the edifice of the story itself corrupts in the human soul. you are not alarmed, you are here. find firm ground in totality by reducing the effect of the accomplishment. it is not geological scale that dictates this monument, it is the atomic scale. you are here and will never get there. rest within yourself the pride that drives you to peruse the stacks that populate the shelves.

surf the website by clicking here

 

 

proposed floor plan for the library of babel
spectacularly, intersecting hexagons are depicted in async’s remix lp

only then can you wonder truly past situations and phenomena. to affix your gaze toward significance and its healing abilities. by lsd

Salcedo | Genet | Luke | Incision as a two-way street

 

there are moments in notre-dame des fleurs that reverbate. they shake the terrain, and the words become buzzing entities. as gesture turns to caress and exchanges pronounce lullabies genet pierces his way in and out of the novel and the novel being told. i refuse to attempt a reading of his work beyond these observations. i refuse to remember the work through anyone else’s eyes and to accentuate other’s lives into the novel. knowing genet’s novel is simply to have read it an innumberable amount of times and to find in it the same tin soldier, the same procession, the same bed, and the same river bank. in that way the novel remains the same as genet wrote it. it is his to traverse and to tangle/untangle. this is his. i cannot wish more from it, as it expresses wholly the desire of his entrapment. willfully pressed against the most unsavory walls.

 


 

“oh luke, you wild, beautiful thing. you crazy handful of nothin’.”

“hell, he’s a natural-born world-shaker.”

 

 

compare to cool hand luke the condition of captivity. The softness of both genet and luke’s abject desires. in them both i find myself not wanting to go further, neither past the boundaries of what they provide nor into the grating dithering of peoples’ opinion.

salcedo anchors into the seed of this thought reassurance. that as she herself shares of her own work the status of secondary witness to violence. by way of building upon and reconfiguration she pierces the nature of the objects under her gaze, into testaments. their claims to violence solidified by the intervention she musters. enclosed or gouged, the object is preserved – so then is maintained its potential for ongoing intrusion.

 


pressing into the comet, trailing such as it is by lsd

Holly Herndon | PROTO | Extreme Love

 

lily anna hayes reading a text that might surely make timothy morton proud.

it moves me so profoundly.

it is everything but not all.

warm excess materialism.

i sure love it with all my heart..

prompting an unchanged discovery by lsd