Isadora, Multimedia Dance Piece

Boy! It's been such an epic gap between updates! In my defense though, there have been a ton of new developments in my personal and kinoeye (ie moving image making related to camera work) life. Midterms hit me with vengeance and though they all went well they took up most of my extra time and left me fairly dead to the word and unable to post.

So, since my last post I've been keeping pretty busy. I was a PA for a commercial shoot with Verde Group which was a cute little two day gig. They're a great little VT based indie production company owned by a husband and wife, so it was local.

I've started working with the choreographer Susan Levine, doing the experimental videography for her dance piece titled Miss. We're using this really interesting program called Isadora. 

Here's a little video that explains what it does and how it works:

Should be pretty cool. I'll keep you updated. Check out Troika Ranch, they do a lot of really dope multimedia work.

Turn, Twist, Wrench

 

if you clip the wings of a dragonfly

it will contort on the wood floor, until someone kills it

 

flapping in desperation

unable to move properly, only to squirm

 

that’s what’s in my gut

 

I can feel its rise, like mutant ecstasy

shattering my concentration

 

ripping through my grey matter like gojira

rising, born out of my shadowy depths

 

…breathe slow.

lest the beast overtake you

 

fingers on collarbones tapping constantly

with the part and parcel and whole twisting inside me

 

digging teeth into cuticle flesh

and gnawing the inside of my mouth

 

like a trapped animal trying to bone-saw an appendage

sacrificing a limb to save it’s own life

 

the unrelenting hum in my brain, sturm und drang

warnings of danger long-past or never-was

 

memory, open now

I remember convincing myself of suffocation

 

on route four, in the morning, in the traffic,

in the car, driving to work, having to pull over

 

I wanted to climb out the window in the filthy truck stop

and scream

 

the tsunami has reached my shores

it blows out my mind

 

I’m acting weird and my hand starts bleeding

the blood filling the empty space between nail and flesh

 

there is no escape, it’s inside your head

and the congestion of people is so frightening

 

even familiar faces, like masks

vulgar trauma personified

 

till my whole self, wrenched by dread

barely cognitive

 

 

is sucked through the wind-tunnel foyer

out the door, into the night

 

expelled onto the porch

invisible, sweating, pupils narrow

 

cold air makes me shudder harder

…breathe slow.

 

delicately, strand of hair by strand of hair

I unmount my terror, and open my pack

 

Don’t you know that’s bad for you?

Excuse me, I only smoke so I can breathe.

 

squish and crunch

a rocket out of horror

It's wednesday. Rhe and I got food

Some things that happened:

Terror

Permanent Trauma, wtf is up with this mask?!

I bought delicious mushrooms. From the co-op guys, seriously.

City Market Co-Op has the best produce man. Organic and local goodness baby!

Even the bag is heady and recycled and edible!

Good Girls Love Yogurt

Cake Mix for a dollar!

I menace Cliff with a mixer!

Rhea's mouth

Obama is a Trekkie

"One of the presidential candidates saw me and gave me the vulcan signal. It wasn't John McCain." - Leonard Nemoy

I need me some action jeans!

List of My Favourite Words

1. Aberration

2. Atomic

3. Aperture

4. Beatific

5. Brain

6. Betwixt

7. Belladonna

8. Clandestine

9. Clever

10. Climax

11. Casanova

12. Cluster

13. Door

14. Dystopian

15. Dirigible

16. Dialogue

17. Death

18. Ectoplasm

19. Engendered

20. Ecstatic

21. Exoskeleton

22. Fever

23. Fig

24. Foe

25. Ginger

26. Grave

27. Gizzard

28. Happenstance

29. Haggle

30. Hand

31. Ichthyosaurs

32. Ignoramus

33. Idiomatic

34. Ice

35. Ink

36. Juniper

37. Juxtapose

38. Jingle

39. Knuckles

40. Kipper

41. Laudanum

42. Lux

43. Lithium

44. Mighty

45. Minx

46. Marvelous

47. Narcoleptic

48. Nifty

49. Never

50. Orgasm

51. Open

52. Oval

53. Panegyric

54. Pantheon

55. Polymath

56. Posthumous

57. Popcorn

58. Quixotic

59. Quagmire

60. Queasy

61. Rage

62. Ring

63 Ravenous

64. Ritzy

65. Sasquach

66. Shallot

67. Sea

68. Sacred

69. Tremble

70. Transverse

71. Tinker

72. Underwhelmed

73. Union

74. Ugly

75. Vapid

76. Vortex

767. Virile

78. Vista

79. Vanguard

80. Whimper

81. Wallop

82.  Wonky

83. Wiggly

84. Xenon

85. Xerox

86. Young

87. Yearn

88. Yammer

89. Yes

90. Zephyr

91. Zeitgeist

92. Zipper

Gabba Gabba We accept you...

Lately I've found myself deeply interested in the history as well as the current incarnations of the circus side show. Though it is plagued with pain and alienation I've developed a real respect for the people whose lives I've come to learn about. It wasn't a simple life, especially for these people who were often treated as human chattle, yet many of them persevered and developed in the face of adversity in a time when society at large wanted nothing more from them then to gawk and stare. These were people who were often deeply intelligent and sensitive but had to figure out ways to protect themselves from the public at large. (Though at the time I'm fairly sire that the public at large was convinced that it was they that needed protecting.) Here are some of my favourite performers that I have discovered...

Mary and Elizabeth Chulkhurst were a pair of conjoined twins born in 1100 (before the advent of the freakshow) to a well to do family in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, we might not even know of their existence if it was not for the fact that they sold molded cakes with their image on  it. These were sold with the profits going to the poor and needy in their area. When one passed away the idea that they should be separated was postulated, however the surviving twin rejected the notion saying "As we came into this life, so shall we exit it." Though really with the quality of medicine in 1100, who can really blame them?

Here's a picture of the cake mold.

Another character in sideshow history that I quite admire is that of "Clifford Thompson" or "Count Olaf" the 81/2 foot tall norwegian farmer from North Dakota. He was often billed as a descendent of the King Olaf the Viking, and was thus a "Viking Giant." I can practically hear P.T Barnum rubbing his hands together from here. Aside from the distinction of simply being one of the tallest people ever on record Clifford was a member of the Elks. He was also a dairy farmer and would often endorse milk at county fairs holding a sign that said "Look what milk did for me!" Later in life he earned his law degree in under two years and was thus the tallest practicing lawyer on record. Though he married dancer Mary Mars, who he met while in Barnum's show in 1939, I can't find a record of them having children.

The last person I'm going to talk about today is my favouite. Zippy the Pinhead was a Liberty Corner, New Jersey native and the catalyst in my interest in the sideshow as he is in many ways a favorite son of Jersey. Famous for his unusually tapered head freak shows would tout him a a micro-cephalic, yet he displayed none of the educational difficulties associated with the disease. In fact Zip, as it would seem, was a shrewd showman, using his unusual physical appearance to pull his poor African-American family out of poverty. After he had ceased touring with both Ringling Brothers and PT Barnum Zip settled down in Coney Island. During his exhibition time there Zip once saved a young girl from drowning in the ocean off the boardwalk. After rescuing the girl and returning her safely to her parents Zip disappeared to avoid the accolades of the crowd. It seems that this man, who would often screech and howl behind bars in a furry suit as a "missing link" felt uncomfortable with being on display in the more average sense. Or maybe he was afraid it would blow his cover as being of inferior intelligence. In fact Zip's last words were to his sister, "Well, we fooled 'em for a long time, didn't we?"

13

He was calling out to her

It was only after the gun went off that she truly knew what it meant to be alone.


save a life,
no faith in love,
my sickening vice,
grows larger everyday

working on something longer. will post soon.

gore

When she woke up, with the sheets all covered in blood she knew something was very wrong.
But the real question was...where was the rest of the dog?

started this instead of writing tonight

i'm going to the movies to see hellboy2 now.

have i filled your shoes with lead darling?

virginia woolf filled her pockets with rocks

i read her last letter and i decided to take a bath

in the bathtub her ghost came to me

told me that my egomaniacal self absorbtion was the result of the mtv generation

i said i didn't have cable and that she was crazy and maybe she shouldnt bother me in the tub

she handed me a razor

i shook my head and said that if i was going to die it wouldn't be naked

she said maybe i should think of the people that i bring down and make depressed

i said that i wasn't her and if she felt guilty regarding her husband that was her business

but it made me think unsettling things anyway

i hummed the little song i sing to myself in bed

I don't exist I don't exist I don't exist

and i submerged myself waiting for some answer to come from this lukewarm baptism

i just got cold and the water got dirty

virginia was getting impatient.

can you at least hand me a towel? i asked

no.

i explained that i was american and twenty one and lonely and had writers block

and that combination made one too lazy to make decisions relating to the cessation of ones life

she said it was a clear cut lack of commitment to my craft

and i asked her if she wanted to watch eraserhead with me, it's pretty fucked up and you might like it i told her

she said ok, but only if i would consider hanging

i said i'd think about it just to shut her up

she handed me a towel

she's a huge david lynch fan now

and she doesn't bother me in the tub anymore

What're you screaming as if it's the end of the world?

when i wake up around one am i can't even function well enough to vomit.
i keep wondering if this is all that i'm good for, and I remember you and the little house and the phone call.
there is something worth fighting for, i tell myself, something more important than work at noon or making a chicken soup. there are all-night-conversations and stars and wrapping blankets around the two of us on nights that ware almost-warm-enough-but-not-quite. i think back to before we were lovers, when we sat awkwardly in my tiny bedroom watching movies. lying foot to head on that twin bed. did you know that when it got too late I thought about asking you to stay? now after these two months of solitude i really honestly regret those few months of lost nights in your arms? I can't sleep anymore without you really. when I do the dreams are full of the sheriff and of sleep paralysis and nightmares


please save me baby. i'm dying here without you.

its still 21 days and I have no place to live but the bottom of some bottle that in the end makes me teeth feel fuzzy and my heart feel sore. I keep trying to escape my loneliness but there is no escape but you,

you said you'd call. I guess you didn't have time. and that's ok.


21 days

and tomorrow i want to take a fucking bath

The night the metal heads shattered the window.

By the time he arrived it was too late. The plasic solo cups were strrewn about the living room and the place stank with the acridic air of burning cigarrettes. Pushing his way throught the crowd he searched the living room's bumping and grinding bodies for his pink haired roomate.
"Elise! What is going on?"
She turned, smiled and appeared at his side on a wind of burbon.
"It's a party, dumbass."
She handed him a flask. He looked around and realized that he was in a sea of people that he couldn't escape and that he would never be able to get out of his house. He took a swig.
"Atta boy! You'll have fun."
Suddenly she made a ridiculous face and gestured double thumbs up as if she were the Fonz.
"I'm gonna get you laaaaaid!"
Nicky sighed. This was going to be interesting.

A Poem that is Half by Ben and Half by the internet

Nuke The Fridge.
Jump The Shark.
If they can make art into schlock.
I can make schlock into art.

Considering Canada

Crinkly Roses

The flower,the last he gave her, dried to a crisp long ago and spun in the bud vase from the draft coming in from the window. She was waiting for it to fall apart. When it did, maybe her heart would stop breaking.

A note

reading the last few entries...i guess i'm feeling a little trapped in the house. I don't know why. I went to a movie today.

I'll be back in VT soon.

disfyn-shui

the cookbook rips in half
a break in the heretical text
allowing the real question to slip away
like a rat through a crevice
bones chatter
and night blooms, a black flower
damask prints, and missing links
this house is a tomb