Poetry
Jordan Scott w/ Jon McCurley posted on August 16th, 2010
HAPPY PRIDE WEEK posted on July 3rd, 2010
Nina Arsenault recently spoke at IdeaCity 2010 about her art and her body, and how she objectifies herself in the name of both. Read the whole ‘talk‘ because it’s super.
“And, I take my understanding of irony from Donna Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto. She articulates irony not simply as the idea that an image can contain an implied and literal meaning. Harraway’s deep understanding of irony is that a single image or body can contain a cascading web-like structure of seemingly contradictory yet dependent meanings that can not even be pulled apart. To do so would be to deny the truth of the greater whole.
It’s a beautiful definition of irony.
Dialectics dissolve into one another. Male into female into real into fake into beauty into abomination, worshipfulness and self-annihilation. Cascading into one another.”
Parts of a tour documentary:
‘And then a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.’ posted on March 3rd, 2010
From Kahlil Gibran’s THE PROPHET - ‘On Pain.’
“And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun,
so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life,
your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
‘Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
‘For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay
which the Potter has moistened with his owns sacred tears.”
From Kahlil Gibran’s THE PROPHET - On Pain.
[You who never arrived] posted on February 14th, 2010
You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved, who were lost from the start, I don't even know what songs would please you. I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment. All the immense images in me-- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected turns in the path, and those powerful lands that were once pulsing with the life of the gods- all rise within me to mean you, who forever elude me. You, Beloved, who are all the gardens I have ever gazed at, longing. An open window in a country house--, and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,-- you had just walked down them and vanished. And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, seperate, in the evening... Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Orgesticulanismus & Ophthalmology posted on February 2nd, 2010
Mathieu Labaye created the short film ‘Orgesticulanismus‘ as a tribute to his father, a man who’d been confined to a wheelchair for the last 15 years of his life.
This is one of my favourite sequences from Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007); also about a man confined by the malfunction of his body.
so you want to be a writer? posted on December 14th, 2009
| so you want to be a writer? | ||
| by Charles Bukowski | ||
if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was. |
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The Mirror posted on December 10th, 2009
Poetry, film, and intense visions of destruction and beauty are all constructed like a symphony by the brilliant Tarkovsky….and needless to say are absolutely mesmerizing. Like a godly meditation about the impermanence and misery of the human condition, the pace of his films draws into an inner world that is densely populated by the images from the past and quickly disappearing present. Long steady shots and a poem read over top of the calmly disturbing imagery is quite breath taking in these scene from The Mirror.
This is a short article, on some of the most poignant symbols in Tarkovsky’s films (more clips included).
Stutter on screen posted on November 1st, 2009
Now that Bravo! TV has screened our little short nationally we can share it with you here online and in full format. Enjoy!
Stutter from Artist Bloc on Vimeo.



