Megan and Murray

Miranda July's Killer New Website

Wow.

UPDATE (by Meg): We own the galley for this book, and I can attest to its wonderfulness. It's good. Miranda's right. Listen to the stove.

Close-Up of an Orange

John Cage, 1912-1992

"There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot."

"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason."

"I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry."
John Cage

Sandburg: Sand Scribblings

Carl Sandburg

V. Mist Forms
26. Sand Scribblings

The wind stops, the wind begins.
The wind says stop, begin.

A sea shovel scrapes the sand floor.
The shovel changes, the floor changes.

The sandpipers, maybe they know.
Maybe a three-pointed foot can tell.
Maybe the fog moon they fly to, guesses.

The sandpipers cheep “Here” and get away.
Five of them fly and keep together flying.

Night hair of some sea woman
Curls on the sand when the sea leaves
The salt tide without a good-by.

Boxes on the beach are empty.
Shake ’em and the nails loosen.
They have been somewhere.

Search-Word Poem (the words that get you here)

As eldests, we do not know
the woes of being a middle child,
but of mexico sickness, we have some experience.
With a little thought, we could provide
a list of bull fighting films,
or expose that secret society of avant guard woodworkers.
Perhaps it's only the sexy words
of Camus or Susan Stewart
that draw you here, or the promise
of slowing down your fast metabolism.
That christian art picture of guy with hammer at crucifixion?
It could have been anyone, really.
Hammers are just the messenger, innocent as a
possum bite, or the virtues of work.

[thanks to Amy Kane for the idea]

They Waived Back, the Room, Those Mountains

Sexy Words, Water and Words with Thorns

Chris Burden's Shoot

If you read Megan's earlier post about UCLA Art Prof/artist-well-known-for-having-himself-shot-in-a-gallery ("my kid could do that") Chris Burden and his student-who-didn't-get-in-school-trouble-for-doing-a-real-Russian-roulette-performance-which-made-Burden-mad then you have an idea of what I'm bracing for as I prepare to teach Installation and Performance Art this semester.

My syllabus is half an inch thick with legalese. I'm tickled that my spell checker recognized legalese. What a sexy word.

I'm trying something different with this class this semester. I'm gonna throw in a chapters focusing on lighting and interior design. I like to mix the technical with the conceptual, I think students will be better prepared for the final underwater exhibition.

Water brings projects to their knees. Plans always sound good on paper and conversation. Water. Water is the most vicious, unforgiving, brutal and persnickety media that ever looked cross-eyed and spit in the direction of that thing next to art.

The spell checker also knows persnickety, a word with thorns.

Election Day

The Poor Voter on Election Day
by John Greenleaf Whittier

To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!
While there's grief to set redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon's vilest dust-
While there's a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!
A man's a man today!

[courtesy of NPR commentator T.R. Reid's Election Day ritual.]

Because I am Being Sucked into the Very Vortex of the Art World, and Seem to Have Forgotten that I Once Had A Life Unrelated to Visual Art: A Poem