Progress on the Polaroid Front

I've just scanned and uploaded the latest batch of Polaroids. There are 10 from Korrine's Christmas party and about 25 from Will's. I also reversed the order of the set, so now the oldest pictures are at the end and the fresh ones are at the top. Get 'em while they're hot.

Updated: New Year's Eve is on there too in a major way.

Imagine What Your Life Would Be Like Without Selachophobia and Fear of Sharks

1: selachophobia: a persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of sharks , despite the understanding by the phobic individual and reassurance by others that there is no danger. 2: selachophobia: a strong fear of, dislike of, or aversion to sharks.

But so long as the negative association is powerful enough, the unconscious mind thinks: "Ahh, this whole thing is very dangerous. How do I keep myself from getting in this kind of situation again? I know, I'll attach terrible feelings to sharks, that way I'll steer clear in future and so be safe." Just like that selachophobia is born. Attaching emotions to situations is one of the primary ways that humans learn. Sometimes we just get the wiring wrong.
The actual phobia manifests itself in different ways. Some sufferers experience it almost all the time, others just in response to direct stimuli. Everyone has their own unique formula for when and how to feel bad.

Apparently, Selachophobia can be financially draining, as well:

For anyone earning a living, the financial toll of this phobia is incalculable. Living with fear means you can never concentrate fully and give your best. Lost opportunities. Poor performance or grades. Promotions that pass you by. selachophobia will likely cost you tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your lifetime, let alone the cost to your health and quality of life.

Luckily, help has arrived.

They've hexed me w/perplexed intensities

Holden has found my bizzaro alter-ego on the internet: a female slam-poet who posts on ghettosoul.com as "Charlie B." She's spittin' some pretty mad science, and she strikes deep into the heart of the soul of the dream of the wish. Check out her pain when she tells you she loves you, but you don't believe her. Contemplate the age old question of whether or not Love is "Fantasy or For Real?" and then marvel at the reality of this ode to dick flickin'. Pretty hectic.

Aesthetic Phoneticism

Here's an attempt at an explanation of Aesthetic Phoneticism, an art idea that I came up with all by myself:

The basic concept is to produce a picture accompanied by a series of words that, when taken as a whole, simply look and sound nice on a purely aesthetic level with no inherent meaning or symbolism. It's kind of a boiled down, superficial (shallow? visceral?) form of art. It can be done in any medium that conveys imagery with sound. (look, hear, eye, ear). So far, mine are mostly drawings on paper.

The compositions are not planned out ahead of time; they're in the same neighborhood as automatic drawing, but with a little more conscious control. Words are (supposed to be) chosen strictly for their phonetic relation to each other rather than for meaning. It's not exactly like dada poetry, in which sound is emphasized, because the words are not selected at random. I am (usually) trying to make combinations of sounds that are separated from their definitions, although since it's a form of free association, associations do appear, (and are permitted to hang around). I tend to use near rhymes more than actual rhymes, because I like the idea of subtle sound and syntax connections and evolutionary changes in the sequences.

There's a dualism to the process for me, in the sense that the rules and constraints that I set for myself force me to work within this framework of non-meaning, while it's pretty much impossible (at least for me) to really adhere to that construct. My mind is constantly trying to insert symbolism and meaning into the drawings and words. I like that conflict, though, and really, it's a major part of the appeal for me. So I end up at kind of a halfway point between sense and nonsense. or calculated randomness. Non-representational representation. or something. Anyway, I like it that way; I find it to be more interesting, funnier, and somewhat revelatory.

In the interest of full-disclosure, many of these drawings were created after drinking a lot of beer, and two of them are in japanese.



So here are 20 drawings from the aesthetic phonetic sketchbook.

Does Sufjan Ever Sleepjan?

Sufjan Stevens is so prolific - he must do a song a day to be able to put out so much material. I wonder how many artists/musicians have said half-jokingly or even in all seriousness that they would like to do a Christmas album - while they're still relevant in the music world - and then never got around to it or chickened out or weren't allowed by their labels. Well, Sufjan not only got around to it, but he recorded 3 e.p.'s worth of the stuff. Holden emailed me a link to this dude's blog where you can download all of it. (I know this is possibly old news to a lot of people... I think a lot of this stuff was released a while back... It sounds more like Seven Swans than Illinois... But I just got on it, and I got excited.) I love Christmas music. Sufjan's great. It's a good match. Here's the tracklist, and you can click the titles to download the stuff.

Vol. I Hark! Songs for Christmas

01 Silent Night
02 O Come O Come Emmanuel
03 We're Goin' to the Country!
04 Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming
05 It's Christmas! Let's Be Glad
06 Holy, Holy, etc.
07 Amazing Grace


Vol. II Hark! Songs for Christmas

01 Angels We Have Heard On High
02 Put the Lights on the Tree
03 Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
04 I Saw Three Ships
05 Only at Christmas Time
06 Once in David's Royal City
07 Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!
08 What Child Is This Anyway?
09 Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella

Vol. III Ding! Dong! Songs for Christmas

01 O Come, O Come Emmanual
02 Come On! Let's Boogie to the Elf Dance!
03 We Three Kings of Orient Are
04 O Holy Night
05 That Was the Worst Christmas Ever
06 All the King's Horns
07 Ding! Dong!
08 The Friendly Beasts

Every Po Ever Laroided (Thusfar)

well y'all, I've finally finished the daunting and slightly illogical task of scanning my entire polaroid collection (to date - the hotel party is at the end of the set) and it's online for your viewing pleasure. I've been a polaroid fanatic for a while now, and my photos go back to about 1999 when I got my camera. of course, since the film is expensive, the subject matter/times depicted tends to progress in leaps. whenever I could afford to buy a pack of film, it would usually be shot up all at once, and then I wouldn't shoot anything else for a while. so I guess these 374 snapshots probably represent somewhere around 40 or 50 specific days or nights sliced out of the past 6 years. interesting. (to me, at least.) (and probably to some of you, too.) I'm gonna go ahead and say that I'm planning to keep the flickr photoset updated as I shoot more pictures. we'll see if that really happens. but I did score a bunch of free film from the Toby Keith movie, and my dad says he has some packs of film for me from the FBI storage closet. so i've got no excuse to not keep it up. if you see me taking pictures, remind me to keep the ball rollin with the scannin. then everyone can have 'em, and the world will rejoice and be as one.

haircut

New Orleans Now

Since I've been in Baton Rouge for over a week now, I figured it would be inexcusable for me to not visit New Orleans at least once. So the other day, I joined my cousin Lance, his wife Erin, and our Aunt Andree on a trip through the city. Lance is a firefighter, and was involved in the rescue efforts after the hurricane, so he was a perfect guide to show us around. He knew a lot about what happened where, and what has been and is being done to recover. We all took a lot of pictures, and I'll be updating my flickr page with theirs when I get them. So far, you can at least check out my photos.

One thing that struck me was the sensation that some areas were not as bad as I thought, even to the point of seeming completely normal, and then other areas were absolutely as bad as you can imagine. The change was often a matter of turning a corner or crossing a block. For example, the French Quarter, fortunately, is on pretty high ground, so those old, dilapidated restaurants, bars, and shops that have been built upon older buildings that were built upon even older buildings are all still standing and functional. The electricity there was restored pretty quickly, and there are street vendors, tourists, and jazz musicians on the corners. The only noticeable change in the Quarter is that it's less crowded and there were a lot of hurricane katrina t-shirts for sale.

The next thing you know, you're practically in a third world country. As soon as you get out of the Quarter, there's no electricity, so all the intersections have temporary stop signs set up. There are gigantic piles of trash and rubble lining the streets. Dishwashers, refrigerators, & washers and dryers are lined up, outside, broken. One fridge had a graffiti message spraypainted on the door: "Do Not Open!" There were literally hundreds of abandoned cars, suvs, and trucks. Doors and trunks were wide open and windows were broken. Most of them were covered with a grayish white film leftover from the floodwater.



As we drove through the neighborhoods, we kept noticing the brown stain on garages, trees, and sides of houses where the waterline had been. Lance was especially aware of the fact that we were driving in places that were underwater a month and a half ago; he had seen the same neighborhoods from 6 to 10 feet higher in his boat, and he said everything seemed different from the "normal" angle.

There are signs everywhere you look, many handmade, for practically any kind of service that people in this situation would need. One said: "Computer flooded? We can retrieve your files." Another was for restoration of damaged photographs. Lots were advertising "home-gutting" and "de-molding". It was surreal to know that this is basically the only economy in New Orleans right now.

With the exception of the Quarter, just about all the "standard" businesses are closed, but we did find some nice suprises. Lance and Erin's favorite hole-in-the-wall Italian joint was up and running, so we had a great lunch, and there were some entrepreneurial-minded folks who had bare bones tent shops: like the barber cutting hair in a closed Shell station parking lot. Those people are mainly catering to FEMA and Red Cross employees, though. Other than relief workers, there are not many people around; it really feels like a ghost town, especially in the neighborhoods, where block after block is basically uninhabitable.

Now that the water is gone, there's a sense that the urgency and the emergency is over. But it's painfully obvious when you walk or drive around that the job of making New Orleans liveable, much less a nice place to be, is going to take a long, long, long-ass time. here's the link to the flickr jive.