Ekphrasis

Margins of New York

The storyboard of a Saturday, our view over Calvary

of a flickering, modern skyline haunts our attachment

to fleeting time, even if we know that we will never

really catch the slow, plodding car ahead of us that

can’t seem to pick a lane and stay in it.

45 miles per hour in a winter rain obliges us to use the

passenger side door window as a self-evident filter that

keeps the rain out, even as each drop slides up the glass

and tries to get in after floating like a pearl over the dead.

I ask her to lean back so that I can twist my neck and

gaze at the faded height of New York and the darkening

breadth of the cemetery through the speckled afternoon.

“I’ll take a picture” she says. “Keep your eyes on the road.

We don’t want to get in a wreck."

"I’ll take a picture so you can to see the same view as me.

You'll be able to relive the experience through the photo.”

How do I tell her what I know? The moment is gone,

there is nothing but the present and her photograph

captures only ghosts, only a view of a city both dead and

alive. We cross the bridge and “We should make time to

visit the city when it's not raining” is all I can say.

This is just a little poem that I'm working on. Any constructive criticism is appreciated.

*Picture taken by my wife with some focused "editing" on my part.

The Great God Bird: Nature: Art/Science/Culture

Two videos with Sufjan Stevens ethereal song "The Great God Bird" about the elusive Ivory-billed Woodpecker - otherwise known as the Ghost Bird (see documentary "Ghost Bird"). I am writing about the interactions of Art, Culture, and Science in humanity's idea and relationship with what we have been calling "Nature." I certainly view these two videos quite differently. The official music video (the pretty girl and the flowers) made me want to discard it right away as somehow missing the point or as over-romanticizing the the song's message about the loss and sense of a need to recover a species of non-human life. The second one which was made by a Youtuber out of Discovery Channel footage of the behind-the-scenes video of the documentary about the woodpecker seems a great contrast to the mystical, even spiritual, aura of Steven's tribute to the "Great God Bird."

What do you guys think? Is there a metaphor in the official video that I'm missing out on? Do we think of our experience IN "nature" as a beautiful walk in a field of flowers while we photograph everything is sight? Or is it this observation-as-a-way-to-know experience that drives us out into the wilderness to be sure that we haven't indeed eliminated another non-human? Perhaps it is more like singing, and listening to, the song: both a in- and out-of-body experience, a subliminal and sublime event?

Here are the lyrics to the song:

In the delta sun, down in Arkansas
It's the great god bird with its altar call
And the sewing machine, the industrial god
On the great bayou were they saw it fall
It's the great god bird down in Arkansas
And the hunters beware, or the fishers fall
And paradise might close from its safe flight flawed
It's the great god bird through it all

And the watchers beware, lest they see it fall
And paradise might laugh when at last it falls
And the sewing machine, the industrial god
It's the great god bird with it's altar call
Yes, it's the great god bird with its altar call
Yes, it's the great god bird through it all

There's a lot more to say but...

Traces

Firekites - AUTUMN STORY - chalk animation from Lucinda Schreiber on Vimeo.

I like the idea that we leave part of ourselves behind as traces. I want to say that the idea of the 'trace' is Derridean. Who can lend me a hand in this matter?

What is your first thought when you see this mate brand?

I thought it was one of those brands that market's mate as a health supplement. COLON CLEANSING MIRACLE IMPORTED FROM SOUTH AMERICA!!! GENTLY CLEANSES THE TOXINS FROM YOUR DIGESTIVE SYSTEM AS YOU DRINK THIS SOOTHING TEA FROM PARAGUAY!!!!! THE SANITARY CONFIDENCE THAT COMES FROM DRINKING COLON BRAND MATE WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

Vuelta a Atahualpa

I just had to share this great little song by the Argentine-American artist Kevin Johansen.  Those who are familiar with my thesis subject might like this more but Atahualpa Yupanqui is a folklorist legend in Argentina and there have only been a few new takes on him and his music outside of folklore circles that have been any good (i.e. Divididos with "El arriero va" (excellent cover by the way)) and while "Atahaulpa You Funky" (get it: Atahualpa Yu panqui) is not a cover, I really love that it plays with the idea of Atahualpa and his music as somehow untouchable.  Anyway:

Atahualpa, You Funky! - KEVIN JOHANSEN

Ok one more good Kevin Johansen song (check out that charango!):

En mi cabeza - Kevin Johansen

Oh and I changed the Lunfardo.

To Gather or to Enframe

Heidegger uses the symbol of the bridge as an example of how technology can "gather" nature without "challenging" it: 

"The bridge swings over the stream 'with ease and power.' It does not just connect banks that are already there.  The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream.  The bridge expressly causes them to lie across from each other.  One side is set off against the other by the bridge.  Nor do the banks stretch along the stream as indifferent border strips of the dry land.  With the banks, the bridge brings to the stream the one and the other expanse of the landscape lying behind them.  It brings stream and bank and land into each other's neighborhood.  The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream.  Thus it guides and attends the stream through the meadows [...]. The bridge lets the stream run its course and at the same time grants mortals their way, so that they may come and go from shore to shore." 

- "Building Dwelling Thinking"

"The hydroelectric plant is not built into the Rhine River as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years.  Rather, the river is dammed up into the power plant.  What the river is now, namely, a water supplier, derives from the essence of the power station [...].  The Rhine is still a river in the landscape, is it not?  Perhaps.  But how? In no other way than as an object on call for inspection by a tour group ordered there by the vacation industry."

- "The Question Regarding Technology"

Now, my photo and my poem below: "Enmarcar."

Rio Blanco writes itself with the seasons.

Invierno: a slender silence se encoge de las orillas.  

Primavera: confident, it rushes white to green, it carries casas y cardones en una ola agridulce.

Verano: it finds its backbone again beneath the barro satisfecho y saturado.

Otoño: "¡viento, viento, traéme aguacero!" another letter, another year, another bridge to pass under.

A few changes in blog

I've added two new Gadgets to the blog.  The first is what I call "Lunfardo del momento" and I will change the Lunfardo term every once in awhile.  The second is a "Random Cat picture" preprepared gadget that I've renamed "Gatos: Esclavos subversivos de la Modernidad" [not sure what I mean but it sounds great].