Philosophical Investigator

&c

2011-05-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

(&
has
been
considered
the
27th
letter
of
the
alphabet)

Trayworld goes on
&c.

New Tray

2011-04-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

Work was halted to document this rather elegant arc.

The bottom layer of brown is liquid.

The paradox of "Action" painting was that it ended as a static image.

Puddles of liquid paint should be enough to fuel the imagination.

What did Pollack see when he gazed into the paint cans in his studio?

August Sunlight

2011-01-24T20:50:00.000-08:00

Here in January
it is worth considering

a lily from August 2010

*

"As silent as a mirror is believed
Realities plunge in silence by . . ."

Hart Crane

*

My 2 favorite graphs of 2010

2010-12-19T17:51:00.000-08:00

6-second collage #

2010-12-18T16:19:00.000-08:00

Upon opening the New Yorker today
noticed an uncanny echo of my Virgin Mary post
of a couple days ago.

There's something about a snake
and a pretty girl
I suppose.

I have sampled a small portion of the whole photograph
(2008 by Tina Barney: "Family Commission with Snake")

but the comparison resonates with the whole.

The snake is a free-floating element
with everything else in the picture.

We are floating in space!

2010-12-16T20:15:00.000-08:00

Then we return to forever.

Merry Snakesmas

2010-12-15T20:37:00.000-08:00

This little event card
printed in Italy in 1971
is a funeral announcement.
It's such a nice little image of the Virgin Mary.

But why is she standing on a snake?

I've been thinking of Mary

lately

wondering why she didn't just say

No
Thank you.
I prefer to remain
immaculately
unconceived
.

Same painting: 2 different book covers

2010-12-13T20:55:00.000-08:00

I'd never seen the British edition

of this novel until recently. (On the left.)

Maybe I would have liked the novel more if I had read that edition.

December 12, 2010

2010-12-09T16:13:00.000-08:00

1 to 5 PM Sunday

Willow Creek
Montana

Aunt Dofes Hall of Recent Memory

Silent auction and sale.

I saw the shining mountains

2010-11-24T17:25:00.000-08:00

last week and had to pull over
although my instamatic camera
does not do the sight justice
(i'm not sure my
living tissue quite captured it either)

this is approx. 1 percent of the visual experience

6 Second Collage

2010-11-17T16:16:00.000-08:00

Suddenly these two books were
side by side on a table

it took 3 seconds to conceive the composition
and 3 to execute the scan

hence: 6 seconds
of phenomenological investigation

Jacques' cover is from 1958 and Dwayne's 1977

what is the brand value of this famous beard
and how does it compare to Che's iconic image

and just what is "economic thought?"

underneath that price sticker
is the word "radical"

Political Economics is like a 6 second thought experiment itself innit?

Another one of those feathered things

2010-11-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

that thought
yes i can!
until it was run over

in the parking lot
of wall mart
by a tea partier

in a Hum-RV

Bleak little rainbow

2010-11-03T15:52:00.000-07:00

Cited behind the Helena Civic Center yesterday.

It was not raining

the winds were carrying sprays of rain or snow

the other rainbow I saw yesterday was completely in the clouds

Out Bird's Eye way

Up above the Great Divide

it's been a good year for rainbows

Thus Spake Debussy circa 1900

2010-10-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

How can we be more succinct than this?

If the notion of "new music" has any meaning at all--this is it.

It takes 600 years to create a musical tradition

and 6 seconds to destroy it.

(3 seconds at most.)

Then we begin

again

.

Another rainbow

2010-10-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

This past June looking out the back door of Bedrock Books

Purposeless Unity

2010-10-06T20:30:00.000-07:00

What is this force that
drives the visible world

alleged "green fuse"

or "dark matter"

*

is "god" a more important word than "and"?

or "the"?

*

I am not a Theist. I am a "The"ist.

First principle: Purposeless Unity.

Words--like paint. But not paint wet in a can or dry on a surface.

Rather, some place in between.

We find unity in the purposeless beauty of the commonplace.

Is it an "ebook" or an "e-book?"

2010-09-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

Ebook?

E-book?

The real problem with ebooks: You can't burn them.

*

All text is ironic. Don't confuse intelligibility with intelligence.

Words laugh at you when you burn them.

*

August Rainbow versus Catholicism

2010-09-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

Brought to you via the electrical grid

We had a couple knock-out rainbows this summer of 2010

*

Yesterday was the anniversary of the

Fall of the Twin Towers

*

That reminds me,

I saw four guys holding a banner in Women's Park here in Helena

"9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB"

it read

as I drove by

this tribe of four guys holding their banner

they all seemed to be talking at each other at once

*

I was reminded of that old media form known as television

Camel DNA

2010-09-03T20:50:00.000-07:00

Riffs on a sentence from Richard Dawkins (UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW)

Camel Dna

　
　
Camel DNA has been shaped by the desert
As Starfish genes are carved by waves
Sequenced by sand and salt
　
Camel DNA tells the ancestral story
blowing in the mindless tunnels
of this ruminant quadruped
　
Camel DNA speaks in a syntax
sculpted by survival
"Desert" is written in the genes of these Biblical beasts
　
Camel DNA sings of arid climates
just as Dolphin DNA chants of the sea--
Eagle DNA describes ancient azure
While crickets’ Digital Nada Ascends into heaven:

Goes in one ear of God
& out the other

Newsboy Solidarity

2010-09-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

Somebody asked me the other day,

Where are you from?

Are you from Butte?

No, I replied.

But thanks, I think.

Do I look like I'm from Butte?

You look like someone I grew up with in Butte.

I'm sorry, I said.

I'm not from Butte.

"Between living and dreaming . . .

2010-08-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

There is something else.

Guess what it is."

(Antonio Machado)

&

"The eye you see isn't

an eye because you see it;

it's an eye because it sees you."

&&

"Consciousness takes two forms.

One is light, the other patience. . . ."

6 Second Collage #3

2010-08-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

2 post cards fell out of a book.

Promotional material from Turtle Island Press

circa 1968 for a republication of Carl O. Sauer's NORTHERN MISTS

Montana Semiotics

2010-08-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

View of the Lemhi Valley in Idaho

2010-08-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

From the Yearian Cemetery.

The site of Thomas Savage's first novel: THE PASS.

Where 10 years feels like a hundred

Dust and mud are the earth's grudge against godless men

*

Even a tranquil blue sky harbors a chill

shimmering in the marrow of existence

*

(It's Georg Trakl in the guise of cowboy poet.)

On Silliman's "School of Quietude"

2010-08-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

I find Silliman's term for
the major trend in American poetry
of the past 50 years quite apt.

But haven't most of them retired by now?

Or, gone under ground
in the most literal sense?

Silliman is quite right to question the quiescent
nature of mainstream academic doggerel.

Listen, if you can handle it, to Keillor's "Writer's Almanac"
when he reads the poem of the day.

S. of Q. reigns. Hush. Do not disturb. Yawn, it's late, time to
go gently into that quiet riot of surrealistic sleepscape.

This is a postcard I received in 1984

2010-08-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

From Paul Piper

*

The artist is Sam J. Boscarino
of Missoula published in 1946.

While badly drawn and wildly
inaccurate

well, what better definition is there
of what is known in our region

as Western Art?

See you at the Rendevous.

Annika out for a walk

2010-08-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

On the summit of Thrill Hill

Then, admiring some flowers
in Reeder's Alley

Oil Spill

2010-08-02T20:34:00.000-07:00

This is a painting
I recently unearthed
that I did 10 or 20 years ago

but now I think is finished
because it has a title

"Oil Spill" 2010

i've found the greatest poem OAT!

2010-07-26T20:58:00.000-07:00

It's by Ernst Jandl

from a collection titled REFT AND LIGHT

it moves as the little cat's fog feet

beside the red-wheeled chickens

*

Is Annika the reincarnation of Buddha?

2010-07-21T21:39:00.000-07:00

You be the judge.

Spent the weekend on Flathead Lake

2010-07-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

With the printer/visionary Peter Koch.

Annika greeted his ideas with an enthusiastic

skepticism.

The days were
infused

with light

hence

the electric orchard.

Annika also enjoyed
the arcs made by
the vintage metal patio
chairs.

Annika and Peter

voiced the same

sentiment about their

uniquely Montana weekend:

"I need this."

6 second collage #2

2010-07-13T20:50:00.000-07:00

Art for the attention surfeit crowd.

Frank Miller mashed with St. Teresa of Avila.

These two book covers lying on the table seemed to resonate.

For about 6 seconds.

One for the ANNALS OF BORING ARCHITECHTURE

2010-06-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

Table top Musicians in Concert?

2010-06-23T21:13:00.000-07:00

One thing that peeves me about text messaging is
the devaluing of the term

TEXT

which used to be a touchstone for tangibility--
words put

INTO PRINT

that was the thrust

not this immediately delete mind"set"

also: text messaging is parasitic on the alphabet
appropriating signs @ whim

always dependent on the host system
but only draining never contributing
to the row row row bustness of the language at large
*

Text messaging is the anti-christ of the printed word

ttyl

Thank you Hilaire Belloc; thank you Jeff Mills:

2010-06-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

If you've never read the hilarious
Hilaire, seek him out.

Author of ON ANYTHING;
ON NOTHING AND RELATED SUBJECTS;

ON EVERYTHING;
ON SOMETHING;

and of course the aptly titled:

ON.

*

But my other subject today is Jeff Mills, techno/dj of Detroit fame
who has just released a new 5" CD/Vinyl hybrid.

It's called THE OCCURENCE and can be found
wherever CD/Vinyl Records are sold . . .

Yes, you can also play this CD on your turntable!

At last. I mostly listen to vinyl but I still have a place in my hEARt
for that vintage format, the Compact Disc.

Jeff Mills, a bridge builder for today.

6 Second Collage from THE CINEMA

2010-06-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

AS ART.

(1965)

Behind the scenes of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANKE

&

a still from IVAN THE TERRIBLE.

The caption for the 1st image reads, "Film production is one of our heavy industries."

As an example of a heavy industry accident, AVATAR could be compared to The Big Spill. But in the society of the spectacle, a giant accident like AVATAR makes billions of dollars rather than costing billions of dollars.

Oh oil-covered film-going pelicans!

Splanchnic Neurasthenia

2010-05-31T21:16:00.000-07:00

Woke
up
this
morning
with
splanchnic
neurasthenia

Albert Abrams
wrote
the
book
on
the
blues

Turns
out
there
is
a
cure for the springtime blues.

Toothpick, Lisbon, & Orcas Islands

2010-05-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

A small magazine out of
Seattle from 1973.

This piece "1" is on the cover.

It is attributed to one Ron Silliman.

*

Holds up rather well.

One can see the periodicity at work
which will reach fruition in landmark texts
like TJANTING and KETJAK.

Martin Holt's May 1st birthday party in the quarry

2010-05-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

one of the burnable sculptures entered in the "sculpture slam"

this one by chris chrichton * as Heraclitus said: "Fire lives the death of air, and air lives the death of fire . . ."

Degrees of Strange in Philipsburg

2010-05-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

Random tableau from the old school house in Philipsburg last week.

Who you lookin' at?

2010-05-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

"He who fights with monsters should see to it
that he does not become a monster himself. And
when you stare long into an abyss, the abyss
also stares into you." [Nietzsche]

The Laws of Money

2010-05-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

are not the same as those pertaining to gravity.

Three depictions of Hell

2010-05-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

from a German text (circa 1890) have me thinking of spending some time in Hell.

Oddly it doesn't look all that bad. More like people waiting in an airport.

This guy in the lower right seems to be saying

"By golly, I'm standing in flames!"

These
people
don't seem
to be doing badly
at all. The flames are
higher, but, nobody's hair
has even caught
on fire.
Here, things seem a little more dire.
And at last, one person has buried their
face in their hands.

Hell, Purgatory, Heaven.

It's the original video game.

A little piece of filler

2010-05-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

from Alan Moore's new magazine

DODGEM LOGIC

*

This mania for puzzles . . . as if the world isn't
always already

riddled with riddles--

*

"How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?" [E.M. Forster]

*

A game in which . . . to play would be to make up rules . . .

After dinner, we attacked

2010-05-05T19:27:00.000-07:00

the old problem of Nominalism versus Realism. Annika has just finished summarizing her stance contra Realism.

Brother John has mumbled something like, I guess we will just agree to disagree, then.

Actual Size

2009-11-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

Chomsky quotes Shklovsky early in LANGUAGE & MIND:

"People living at the seashore grow so accustomed to the murmur of the waves that they never hear it. By the same token, we scarcely ever hear the words which we utter . . . We look at each other, but we do not see each other any more. Our perception of the world has withered away; what has remained is mere recognition."

Perception of the world has withered . . . to be sure . . . back there in 1919 . . .

Where does that put us here in 2019? Ok, it's 2009--what a difference a digit makes!

The question remains: have we become so entirely dependent upon representations of the world that we no longer even recognize what an actual perception might be like? I think it was William Tennesse Stevens who pronounced: No things but in ideas.

Or was that Gertrude Wittgenstein?

Today's quote:

2009-10-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

"Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working."
(Stephen DeStaebler)

I read this today in a book entitled ART AND FEAR.

*

There is also the work of Jim Magee:

http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Inside-The-Hill

*

"Everyone makes and has need of making a world other than the one he sees."

(Joseph Joubert)

Silence Enlarges All

2009-10-20T21:19:00.000-07:00

Silence will soon become a commodity
futures in silence will be offered in the marketplace
we will invest in durations of silence
to be cashed in at a later date
we will insure our silence
just like a house
car or life
we will stash our shares of silence
in a silent safety deposit book
our future passport into the anechoic chamber of bliss
this will happen silence will become commodified you know I’m right
then the famous day will arrive
we are ready to cash in our shares
enter a sacred password and:
　
　
silence ensues
　
　
. . . . . A new lucidity
floods our frontal lobes
Silence creates a spate of instant upon instant fundamental
insights
into the structure of existence
our investment is paying death-defying dividends
free at last we are happier with every breath
when suddenly noiselight sirens beeping alarms
your time is up
WHAT?
My silence is over?
Thread of thought unravels
All remains unrevealed as noise of existence
resumes I must call my broker/priest
Put in an order for another decade of silence
Sure
What’s your bid?
Everything
Forever

Sunrise during full moon

2009-10-18T16:54:00.000-07:00

Things looked a little strange when I left Jester's
the other night
Sunrise
& a full moon

Or portent of doom?

Lo: a poem spewed forth titled:

AFTER THE DISASTER

(ahem)

after the earthquake
we asked god
why now why here
he sd
he'd get back to us

following the tsunami
we prayed to the sea
please
be kind be gentle
then came
the cyclone

after the assassination
we called the cops
"Who is calling?" they asked
(we hung up)

after the train wreck
we sent a text message
PAY ATTENTION
STOP TEXTING

after the atomic bomb exploded
we thought: what were we thinking?
The Unthinkable, we replied
then we forgot what we were thinking

after the Hollow cost
we asked Jesus on the Cross
Doesn't spring just hang you up the most?

After the chicken got run over
we mused: why did that damn chicken
want to cross the road, anyway?

After we had met the Buddha
on the road
& had killed him
we felt sad
why
we pondered
why had he been out to get us?

After 13 shots of whiskey
we
dropped
dead

After I dropped dead
a blond-headed reporter
stuck a camera in my face "How does it feel to be dead?"

it feels good I said
grabbed her by both wrists &
pulled her into the void
into that good gentle quiet night

In the Future

2009-09-24T21:03:00.000-07:00

It's 9/11

24/7

then things calm down

for the Apocalypse

when 666

parties down

like it's 1999

Aways Enlarge

2009-09-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

Hey John,

Here is the Pascal quote I was trying to recall last time we talked:

"The reason of effects.--Lust and force are the source of all our actions; lust causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones."

Take my religion, please.

This is theology like Soupy Sales: A Pi in the Face.

Well, that's the way it is . . . these days . . .

Ad infinitum is the new End Of Story

Over-fed is the new hunger

Abject poverty is the new filthy rich

Noise is the new signal

Manic Depression is the new Calm Elation

Betrayal is the new Loyalty (Sarah Palin)

Capitalism is the new socialism (Bank bail-outs)

Infidelity is the new Family Value (Take your pick)

Plagiarism is the new Originality (Every DJ alive)

Destruction is the new Creation

Randomly splashed paint trays are the new exactitude

Catextrophe

2009-09-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

i saw the best minds of our society
destroyed by text messaging
car crashes train wrecks
metastasizing devices murdering brain cells
immediacy
replacing understanding
weapons of destruction of the masses

guns don't kill people improvised explosive messages do

by the roadside in the thoroughfare car
bomb truck bomb bus bomb plane bomb
bomb bomb bomb

inattention is the new concentration
soon we will all be twittering machines
Another catextrophe bites the dust in the wind
where the answers blow

Small town music stores

2009-08-23T17:26:00.000-07:00

are disappearing

this store in Dickerson, North Dakota
still exists

but for how long?

Notice the strange instrument in the corner of the window

a harbinger of things to come?

Is there a place for the didgeridoo
in a North Dakota high school marching band?

I hope so.

Although

I just heard a bird call
in the alley
out back

. . . & I wondered

is that somebody's cell phone?

Tattered plastic caught in fences

2009-07-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

I recently became interested in documenting plastic caught in fences

usually along a road

a kind of script

wind driven random alpha-bits

"World's" largest dairy cow contemplates the sunset

2009-07-26T19:09:00.002-07:00

Meanwhile

back here in Helena

i just had someone stop in at "Bedrock" books

because the front door was open

A guy stepped in and asked, "Are you open?"

Sir, I replied, this is Bedrock Books and we are never open.

We are closed 24/7.

If you'd like to make an appointment check with the giant cow in North Dakota.

Crazy Weather

2009-07-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

View from Thrill Hill
of the sky above the Helena valley
last Friday

My new word for today:

Globovore

Someone who must consume everything in the world

The hyper-consumer.

Yesterday's word:

Bio-MEME-icry

Spreading of the word about Nature as primal teacher

*

Consciousness is just whatever weather is blowing through a brain on any given day

*

We are left-handed and right-handed; but, are we left or right eyed?

There was a party at Bedrock.

2009-06-29T20:47:00.000-07:00

We incorporated
a
door
found
out
by
the dumpster
in back.

The next
day
it
looked
like
this.

Everybody
used the door as a frame for a portrait.

Two examples follow.

It was a good party.

Blue Arc

2009-06-08T22:01:00.000-07:00

Another day

another paint tray

*

intriguing tedium of majestic monotony

*

Quarry bonfire Saturday night

2009-05-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

Then
this morning I read in Geoff Dyer's YOGA FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO DO IT
A quote from Roland Barthes, "Burn what you whorship . . . and whorship what you burn."

Soon
the
guitars
will
become
a
funeral
pyre

Getting more traction in Livingston, MT

2009-05-11T22:02:00.000-07:00

Saw this rig
while on a quick
road trip to Big Timber

Greetings from Southern Utah

2009-05-07T15:56:00.000-07:00

Near Carl's place outside Boulder.

A small sampling from

2009-02-24T20:32:00.000-08:00

The Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Type Catalog of 1925.

Foundry poetry @ its best.

Suzi Gablik went to Black Mountain

2009-02-21T15:17:00.000-08:00

Did you know that?

What a place and time!

Gablik mentions here: http://virgilspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/02/black-mountain-college-revisited.html

that Michael Rumaker has written a memoir of his time there.

(I didn't know Rumaker went to Black Mountain.)

I learned this from following a Silliman drone-bot poetic list

There should be armies of poets following Silliman's links

&

I suppose there are.

*

The Harmony of the Squares

2009-02-16T19:31:00.000-08:00

Cubes of silence

*

bales of air

*

"Consciousness is a property of minute patches on the warm surfaces of mild planets."
(P. W. Atkins)

*

buckets of music

rain of anvils

cans of laughter

butterflies forged in iron

*

"We must get rid of our superstitious valuation of texts and written poetry. Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed."
(Artaud)

*

Here's a poem to read once and then forget. It is called:

THE DEFINITION OF SENTIENCE

a soul
is
"at home"
in
galactic
space

a soul
"feels"

alone

only

in a body

*

CABLES TO THE ACE

2009-02-14T19:04:00.000-08:00

OR: FAMILIAR LITURGIES OF MISUNDERSTANDING

Such is the title of a book of poems I'm reading by Thomas Merton from 1967.
(This picture means nothing in relation to the book
but then
what
does anything mean in relation to anything else:)

"3
Decoding the looks of opposites. Writing down their silences. Words replaced by moods. Actions punctuated by the hard fall of imperatives. More and more smoke. Since language has become a medium in which we are totally immersed, there is no longer any need to say anything. The saying says itself all around us. No one need attend. Listening is obsolete. So is silence. Each one travels alone in a small blue capsule of indignation. (Some of the better informed have declared war on language.)"

Thomas Merton: prophet of the internet? "Listening is obsolete."

The language of this "poetry" is totally contemporary:

The title poem begins:

"Edifying cables can be made musical if played and sung by full-armed societies doomed to an electric war. A heavy imperturbable beat. No indication where to stop. No messages to decode. Cables are never causes. Noises are never values. With the unending vroom vroom vroom of the guitars we will all learn a new kind of obstinacy, together with massive lessons of irony and refusal. We assist once again at the marriage of heaven and hell."

Well, perhaps not "totally" contemporary.

Who sends "cables" any more?

But then XX years from now we will ask, "What's an email?"

However, we will still be washing and drying our hands; or will we?

Not Everything We Do

2009-02-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

Is full of color

this recent house we workd on--

call it

the "winter palace"--

is pale, dessicated--

and yet

. .. . . .. .. . .. . . .

You Asked For It

2009-02-12T07:16:00.000-08:00

More fake art
from the real world

Actual paint tray residues
posing as abstract paintings

Rigorously random effects
created under carefully controlled circumstances

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T19:56:00.000-08:00

2009 will be fine.

These elegantly dressed ladies watch the new year open with placid calm.

Micro-bliss

2008-12-04T23:53:00.000-08:00

Spider plant blossom over box forms

Great clouds outside of Great Falls

2008-11-30T21:23:00.000-08:00

Drove into these blowing clouds of snow the other day

as we returned from Monarch.

Perhaps we should call it

gigantic sky country.

This fat old sunflower

2008-10-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

loomed over the back yard late this summer.

Gone now, composted, it enters the midden of history.

But just before it fell over, succumbing to frost and gravity

it handed me an envelope: It's absentee ballot; another vote for Obama.

Recently acquired book:

2008-09-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

Mary MacLane's third, and last, title.
Published in 1917, it is a sequel to her famous THE STORY OF MARY MacLANE.
Unsurprisingly it is about . . . herself.

But what of the San Francisco bookstore that carried the title, what, some 80 years ago?

White House Books.

I look forward to browsing there soon.

Sunset on Flathead Lake

2008-09-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

Recently spent a few days on Flathead Lake . . .

Waves undulating on the shore

. . .

Then, back in Helena

A party on Rodney Street

Ululations and more

undulating

. . .

It's been a good summer.

Two new images.

2008-08-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

The whole paint tray series could be called "Listening to Paint Dry"

Meanwhile, history proceeds on.

Will technology eclipse christianity?

Or, will Jesus have the last laugh

and eat western history for brunch?

John Hanson Live at Bedrock

2008-08-02T17:39:00.000-07:00

Wandering troubadour/monk/blogger/spirit

John Hanson passed through Helena last week

played some songs for a while

*

people smiled

prayed

stood by in stupified ceramic wonder

*

we sang a-
long
we did not sing some-
times we sat
without singing a-
tall
we sang but not a-
lot
if we sang a-
lways
there would
be no silence:
the greatest song of a-
gog

There are flightless birds

2008-07-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

and then there are birdless wings

saw this on the street a few days ago

Real world events.

2008-05-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

A recent paint tray.

Random rectangles

on rain-wet sidewalk.

Spring Snow

2008-04-27T20:23:00.000-07:00

Not just a great novel my Mishima!

This spring has been bountious with snow

This half-eaten snow frosted doughnut
(of unknown material)
was outside of Bedrock the other afternoon.

"Photography is inherently fragmentary . . ." writes Robert Adams on the last page of a recent book.

At first I thought this was profound. Upon continued reflection it seems platitudinous.

Isn't all art inherently fragmentary? Consciousness is inherently fragmentary.

Baseball is inherently fragmentary. Pitch by pitch.

*

Photography is inherently unifying.

Yet another picture of my favorite two-headed eagle.

2008-04-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

With a triangle on its heads.

What does it mean?

Oh, and a recent tray.

Frozen chaos of the everyday.

Red Ink

2008-04-19T18:16:00.000-07:00

Next I need a big bottle of black ink.

*

Claes Oldenburg?

2008-04-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

This looks like a gigantic sculpture to me.

Nancy Rumbel & Eric Tingstad

2008-03-31T17:42:00.000-07:00

Presented a Tilt-a-Whirl
performance at the Methodist Church
here in Helena
last Saturday night.

Beautiful sounds abounded
as the soothing tones
cut through the air like razor-sharp scythes.

They did a tasteful arrangement of
"What A Wonderful World."

I'm looking forward to comparing it to the cover
version forthcoming on the new Ministry album.

American monetary system

2008-03-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

Remember these machines?

There's still one at The Hub in the Helena Valley.

Much like the economy today

it's "broken."

Out of order.

Vote Obama.

Restore order.

Ultimately, it may mean

more pocket

"change"
for us all.

The Corner Bar?

2008-03-04T18:04:00.000-08:00

How long can it remain?

Paint tray shot in the afternoon light.

Late Dusk March 1st Light 2008

2008-03-01T21:07:00.000-08:00

On
the
walk
home
from Bedrock.

Annual Snow Carving Contest on Rodney Street

2008-02-17T22:44:00.000-08:00

New directions in random color splatter

2008-02-09T21:45:00.000-08:00

Chain-lock lattice

2008-01-27T21:54:00.000-08:00

Stuff

2008-01-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

Check out this guy's art:

http://www.chrisjordan.com

Reading this book . . .

2008-01-17T08:48:00.000-08:00

is like receiving mild electrical stimuli

to the brain through the electrodes of prose.

Not harmful at all, trust me.

Rumor has it

2008-01-09T23:37:00.000-08:00

Charley B

will be Oprah's next selection

but

it might be just one of those

internet

dreams

No Country For Old Men: The Movie

2008-01-05T23:10:00.000-08:00

The C-Brothers have made a film that reminds us of the promise of cinema.

That is, it can be an art form like poetry or painting or prose.

The masterstroke is this: The complete absence of a soundtrack as such.

Yet, it is as much an aural experience as a visual or narrative one.

The sounds of the world are allowed to live on their own.

No folksy guitars to say, this is "the west." No ominous drones to indicate foreboding and menace.

Plenty of unease in the sound of footsteps in the hall, the scrape of coathangers in a cheap motel closet.

Not a single note of "music" in the entire film; yet, the most appropriate and artistic use of sound in cinema I've ever "seen."

New Year's Resolution.

2008-01-01T23:07:00.000-08:00

Blog more.

Blog worse.

*

Resist nothing.

Obey everything.

This I believe.

2007-12-26T21:25:00.000-08:00

I believe in the random line

accidental color

chance glimpses behind

veils of delusion

*

Perhaps Jimi Hendrix presaged

waterboarding when he wrote

"feel like I'm living at the bottom of the bay."

But also, to be forced to breath

air--isn't that a form of torture as well?

Call it . . . in-hell-ation.

Consciousness is given just enough oxygen to realize that it is doomed.

*

Still, as Cioran pointed out, each moment of this tedious hell is a sublime miracle.

The 3rd album by Tomahawk

2007-12-23T22:22:00.000-08:00

I picked up this cd in Missoula the other day.

It's pretty good stuff--but there are certain questions of appropriation.

"All tunes are original arrangements inspired by native american material from the late 19th century."

That's it for information on what the original sources are.

I would hesitate to play this music for the Indians I've worked with in my studio.

Ultimately, I think it could all be worked out. There just needs to be more specific reference to the original sources.

I've got some amazing stuff on vinyl of field recordings made in Montana in the 50's and 60's.

Apparently, this is stuff that is TRANSCRIBED by anthropologists or ethnomusicologists--there just isn't enough information in the packaging or at the Ipecac website.

Www.Ipecac.com

Actually, I really like the music, I'm just disappointed that there isn't more direct acknowledgement of where its coming from.

The "Anonymous" title also bothers me. Mike Patton has borrowed riffs from the Ramayana Monkey Chant for years. All music is derived from other sounds. Bartok doesn't specifically reference the folktunes he appropriates. Yet, in our time, we can now easily refer to our sources.

"Anonymous" seems pretty lazy. The borrowings on this album range, it would seem, from Hopi, to Crow, to Blackfeet, to . . . I don't know.

Time Machine

2007-12-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

Bought this device at a garage sale

a while back.

Happened to get it out the other day

wind it up and set it in motion.

*

Haven't seen it since.

On the stand-up philosophy of Cioran

2007-11-30T12:09:00.000-08:00

Erasmus had this to say:

"Nothing is more foolish than to talk of frivolous things seriously; but nothing is wittier than to make frivolities serve serious ends."

Back in Butte, again.

2007-11-25T22:43:00.000-08:00

I snapped these white walls in Butte 2 weeks ago.

Butte continues as a backlot of existence

& nothingness. Awaiting its' next visit from Wim Wenders

or David Lynch or Shaun Penn.

*

Movie Alert: INTO THE WILD.

*

"Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg?"

2007-11-22T21:52:00.000-08:00

Ever since I read this quote ("Do you want total war?") somewhere, attributed to Hilter's propaganda adviser, Joseph Goebbels, I've been pondering this fine distinction between Total War and Absolute War.

Total War is essentially a war in which a state's political system, society and economy are mobilized to a massive degree for the continuation and expansion of the war effort.

Absolute War, would be a war that is free from the moderating effects imposed on it by politics and society.

Clausewitz, western philosophy's esteemed theorist of warfare, considered the concept an absurdity--since, a nation (a social and political economy) is required to underwrite a massive war machine.

However, Clausewitz was thinking about this 150 years before the birth of George Bush 2.0.

The Bush/Cheney regime would appear to be the first successful practioners of Absolute War in history. Their program is international in scope. Boundaries are less important than targets. Targets can be anyone and anything.

It is generally agreed that World Wars I & II were the first instances of Total War, incorporating civilians and the civilian infrastructure as part of the military's logistical support system.

Absolute War has taken this one step further. Now, civilians have been hired to do the actual killing. International law and the moderating influences of social custom? How quaint.

With Total War there was at least a sense of an Us versus a Them.

Absolute War is not so obvious and is most clearly embodied in the conduct of Herr Cheney: You may be his friend but that doesn't mean he won't shoot you in the face.

Our cat, Sid, on her way to giving me a high 5

2007-11-19T21:59:00.000-08:00

She's got to learn to keep those claws

retracted, though, during this maneuver.