Tuesday, January 03, 2012

The Dragon With The Girl Tattoo





There once was a dragon named April
who ate grapes and more grapes till she was grape-full.
She discovered a way
to make breathing flame pay,
regurgitating raisin flambé by the crepe-full.



Yeah, I wrote that. Monday night. It’s fresh!

I believe that will be the last thing I’ll write about dragons for a while. I wanted to wrap up the topic with something special.


Well, maybe one last thing—



*



A dragon isn’t a gadget, a little thing
that does something useful or something you enjoy.

A wristwatch is a gadget that tells you the time.

A little keyboard that you can carry around
is a gadget that lets you make music sitting
in bed, or in a motel room on vacation,
or, I suppose, sitting on a motel room bed.

Possibly the Loch Ness monster is a dragon
bringing tourists and tourist dollars to Loch Ness.

That’s useful. And Loch Ness tourists enjoy themselves
even if they don’t see the monster, just the loch.

But, still, the Loch Ness monster isn’t a gadget.

If a mad scientist constructed a gadget
duplicating a dragon’s functionality,
the virtual dragon or counterfeit dragon
would certainly fail in some spectacular way
because mad scientists’ creations always do
and then the fake dragon would be functionally
the same as a real dragon and the fake dragon
would still be a gadget, too. Mad scientists laugh
because sometimes science can be something like art.

The mad scientist’s quest for a dragon gadget.

CĂ©zanne said that true art doesn’t copy nature,
but is a harmony parallel to nature.







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



The Mad Scientist Is Always Laughing


Thinking Of Mountains


A Flute Landscape























Monday, January 02, 2012

Two Dragons




One time I was looking around his [Ray Harryhausen’s] garage and up in the rafters of the garage something was sticking out. There was like the skull of something going behind some boxes. I couldn’t see what it was. It was all in pieces. It was the dragon from “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.” I just thought: Oh, what a sad end for such a wonderful creature.



Special Effects Wiz Dennis Muren
Quoted in, “Ray Harryhausen Chronicles”
(DVD Bonus Feature)




A couple of months ago I did a post about the movie “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One” Posh People Squabbling. I didn’t like the movie much. I didn’t think it was a bad movie, just boring, endless bickering between people, some nice, some nasty. Anyway, over Christmas even though I didn’t like the first part, I watched “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two” just to be complete. I expected to fast forward through the movie the same as part one, but I ended up liking part two very much. Even though many of the scenes were very similar to the first part and all the same filmmakers worked on the second part, I enjoyed the second part a lot. (I even went back and watched the first part again—I still didn’t like it, still fast forwarded through most of it.)

One of the most remarkable scenes in the second part was when the heroes escaped from the bank on the back of a dragon. It was an extraordinary dragon. I mean special effects-wise. Probably one of the very best special effects shots I’ve ever seen in my life.

It reminded me of another famous dragon and led me to think of how movie technology has changed over the decades.

This is the famous dragon from “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,” which was released in 1958:


Many, many special effects masters of the current world watched this movie when they were kids and fell in love with films and special effects for the rest of their life. (Many kids, too, were inspired to become musicians by Bernard Herrmann’s amazing score for the film.)

This is the dragon from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two,” more than fifty years on from the Sinbad dragon:


Special effects-wise that’s the Mary Poppins of dragons: It is practically perfect in every way.

One thing stands out about comparing these two dragons.

The first, Ray Harryhausen’s dragon, was created and filmed by one person, Ray Harryhausen. Perhaps his father made the armature, maybe Ray made it himself. Ray animated the dragon, brought it to life, move-by-move.

The dragon from Harry Potter required—literally!—many dozens, possibly hundreds, of designers, artists and programmers to bring it to life.


My first thought was: Holy cow, if the rather simple dragon from “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” inspired so many people to devote their whole life to fantasy films, to creating wonderful special effects, just imagine the extraordinary result “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two” will have on young people, just imagine all the wonderful work people inspired by the film will create.


But then I wondered if that will be true at all.


I mean, most film buffs learned very young that Ray Harryhausen did the effects for his movies by himself. Film buffs who experimented with stop-motion movies learned that it is an incredibly time-consuming and almost mind-numbing procedure to take thousands of still images and put them together into an animated sequence. But in a way it is fun—almost like meditation. And it is very satisfying to imagine and design a sequence of animation and then bring it to life and clean it up and augment it with sound and editing.

But film buffs today know that special effects are sequences output by various computer programs and then cleaned up by dozens or even hundreds of anonymous computer artists sitting at screens and moving a stylus across a digitizing tablet. A director or designer will decide on the action to be displayed. A lead animator, perhaps, will put in this-or-that bit of amusing incidental business, and then everyone else just goes through the motions. From what I’ve heard and read it is literally an assembly-line process, where the individual workers have essentially zero input into the overall content of their work.

Will any young people today—when they learn how special effects are done—will any young people say to themselves, “Gee, when I grow up, that’s what I want to do, sit on an assembly line of graphic artists and make sure the edges in the middle of the picture are properly blurred”? Will any young people say to themselves, “Gee, when I grow up, I want to sketch storyboards and send them overseas to slave-shop computer artists who will convert them to an animated sequence”?


It seems so wonderful, looking at the final image, the completed movie. But unlike fifty years ago, I wonder: Will all that sense-of-wonder today translate into any inspiration at all?


*


On the topic of dragons, in case anyone is worried, when Rubber Lizard isn’t working he’s not stuck out in a garage or up in any rafters. He usually hangs out on top of the bookcase with Little Plastic Doll and Tina. He always has someone to talk to.




*


I strongly suspect there’s a reason
some women will be able to talk
to dinosaurs when the beasts return.

There are two dragons to every one.

There’s the dragon we see and talk to.

And there’s the dragon that animates
the dragon that we see and talk to,
that curls its tail and up-roots a tree,
that forms the whispered dragon-talk words,
that shapes the flame when the chemicals
in the dragon’s mouth combine to fire.

There are two dragons to every one.

One is rare these days. But the other
gently wrecks and whispers and breathes fire
just to stay in practice. And for fun.

























Sunday, January 01, 2012

2011 Complete Index



December 2011


Friday, December 30, 2011 -- “When All My Words About Britney Disappear”

Thursday, December 29, 2011 -- A Catastrophic Failure (With Music)

Wednesday, December 28, 2011 -- This Woman And That Song: Apologies

Tuesday, December 27, 2011 -- Another Look At Another Venus

Monday, December 26, 2011 -- This Bright Old World Of Ours As A Rune


Friday, December 23, 2011 -- Christmas Witches: Sound Synthesis

Thursday, December 22, 2011 -- “The Primitive And What Came After”

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 -- Parsimony And Aberrant Forms

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 -- Dragon Storm: The Woman Looking Away

Monday, December 19, 2011 -- Lost In The Villainy


Friday, December 16, 2011 -- The Real World In Georges Seurat’s Notebooks

Thursday, December 15, 2011 -- Two Women And Someday

Wednesday, December 14, 2011 -- Returning From A Walk To Mars

Tuesday, December 13, 2011 -- Synthetic Philosophy, Liminal Entities And Scripts...

Monday, December 12, 2011 -- The Role Of Headphones In Bach’s World


Friday, December 9, 2011 -- In Napkin Legend — The Napkin Tetraptych

Thursday, December 8, 2011 -- An Unclear Story About Walking To Mars

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 -- Reduction Of The Muse

Tuesday, December 6, 2011 -- “The Whole Earth As The Village?”

Monday, December 5, 2011 -- Looking Back: The City Or The Monster


Friday, December 2, 2011 -- Parking Lot Shadow As A Color-Space

Thursday, December 1, 2011 -- Aberrant Forms



November 2011


Wednesday, November 30, 2011 -- I’m An Idiot—Episode 748

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 -- Dinosaurs And Robots And Vicki’s Smile

Monday, November 28, 2011 -- Song As Eternal Monster Inside Sound


Friday, November 25, 2011 -- Gadget Bliss

Thursday, November 24, 2011 -- A Flute Playing And Fog Hides The Shore

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 -- The Fons Et Origo Of Mad Laughter

Tuesday, November 22, 2011 -- On Being ‘The Girl’

Monday, November 21, 2011 -- Footsteps Like Mad Paint Marks


Friday, November 18, 2011 -- The Loch Ness Monster Vs. Los Angeles

Thursday, November 17, 2011 -- Clean Shaven And Ready For Movie Talk

Wednesday, November 16, 2011 -- The Angle Of Repose Of Corpses Redux

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 -- Susan Didn’t Take Anyone With Her

Monday, November 14, 2011 -- Secret Gadgets And Gadget Secrets


Friday, November 11, 2011 -- Song For Leviathan — An Impossible Ode

Thursday, November 10, 2011 -- Dream Lover Fantasy Update

Wednesday, November 9, 2011 -- Notes On This Notebook Odyssey

Tuesday, November 8, 2011 -- Headphones (The Good And The Bad)

Monday, November 7, 2011 -- Carnage Candy


Friday, November 4, 2011 -- See Monsters?

Thursday, November 3, 2011 -- Sasquatch And Anime Girl, #6

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 -- An Expedition Through Photography

Tuesday, November 1, 2011 -- Skirts Like The Sound Of Dirigibles



October 2011


Monday, October 31, 2011 -- Halloween Trees (Ode To)


Friday, October 28, 2011 -- This Is Not “Fashion Bulletin I’m Yours”

Thursday, October 27, 2011 -- Pamela At The Doorway To Atlantis

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 -- Just A Real Thing But That’s Enough

Tuesday, October 25, 2011 -- A Fun Offering To The World Gadget

Monday, October 24, 2011 -- There’s No Pain In The Sky


Friday, October 21, 2011 -- Buying The Beatles Forever

Thursday, October 20, 2011 -- “Ha, Ha, Rubber Lizard Loves Taylor Swift”

Wednesday, October 19, 2011 -- The Face The Lonesome Cowboy Sees

Tuesday, October 18, 2011 -- Memories Of Faces/Lost In Shadows

Monday, October 17, 2011 -- Exerting Agency, Liminal Entities And Scripts


Friday, October 14, 2011 -- Blows Against The (Expensive) Empire

Thursday, October 13, 2011 -- Behind-The-Scenes On Ten Thirteen

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 -- You And Me, I Mean, Mare Carminum

Tuesday, October 11, 2011 -- Clouds Drift As If They’re Listening

Monday, October 10, 2011 -- When The Night Shapes Itself


Friday, October 7, 2011 -- The French Word For ‘Dragon’ Is ‘Dragon’

Thursday, October 6, 2011 -- Kite Flying In America (With Trout)

Wednesday, October 5, 2011 -- Checking In On Disbelief And Recognition

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 -- There’s A Woman With No Clothes On Here!

Monday, October 3, 2011 -- About Not Seeing Comet Garradd

Sunday, October 2, 2011 -- 2011 3rd Quarter Index



September 2011


Friday, September 30, 2011 -- A Flute Landscape

Thursday, September 29, 2011 -- Real Water Colors (With Figures)

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 -- Dinosaurs And Hippie Girls Is A World

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 -- Watercolors And Dive Bombers

Monday, September 26, 2011 -- Mice Elf Again


Friday, September 23, 2011 -- The Thunderous Tragedy Of Batteries

Thursday, September 22, 2011 -- The Thunderous Glamour Of Batteries

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 -- The Equinox And The Tropics And Me

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 -- “Indigestion” (And A Victorine Meurent Update!)

Monday, September 19, 2011 -- Hood Ornaments And Exploding Stars


Friday, September 16, 2011 -- A Captain Kirk Exorcism

Thursday, September 15, 2011 -- Making Noise Between Puddles And Clouds

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 -- Passages Between Worlds

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 -- Hidden In The Shadow Of The Index

Monday, September 12, 2011 -- Japanese Train Stations Forever


Friday, September 9, 2011 -- Wild Dogs As Acoustic Holdouts (Redux)

Thursday, September 8, 2011 -- Gadget Angst

Wednesday, September 7, 2011 -- ‘Hortense Had Her Adventures’

Tuesday, September 6, 2011 -- What I Learned Today At Barangrill

Monday, September 5, 2011 -- A Thumb Update (And Book Report)


Friday, September 2, 2011 -- The Underwear Distance Of Love: A Puppet Show

Thursday, September 1, 2011 -- A Butterfly In Shadow And Everything



August 2011


Wednesday, August 31, 2011 -- Blood All Over My Kitchen!

Tuesday, August 30, 2011 -- Folklore Of The Carnivore: Taylor Swift

Monday, August 29, 2011 -- In Which I Wrap Up The Cheese (Trilogy)


Friday, August 26, 2011 -- Writing About Photographing Rembrandt

Thursday, August 25, 2011 -- On Being Unhappy (And Happy)

Wednesday, August 24, 2011 -- A Civilization Of Leaves

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 -- Lithosphere Atmosphere Ionosphere Coupling

Monday, August 22, 2011 -- Kangaroo Girl And The Yale Boys


Friday, August 19, 2011 -- Movies, Keyboards And Skirt Police

Thursday, August 18, 2011 -- All The Questions About Atlantis

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 -- Pretty Blue Flowers At The Gates Of Hell

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 -- The Craft Of Wreckage

Monday, August 15, 2011 -- Clown As Supervillain


Friday, August 12, 2011 -- Where The Scorpion Sits Down For Tea

Thursday, August 11, 2011 -- Throwing Rocks At Tin Cans

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 -- Beautiful People Are Courageous

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 -- The Mythic Landscape (And French Writers)

Monday, August 8, 2011 -- Where I Torment, Torture And Traumatize A Teen


Friday, August 5, 2011 -- An Albireo Question

Thursday, August 4, 2011 -- The Evil Light In Perkins’ Eyes

Wednesday, August 3, 2011 -- Distance From Paris To Berlin

Tuesday, August 2, 2011 -- Leaving Mandy Moore

Monday, August 1, 2011 -- Cool Snail Ben Safe At Second Base



July 2011


Friday, July 29, 2011 -- Expeditions And Wilderness Parties

Thursday, July 28, 2011 -- Scraps For Alison With Love And Squalor

Wednesday, July 27, 2011 -- What Is Electric Sugar?

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 -- Anal Sex And Death In Los Angeles

Monday, July 25, 2011 -- This Woman From The Canals Of Mars


Saturday, July 23, 2011 -- Amy Winehouse Makes It Official

Friday, July 22, 2011 -- Big Clouds, Big Scorpions, Doing Stuff

Thursday, July 21, 2011 -- A Sketchbook Page With No Sketches

Wednesday, July 20, 2011 -- Weather, Fringe Talk And Debunking

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 -- Posh People Squabbling

Monday, July 18, 2011 -- Too Beautiful To Comprehend


Friday, July 15, 2011 -- Dinosaur By Moonlight: A Puppet Show

Thursday, July 14, 2011 -- The Library That We’ve Made Of Ourselves

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 -- Scientist At A Hamburger Stand

Tuesday, July 12, 2011 -- The Wind, Here In The Sea Of Clouds

Monday, July 11, 2011 -- Enceladus Was A Child Of Gaia


Friday, July 8, 2011 -- Freedom From The Wild/Lost In Metonymy

Thursday, July 7, 2011 -- The Criss-Crossing Of Sara’s Hair

Wednesday, July 6, 2011 -- Wild In The Parking Lot

Tuesday, July 5, 2011 -- Ode To A Flute: On Getting Blown Right

Monday, July 4, 2011 -- This Girl Like Fireworks

Monday, July 4, 2011 -- 2011 2nd Quarter Index


Friday, July 1, 2011 -- “Hold Me Forever: A Doll Philosophy”



June 2011


Thursday, June 30, 2011 -- No Lights In My Kitchen (Or Anywhere Else)

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 -- Almost Invisible Bokeh

Tuesday, June 28, 2011 -- Ha! Man Throws Away Library!

Monday, June 27, 2011 -- Nuclear Accidents, Sociology, The Word ‘Bistre’


Friday, June 24, 2011 -- On Not Playing A Synth Workstation #2

Thursday, June 23, 2011 -- On Not Playing A Synth Workstation #1

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 -- Birds And Three Pretty Birds

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 -- Another Quick Megan Fox Moment

Monday, June 20, 2011 -- Music At The Garden’s Edge


Friday, June 17, 2011 -- Hot Liquid Savage And A Cup Of Paintbrushes

Thursday, June 16, 2011 -- New Birds (In The Parking Lot)

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 -- Maggie And The Fish Head

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 -- A Quick Lunar Eclipse Note

Monday, June 13, 2011 -- Loch Ness Apocalypse


Friday, June 10, 2011 -- “The Librarian And The Painter”

Thursday, June 9, 2011 -- Coming Attractions: The Librarian And The Painter...

Thursday, June 9, 2011 -- “A Little Bit Of A Storm”

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 -- Les Paul Versus Taylor Swift!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011 -- The Lost World Of Stacy And The Llama

Monday, June 6, 2011 -- Can We Reboot The World?


Friday, June 3, 2011 -- One For My Baby

Thursday, June 2, 2011 -- Tennis, French Scumbags, Classic Science

Wednesday, June 1, 2011 -- The Built World Redux—Art And Souvenir



May 2011


Tuesday, May 31, 2011 -- Edma In Heaven Laughing

Monday, May 30, 2011 -- Thinking Of Mountains Redux


Friday, May 27, 2011 -- “The Garden’s Edge”

Thursday, May 26, 2011 -- Motion Beyond The Fox Point

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 -- Style And Substance And Acoustic Terror

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 -- Nancy Kominsky 1915-2011 RIP

Monday, May 23, 2011 -- Dragon Storm: Ammonia Snow


Friday, May 20, 2011 -- “Where Did The Cows Go?”

Thursday, May 19, 2011 -- Irving Berlin’s Piano

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 -- Nuclear Accidents, Beatles, Mean Snakes

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 -- The Best Reason To Study Astrophysics

Monday, May 16, 2011 -- Click—It’s A New Week


Friday, May 13, 2011 -- Pedals, Patches And A Composer

Thursday, May 12, 2011 -- Beautiful Bugs, Annoying Clicks

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 -- Perfect Pages

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 -- Asteroid Scheila Is Not A Comet Update

Monday, May 9, 2011 -- The Monster Thought Of The Waldensians


Friday, May 6, 2011 -- Don’t Paint Your Wagon: Off, Off Broadway

Thursday, May 5, 2011 -- The Book Of Love In The City Of The Dead

Wednesday, May 4, 2011 -- A Quick Robot Guitar Note

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 -- “The Clock Had All His Attention”

Monday, May 2, 2011 -- Four Pictures, Three Without Cars



April 2011


Friday, April 29, 2011 -- Insect Pathology And You: The Musical

Thursday, April 28, 2011 -- “The Piano Singing Back To You”

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 -- Everything’s Happening In Parking Lots

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 -- Exciting Waveforms

Monday, April 25, 2011 -- The Girl Who Talks To Dinosaurs


Friday, April 22, 2011 -- Moon Dust In Waltz Time

Thursday, April 21, 2011 -- Little Complicated Things And Stuff

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 -- The Five Student Colors Of L. S. Lowry

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 -- The Time Of The Dinosaurs

Monday, April 18, 2011 -- A Beard Tangled With Headphones


Friday, April 15, 2011 -- Harps And Flutes, Swans And Monsters

Thursday, April 13, 2011 -- King Solomon, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Laurie Strode

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 -- There Are No Pianos In The Bible

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 -- Fukushima I Nuclear Accidents

Monday, April 11, 2011 -- Ayn Rand, The Tower Of Babel, Breakfast


Friday, April 8, 2011 -- Creatures Of Darkness And Light: The Movie

Thursday, April 7, 2011 -- Repurposing Vicki

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 -- Is The Key The Little Key?

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 -- Two Swans

Monday, April 4, 2011 -- Flying Saucers And Beethoven


Sunday, April 3, 2011 -- 2011 1st Quarter Index

Friday, April 1, 2011 -- Sex With A Monster: The Musical



March 2011


Thursday, March 31, 2011 -- Wild Dogs As Acoustic Holdouts

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 -- Moths, Scorpions And Unreal Women

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 -- Shōbijin And Daikaijū

Monday, March 28, 2011 -- Bambi, Godzilla And Intimacy Issues


Sunday, March 27, 2011 -- Singing In My Closet

Friday, March 25, 2011 -- Sheet Music Talk

Thursday, March 24, 2011 -- How Illumination Works

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 -- Luc Montagnier And Bad Memories In Good Water

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 -- Writing Versus Multimedia

Monday, March 21, 2011 -- When You Press Down A Piano Key


Friday, March 18, 2011 -- Sense Of Place

Thursday, March 17, 2011 -- Technology And Food

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 -- Even Puppets Yell At Me!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 -- Motion Toward And Away—Ode To Pamela

Monday, March 14, 2011 -- I Don’t Know What Lost Means Any More


Friday, March 11, 2011 -- I Don’t Know What Distance Means Any More

Friday, March 11, 2011 -- Wrapping Up Roland

Thursday, March 10, 2011 -- Looking Over Its Shoulder At The Giants

Wednesday, March 9, 2011 -- Quasi Una Atomic Octopus Fantasia

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 -- “Different, But Not Individually Evil”

Monday, March 7, 2011 -- Robot Pilots, Kites, Cutting Strings


Friday, March 4, 2011 -- Waterfall In My Kitchen

Thursday, March 3, 2011 -- I Can’t Sleep In My Kitchen

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 -- Romance In My Kitchen

Tuesday, March 1, 2011 -- Beethoven And Three Plates In My Kitchen



February 2011


Monday, February 28, 2011 -- Violence Of The Sun In My Kitchen


Friday, February 25, 2011 -- Ghost Behind The Scenes

Thursday, February 24, 2011 -- Ghost Of A Different World

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 -- Beethoven, Britney Spears And A Ghost

Tuesday, February 22, 2011 -- Do Ghosts Play With Toys?

Monday, February 21, 2011 -- Oh-Oh, Ghosts


Friday, February 18, 2011 -- Louis Lumière’s Beautiful Beast: A Puppet Show

Thursday, February 17, 2011 -- La Seule Chose Que Je Peux Faire

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 -- A Perfect Day For Love And Squalor

Tuesday, February 15, 2011 -- Hot Rods, French Girls, Monster Lizards

Monday, February 14, 2011 -- Beautiful Impossible Math Thing


Sunday, February 13, 2011 -- February Ketchup

Friday, February 11, 2011 -- Robot High Heels

Thursday, February 10, 2011 -- Robot By Television Light: A Puppet Show

Wednesday, February 9, 2011 -- Robot Above The Clouds Of Saturn

Tuesday, February 8, 2011 -- Robot In The Rain

Monday, February 7, 2011 -- High Heels, But Not Sweet Polly Purebred


Friday, February 4, 2011 -- The Real Reason Dinosaurs Eat Electricity

Thursday, February 3, 2011 -- Extinct Entertainment And Dinosaurs

Wedday, February 2, 2011 -- Dreaming Of A Dinosaur In A Maidenform Bra

Tuesday, February 1, 2011 -- Dinosaur And Woman: A Puppet Show



January 2011


Monday, January 31, 2011 -- Things Libraries Throw Away


Friday, January 28, 2011 -- Moonlight Becomes You

Thursday, January 27, 2011 -- Quasi Una Flying Car Fantasia

Wednesday, January 26, 2011 -- Like Before The Internet Went Psycho

Tuesday, January 25, 2011 -- The Sound Of One Hand Chording

Monday, January 24, 2011 -- Feral Kangaroos And Women


Friday, January 21, 2011 -- Something Heroic And Remote

Thursday, January 20, 2011 -- The End Of The World Shaken Not Stirred

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 -- Pretty Flowers, Taylor Swift, Killer Whales

Tuesday, January 18, 2011 -- Romance, Cinema And Science Fiction Dreams

Monday, January 17, 2011 -- Thinking About Perspective


Friday, January 14, 2011 -- Basically Just The Lovemongers Doing Zeppelin

Thursday, January 13, 2011 -- No Bird Shadows On The Analemma

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 -- “The Honeymoon Machine”

Tuesday, January 11, 2011 -- An American Tune In Oostburg

Monday, January 10, 2011 -- Cars Are The New Birds


Friday, January 7, 2011 -- Famishius Vulgaris Ingeniusi

Thursday, January 6, 2011 -- Hot Red Earth, Cold Blue Jazz

Wednesday, January 5, 2011 -- “Pretty Horrifying But Actually Very Real”

Tusday, January 4, 2011 -- Anagnorisis

Monday, January 3, 2011 -- A Place To Read Books I’ve Never Read


Sunday, January 2, 2011 -- 2010 Complete Index




























Friday, December 30, 2011

“When All My Words About Britney Disappear”



The only art instruction book I’ve read
that builds its entire approach to sketching
around careful shapes and careful values
with a result something similar to
the black and white sketches of Georges Seurat
will be published in a new edition
in the second quarter of the new year.

It’s an old book that has been out-of-print
for many decades. Around here just one
library had a copy. They tossed it.

I’m looking forward to the new release
even though I’ve read the book many times
and made photocopies of some sections.

I’m trying to get better at drawing.

Of course reading books won’t make me better
at drawing careful shapes, careful values,
and reading a book I’ve already read
seems particularly inefficient.

But if I was after efficiency
I’d use a camera—they’re good gadgets.

And if the words and drawings in a book
are themselves careful shapes, careful values,
reading such a book again and again
might carefully shape and shade my thinking.

That doesn’t make me better at drawing.

But if I do get better at drawing
the only way I will recognize it
is if my thinking is shaped and shaded
carefully—like a Georges Seurat drawing.

This new year I’ll be reading an old book.

The twenty-first century doesn’t care
if I can draw. I own a camera
and libraries, now, throw away old books.

But soon enough it is going to be
the twenty-second century and then
everyone now will wish they’d learned to draw
because these kinds of things skip centuries.

I’m trying to get better at drawing.

This new year I’ll be reading an old book.

A twenty-second century woman
will look up when she hears dirigibles
and that’s what she will see—dirigibles!






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






*


The Real World In Georges Seurat’s Notebooks


Things Libraries Throw Away


The Lost World Of Stacy And The Llama



Digging Britney Redux

When all my words about Britney disappear
a woman remains—stripped because of the heat,
curious, looking up to see what’s coming,

on guard, crouching with her cat and with a spear.
Above, there’s sound,
like a song, musique concrète—
That sound is dirigible engines humming.






















Thursday, December 29, 2011

A Catastrophic Failure (With Music)



Today’s post is going to be a little ... disjointed.


Basically, today’s post is about the catastrophic failure of a post idea.


Usually when I get a clear, specific idea for a post I am able to work through the steps of making the idea real without too many problems.

Sometimes, every now and then, I’ll hit some snag where the idea doesn’t seem as good once I start actually doing the work. Maybe a cartoon doesn’t seem funny or interesting. A story doesn’t seem to have any entertaining element. Some hoped-for bit of logic never materializes. So then I usually try to change whatever my original thought was into something that I can use. Instead of a cartoon maybe I’ll try a stop-motion video. Or instead of a stop-motion video I’ll try just sitting down and playing something on guitar. Almost always I can end up finding a way to use my original thought.

Every now and then, however, no matter how I try, some idea just will never fit into any form that I feel works here at the blog. Then I have to just abandon that idea. I try to put the thought out of my mind and hope that someday it will come back when I can make use of it properly.

That’s happening right now.

I don’t really want to abandon this idea, but since the year is running out I also don’t want to drag a troublesome idea into the new year. So for today’s post I’m just going to put up what I have and explain what I was thinking and make it a standalone post all by itself. Maybe someday I’ll come back to this and use the raw material in another way or something. I don’t know.

Here’s the deal.

A few days ago I had an idea for a new stop-motion video for Little Plastic Doll. The basic idea was that it would be a sequel of sorts to “Ha, Ha, Rubber Lizard Loves Taylor Swift.” The backstory was going to be that Little Plastic Doll was kind of jealous of Rubber Lizard singing to the picture of Taylor Swift, so Little Plastic Doll was going to write a “Taylor Swift-type song” to show Rubber Lizard that she could write a girl’s country song, too.

Right away I hit my first snag. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never actually heard a Taylor Swift song and I don’t want to listen to any. So I was going to just have to guess at what a “Taylor Swift-type song” would sound like based on what I’ve heard people say about them. It’s not good to write about something based on guesses, but I was going to do it. I’ve heard her songs are sort of almost always about a young woman’s fantasy of meeting a cool guy. So I turned that into an idea about a young woman who meets a guy who turns out to be a superhero and she’s just pissed off that he never calls because he’s always somewhere saving the world.

Then I hit my second snag. The song was way too long for a stop-motion video. The software I use (right now) to make those stop-motion videos is terrible and really only works for things that are about a minute long. The song I came up with has six verses (I’m an idiot) and even if I was going to make it no matter how I tried I couldn’t think of how I’d fit the story of the song into any of the “locations” I use for making videos.

Then I hit my third snag. I couldn’t think of any way to change the basic idea so that I could use it. I didn’t want to sing the song myself because it’s clearly a “girl’s song.” And although I can draw a single cartoon, I can’t draw well enough—or certainly not fast enough—to create a comic book-style series of images to go along with an illustrated video of the song. And just the lyrics of the song, without any context around them, didn’t seem all that interesting.

So I was screwed. This seemed like one of those idea that I just had to abandon.

But I kind of like the song, and it still seems kind of fun to me, this notion that a young woman would just be pissed off and sing because she was angry at a superhero for not spending enough time with her instead of saving the world.

And that is pretty much the backstory to today’s post.

The year is running out and I don’t want to abandon this stuff, yet at the same time I don’t want to drag it into the new year with me. So I’m typing up this endless explanation, and now I’m going to insert a graphic of the music for the basic melody and then put up the lyrics for the song I came up with.

That’s today’s post.

*

This melody isn’t exactly perfect. I was still experimenting with changing things around here and there. But this is the basic idea. A simple repeating structure for each verse, and the last line of each verse tells the story and maybe drags out the time a little, a bit of free-form rhythm to the general eight-bar structure.


And here are the lyrics. It was supposed to be Little Plastic Doll singing her version of a “Taylor Swift-type” love song. (I also like this because in “Hold Me Forever: A Doll Philosophy” Little Plastic Doll sang about how much she loves it when her phone rings and here she is singing about how much she hates it when her would-be boyfriend’s phone rings. But this is just way too long. And there really should be an instrumental verse before the last lyrical verse, so this would be even longer.)


After we danced
I waited for your call
After we danced
I waited by the window
After we danced
I waited for you
But you were off doing something

We danced
I waited for your call
After we danced
I waited by the window
After we danced
I waited for you
But you were fighting supervillains

We danced
I waited for your call
After we danced
I waited by the window
After we danced
I waited for you
But you were saving the whole world

We danced
I waited for your call
After we danced
I waited by the window
After we danced
I waited for you
Then my dream came true

We danced
I waited for your call
After we danced
I waited by the window
After we danced
I waited for you
Now it’s me and you
(Until your phone rings!)

We danced
I waited for your call
After we danced
I waited by the window
After we danced
I waited for you
Now it’s me and you
(Until your phone rings
And you have to save the world
Again!)

























Wednesday, December 28, 2011

This Woman And That Song: Apologies



So once I knew this woman who said
all men owed her an apology.

But when she said it she was smiling.

I don’t have that as a video
and I don’t even have a sound file.

As it happens I have a cartoon
and a poem about the moment.

Where do songs go after we sing them?

Through a microphone and interface
and into a computer sound file.

I just played and sang a song without
switching on a recording device.

And I didn’t sing it to someone.

Where did that song go when I sang it?

Is it here in this poem somewhere?

If I say it’s nowhere and I’m wrong
then who would I apologize to?

























Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Another Look At Another Venus




The astonishing man was Ravel, of whom we always think in terms of lush orchestrations. He was a very fine pianist, and—with the exception, I think, of his Piano Concerto—he always wrote his compositions as piano pieces first of all. Then he orchestrated them. I find this very curious. If I’m writing an orchestral piece, I write straight for orchestra. But Ravel, who was one of the greatest orchestrators of all time, and the musician I admire most of all, performed what I think was an extraordinary operation on almost everything he wrote.







I’ve never much liked orchestral music. I haven’t heard a great deal of it, but I’ve had opportunities to hear it and because I’ve never felt any engagement with the form I’ve never followed up on most of those opportunities.

On the other hand I’ve always loved small groups, things like chamber music, where you get to see traditional orchestral instruments in simple settings, playing music where you can watch and listen to individual musicians playing parts and follow the individual voices. I love all stuff like that.


I wonder what the future of orchestral music will be?


For people who like it, to my eyes the future looks bleak for at least two reasons.

One is that some advanced synthesizers now can automatically generate orchestral scores. That is, an 88-key keyboard can be sectioned off into octaves and when a musician plays something on the keyboard, parts in the low octaves will be played by orchestral instruments with a low range and keyboard parts in the high octaves will be played by orchestral instruments with a high range. This can happen in real time and, after a piece is played and recorded, a musician can go into the score and manually rearrange things however they choose. But I strongly suspect commercial pressures to get music written and recorded will cause musicians to work quickly and simply accept default choices made by the machine with little tweaks here and there. So, orchestral music as a true expression of an individual composer’s personality will vanish, and be replaced by orchestral music that just exemplifies a composer’s superficial style choices.

A second reason is that as people are raised with simplistic art and entertainment, their expectations change and their very thinking about art and entertainment changes. A friend of mine once read “Atlas Shrugged” and when he finished he said he didn’t think it was good or bad, just another novel, but he asked me, “Why was it so long?” He said he kept on imagining the story could have been over after each section, rather than keep going to a new sequence of events. I said the story is plotted something like an orchestral piece of music, where each character has his or her own theme and conflict and story-arc and the themes and conflicts mirror each other and illuminate each other and everything plays off everything else, a sequence of small crescendos building to the actual climax where the main transcending themes are resolved. He thought I was nuts, and he thought I was just rationalizing, just making up excuses for Ayn Rand’s—in his eyes—arbitrary decision to make the novel so long. As more and more people never develop the ability to conceive of complex art and entertainment as fun and satisfying in a personal way, fewer people will create it and those who do, I strongly suspect, will approach their work in a very insular way, isolated from the mass-market, from pop culture. And without feedback from participation in the overall culture, art and entertainment becomes vastly less than it could be, even if it is created sincerely.

Or so it seems to me, at least.


I think the future of orchestral music is disco.



*



Linda went off to a new age workshop
and before she left we went to dinner
and I said, “New Mexico sounds peaceful
but everything I’ve heard about these things
is that the so-called ‘workshop day sessions’
are just a socially acceptable
excuse for people to hook up for sex.”

Linda made a face and sighed a big sigh
and said, “You think everyone thinks of sex
all the time just because that’s what you do.”

So Linda went off to New Mexico
and instead of coming back late Sunday
she came back early Friday afternoon.

Linda said, “You know I hate to say this
but oh my God I can’t believe how right
you were about everyone having sex.
We were supposed to be talking about
meditation but at every session
people would pair off or join up in groups
and the only thing people talked about
was whose room haven’t they done it in yet.”

I asked her, “And did you have a good time?”

She made a face, sighed, said, “I drove to town
and spent the whole week in the library.
At night I drove back and locked my room’s door.
Finally I just quit and came back home.”

I said, “At least you got some reading done.”

She said, “Air fare. Room and board. Car and gas.
All that money and I sat reading books.
Do you know how much that fucking week cost?”

I pointed at her. I said, “‘Fucking’ week.”

She said, “I said you were right, I was wrong,
you don’t have to rub it in. Oh— Shut up!”








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



Another Venus


Fluorescent Lights On A Book Of Shadows





















Monday, December 26, 2011

This Bright Old World Of Ours As A Rune




I was drawing a cartoon
about a woman who played
with monsters, monster games made
to play out under the moon,

not described in word or rune,
where blood is black, colors grayed
by full moon light, blood is trade
by new moon dark, death a boon.

Real monsters took a woman away.
I didn’t know her. I knew her art.
She tried. Played what no one wins. She lost.

I wish more than anything today
we could help each other win our part.
We can’t. We’re alone with monsters. Lost.






I saw the waxing crescent Moon tonight.
It was only a day and five hours old.
Venus was in the west too, bright and bold
just south of the Moon’s thin, dim, orange light.

Bright Venus and a young thin Moon. The sight
made me think of Amy Winehouse. She’s cold
as the night now, but close enough to hold
as a thought. A twilight thought at midnight.

Did Amy ever look up at the stars?
Did she ever know anyone who knew
which star is Venus, or where’s the young Moon?

If nothing else this bright old world of ours
took those people away from her, the few
who know such things, and made her world a rune.







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




(I wrote this in the early AM hours
of Monday, 12/26. But for me
it was late Sunday night. And I
was still thinking about seeing
the beautiful 2% illuminated Moon
just after sundown late that afternoon.)



*


The Difference Between Clouds And Conquistadors


I’m Sorry The World Did This To You




Kate Moss (And Why My Life Is Derailed)


Never Having Kissed Amy


The World And The Supervillain’s Nightclub


Ode To The Concept Of Cotton Candy


Amy Winehouse In The Sea Of Crises


Expedition To Amy


Posh People Squabbling


Amy Winehouse Makes It Official


Pretty Blue Flowers At The Gates Of Hell


















Friday, December 23, 2011

Christmas Witches: Sound Synthesis



Static on a TV screen tuned to an unused channel.
The flat white of a snow-covered parking lot with no cars.
Raindrops from a storm splashing on the surface of a lake.
Noon sunlight on a single puff of cloud in a clear sky.

“Clouds and rain and snow are all water,” the green witch said. “But
static on a TV screen is only technology.”

“Water turns into these things,” I said, “when acted upon
by the forces of nature. And a television screen
becomes an infinity of things when acted upon
by the force of a finger pressing a remote control.”

The green witch started to say something, but stopped, then started
to say something else, but stopped. She remained silent, thinking.

“Our lips can speak or not speak,” I said, “when acted upon
by the force of our mind pressing against our skin and bones.”

The green witch looked at the words silently, then looked at me.

For a moment we looked at each other without speaking.

Then the green witch said, “I’m thinking about what happens when
one person touches another person.” She stared at me.

“Did I just touch you?” I said. The green witch smiled. And she laughed.

A guitar is a mechanical approximation
of a synthesizer that can sound like any guitar.










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



Christmas Witches I Mean Wishes


Christmas Witches: A Present Of The Past


Christmas Witches: Ogres And Showgirls



















Thursday, December 22, 2011

“The Primitive And What Came After”




The green witch said, “She’s in Los Angeles doing what you call villainy.”

I said, “It won’t be the same without her.”

The green witch smiled and asked, “If she were here, what do you think would be the same?”


random holiday talk






De Santillana and von Dechend state in the Introduction to Hamlet’s Mill that they are well aware of modern interpretations of myth and folklore but they find them shallow and lacking insight: “...the experts now are benighted by the current folk fantasy, which is the belief that they are beyond all this - critics without nonsense and extremely wise”. Consequently, de Santillana and Deschend prefer to rely on the work of “meticulous scholars such as Ideler, Lepsius, Chwolson, Boll and, to go farther back, of Athanasius Kircher and Petavius”. They give reasons throughout the book for preferring the work of older scholars (and the early mythologists themselves) as the proper way to interpret myth; but this viewpoint did not sit well with their modern critics schooled in the “current anthropology, which has built up its own idea of the primitive and what came after”.


that quote is from
Wikipedia’s entry on “Hamlet’s Mill”
and the quotes within it
are from
“Hamlet’s Mill”





My guitar is like prehistory now
because my fingers have traveled through time
and can play on keyboard synthesizer
chord voicings similar to the voicings
I use in arrangements for my guitar
and the synthesizer can synthesize
acoustic or electric guitar sounds
so my fingers all modern and high-tech
can make sounds not exactly the same but
so similar that if you close your eyes
or even if you keep your eyes open
wild dogs crying out in the night might not
be able to tell the two sounds apart.

At least that’s my current folk fantasy.

My guitar is still right next to my bed.

My room wouldn’t be the same without it.

But if my guitar could talk would it say,
“I’m here, but what do you think is the same?”




































Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Parsimony And Aberrant Forms




An avalanche of more than 100 apples rained down over a main road in Keresley, Coventry on Monday night.

The street was left littered with apples after they pelted car windscreens and bonnets just after rush-hour.

The bizarre downpour may have been caused by a current of air that lifted the fruit from a garden or orchard, releasing it over the junction of Keresley Road and Kelmscote Road.

One driver said: "The apples fell out of the sky as if out of nowhere. They were small and green and hit the bonnet hard. There were other cars on the road at the time too and everyone had to stop their cars suddenly."

... Keresley parish councillor Sandra Camwell said a freak black-out happened on the same road last year.

She said: "Strange things do happen in this part of the world. I think it's highly likely that apples did fall from the sky. We're in an area with a spooky history, where there have been witches for centuries, after all."







Coventry is in central England
north of London and apples fell there
seemingly from nowhere from the sky
hitting cars and disrupting traffic.

Assuming there wasn’t a grounds crew
working a couple of blocks away
cutting down a stand of apple trees
using an industrial shredder
spewing apples out into the sky
falling apples hitting cars is strange.

But lots of things fall out of the sky
and the press always finds an expert
who blames falling fish or frogs on wind
and now an intense vortex of wind
is being blamed for dropping apples.

Meteorologists think of wind.

Coventry people think of witches.

If Christmas witches can make apples
fall from the sky disrupting traffic
can they also make dinosaurs fall?

Dinosaurs falling out of the sky
would disrupt traffic if disrupting
traffic makes Christmas witches happy.

It’s always been kind of bloodthirsty
the saying Kill two birds with one stone.

Maybe birds are getting back at us.

Or something else up there in the sky
interested in parsimony
interested in disrupting cars
interested in Christmas witches
interested in Christmas wishes
of dinosaurs wanting to come back.

If dinosaurs fall out of the sky
the meteorologists will have
a harder time explaining it than
the local people of Coventry.

In fact maybe you could even say
the meteorologists will have
a hell of a time blaming the wind.


























Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Dragon Storm: The Woman Looking Away




Yesterday I talked about musical duets and a woman who played violin.

That reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what.

I thought about it all day. Then, late Monday night, I sat down and looked over at my bookshelf and went from left to right, staring at each of the books and thinking, “Is it something from that book? Is it something from that book?” all the way across the shelf.

And the method worked!




This is what I was thinking of:


“In that syrupy operetta Das Dreimaderlhaus, Franz Schubert pays court to all three maiden daughters of his patron. Paul Kammerer broke the record by falling in love successively with the five famous Wiesenthal sisters. Four of them were ballet dancers, the fifth played violin.”


The fifth played violin!

None of those love affairs worked out very well. And one of them—with the eldest sister, Grete, a dancer—apparently played some part in Kammerer’s suicide. At about the same time the evidence became available that someone—Kammerer’s assistant?—had faked the nuptial pads on the toads, Grete decided that she would not accompany Kammerer to Moscow. Apparently the combination was too much for Kammerer and he went for a walk in the woods and shot himself in the head. Reports were that he held the gun in his right hand and, for some reason, reached around and shot himself in the left side of his head.


“The only explanation of sorts was offered, not by a psychiatrist, but by an intuitive woman. Though Kammerer was an abstemious man, he might have had a few drinks to give himself Dutch courage before he set out on his last walk. Sitting with his back to the rock, he might have hesitated for a long time, then, with a sudden swinging gesture, brought his arm around his face and the gun to the left ear. There is more panache in such a gesture than in the conventional lifting of the gun, right hand to right temple. Even if not drunk, the gesture would fit an impulse of sudden desperate exaltation—and end with a flourish. His death had a touch of melodrama, but so had his life. He was a Byron among the toads.”


That’s what I was trying to think of!

“He was a Byron among the toads.”

The girl playing violin yesterday was reminding me of Kammerer and one of the younger Wiesenthal sisters. And that was reminding me of Koestler’s outstanding epithet for Kammerer: “He was a Byron among the toads.”

There are worse ways a person’s life could be summed up!



*



There’s a storm raging on Saturn
but we can’t walk to Saturn’s moons
and stretch out on a rock to watch
dragon-shaped clouds swirl on Saturn
and maybe strum on a guitar
improvising a song about
a knight watching a dragon grow
but holding his station sword raised
somehow brave somehow standing firm
somehow not driven mad in fear
by the dragon growing larger.

If a scientist discovered
a star-gate a portal between
everywhere and anywhere else
would that matter when a woman
right there became the only thing
he could see and she looked away
and then the star-gate stopped working
and all the scientist could see
would be dragons and all of them
would be swirling chaos growing
like clouds at night blocking the stars?

The scientist should have written
a song and closed his eyes and sang
and maybe played along without
looking at his guitar strings or
watching his fingers press down keys
and what could the dragons have done
and what could swirling chaos do
or the woman looking away
everywhere far away again
from right there from that one firm spot
where a scientist stands singing.










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



Paul Kammerer at Wikipedia


*


Dragon Storm: Ammonia Snow


An Unclear Story About Walking To Mars


Where The Tree Goes Into The Ground