What if I never get to call those rusty beaches with reflections of factories and cranes my home again?
28 November, 2012
23 September, 2012
29 July, 2012
Kosmos
'But there is another side to the psychology of spaceflight. During their stay in space, astronauts have reported what author Frank White called the “overview effect”
– they became filled with a sense of wonder and awe about the universe,
and experienced spiritual epiphanies such as unity with nature,
transcendence, and universal brotherhood. Space affords some incredible
experiences. NASA psychologists have looked into the benefits of taking
photographs from the International Space Station, which may have a
salutary effect on the minds of astronauts (.pdf).
These positive effects seem to last. Psychologists studying
astronauts who return to Earth report that they are less anxious,
hypochondriacal, depressive, or aggressive. It seems that, during their
stay in a tough environment, people are able to develop coping skills to
deal with the challenge and stress, which they get to take with them
back to Earth.'
I was born into unseen catastrophes and unseen discoveries. Perhaps I have space running in my veins. Perhaps I was born 3.7 miles from the S U N.
In 1990:
- The Space Shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit revolutionizing astronomy;
- Tim Berners-Lee publishes a more formal proposal for the World Wide Web and the first web page is written;
- The First Known Case of AIDS is traced back to 1959;
- The Space Probe Voyager launched in 1977 photographed the Solar System at a distance of 3.7 miles from the SUN;
- 18 years after its launch the US Space Probe Pioneer reaches a distance of 46.5 billion miles beyond all planetary orbits;
- Depletion of the Ozone Layer is discovered above the North Pole.
[Client Mansell - Memories (Someone We'll Never Know)]
'Isn't this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex,
wonderfully unfathomable NATURAL world?'
'I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
and unimportant…,
but thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long
as my great great great great uncleses and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine.
Twice as long to love this wife of mine.
Twice as many years of friends and wine.'
[Tim Minchin - Storm]
I want to shout and murder.
'It takes a lot of nerve to destroy this wondrous earth.
We're only human; this at least we've learned.'
We're only human; this at least we've learned.'
[Bowerbirds]
Instead, I want to be filled with a sense of wonder. I want to be filled with all of this s p a c e
We are stardust. I W O U L D N E V E R D R E A D D E A T H I F I B E C A M E O N E W I T H K O S M O S
13 May, 2012
The worlds end in London
[Low - Sunflower]
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river...
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.'
[T. S. Eliot]
28 February, 2012
Beginners [v]
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
[- The Velveteen Rabbit]
Hal: 'Well, let's say that since you were little, you always dreamed of getting a lion. And you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait, but the lion doesn't come. And along comes a giraffe. You can be alone, or you can be with the giraffe.'
Oliver: 'I'd wait for the lion.'
Hal: 'That's why I worry about you.'
[Fleet Foxes - Your Protector]
19 February, 2012
Treat of the day
Time to think, look and act CAREER. So that one day I can buy a little cave in the Old Town or a factory by the seaside.
I can't actually recall ever seeing blue screen being used as... blue screen. This video wins. The 80's always win.23 January, 2012
Back Door Man
Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend by Stephen Davis- a witty and thorough view on Jim Morrison's life. I'm about half-way through and thought I'd share some of my favourite bits...
' ''Film Studies'' was a new academic field in 1964, and film student was considered synonymous with goofball, slacker, draft dodger.'
'In his notebooks Jimmy wrote concentrated poems that described a superhuman elite of elevated beings- ''the Lords''- who operated on a higher psychic plane than the rest of humanity, who ''saw things as they were.'' The Lords invisibly imposed a version of social control that seems derived from William S. Borroughs's Nova Mob.'
'But classmates acknowledge that Morrison was unusually dedicated to learning the obscure byways of film history. Ray Manzarek recalls that Jimmy once hitchhiked 450 miles all night to Berkeley for a one-time-only screening of French existentialist hero Jean Genet's ultrarare homoerotic prison movie Un Chant d'Amour. Only the hippiest, most hard-core cinema freaks in L.A. took the trouble to make the scene. ''Jim was a very talented and brilliant person,'' Phil O'Leno said. ''But he was a little too young to be wise.'' '
'The Ravens were fun, but mediocre. With no original songs and a charisma-challenged lineup, it was a band going nowhere.' (I will definitely be adding the term 'charisma-challenged' to my vocabulary!)
'But mostly Jim had just stopped eating. Instead he began taking daily doses of LSD, using the still-legal hallucinogen to raise his consciousness and blot out the psychic trauma of his past.'
'Or he and Phil O'Leno would drop acid and freak out along the canals, trying to scare each other.'
'Bill Gazzari wouldn't even let Jim into his club to audition because he was barefoot. This went on for a while, Gazzari recalled. ''One day Jim said, 'Bill, can we come in now?' I leaned over the counter and he had one shoe on. He didn't have a shoe on the other foot. I said, 'Did you lose a shoe?' Jim said, 'No, I found one so I could get in.' '' '
'Talent does whatever it wants to. Genius does only what it can.' - Eugene Delacroix
'Sometimes, when stuck for a lyric while he was improvising, he'd crack a popper under his nose. Jim's eyes rolled up into his head and he'd collapse over the keyboard. Ray just kept playing until Jim regained consciousness and the set would go on.'
'On Saturday night, while John Densmore and Pam were talking in one of the Fog's booths, Jim Morrison made his move and sat down with them. There was talk of mutual friends, astrology, acid, and real estate. Ray later tried to accurately describe this encounter: 'Once their eyes combined, their psyches did a caduceus up the staff of Mercury and their souls sprouted wings. They were mated. Olympian. Cosmic.'' '
'She acted out the role of rock star wife to the max, calling herself Mrs. Morrison, wearing a wedding ring, and burning through his money as if he owned a bank. He never married her, he often cheated on her (and she on him), but he always came back to her. He wrote to her, dedicated his poetry to her, and left her everything in the end. Jim Morrison loved Pamela Courson to death.'
'At least once a week Pam would explode in fury, throw open the bedroom window, and dump Jim's clothes and books into the street, screaming curses and bloody murder as the laundry and literature flew. Mirandi Babitz ascribed some of Pam's chronic unhappiness to sexual incompatibility between the two lovers. Jim, Babitz claimed, preferred anal intercourse, while Pamela, who was tiny and rail thin, was less than thrilled taking Jim's reputedly prodigious reproductive organ into her rectum.'
(On Jim's photo shoot with Gloria Stavers) 'She shot him pouting like a sex kitten, and posing against her brick walls like a Greek hero. She told him about her trip with Lenny Bruce, and showed him how to stay thin and sexy by throwing up the food he'd eaten. At dawn they tumbled into bed. She lubricated herself with melted butter and let Jim do what he liked best. A couple of months later, when The Doors was released, Sixteen published a fawning, breathless cover story under the headline: ''Morrison Is Magic!'' '
'He was extremely welcome at Warhol's midtown studio, the Factory, where he scored pills from the regulars and star-quality blow jobs from Nico in a bathroom covered in aluminum foil.'
Jim about himself: 'I've always been attracted to ideas that were about revolt against authority. I like ideas about the breaking away or overthrowing of established order. I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos- especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom. Rather than starting inside, I start outside- reach the mental through the physical.'
' ''Film Studies'' was a new academic field in 1964, and film student was considered synonymous with goofball, slacker, draft dodger.'
'In his notebooks Jimmy wrote concentrated poems that described a superhuman elite of elevated beings- ''the Lords''- who operated on a higher psychic plane than the rest of humanity, who ''saw things as they were.'' The Lords invisibly imposed a version of social control that seems derived from William S. Borroughs's Nova Mob.'
'But classmates acknowledge that Morrison was unusually dedicated to learning the obscure byways of film history. Ray Manzarek recalls that Jimmy once hitchhiked 450 miles all night to Berkeley for a one-time-only screening of French existentialist hero Jean Genet's ultrarare homoerotic prison movie Un Chant d'Amour. Only the hippiest, most hard-core cinema freaks in L.A. took the trouble to make the scene. ''Jim was a very talented and brilliant person,'' Phil O'Leno said. ''But he was a little too young to be wise.'' '
'The Ravens were fun, but mediocre. With no original songs and a charisma-challenged lineup, it was a band going nowhere.' (I will definitely be adding the term 'charisma-challenged' to my vocabulary!)
'But mostly Jim had just stopped eating. Instead he began taking daily doses of LSD, using the still-legal hallucinogen to raise his consciousness and blot out the psychic trauma of his past.'
'Or he and Phil O'Leno would drop acid and freak out along the canals, trying to scare each other.'
'Bill Gazzari wouldn't even let Jim into his club to audition because he was barefoot. This went on for a while, Gazzari recalled. ''One day Jim said, 'Bill, can we come in now?' I leaned over the counter and he had one shoe on. He didn't have a shoe on the other foot. I said, 'Did you lose a shoe?' Jim said, 'No, I found one so I could get in.' '' '
'Talent does whatever it wants to. Genius does only what it can.' - Eugene Delacroix
'Sometimes, when stuck for a lyric while he was improvising, he'd crack a popper under his nose. Jim's eyes rolled up into his head and he'd collapse over the keyboard. Ray just kept playing until Jim regained consciousness and the set would go on.'
'On Saturday night, while John Densmore and Pam were talking in one of the Fog's booths, Jim Morrison made his move and sat down with them. There was talk of mutual friends, astrology, acid, and real estate. Ray later tried to accurately describe this encounter: 'Once their eyes combined, their psyches did a caduceus up the staff of Mercury and their souls sprouted wings. They were mated. Olympian. Cosmic.'' '
'She acted out the role of rock star wife to the max, calling herself Mrs. Morrison, wearing a wedding ring, and burning through his money as if he owned a bank. He never married her, he often cheated on her (and she on him), but he always came back to her. He wrote to her, dedicated his poetry to her, and left her everything in the end. Jim Morrison loved Pamela Courson to death.'
'At least once a week Pam would explode in fury, throw open the bedroom window, and dump Jim's clothes and books into the street, screaming curses and bloody murder as the laundry and literature flew. Mirandi Babitz ascribed some of Pam's chronic unhappiness to sexual incompatibility between the two lovers. Jim, Babitz claimed, preferred anal intercourse, while Pamela, who was tiny and rail thin, was less than thrilled taking Jim's reputedly prodigious reproductive organ into her rectum.'
(On Jim's photo shoot with Gloria Stavers) 'She shot him pouting like a sex kitten, and posing against her brick walls like a Greek hero. She told him about her trip with Lenny Bruce, and showed him how to stay thin and sexy by throwing up the food he'd eaten. At dawn they tumbled into bed. She lubricated herself with melted butter and let Jim do what he liked best. A couple of months later, when The Doors was released, Sixteen published a fawning, breathless cover story under the headline: ''Morrison Is Magic!'' '
'He was extremely welcome at Warhol's midtown studio, the Factory, where he scored pills from the regulars and star-quality blow jobs from Nico in a bathroom covered in aluminum foil.'
Jim about himself: 'I've always been attracted to ideas that were about revolt against authority. I like ideas about the breaking away or overthrowing of established order. I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos- especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom. Rather than starting inside, I start outside- reach the mental through the physical.'
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)