July 29, 2008

http://www.cassettefrommyex.com/

here's a link for myself and for anybody who accidentally lands on this site.

and some thoughts.

jacques tati's PLAYTIME / unique cinematic masterpiece.

origin of species ... a must read for before, during and after a long encounter with nature. especially the first 4 or 6 and the last chapter... read the summaries of the rest unless you're a biology student looking for prescient research projects in the field.

just back from a week in the Crazy Mountains of Montana. the highlight / white-winged crossbill

July 12, 2008

the word of the day is "potlatch"... http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/potlatch

currently writing a review of what might have been a dull doc on Yao Ming, an athlete I know nothing about who plays in a sport I care little for. It's enough to get a guy going, though. It seems a career as a writer is a real possibility for me, but I have got to pay my dues. I think film criticism will be a good start. Literature, too, but keep at it day in and day out.

I feel pushed around by unpleasant obligations and feel this is my own fault. Really, I am just not suited for American culture - I prefer living abroad and will most certainly become an expat. Too much violence, and not just physical, criminal violence, but violent gesture and violent intentions underlying much of our activity. I realize this exists everywhere and is part of the human animal, but that it is more apparent to me here on my native soil is undeniable. I suppose I am learning to cope.

back to my yao essay...

July 9, 2008

Voyage of the Beagle is just great, especially after the first 15 pages or so it took to adjust to the arcane language. Practical, curious, wonderstruck, elegaic - this man may have been a novelist (and nearly was a preacher) but for his training in and passion for the natural sciences. Makes one want to carry around field guides on botany, birds, insects, animals. Makes one want to keep rigorous travel journals. The idea of shooting narrative films while on the road and conducting field work simultaneously came to me. Have a resident biologist on set and schedule time for observation. Then the thought of staging musical performances in the rainforest while planting trees. Fuck concert halls and entertainment, lets do the hands-on work this planet needs and apeal to the soul and to the aesthetic intellect at the same time. All of this is ridiculous, but that is the point of this blog space, to serve as a sounding board for those thoughts I otherwise let go unexpressed.

July 7, 2008

in that warehouse of stored-up ideas one never taps:
pale death.

when we sit to write every day we do just that.
when we aim to and fall short it is that we are doing.

we’ve read more of roberto bolaño than perhaps everyone in this damned country minus a dozen people. write down what we’ve found out.

we’re reading cormac mccarthy and have something secretive to say about it. we love it but we cringe at the politics. dissect this beauty and dissect this romanticized, diminished portrayal of mexico

we have beautiful movies and beautiful photographs inside of us waiting. get them out.

we have a notion of beauty that we’d like to propogate. do so.

this pep talk is beyond all reason.
get to grant writing, get to the page, open up final cut pro and spend time editing. photoshop. we are not to sleep or worry about our health or comfort. we are to race around destroying the world. we are to populate the world with monuments to ourself. produce produce produce!!!

tv – freaks and geeks, buffy the vampire slayer
film – ugetsu, birth, bad doc on photography, angels with dirty faces
books – mccarthy’s border trilogy. on deck – voyage of the beagle
conversation with helen – her divorce, my mom’s obesity, maca’s visa, strategies for expediting the process, conversation strained, uneasy, forced, both of us tired, still somehow sweet