Posts tagged Rhythm and Angularity

I’ve always loved the title and description of this photograph. “Hit, Miss, Hit” - seems like a day in the life of anyone. The rhythm between windfalls of prosperity and misfortune. Up beats and down beats. Without this contrast, there would be no such thing as rhythm. And rhythm is the fuel of life. Zoom out far enough and you’ll see the break in the clouds but from out current vantage, it’s invisible. ~ü Hit, Miss, Hit Like a giant transparent lintel made of rain pouring hard straight down, with a section of no rain. This was taken at the entrance to the Wupatki National Monument, off old Route 66, Arizona.

I’ve always loved the title and description of this photograph. “Hit, Miss, Hit” - seems like a day in the life of anyone. The rhythm between windfalls of prosperity and misfortune. Up beats and down beats. Without this contrast, there would be no such thing as rhythm. And rhythm is the fuel of life. Zoom out far enough and you’ll see the break in the clouds but from out current vantage, it’s invisible.

~ü

Hit, Miss, Hit

Like a giant transparent lintel made of rain pouring hard straight down, with a section of no rain. This was taken at the entrance to the Wupatki National Monument, off old Route 66, Arizona.

dreaminginthedeepsouth

I spent most of the day getting used to the understated elements of the footage for The Assassination of Chicago’s Mayor.   I’m looking for the natural cadence of the film.  I like to rough out the edit while I outline the music in an attempt to find the movie’s idiosyncratic pacing.  The tone and tempo of the performances captured to screen should fully inform the natural flow of the experience.  The image above is the basic musical gesture I settled on. ~ü

I spent most of the day getting used to the understated elements of the footage for The Assassination of Chicago’s Mayor.   I’m looking for the natural cadence of the film.  I like to rough out the edit while I outline the music in an attempt to find the movie’s idiosyncratic pacing.  The tone and tempo of the performances captured to screen should fully inform the natural flow of the experience. 

The image above is the basic musical gesture I settled on.

~ü

earthcirclefilms.com

I contend that rigidity, whether physical or mental, i.e. the adherence to a principle to the utter exclusion of its opposite, is contrary to the laws of life.
Moshe Feldenkrais

The Value of Work

There is no more obnoxious way to punish a man than to force him to perform acts which make no sense to him, as when one empties and fills the same ditch indefinitely, when one makes soldiers who are being punished march up and down, or when one forces a schoolboy to copy lines.

~ Simone de Beauvoir

Most men and women who commit crimes are punished with no emphasis on rehabilitation.  It’s a cruel waste of human life.  I’ve never read it so articulately illustrated as Dostoyevsky’s The House of the Dead.  It’s a shame that books like these are not essential reading, although I understand the commitment involved by the reader. 

A more casual, contemporary encounter is Paul Modrowski’s true life journal: On the Inside.  He is currently serving a life sentence in Stateville Prison in Illinois, attempting to make the most of a life filled with empty activity.  Free or imprisoned, guilty or innocent, activity devoid of meaning only leads to a cycle of constant despair. 

Work is worship.  Good work is a powerful tool for helping oneself and others.  It is the prescription for mental rehabilitation and the foundation of self-respect.

~ü

Beetles burrow through pine bark and leave behind a visible history; the series of now-points that create the paths of the past.  The truth that their past demonstrates is that is has no tangible beginning and no discernible end.  It is a tangle of time, as all time is.  We often mistake time as a linear sequence of events, each caused by the previous one.  It’s a source of frustration because time almost never acts in this way. When it seemingly does, it is really a tangle of events that we collapse into a single source as we zoom out and analyze what has landed us in the present. ~ü

Beetles burrow through pine bark and leave behind a visible history; the series of now-points that create the paths of the past.  The truth that their past demonstrates is that is has no tangible beginning and no discernible end.  It is a tangle of time, as all time is.  We often mistake time as a linear sequence of events, each caused by the previous one.  It’s a source of frustration because time almost never acts in this way. When it seemingly does, it is really a tangle of events that we collapse into a single source as we zoom out and analyze what has landed us in the present.

~ü

vindsval

The atmosphere is inconspicuous.  Always hiding in plain sight.  Unless it is the wind, then it shows itself in the negative space - the space occupied by physical objects.  To it, we are the invisible impairments.  It moves us.  It shapes us.  It circumvents us.  The ether connects us and transmits our thoughts to one another.  Without it we could not hear.  It envelops us and imbues us with life.  Without it we could not exist.  It is the organization through which we build our thoughts and realize our aspirations. ~ü

The atmosphere is inconspicuous.  Always hiding in plain sight.  Unless it is the wind, then it shows itself in the negative space - the space occupied by physical objects.  To it, we are the invisible impairments.  It moves us.  It shapes us.  It circumvents us. 

The ether connects us and transmits our thoughts to one another.  Without it we could not hear.  It envelops us and imbues us with life.  Without it we could not exist.  It is the organization through which we build our thoughts and realize our aspirations.

~ü

melodyandviolence

Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.
House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is- particularly the artist- particularly myself!
Hermann Hesse
Then suddenly Ann would snap alert and feel intensely alive, or rather that everything was alive and that she was part of it.  The rocks, the rowboat on the shore, the water itself - everything seemed pulsating with a kind of energy.  She found she could put questions to the experience.  “What is my role in all this?” she asked.  “I want to know,” she whispered.  “Show me.”  The rocks, the trees, the water - all in silent chorus “answered” - not in words, of course - that her wanting to know, just that, was her part of the pulsating landscape.  “Creation delights in the recognition of itself” is how she would later put it. - Huston Smith “Tales of Wonder” 
   [Photo: Rick Geerling]

Then suddenly Ann would snap alert and feel intensely alive, or rather that everything was alive and that she was part of it.  The rocks, the rowboat on the shore, the water itself - everything seemed pulsating with a kind of energy.  She found she could put questions to the experience.  “What is my role in all this?” she asked.  “I want to know,” she whispered.  “Show me.”  The rocks, the trees, the water - all in silent chorus “answered” - not in words, of course - that her wanting to know, just that, was her part of the pulsating landscape.  “Creation delights in the recognition of itself” is how she would later put it.

- Huston Smith “Tales of Wonder” 
   [Photo: Rick Geerling]

A small movie I made.  The beginning of fall as told through the elements.

ü