Category Archives: Art and Culture

Art and Culture, Latin, MOOCS, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Just Glad For Them To Be Over

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                            Thanksgiving Moon

Finished the quick page through of Missing and have decided on key steps to take next. There will be some formatting, substantial rewriting at the end, amplification of descriptions in certain parts and a bit of rearranging.  My goal is to finish before we leave for Denver.

My capacity to translate while “in” the Latin seems to be growing.  In the passage from today Jupiter is very mad and has decided to destroy the mortal race.  Which he will do, later on in the book.  How?  By means of a flood.

I’m down to the last two poets in ModPo, plus the four assessments of other’s writing assignments.  After two and a half months of considerable work in ModPo and Modern/Post Modern, I’m experiencing that end of the quarter blah.  I don’t really want to finish the work, but I’m going to because I’ve invested so much now.  I get this filled up feeling, brought on by choices I’ve made, yes, but it’s still there.

These were two really good courses and worth the time and effort, more than repaying the work.  Just glad for them to be over.

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Humanities, Latin, Literature, Myth and Story, Photography, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Missing, In the Dark Wood, Lycaon

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                               Thanksgiving Moon

Involved with what is, I believe, technically the fifth revision of Missing.  20,000 words went out today, a whole story line about a goddess and her giantess assistance.  It included, too, a favorite part of the book for me, the Wyrm and the Weregild, a group of expert giant dragon hunters.  But this storyline does not intersect directly with the primary story in Missing and it’s now in the pile for Loki’s Children, which now has over 50,000 plus words available from the drafts and revisions up to now of Missing.

Some key names got changed, transitions made more clear.  I got about half way through a quick review.  Probably will finish with that tomorrow.  Then I’ll go back in and start adding some more description, some character development and I may, probably will, change the ending to give it more punch.  Thanks to Stefan for the idea.

Translated another four verses in the story of Lycaon today, too.  These were hard, either the Latin was thick or I was.  Maybe both.  Still.  Done.  That’s my goal per day.

Also worked on ModPo’s final week.  Two very interesting poets today.  Erica Baum is a conceptual poet who combines photography and found language to create intriguing works.  Here are two images we reviewed in class:

 

The first is from a work called Card Catalogues where Baum photographed certain portions of the New York University Library’s old card catalog.  Each photograph is a poem of juxtaposition created by the strange constraint of alphabetically organizing knowledge.  The second is one of several pieces from a work, Dog Ear.  These are all large photographs, Card Catalog is too, and she hangs them in galleries together, though each photograph stands alone.  This is part of the conceptualist idea that ambient language contains all we need as far as poetry.  We only have to work to find it.  But that work can be difficult.

The next poet is Caroline Bergvall, a French-Norwegian who works in English.  Her work is a ten-minute recitation of 47 different translations of the famous opening lines of Dante’s Inferno:

When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.  from the Mandelbaum translation

This is a strangely evocative, haunting experience.  You can hear her read it here.

(Frame from a 1911 Italian film version of the Divine Comedy. The director’s name was Giuseppe De Liguoro. from this website.)

Art and Culture, Writing

Missing found.

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                                        Thanksgiving Moon

Missing, the 4th revision, is at home now, having had its beta reading.  That means I’m taking the manuscript up today, seeing what to do, how to hone it one more time. Revision jumps to the front of the line for time, so the Latin will move to 11:00 a.m. and ModPo, this last week, to the afternoon.

There was an interesting perspective on revision I saw last week.  Something like: revision’s not so bad because you know you already have a novel.  True.  And I have few more lying around, too.

Having the ability to arrange my days around the growing season, my writing, the Latin and, now, MOOCs, has made it so I’ve never missed my docent work at the MIA.  Too big a time suck.  How to add art back into my life at that level of intensity, though, still eludes me.  That I miss, the intense immersion in the world of art.  I don’t miss the driving, the tour preparation, the tours.

And now, back to Missing.

 

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Politics

The Bechdel Test

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                          Samhain Moon

In Modern and Post Modern we read Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, Fun Home.  It’s poignant, well-drawn and has a lot to say about gender and the corrosive personal affects of having to hide one’s sexual preferences behind society’s gender roles.  I’m not surprised to see her in this interesting quote.  Gonna try and test movies from now on myself.  Here’s a link to her website: Dykes to Watch Out For.

“Four independent theaters in Sweden have launched a campaign to install a rating system that classifies films based on their representations of gender. Films will be approved with an “A-rating” if they pass the Bechdel test, named after Alison Bechdel, whose 1985 comic strip inspired its development. The Bechdel test has the minimal criteria that the film contains at least two female characters that talk to each other about something besides men. While this yardstick of measurement may seem easy enough, the amount of films passing the test has proven surprising scant.”

Art and Culture, Woolly Mammoths

You Dip Your Honey Rod in the Molten Glass

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                         Samhain Moon

Glory hole.  Boil.  Jacks.  Crimpers.  Gathers. Honey rods. Annealer. Diamond shears. IMAG1071Taglia. Paddles. Tweezers.  If you encounter this unusual constellation of tools and equipment, you’re about to work with glass.  Molten glass.  Molten as in 4,300 degrees molten. Molten as in droops off the end of the honey rod if you don’t keep rolling, rolling, rolling.

(Frank ready for his first gather.)

You dip a honey rod into an oven, a 4,300 degree oven filled with about 350 pounds of molten, transparent glass.  Twist two or three times and get a good gather on the rod.  Pull it out, orange, heat blasting back from the oven.  Roll it.  Roll it.  Over to a table that might be an Indian spice sellers tables with small mounds of wares, dip the molten glass in yellow or white or blue, move it back and forth so the color coats the gather.

To the bench.  Rolling, this time maybe pull out the tweezers and grab the end of the IMAG1070gather, pull it, twist it.  Then maybe the shears to make a few cuts. Still rolling.  Rolling. Always rolling.  Another gather, bigger this time, over the first gather, the one with color. Rolling, rolling.  Always.  This time layers of newspaper soaked in water.  Yes.  Newspaper.

(Charlie with newspaper.)

Wet newspaper.  Thick, wet newspaper.  In your hand, against the heat of the second gather, rolling still rolling, you shape the whole, now headed toward that most mundane, but forgiving of glass shapes, a paperweight.  Back in the gloryhole for a heat blast.IMAG1058

Back to the bench.  This time the jacks grip the molten glass at the rod’s end, making a line around it, a line that will make breaking the cooling glass off the honey rod possible.  “It perforates the glass.”  Oh?

(the glory hole)

Whatever it does, sure enough, after gently tapping the gather at the jacks imprinted line, the paper weight falls off.  A blow torch comes out, heats the rough edges and makes the bottom molten enough to receive initials.  Gotten know which one is yours.

Then they go into the annealer.  It gradually steps down the heat so the coefficient of IMAG1063expansion doesn’t overtake the masterpiece and shatter it.  Ready on Wednesday.

What the Woollies did this Monday night at Minnesota Glass Arts.

(Jen releases her demonstration paperweight from the honeyrod.)

Art and Culture, Humanities, MOOCS, Poetry

A Skull Expanding Moment

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                           Samhain Moon

Can you hear that streeetcchhhing sound?  It’s my 20th century, 2nd millennium mind trying to shoehorn in some new ideas.  Not only the New York School poets, for whom Allison gave some appreciated homework help (locating the 5 spot and some info on O’Hara and Larry Rivers), but this afternoon I’ve finished the reading on Unbending Gender and another one on reflexivity*.

We’ve entered the realm in both these courses I most looked forward to, the section on post-modernism.  I’ve never been able to get straight in my head what post-modernism is, or is supposed to be.  I had the same trouble with dew point for a long time so I think there is hope.

Reflexivity is a key aspect of modern art as I now understand it and modern poetry, too.   The poem and the art work both are works of art and commentaries (self-reflective) on the act of art-making.  This is clear when painting turned away from realism and toward cubism and abstraction, collapsing perspective into 2-d, the act of painting itself commenting on the acts involved in producing the very painting in view.

A Pollock action painting is clearly 2-d, makes no attempt at 3-d perspective and the action of dripping the paint on is clearly evident.  In commenting on this point Michael Roth, teacher of the Modern/Post Modern class, made an interesting comment, referencing someone else:  The surface in these paintings, though bold, are fragile.  I understood this immediately, though I don’t know whether I could explain it.

At some point along here I’m going to synthesize my understanding of post-modernism. To see if I can put it out there clearly.  (that may not be very post-modern though)

*wiki  Reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect. A reflexive relationship is bidirectional with both the cause and the effect affecting one another in a situation that does not render both functions causes and effects. In sociology, reflexivity therefore comes to mean an act of self-reference where examination or action “bends back on”, refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination.

To this extent it commonly refers to the capacity of an agent to recognize forces of socialization and alter their place in the social structure. A low level of reflexivity would result in an individual shaped largely by their environment (or ‘society’). A high level of social reflexivity would be defined by an individual shaping their own norms, tastes, politics, desires, and so on. This is similar to the notion ofautonomy.

Art and Culture, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Changes

Leave a comment

Fall                                                                          Samhain Moon

Buddy Mark Odegard has found a new style in poster-like art about the Northshore.  Good

We’ve had snow and we’ve had rain, who knows when I’ll be back this way again.  I do.  Next season around the same time.  Loving the change of seasons.  The transitions may be later and milder, but they’re still coming and I still love le difference.

Found out my chain saw needs a new bar as well as a new chain, so I’ll have to visit the hardware store tomorrow:  new glasses, dental visit and a chain saw bar.  These are the kind of things that take me into the really retail and away from cyber-purchase.  Hands on matters where time counts.  Otherwise, I’d rather get it in the mail.  No schlepping and it saves on gas.

What?  I heard that.  Yes, it does save on gas.  Shopping on the internet aggregates deliveries among many people allowing for a much more efficient route and far fewer trips per item.

Art and Culture, Asia, Cooking, Family, Garden

Outdoors

1 Comment

Fall                                                                              Samhain Moon

The mid-point of October and we’re almost done with gardening.  We broadcast under the cherry and plum trees today, removing the mulch, taking up the landscape cloth, laying down the fertilizer and spraying the biotill, then replacing the landscape cloth.  After the nap I helped Kate get the landscape cloth back down, then while she rejoined it with staples to the ground, I sprayed biotill on the vegetable garden beds and mulched all of them but the herb spiral.

(Persephone and Hades)

The raspberries, which I picked this morning, are still producing and the leeks await a cooking day when I will make chicken leek pot pies, next week probably.   The leek bed will get fertilized, sprayed and mulched when they are inside while cutting down the raspberry canes, then spraying and fertilizing has to wait until they quit bearing.

This was significant manual labor and we’re both in the weary phase.  A quiet evening leaf tea bowlahead.  Some Latin right now for me.

My new teaware came, a clay bamboo holder for my tea utensils, a new pitcher made of yixing clay with a white ceramic glaze inside and a rosewood tea scoop.  All of this from a shop in Vancouver that has excellent products, The Chinese Teashop.

Art and Culture, Poetry, Writing

Out There, Man

Leave a comment

Fall                                                               Samhain Moon

The beats.  for beatific.  A generation I have begun to feel more now, reading them in ModPo.  I never read them, ignored them as quaint, anachronistic for the rebellion, my rebellion, our rebellion, the 60’s.  Now looking back at them, imagining them as outriders on the buttoned up, nuclear overcast, post-war suburban build out to conformity culture in which I was young, now I can see.  And hear.  They inhabited a margin unimaginable from the center of Levittown, a world of China and tea with no oriental associations, a rootless, roving busload of wearers of black, makers of poetry, listeners to jazz, respecting no sexual or social conventions.  Out there, man.

(Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Lafcadio Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso in 1956)

Now.  Now I hear the Howl and have listened to Kerouac’s strangely charismatic voice, speaking through digital technology only barely coming to be in his own time.  These are not my people.  I am not of them.  But they are our people, our American outsiders.  Buoys on the shipping lanes of middle class culture warning out beyond here there be monsters.  My people are political.  The beats were not.  We used acid and mescaline and peyote, they turned to heroin.  They found their place in poetry and wandering and improvisation; we found ours in the street, organizing, fighting.  Different.  But the same.

(Carl Solomon, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs at the Gotham Book Mart, New York City, 1977)

American outsider voices.  All amplified in that strange alien language spoken only where the commuters never ride.  Where the matron never serves tea.  Where the only hope is purity and clarity and the archetypal.  Never sullied by bills and jobs and diapers and cars breaking down.  Out there surfing the big breaks of idealism that crest upon the shore of America the Capitalist and America the Conformist.

(Train Station, by Bernice Sims)

I hear them now, speaking in their cadences at night in coffee houses, pounding small drums and shouting into the microphone about pain and angels and doomed love.

Art and Culture, Humanities, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Latin

Leave a comment

Fall                                                              Samhain Moon

Back in the SPQR.  Translating Metamorphoses this morning, 6 verses and I didn’t pull my hair out too often.  That’s because, of course, there’s so little left.  The Latin has had me going this way and that.  It’s too much, takes too much time.  Maybe I’ve gotten from it what I want, what I intended.  Then, but I’ve invested 3 + years at it.  Finally, ok, I’ll try it again for a while.

Then, this morning. I had a great time.  Always wise to suspend judgement until some data is at hand.