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 ‘Down time’ Category
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 »
March 30th, 2010
On such a series of rainy days it’s hard to be patient for the inevitable promised spring flowers or the long, drowsy days of summer. This is the difficult transitional phase, the growing pains of a season that just isn’t quite ready to step up to the plate.
For some reason, days like this make me think of northern France. Directly south of the English cliffs at Plymouth there is a town called Brest. It was almost entirely destroyed during World War II, left with only three buildings standing. In 1945, the poet Jacques Prévert published his poem Barbara, which I think is a fitting complement to such a day as this. If you are feeling a little wistful, a little longing for a rainy sea and a French day that smells of brine and wet wood, on a beach where the horizon melts into the earth– this is the mix for you. Read the rest of this entry »
February 23rd, 2010
There is an end to everything. When I moved to New York City in 2003 I was 22 and mostly stupid. Having just graduated from art school, I was still laboring under the misapprehension that the world owed me a living, that my friends would always be my friends, and that I would be young for a long time. Those first six months were probably the hardest time I’ve ever had. I was seriously poor, working jobs that were detrimental to my health and my self-esteem, sometimes barely scraping up enough change to eat, and just wrapping my head around the fact that my previous four years’ experience in no way prepared me for life in the ‘real world’. Read the rest of this entry »
January 9th, 2010
It’s funny how some American cultural institutions, though supposedly predicated on reality, are in fact products of our collective imagination. Take ‘tiki’ culture, for example. When I was in LA, I had the good fortune to go to one of the country’s longest operating tiki bars: Tiki Ti. Ray Buhan opened Tiki Ti in the early 1960s after working for some of the city’s original tiki establishments, and it stands in the same spot to this day. Unbelievably, it is also still run by his family– his son, and now his grandsons tend the bar and make the 85+ concoctions on the menu. 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 »
February 20th, 2009
Sometimes it is difficult to say what you mean, more difficult to do what you intend– intentions are slippery creatures, constantly shifting with context and emotion. I intended to be productive this winter, to come up with a sort of road map for the next few years, but I find myself at the tail end of it having done almost none of my own work, though I have so far managed not to become a casualty of the economic downturn (yet). So, instead of a road map for the next few years, I made a mix for the next few months– something that reminds me of the coming changes, something somewhat wistful, somewhat quiet. What I really want is to record it onto an old cassette tape and take off somewhere in a beat-up car, but we can’t have everything, I guess. Read the rest of this entry »
December 23rd, 2008
So, this is the end of the year, yet again. I am currently back in the Southlands, which make me alternately Very Happy (the excellent comforts of good food and general moody ambiance) and Very Unhappy (needing to drive everywhere and not owning my own vehicle, being held to other people’s schedules, lack of the internet). It’s strange not to have visited in an entire year. Contrary to what we may think, towns and cities are very much alive, constantly shifting and changing whether we observe them or no. Geographies are not fixed, but are a matter of pure context, rather like time. 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 3rd, 2008
The winds of change, they are a-blowin’. This, combined with the steadily cooling weather puts me in the mood for Tropicalia. Started in Brazil in the sixties, the movement encompassed a diverse mash of influences, taking on guises from many styles of music, poetry, and literature. It ended abruptly in 1968 when Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, the leaders and most recognized voices of Tropicalia, were incarcerated on false charges by Brazil’s right wing military dictatorship. Though later released, they were exiled from the country for four years. Many of their contemporaries were not even this fortunate, undergoing torture and forced “psychiatric care” for their artistic creations, lifestyles, and attempts at cultural syncretism. Read the rest of this entry »
