‘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.

(photo by: zuzana hudackova / in this image: agi gutkowska)

‘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:

(photo by: zuzana hudackova / in this image: agi gutkowska)

‘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

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.

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).

P.S. posted on December 3rd, 2009

change the world

(for mama

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.

a poem is a thing is a thing is a poem posted on October 13th, 2009

avant garde lithuanian poetry in translation: www.dearsir.org/sites_current_issue_writers_1/janusevicius_tribinevicius.html

Jordan Shoot a Wrap! posted on October 7th, 2009

Photography by Keri Knapp

Completed shoot for an NFB (National Film Board of Canada) interactive documentary on poet Jordan Scott. We captured Jordan reading to an audience and interviewed him on his experience growing up with a stutter and how they relate to the poems in his book Blert. All of this will be weaved into a flash based interface. I’m pretty excited about the concept we have come up with. Check back later to find a link to the work.