In 1975 the Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader set sail from Cape Cod on a single-handed crossing of the Atlantic as part of what would be his final work, entitled In Search of the Miraculous. His vessel, the thirteen foot long Ocean Wave, was the smallest craft in which such a feat had been attempted. Three weeks into the voyage radio contact was lost, and ten weeks later the Ocean Wave was found partially submerged West-Southwest of the coast of Ireland, Ader’s intended destination. He, however, was never seen again. Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for the ‘Autumn’ Category
July 30th, 2010
Being addicted to British television has its perks. In addition to off-color sitcoms and Welsh cartoons, the BBC has a very nice way with music documentaries. Synth Britannia is a well-researched, extremely interesting piece about how a once marginalized and underground genre of music came to be the defining style of a decade. It’s difficult to imagine PBS devoting the same kind of attention and care to these acts’ American counterparts, mainly (I suppose) because production costs would far outweigh interest in the subject. Read the rest of this entry »
June 15th, 2010
Don DeLillo’s White Noise was published in 1985, went on to win the National Book Award, and thrust him into the forefront of a vague movement called ‘postmodern literature’. I have never truly understood what this label means. Postmodernism in literature and art, in architecture and criticism has certain elements in common, but nothing binding, nothing constant, and maybe that is the point. At its core, postmodernism highlights the recursive, fractured thoughts that plague us as members of advanced capitalist societies: truth is relative to the observer, we are alone in a crowd, and the devices we use to create a sense of community or identity only serve to drive us further apart. We buy things that in turn try to sell us a semblance of self parceled out in neat monthly payments of 19.95. Read the rest of this entry »
May 7th, 2010
Change is never easy. Whether it is the yearly confusion surrounding seasonal shift or a major alteration in fortune, change takes us all by the scruff of the neck and wags its finger in our faces. Through its clumsy reminders we are forced to accept that we are finite, that we own nothing absolutely, and that we must make the best use of the time that we have. I believe that an approximation of personal peace can be attained by acceptance that flux is the only constant, and that in the end, the details are everything. That said, sometimes you just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep going. Read the rest of this entry »
November 30th, 2009
Last week I was in southern California, driving around, trying to get a better idea of what constitutes American identity. It’s pretty amazing that this country is so incredibly diverse and yet manages to be cohesive enough to aspire to a national archetype. Landing in LA, the tall palms swaying against dry air, I felt as far away from New York as I did in Finland. Read the rest of this entry »
October 17th, 2009
Fall is a funny season. For me, it has the dual connotation of innocence– new school books and pencils, and of decay, the inevitable end of the warm season, and the yearly celebrations surrounding the reminder of mortality. Heavy? Kind of. Read the rest of this entry »
May 10th, 2009
…another in an occasional series.
White Horses, 1984, directed by Vladimir Grammatikov
I’m sorry, you know, but I had no other options. I didn’t mean for you to come here. But now you are here, you must help us. We can’t last much longer. With these words, White Horses begins its odd, uneven adventure. Roundly panned in the mid-eighties as too incomprehensible for children and too idealistic for adults, this Swedish adaptation of an Italian children’s novel quickly fell into obscurity, though it deserves further notice at least for its incorporation of all the classic eighties fantasy film conceits. Read the rest of this entry »
November 30th, 2008
Sometimes, we all get homesick. This feeling, which can be triggered by the most mundane objects or situations, leaves me feeling somewhat transparent at the extremities– literally as if I were in a place of transport between ‘here’ and ‘there’. Though I absolutely do not long to be under any other roof than my own, there is something magical, magnetic about the place I grew up– the deep South. Read the rest of this entry »
November 7th, 2008
At a certain point in getting to know people, we all tend to pull out the ‘once upon a time’ stories. Once, when I was really drunk, once when I ate too much rank Texican food, once before I had heard of GWAR…you know. All of these temporal framings are supposed to imply that now, after we’ve gotten some perspective, we can look back at these times and laugh, or at least snort derisively.
Well, once upon a time, I was Goth. Read the rest of this entry »
October 30th, 2008
A gloomy, blustery Tuesday in late October. Perhaps the sort of Tuesday that would have once inspired strange adventures in abandoned buildings. If this is your steez, or you were wondering what sort of music your Soviet-bloc era atmospheric vampire porn film should be set to, look no further, here’s your soundtrack. Read the rest of this entry »
