“Britney To Razor Blades”

1. A short course in forgetting chemistry


2. How to count in oil and stone


3. The mouldy materia prima


4. How do substances occupy the mind?


5. Coagulating, cohobating, macerating, reverberating


6. The studio as a kind of psychosis


7. Steplessness


8. The beautiful reddish light of the philosopher’s stone


9. Last words

Chapter titles
from “What Painting Is”
by James Elkins

This afternoon I was waiting in line
in a store to pay for some Benadryl.

When I drink too much Red Bull the sugar
and caffeine cause my sinuses to ache.

It must be like an allergy because
Benadryl helps get me back to normal.

The pills, and staying away from Red Bull.

This afternoon I was waiting in line
in a store and the sound system clicked in
as a manager made an announcement.

“Britney to razor blades,” a voice announced.

“Britney to razor blades,” it repeated,
“there’s a customer who needs assistance.”

I looked at the other people in line
and said, “‘Britney to razor blades’—that sounds
like a song title or gossip headline.”

People smiled. A woman said, “If it was
a gossip headline I’d read the story.”

James Elkins taught at the Art Institute
of Chicago’s school when he wrote the book,
“What Painting Is.” He taught art history,
theory and criticism, and the book
is an interesting comparison
of painting to alchemy. James Elkins
is a painter, writer and alchemist.

This afternoon I was waiting in line
in a store. The wait became something else.

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The Hopeless Chaos Of An Actual Field


The Act Of Making Was The Prayer


Rembrandt, Magic And Substance Becomes Mind


The Deliriously Beautiful World Of Unnamed Substances


Negotiations Between Water And Stone

I Don’t Know If People Dancing Care

“Mother,” the girl interrupted, “listen to me. You remember that book he sent me from Germany? You know—those German poems. What’d I do with it? I’ve been
racking my—”

“You have it.”

“Are you sure?” said the girl.

“Certainly. That is, I have it. It’s in Freddy’s room. You left it here and I didn’t have room for it in the— Why? Does he want it?”

“No. Only, he asked me about it, when we were driving down. He wanted to know if I’d read it.”

“It was in German!”

“Yes, dear. That doesn’t make any difference,” said the girl, crossing her legs. “He said that the poems happen to be written by the only great poet of the century. He said I should’ve bought a translation or something. Or learned the language, if you please.”

“Awful. Awful. It’s sad, actually, is what it is.”

from “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”
by J. D. Salinger

“Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.

Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Genesis 11:7-9

In an internet sort of way over the weekend
I discussed electronica with a musician
from Finland. He spoke English, I didn’t try Finnish.

Percussion synthesizers can generate a groove
and other synthesizers in sync can add color
in the form of cool sounds or gritty sounds or wild sounds
and a musician can adjust faders and twist dials
and slide a finger along a ribbon controller
and press buttons to manipulate the groove and sounds.

People dance to this. The musician has made music
and the process didn’t use even one instrument.

It didn’t use, that is, a classical instrument
and since many synthesizers do not use samples
recorded from a classical instrument playing
but instead generate sounds directly from waveforms
people aren’t dancing to classical instruments.

The theory is buttons, faders, dials and controllers
are instruments now. The network of synthesizers
is the instrument now. Manipulating programs
is the way a musician plays an instrument now.

But are these people musicians? Or operators?

That’s the debate. I don’t know if people dancing care
if there’s a fist-fight going on in the back alley
over the labels ‘musician’ and ‘operator.’

I do know Paul Shaffer got pissed off at Britney Spears
when Britney said Paul was David Letterman’s “DJ.”

I discussed electronica with a musician
from Finland. We typed the words into our computers
and the process didn’t require us to move our lips.

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Electronica at Wikipedia


“We’ll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives,” by Paul Shaffer


“The Dave Smith Instruments Tempest
Analog Drum Machine Is A Sick Mopho” at Synthtopia


*


A Note From The Synthetic Wilderness


A Lost World Where Distance Is God’s Anger


I Can’t Sleep In My Kitchen

Serious Thoughts With The Lights Off And On

One night under a bright full Moon people enjoying an evening out were eating dinner in a club. Three musicians were on a bandstand getting ready for their set. Suddenly the front window shattered and a werewolf leaped into the club. The werewolf snarled and howled and slashed at the air with its claws. Everyone in the club ran to the back where the owner was trying to find the key to open the alley door.

On the bandstand, the piano player said, “Don’t worry. Music has charms that sooth the savage breast. I will save us.” The piano player began playing beautiful classical music, the opening bars of the ‘Nocturne in E flat major’ by Chopin. The werewolf howled and leaped onto the bandstand. Grabbing a leg of the piano, the werewolf hurled the piano off the bandstand and the instrument crashed against the floor smashing to pieces. The piano player ran from the stage and huddled in the crowd at the back of the club.

On the bandstand, the guitar player said, “Don’t worry. I’ll play a modern piece that is loved all over the world.” The guitar player began playing the guitar intro to ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ The werewolf snarled and grabbed the neck of the guitar, wrenching the instrument away from the musician and smashing the guitar against the bandstand. The guitar player ran and huddled in the back with everyone else.

On the bandstand, the third musician, a woman with a flute, said nothing but just began playing. The werewolf snarled, howled and slashed at the air in front of him, then turned and leaped off the bandstand and ran out of the club through the shattered front window.

The club owner walked onto the bandstand. “That was amazing,” the club owner said to the woman with the flute. “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The woman with the flute shrugged. “It was nothing, really,” she said. “I just started playing that Paul Desmond-Dave Brubeck thing, ‘Take Five.’ Everyone always runs away when they hear a flute playing jazz.”

“If you were going to film that
or animate that,” she asked me,
“what kind of werewolf would you use?
The classic Lon Chaney, Jr.,
kind of wolfman, or the modern
freaky animal kind of thing?”

“I would go with the classic look,
like Lon Chaney, Jr.,” I said.
“I like the human man-beast look,
where the creature still has torn bits
of clothing on him here and there.
The werewolf that scared me the most
was the Oliver Reed creature
in the film, ‘Curse of the Werewolf.’
Even though he was practically
well-dressed as a werewolf he still
seemed the most savage and vicious.
I think modern versions that use
a freaky animal werewolf
undercut the terror because
animals act like animals
so there’s nothing really shocking
about a big wolf-like creature
eating people. But a human,
that is, the classic man-beast look,
a werewolf where you’re reminded
that the creature is part human,
that is shocking, that is scary,
grabbing people and eating them.”

She said, “You’ve really thought this through.
You’ve given this serious thought.”

For a moment I said nothing.
I looked at her and then looked down.
“Maybe,” I said, “I have been forced
to think it through. Maybe the Moon—”
I lowered my voice and whispered
“—changes me. I become a beast.
Maybe this monster stuff is real.
There are things that can’t be controlled.”

I stopped talking, still looking down.
Then I looked up, quickly, growling,
and pretended to snap at her.

She screamed, all wide-eyed and shrieking
and tumbled sideways off her chair.

I caught her and, laughing, hugged her
and got her steady on her chair.

She made two fists but didn’t swing,
just sat shaking, red in the face.
She said, almost growling herself,
“I cannot believe you got me.
I’ve looked at the full Moon with you.
I know you aren’t a werewolf.
Am I a little girl, a child,
getting scared by bedtime stories?
I cannot believe you got me.”

“Bedtime stories?” I asked. “Are you
thinking it’s time to go to bed?”

“No, I’m not” she said. “In fact now
I’m thinking I want some Red Bull.”
She stood and walked to the kitchen.
“I’m taking a whole can,” she said.
“Do you want a can for yourself?”

I said, “The caffeine might change me.”

On the way back from the kitchen
she switched on all the ceiling lights.

“What’s this?” I asked. “Are you never
going to go to bed again?”

“I’m thinking about it,” she yelled.
“I’m giving it serious thought.”

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*



Before And After ‘Nuts Do Hop’—A Valentine


Landscape With Tiny Dirigibles. Or Not.


Pamela At The Doorway To Atlantis

More Night Than Just The Stars

We were both silent for a while; and as I looked towards the window I saw the first dim streak of the coming dawn. There seemed a strange stillness over everything; but as I listened I heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves. The Count’s eyes gleamed, and he said:--

“Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”

from “Dracula”
by Bram Stoker

Music —
Is something in the music
The way music’s in the night?
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Under the stars on a summer evening
a small telescope set up in the grass
reveals to the astronomer more night
than just the stars. Moths and flying beetles
land and rest on the smooth telescope tube.
Spiders climb up the tripod legs, and down
thin strands of silk if there are trees nearby.
Leaf hoppers, flies, mosquitoes—I’ve even
observed walking sticks and praying mantis
gathering around either the science
or body warmth of the astronomer.

The stars come out, too, on winter evenings
but there are no bugs, then, to share the night.
Bug metabolism, the chemistry,
doesn’t work as well when the weather’s cold.
But the night’s still there. The stars are still there.
And the telescope and astronomer.
Nature, so they say, abhors a vacuum.
I’ve always wondered why evolution
didn’t chance upon a mechanism
comfortable in the winter’s cold dark
as insects are on a summer’s warm night.

An eye augmented by a telescope
sees invisible things up in the sky—
Some stars are double. Some ‘stars’ are planets
circled by moons or enshrouded by clouds.
And some empty spaces between the stars
aren’t empty at all but make strange shapes
as interstellar gas glows in the void.
I’ve always wondered if a winter’s night
around an astronomer is empty.
What might the right instrument reveal? Ghosts?
Lost myths? Invisible eyes watching us?

The Question For Frankenstein’s Friend

The monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I gathered resolution to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion: “Your repentance,” I said, “is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience, and heeded the stings of remorse, before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.”

“And do you dream?” said the daemon.

from “Frankenstein”
by Mary Shelley

So Mary Shelley possibly with help
from her poet boyfriend wrote a novel
and at the very climax of the book
the monster describes itself as alone
more alone even than Satan himself
who has fallen angels for companions
and the monster asks its creator’s friend
by Frankenstein’s body, “And do you dream?”

Frankenstein’s friend makes an attempt to state
the context he sees around the monster
but the monster has a soliloquy
to deliver and the ability
to define and describe its own context
and the monster with its creator’s friend
is still alone and delivers its speech
and is still alone and still a monster.

What would Frankenstein’s friend if asked today
“And do you dream?” even attempt to state—
“I like when the TV flashes bright lights
and I like when the TV yells at me” ?—
to put a context around the monster
Mary Shelley never could have foreseen
even if her poet boyfriend had helped
even if the lonely monster could care?

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The Other Way Of Making A Frankenstein’s Monster


Return To The Other Way Of Making A Frankenstein’s Monster



The Question Clarisse Asks Montag


The Opposite Of Washing Machine


Halloween On An Inclined Plane


ITV Gives 'Frankenstein' A Feminine Makeover

Before And After ‘Nuts Do Hop’—A Valentine

I stopped what I was doing
and scribbled in my notebook.

SHOUT POND
NO PUSH DOT

She stopped what she was doing
and read what I had written.

“Shout pond?” she asked. “No push dot?”

I smiled and she made a face.

“Okay,” she said. “I give up.”

“Come on,” I said. “Try harder.”

The face she made got harder.

“Okay,” I said. “Donut shop.
They’re ‘donut shop’ anagrams.”

Her face didn’t change at all.

She looked from me to the words
then she sighed and closed her eyes
and her face became softer.

“I cannot believe,” she said,
“I’m going to say this, but—
‘Nuts do hop.’ Are you happy?”

I wrote it in my notebook.

NUTS DO HOP

I said, “That is very good!
See, you’re getting good at this!”

She put her fingers over
her closed eyes and shook her head.

She asked, “What have I become?”

I said, “Even more sexy.”

She made an eye-rolling face
but I tackled her before
the expression settled in.

By our rules that means I won.

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Pamela At The Doorway To Atlantis


Landscape With Tiny Dirigibles. Or Not.


Hen Politics, And Passages Between Worlds

Vicki Over Her Shoulder: A Sketch

She said, “I don’t know that you’ve captured the real me.
Is that really how you see me? Pink and orange?”

“It’s just an acrylic sketch,” I said. “I’m playing
with shapes. Playing with brushes. And playing with you.”

“You’ve given it a name,” she said. “And you started
by doing a rough drawing on an index card.
Ten shapes? Is that all it takes to paint me? Ten shapes?”

“I was playing with shapes,” I said. “But I can see
I made one mistake that wrecks this as a likeness.”

“What’s that?” she asked. “You mean the pumpkin orange hair?”

“In this acrylic sketch,” I said, “your mouth is closed.”

“Oh shut up!” she said. She pressed her lips together
to keep from smiling, but when she saw me staring
at the shape her lips made she opened her mouth wide
and stuck her tongue out at me. Then she turned, quickly,
so that her hair bounced brightly as she walked away.

She didn’t look back at me over her shoulder
but that’s okay. In the little painting, she does.

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


I’m trying to experiment
with ways to get a handle
on doing stuff like this
that specifically avoid
anything ‘photographic.’

This is the index card version:




*


An Up-To-Date Vicki Inventory


Dinosaurs And Robots And Vicki’s Smile


The Best Reason To Study Astrophysics


Repurposing Vicki



This Woman From The Canals Of Mars


Jeanne Hébuterne — Art As A Grail