the cloud

cloud: location of all information, the infinitely accessible power, that through which we fly 

daedalus' project for human flight, the urge for limitlessness -  empire and the abdication of responsibility

david pogue's enthusiasm about me.com is troubling to me.  I think he too blithly believes in the benevolence of corporate america. yes, apple. one empire begets another. the smug satisfaction of the way that MobileMe dismisses Internet Explorer -- a put down ten years in the making: MobileMe won't work with Internet Explorer since it “has known compatibility issues with modern Web standards."  But, really, we're just being swallowed by a giant with a different name.  Minotaurs and mazes -- the trap of the human mind - we just can't help ourselves, drawing ourselves into a corner with our brain.

The apple v. pc war - a branding shift, like obama v. bush -- dominance can't believe it's here but it does believe its power and dominance is for the general good, since the idea of the general good has been so deeply corrupted into outright hypocrisy.  I think Marshall Curry's "Street Fight" told our story - Cory Booker is so much a parallel to Obama, albiet on our local Newark, NJ scale.

forget me not the farm

images from the edible office farm residency

the Mondaneum & the Geodesic Dome

I just read this fascinating article about Paul Otlet (b. 1868), a Belgian librarian who, in 1934, created a plan for a network of electronic telescopes that would allow people to search into and browse through millions of interlinked documents and images.

This is a picture of his Mondaneum (mon-da-NAY-um) - his library and research operation.  This images on the wall, I'm guessing, represent his graphic system to create symbol links between articles and pieces of information. There's a museum of his work in Mons, Belgium that's having its 10th anniversary right now.

And starting June 26,  Whitney Museum is going  to launch this big retrospective of Buckminster Fuller's career ("Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe") -- there was a great article about him in the New Yorker (June 9 &16,2008 issue). 

 (See online NYer slide show.)

Both failed in their careers, Otlet because the Nazi's invaded Belgium and destroyed his work, and Fuller, because of the failure of his inventions to work well -- but both men were visionaries whose visions have somehow captured our contemporary realities -- Otlet's vision which basically foresaw the web in a startingly specific concept -- and Fuller's concepts (albiet somewhat misguided) of an ecologically sustainable future in relation to technology, architecture and travel.

All of which makes me think about 20th century visions of the future and outdated futurisms.  What is it that's so fascinating about looking back at these moments when the world was radically different than our own in terms of our individual relationship to technology and communication -- and seeing the seeds of our current gardens being planted.  There's is strange kind of nostalgia and fascination for finding these citizens of present day reality marooned in some early time, trying to build their time machines into our current day or even future day world -- things we take for granted were pipedreams for them -- hallucinatory romps.  

In the NYTimes article about Otlet, the writer keeps trying to say that Otlet would have been confounded by Facebook or overwhelmed by today's web - which strikes me as totally ridiculous to posit -- why wouldn't they have been interested or just disgusted by it?  But I guess it's normal to want to reverse the time-trip back on them... 

Hillary, 2000 & the year of the rat

Although I thought she should have dropped out after those horrible RFK comments, in light of the HBO "Recount" film, Hillary's tenacity makes me think that, at the very least, she wouldn't have given up when the election was stolen.... Not saying that I wish she had been the nomination, since I still can't forgive her for voting to authorize Bush's war, but it does make one think that maybe there is something healing in Hilary's refusal to let go before she did so.

A Rat Year is a time of hard work, activity, and renewal. This is a good year to begin a new job, get married, launch a product or make a fresh start. Ventures begun now may not yield fast returns, but opportunities will come for people who are well prepared and resourceful. The best way for you to succeed is to be patient, let things develop slowly, and make the most of every opening you can find. People born in an Earth Rat are said to be logical realists, shrewd, charming, ambitious, and inventive. Of course, the entire horoscope must be considered when making any personality assessment.

2008 - paradigm shift - year one (add up 2 - 0 - 0 - 8 = 10 = 1)1

protean

Calm in the Swirl of History.  Barack's 'victory speech' on YouTube. 

So I just finished watching the HBO 'Recount' show.  Crying some tears about the failure to stand up and fight against theft and corruption of  power.  Though the film did an interesting job of really laying out the nuanced shades of that particular fight and that particular time.

Kevin Spacey did a great job of being the soul behind the Gore recount theft.  Though, the real star of the show was Laura Dern as Katherine Harris who conflates Queen Esther with a fame hungry, southern Christian 'good girl' who perhaps believes that she is saving "the little Jewish people" by delivering Bush.  The strange Bob Balaban character Ginsburg who was Bush's campaign attorney - is he a self-hating Jew wanting to hang out in the Power Boys club?  I think maybe he's more one of those Zionist Jews who willed Bush into being so that he would kick some ass in the Middle East and stand up for Israel.  (And look, he's really did kick ass in the Middle East).  Interesting to find out that Lieberman was a turncoat all the way back then in 2000, when he stood up for counting all military ballots not just the ones dated & signed.  (I wonder, was that the HBO spin or genuine history?)

So what is this thing that the NY Times reports: "His (Obama's) operatives slapped down attempts to rerun primaries in Michigan and Florida... An old Chicago hand notes that Mr. Obama seems to have read his Niccolò Machiavelli."

Obama just called our nation "the last best hope on earth."  I really want to believe that stands for the ability to reach past shallow patriotism to a more humanist view of country as a place and not the only place; country as part of community and not apart from it.  

Or maybe it's just that we are at that moment where this is the last best hope on earth, right here, right now.  If we can really turn this thing around - this SOB SUV of a country we're still in...

Oh idealism, stay here.  Help us get through the trying times, make us strong and ever fighting for truth, justice and a way past what has come recently to be defined as American.  Bring us back our Quakers, our abolitionists, our native forebearers.  The urban fighters for unions, the treehuggers, the anti-war activists, the soldiers who stand up and fight against injustice and intolerence - who stand up against corrupt generals and defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights .  Let us remember to honor the land.  Let us remember to honor all creatures, great and small, and the deities among us, the trees, the waters, the fields.

Try the war criminals.  Impeach the bastard.  Let's hope that change isn't just a flip of the coin, but a true paradigm shift, a full revolution in the great wheel of fortune.

The Real Deal!

see the NYTimes article today!   Here's to leaders that are truly leaders!

a message from my neighbor

male bonding at La Mama

I went to the "Male Bonding" show at the La Mama Moves! Dance Festival 2008 which featured in particular new work-in-progress by John Jasperse and a new solo by Miguel Gutierrez.  (That's Miguel in the picture.)

I was kind of blown away by John's piece"Excerpts from Pure (work-in-progress) -- it was a sort of hyper design dance mixed with a documentary tendancy -- there is this exquisite liquid release trio by Erin Cornell, Eleanor Hullihan & Kayvon Pourazar -and then John comes and tries and talks about how he can't perfect this pirouette -- the way in which nothing can ever be good enough, or maybe, the way in which dance is a continuous process of redoing and continually looking for the ways in which ones body can find another avenue to move toward the elusiveness of perfection.   There're series of solo improvisations - timed and when the timer runs out the dancer talks - an improv ramble through what seems like the thoughts behind the dance.  Eleanor ups the ante by talking about the stairs at SUNY Purchase being riot proof -- and then Crosby Stills & Nash "Ohio" plays as the next section -- the 10 ft tall woman enters (Erin on Kayvon's shoulders- hidden under a long skirt) --there is that Janis Joplin song playing "Summertime"  and I thought about feminism and the 70's and the way in which women had to enter the scene so much larger than life back then or maybe just (Hillary) NOW.  It seemed it was a dance about the separation between the head and the torso....   And then  John in all black suit as Eleanor's shadow -- an idea that I found both charming and slightly raw...  It's all a jumble in my mind now but I was with the piece the whole way through....

Miguel's solo, "No, Nothing" (though it's identified in the program as "Nothing, No thing") starts hilariously, conceptually -- he checks his phone for what seems like a very long time -- reading his text messages? on state -- and then begins what reveals itself to be the same pattern - long dance followed by monologue -- perhaps that pattern is the way of the males (?) -- 

His dance began by showing his elbows -- a beautiful gesture -- the ultimate safe vulnerability - like giving blood... he takes a step - times slowes way down -- there is imaginary articulateness and then a kind of stamping ape of John's luxurious type of liquid release - where John is melty, Miguel has a sort of cyntriphical release force - he throws himself, Jennifer Monson-like, onto his knees and then the bottoms of his feet -- after a time it felt a bit long (indulgent) but just as I started really shifting in my seat the cellphone alarm went off and Miguel began his crazy dark monologue of dark self confessions - another kind of compulsive truth-telling trip into the dark edges of his childhood dream to become an artist and where that has taken him -- the monologue brilliantly ends into very loud what seemed like EuroClubDance music -- it's an extended ride through Miguel's imagination as if dancing in a club far away from home.... told in the second person - implicating us in his "deeply uncurious thoughts about others."  The lighting throughout, I might add, was brilliant -- Leonore Doxsee delivering a lighting shift at just the perfect moment to accentuate or create a new atmosphere.  

The monologue's poetry sailed above -- and into the angular jutting urgency of the dance.  "This thing of no value - you give it away repeatedly... why give it away - it's so private... like a soap bubble, the vibration of a cellphone or a baby's cry will destroy it..."

the wave

So, I went to a YANKEE'S game on Sunday and this amazing thing happened.  The home team, the bronx bombers, were down 5 to 2 against the Seattle Mariners.  And then this wave started.... one section of the crowd did the wave and it just kept sequentially going through the whole stadium -- it went around like 3 times!  It was amazing.  The stats on the board said there were upwards of 53,000 people at the game -- it started way up in the bleachers and then it was like a yawn, totally contagious -- it just kept going around -  it even went from the section before this big gap in the audience (batting cage & big scoreboard part of the stadium w/ no stands) -- and in perfect timing - the other part of the stadium picked up the wave and kept passing it around.  I don't know if I've ever seen anything like that.  But it did make me believe in the power of the crowd -- and after that - the Yankees scored big -- 3 runs, surpassing the Mariners and won.  It was the will of the crowd. 

 

That experience almost offset the sinking feeling I had when they announced all the military stuff and I realized that professional sports is just one more part of the military-commercialization-complex in which we live.

the tyranny of connectedness

'INDIANA JONES AND THE ACHES AND PAINS ASSOCIATED WITH AGING'

I love that they chose this cartoon to put in the midst of the amazing and beautiful article by Calvin Tomkins about Paul Chan, "Shadow Player."  (New Yorker, p. 40-45, May 26, 2008 edition)

somehow it softens the blows of the middle age regarding the ascendancy of the fierce youth in our midst --

other highlights include: the photo of him by Steve Pyke that makes the shadow of his projection look as if there's a japanese rising sun bandana tied around his forehead, chinese brush painted calligraphy on his chest...

and these inspiring & inspired Paul Chan thoughts from the article:

"Certain works of art resist our attempts to interpret or explain them, Chan believes, and that resistence - what he calls their 'articulate speechlessness' - is what gives them enduring power."

"Part of the pleasure of reading Derrida is precisely that I do not have to understand him. Comprehension is not the game. I don't care what he thinks he's saying _ I want to read word for word, and pay attention so much that I begin to hallucinate. Which I think is a very reckless way of reading, but for me a productive one."

internet access = "the tyranny of connectedness"

urban outfitter progress

I came upon this display at the Urban Outfitters on Broadway.

the green Obama t-shirt says "Obama says knock you out" -- what does that mean???  it's so weird!

The whole display included this too:

Stephen Colbert & the matching books "How to Win a Fight with a Liberal" "How to Win a Fight with a Conservative."  

I find this deeply creepy.  I think that the store people (liberals from Boston who genuinely support Obama???) think that they are supporting the Obama cause with this sort of thing.  Or are they just making fun of the whole "political" season.  I mean, maybe I'm over thinking this... but I feel like the emptying out of real content -- let's jump on the fashion bandwagon and make money off of the image... commercialization of 'hip' is exactly why people in the middle (age/america) don't 'trust' the "Obama thing" - as it's portrayed -- it's hip to be green, it's hip to like Obama -- let's spend money on the t-shirt so we'll be cool -- but don't worry, it's all for laughs - we don't really believe anything.

Yuck!  I did buy a pair of cute sear-sucker shorts there though.

doubt

John Patrick Shanley's new play, starring Cherry Jones, is the epitome of a well-made play. It's upfront about its relationship with its title. The doubt begins and ends the play. It seems the doubt is really about catholism and homosexuality. And the nun is the bad guy, trying or believing and ultimately doubting that she does the right thing in the name of rightousness. On one hand, her act - her accusation, her insight which leads to unrelenting 'righteousness' is shot down. It could be a metaphor for our society right now. We are, just as the priest's audience was, a community united by a common experience of grief which binds us together. It is 1964 in the catholic Bronx and JFK's assassination was last year. We are at sea in the face of our lack of a leader. We doubt God's good intentions or His presence at all in the face of such inexplicable tragedy.

I think if Cherry Jones wasn't such a good actress, the play might be about the demon woman who ruins it for the well-intentioned, if not slightly sexually outre, men, the priest and his queer student. But Jones makes us want to side with her brand of power in the face of powerlessness, fierce determination alongside of her cynical resignation that the deck is stacked against her.

But because we believe in the firm dogged truth of Jones' character, her upstanding ability to mete out the truth from the fluff, her downfall comes as a wound rather than a indictment of religious inflexibity and bitter homophobia. Though, on some deep level, the play, just like 'Bad Education,' is also an indictment of the Church's pathological fear of homosexuality and sexuality in general. Add race to the mix and the play resonates and speaks and shouts and reverberates to the political and cultural stuggles of our time as much as it talks about the recent pedophile Catholic priest stories which were so last year.

2004 - the year of unexpected disasters

peacefish
Originally uploaded by topiary.

We ushered in 2004 with news of the earthquake in Bam, Iran. (6.6 quake that killed 26,000 in Bam on Dec. 26, 2003). Another ancient city in ruins, only this time, through no doing of our own.... how strange that 2004 would end with an even bigger, much more far ranging catastrophe from an earthquake. In between, there were hurricanes and other forces of nature to remind us of our tenuous relationship to security and stability. I read that Saturn is in Cancer right now, from June 3, 2003 - July 16, 2005, which according to the people at www.artcharts.com means that during this time, we humans are reckoning with our relationship to security - a time of increasing government control, bad weather, rising unemployment and depreciating property values (tell this to NYC real estate) and it also says: "The land can literally quake, increasing the potential for earthquakes." (I'm not making this up.)

Of course, there was the unexpected disaster of the election. Which, by the way, http://www.ContestTheVote.org is still looking for people to sign their petition -

But, I think, for those of us who did survive 2004, it has been about gathering strength, gaining strategy knowlege through loss and disappointment - it will make us stronger. Goodbye to supoorting candidates who 'support the war.' Goodbye Reagan, Arafat, Sontag - old guards of thinking. The Modern is new again. And my generation, all of sudden, we are the adults.

Takeshi Kaneshiro

Just saw House of Flying Daggers, which could have been called Tragic Love Story in 4 Seasons or variously, Forest of Flying Bamboo - which was definately the highlight, or also, Gorgeous Japanese Guy Rushing Around China Pretending He's Not in Love With the Cute Skinny Dancer Girl - there is more to say, like that it's gorgeous and hilarious and wonderful and reminds me that in my previous life I WAS a chinese warrior fighting the corrupt government.

B of A's invasion of red

I'll admit, I hold grudges against colors. Like, for example, I've never really forgiven purple. And this is because of Myra Leibster, who my dad dated when he first left my mom. This woman (who had her own children) wore only purple - purple cowboy boots, purple leather jacket, purple socks, everything purple every day. This was in the early 80's when purple was really popular - so it kind of seemed like a fashion move gone OCD. (She eventually became a second grade teacher at the school where my Mom still teaches and even as late as the mid 90's she was still wearing only purple and my mom told me that the kids in the school all called her the purple lady. So I guess it wasn't just a fashion thing on her part.)

But - anyways, the real reason for this post tonight is to report on the trend of big corporations going red. Specifically the previously-ubiquitous-only-on-the-west coast, sinisterly-named Bank of America, who has recently swallowing up Fleet and other East Coast provincial banking institutions out here in NY metropolitan area... Now, I know, it's not really shocking that B of A would starbuck it's way east and onto the streets of NYC, but what really disturbs me is it's sudden, post-election color shift.

Which is to say, when I lived in SF, the B of A's logo was predominantly blue. It always had a blue & red theme, but the backdrop was BLUE. And now, all of a sudden, B of A has materialized with a suddenly revamped logo which is predominantly RED. I take this personally, I take this as an invasion - an politically-charged aesthetic invasion. And, I'd like to point out the irony in the new chosen affinity for Red that this big money, corporate interest has... now that "communism is dead."

stock market

citi-stock market
Originally uploaded by topiary.

disingenuous ads which purport to advise us against thinking money is the most important thing...
meanwhile, you have to have at least $500 to keep in their bank just to have a checking account
i hate them
and their coy b-s
"healthy and wise, the other part is not important"
it makes me want to buy cans of spray paint

bad education

the constant tangling of a movie within a movie, an unfolding plot seems to keep its writer/director central protagonish guessing as to the meaning and motivation of his own characters
second, a viciously funny pot shots at the catholic church
which doesn't just make a movie that gives us the cliche of the injured boys at the hands of the pedophile priests,
everyone in the film is guilty of suffering the bad education at the hands of their beloveds
almodóvar is enraptured by the magic of fiction and the power of the story to transform not only its characters but itself
like a pudding, folding in on itself, as we lick the bowl
and of course, its pretty to look at - not just the boys, but the wall paper, the colors
a field of young catholic school boys pathetically doing push ups to the orders of the fat priest
hustlers upon hustlers, each one trying to steal something from someone else

it's not sincere and heartbreaking like Talk to Her
though they both share the spanish appetite for the surreal
its a wicked and cold and noir'ish plot turning film about storytelling and acting
hustling and theft

queer moss

c. Topiary

notre musique

note to self: join Film Forum

Goddard's 3 part harmony - part Chris Marker (Hell), part No Exit existential fiction ramble, part... Yvonne Rainer film is the only reference I have, but I know she was really inspired by him - so...?

the experience of watching the film was definately enhanced by the presence of John Waters, who was sitting right behind us, as it turned out - hearing him chuckle during this odd film added surreal to the already surreal

i took the film as a meditation on the role of victim - purgatory was set in sarajevo
fitting backdrop for the french-israeli-russian jewess beauty who interviews a palestinian about victimhood and defeat
the palestinian says that no one is interested in them, they are only famous because of who their enemy is: the jews - the ultimate victims who have become the oppressors
the israeli-palestinian struggle (war?) boiled down to a european fascination with the endless transmogrification of the jew

in the end the jewish woman martyrs herself - gets shot in the name of asking people to die for peace

i can't help but think about this film in relation to the interview with Amos Oz today on WNYC - Amos Oz who talks about his own transformation from right-wing zionist in his youth to socialist patriot to contemporary critic of israeli policy

i fantasize that we are a world moving toward more complex ideas about humanity - rendering violence and oppression obsolete - because we have so much work to do to invent sustainable methods for power and nourishment, rebuilding the ruins created in the name of security

I dream that we will take to the streets, inspired by Kiev, inspired by our own disgust with this corrupt empire
may we crumble into a thousand disparete humane pieces
reject the tyranny of corporate global consolidation
and get back to our own small business of growing things
and helping each other to live through this
in slow and beautiful color