Trick or treat. Also:
- Mount Eerie
- the long count
- bloodsucker
- a woman under the influence
- spelling bee
- war of the worlds
- VVORK variety show
this weekend
imaginary outfit: scary movies on the couch
I love Halloween. Always have. It was a night of perfect freedom - freedom to roam the neighborhood past dark, to run across yards and bang on strangers' doors, to dress up and to eat an outrageous amount of candy. Grown-up Halloween is decidedly disappointing in comparison, but even Halloween for kids today is not what it was for me - anxiety is winning. Kid Halloween is becoming an increasingly controlled event, and the madcap magic is being drained away.
Fortunately, I have my memories. And I like to take Halloween night wrap in their cozy embrace - to wear too many sweaters and funny socks, and curl up on the couch with blankets and a stack of DVDs (this list is a good place to start) - whatever is old and creepy. But scary movies aren't the key to capturing the spirit of Halloweens past - it's Tootsie Rolls. Whenever I bite one, I'm ten again with a candy-laden pillowcase banging at my shins, deliciously spooked at the dark neighborhood streets.
true magic
strange powers
Ted Serios on Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers. The end trails off to the Cottingley Fairies.
for remembrance of the departed
Beautiful.
Strange to think that someone will wear this and think of her, Jane Knight, unknown today except through this token of esteem and loss.
hands in
Two things I did on Hallows Night:—
Made my house April-clear;
Left open wide my door
To the ghosts of the year.
Then one came in. Across the room
It stood up long and fair—
The ghost that was myself—
And gave me stare for stare.
Lizette Woodworth Reese, 'All Hallows Night'
Image from here.
talking boards
Bird's-eye maple Ouija board made by William and Isaac Fuld from around 1898-1901. William Fuld came to known as the 'Father of the Ouija Board' and got a patent for his products.
Ouija planchette:
the race track
Albert Pinkham Ryder (American, 1847 - 1917): The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse):
The painting was inspired by a horse race that took place in New York in 1888. A waiter Ryder knew wagered $500 on the race, and then committed suicide when the horse lost ... In reference to the fatal horse race, Death rides on a racetrack, but rides in reverse to the usual direction. (Ryder sometimes referred to the painting as The Reverse.) As was his habit, Ryder worked on the painting for decades, making innumerable changes, and was reluctant to part with it.
From the Cleveland Museum of Art.
this weekend
- Sally Mann
- all my friends are funeral singers
- at the still point of the turning world
- wild river
- marshmallow civil war
flickr image via This Is Glamorous.
it is possible to achieve momentary harmony through creative work
In the book, Max effortlessly controls the Wild Things by taming them with “the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once.”
In the movie, Max wants to control the Wild Things. The Wild Things in turn want to be controlled. They want him to build a utopia for them where they won’t feel pain. But in the movie, Max fails as king. He lacks the power to control his Wild Things. The Wild Things come to recognize that he isn’t really a king, and maybe there are no such things as kings.
In the philosopher’s picture, the good life is won through direct assault. Heroes use reason to separate virtue from vice. Then they use willpower to conquer weakness, fear, selfishness and the dark passions lurking inside. Once they achieve virtue they do virtuous things.
In the psychologist’s version, the good life is won indirectly. People have only vague intuitions about the instincts and impulses that have been implanted in them by evolution, culture and upbringing. There is no easy way to command all the wild things jostling inside.
But it is possible to achieve momentary harmony through creative work. Max has all his Wild Things at peace when he is immersed in building a fort or when he is giving another his complete attention. This isn’t the good life through heroic self-analysis but through mundane, self-forgetting effort, and through everyday routines.
David Brooks, NYT.
fallen
John Muir
Photos: Daniel Paul Bayles' Falling Trees. From top: Falling Tree #6, Falling Tree #1, Falling Tree #2, and Falling Tree #4. All taken in Scotts Valley, California, 1989. Found through Flak.
self portrait, with dog
This is the result of an at-home photo session last February. I needed a bio shot for a project and was trying to take one with the self-timer. Nora loves getting her photo taken, and kept sticking her nose at the camera, so finally I yelled at her to get lost. My dulcet tones always inspire her affection, and she hit me with a big kiss just as the shutter went. I never managed to get a workable shot.
Now, I tag LPC.
rings
Hemlock 82 by Bryan Nash Gill.
Process, using a salvaged piece of wood from a lumber mill:
I love this. I also am partial to these.
a place to hide
this weekend
- large holograms (thanks, s.)
- opals and meteorites
- a pilgrimage of sorts (on a semi-related note, I just found this. Wow.)
- finding chairs and lamps
- wild things
Image: I Love It Here by Ethan Breckenridge. Text written in city dust on an insulated window. Via today and tomorrow.
a new landscape, a possible horizon, a place of rest and absolute beauty
Roni Horn’s Gold Field (1980–82), two pounds of pure gold compressed into a luminous rectangular mat.
In 1990 during Horn’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Gonzalez-Torres encountered her sculpture Forms from the Gold Field (1980–82), two pounds of pure gold compressed into a luminous rectangular mat. Set directly on the floor in an otherwise empty gallery, the work threatens to dissolve into dazzling immateriality, the sense of pure surface that its delicacy invokes. Impressed by its radical simplicity and emotive capabilities, Gonzalez-Torres shared his memory of the work with Horn when they met in 1993. A few days later, she sent him a square of gold foil as a symbol of their newfound friendship and shared sensibilities. He was so inspired by her gesture and the expansiveness of her subtle work that he fashioned his own “gold field” in her honor ...
So far, this is my favorite thing I have seen in New York.
See also:
Post title excerpted from '1990: L.A., The Gold Field' by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in Earths Grow Thick, Wexner Center for the Arts Roni Horn exhibition catalogue, 1996.
imaginary outfit: turning 31
Today is my 31st birthday. For a long time, I've held on to a sort of mystical belief in birthdays, the idea that I would wake up on each one magically transformed, a newly-pure traveler ready to move through a fresh year of my life. Birthdays felt like a catalyst. I had a lingering superstition of their intrinsic power to make things happen, to propel me surefooted into a world I would come to know better and better.
This particular birthday feels a bit like turning a corner. Taken together, these 31 birthdays have worked to make me a little more comfortable with ambiguity, a little less afraid of uncertainty. I feel ready to gently retire the idea of annual transformative moments in favor of the goal of steady cumulative work towards the things I want. Maybe this means I'm ready to finally be a grown-up.
But before the long project resumes, I am going to sit on my couch with my dog and have a cup of tea and think a little bit. Because really, that's what birthdays are - a moment to enjoy the vista, a little hill in the year to stand on and take a moment to look behind, then look ahead before setting off again.
making do
I only brought one chair with me from Ohio, and it is too low and slouchy to use at my work table.
Here's my solution:
All I needed to do was raid the camping equipment and my magazine stash.
Getting a new chair is a priority, though - magazines are not the most comfortable seat.
this weekend
Letters to write. Also:
- paired, gold
- design co-op at the Brooklyn Flea
- Jacques-Henri Lartigue
- lipsynch marathon
- nonsense
- bright star
- and the search for a nearby farmer's market continues
Image via The Ugly Earring.
iconographia coelestis
Iconographia Coelestis By Mario Diacono. New York: Peter Blum Edition, 1985.
A fourteen page text, printed in letterpress, on the Roden Crater project by James Turrell. A poem by Pablo Neruda is quoted, in part, as a preface. This book was published to accompany a portfolio of seven etchings by James Turrell entitled "Deep Sky". Translation from the Italian by Meg Shore. Edition of 150 copies, 23 pages, 9 1/8 x 6¼" (23.5 x 16 cm), hardbound. Signed by the artist.See also: Deep Sky etchings.
If ever I wanted a book for its cover, this is it.
to gather starlight
James Turrell and the Roden Crater.
This clip has no sound, but offers tantalizing glimpses. It's on my list of places to go someday.
This clip has no sound, but offers tantalizing glimpses. It's on my list of places to go someday.
fresh stars
Images of interstellar material from the Herschel Space Observatory, taken with the SPIRE and PACS cameras:
The two instruments have imaged an area of about 2 x 2 degrees (about 16 times as big as the size of the Moon as seen from Earth), revealing an extremely rich reservoir of cold material in the Galactic Plane which is seen to be in a previously unsuspected state of turmoil. The interstellar material is condensing in a continuous and interconnected maze of filaments and strings of newly forming stars in all stages of development, unveiling a tireless Galaxy constantly forging new generations of stars. We see an intricate network of filamentary structures with surprising features indicative of a chain of near-simultaneous star-formation events, glittering rather like beads of water on a string in the sunlight.
this weekend
Making order.
Also:
Mixed media by Mamma Andersson. Top: Storage/Lager, 2007. Bottom: Factory/Fabrik, 2007. At Galleri Magnus Karlsson.
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