It is 4:30 in the afternoon and it is starting to get dark. I missed long walks and it is one of the few good things about this place, only if the streets weren’t too steep. Night starts early and the scent of pine trees is wonderful. I have to wear at least three layers of clothing or else my fingers would fall off. I’ve been seeing a lot of squirrels lately and I’m sure I’d see more of them in the coming days. I saw a Siberian husky yesterday and it looked exactly like our dead dog, Kevin. I should get used to people being courteous and attentive. . . It freaks me out sometimes. There is something about rudeness and courteousness coexisting that I do not understand.

Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey

I've always been a fan of early sci-fi movies -- The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951, It Conquered the World 1956, Planet 9 from Outer Space 1959, The Forbidden Planet 1956, Manos: The Hands of Faith 1966 and Robinson Crusoe From Mars 1966, not to forget those silent German films like Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari -- aside from them being hilarious and cheesy (the kind of cheese I like), they were undeniably brilliant. Brilliant in a sense that there were enourmous amount of creativity and innovation, almost always prophetic, involved. And you then realize that no filmakers today did something as extraordinary as they did. Maybe Tarkovsky, but he's on another category. My guess is that, those were the times that people were more enthused about technology and outer space. Obviously because they were new and they had a lot of reasons to celebrate the future. On the contrary, sci-fi films of today seemed tired, as if it has seen everything, nothing excites. There was a gleamer of that excitement in AI but Speilberg chose a different way and abandoned it as quickly as possible (I wonder what Kubrick could have done).

Anyway, this entry is not about sci-fi movies, really. I found a documentary on Theremin,I was transfixed by the story of this little instrument.Russian Leon Theremin invented the first electronic instrument which he named after himself. You control the pitch and volume by moving your hand like a Symphony conductor. You do this without touching the metal rods connected to a big wooden box.Supposedly,it is the first musical intrument that is played without being touched. It produces an eerie sound common in the films I mentioned above. Think of UFOs and aliens, and you can easily associate it with the sound. Hitchcock perhaps overused it a little. Unfortunately, the Theremin is associated only with that strange sound and sci-fi movies. What is unknown is that it plays a decent Bach or Wagner in the hands of an adept musician. Leon Theremin was an usual man who had an unsual life and invented an unsual instrument. It is definitely worth seeing. Yesterday I checked ebay for Theremins. The cheapest Theremin on auction is about $200. Apparently,they still make them. It would be interesting to start a band using it.

Matisse

Our clothes had a photoshoot with the Hollmanns, Albert & co again.The red wrap-around dress is new. Also, Summit Media featured our clothes last February and March in one of their magazines.

How can both sequential and simultaneous movement be created in an image?

Excerpts from the notes on the exhibition:

My friend,P used "two-dimensional flat surface of stretched canvas, erased the inherent texture by priming 10 coats of gesso, and created succeeding layers of ground in the form of transparent acrylic paint medium tinted with white acrylic."

This is to simulate "sequential and simultaneous movement. Thus, images found in the layers of transparent ground act as sequential and simultaneoud snapshots of movement in time and space. A sense of history and narrative can be perceived."

It achieved showing motion, also sound. P will add more gel medium on this series, therefore, the coming paintings would look more like blueprints. . . very interesting.
Goodluck on your thesis!

PS. That's me drinking wine.

3 Bald Men

I finally finished my term paper in my Michel Foucault class. Fr. David is good instructor. He reminds me of Woody Allen. Well, aside from that horrible comb over, he's sarcastic, random and talks too fast that he usually runs out of breath . . .then he would suddenly pause and snatch some air to fill his lungs again for another set ramblings.

'Discourse is not life: its time is not your time; in it, you will not be reconciled to death; you may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.'

Michel Foucault. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge.

I could not agree more

I found this list in my files. I cannot remember where I got this, but anyway here:

The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is: age 11.There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them. If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and he decides to deliver a message to humanity, he will NOT use as his messenger a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle or in some cases, really bad make-up too. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter/janitor, is not a nice person. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

I am the wrath of God, who else is with me?

I saw Werner Herzog's My Best Fiend the other week and I had to watch it again the next day. I'm amazed how such passion and rage of 'unimaginable proportions' could reside in one man. The film started in a big auditorioum where Klaus Kinski played the part of a raving savior quoting the bible, probably raving about people's misunderstandings of the gospel.Off the stage, he continued to play the part, a lunatic and furious Jesus.

Perhaps,divine providence brought Kinski and Herzog together in a small apartment; Herzog was then 13 and the young Kinksi was a theater actor.Herzog narrates, in an almost melancholic, shifting to an ecstatic tone how fascinated he was to the man. Images of the, already then mad Kinski locked in his little room filled with dead leaves, naked - practicing his lines for hours and hours made a huge impression on the young Herzog.

He revisited two of his 5 films with Klaus Kinski: Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. These collaborations exhibited Kinski's undeniable power on screen. Off screen, you expect the same energy . . .probably,even more. Megalomania and rage are prompted by petty irritants like insects, food and noise. Sometimes Kinski would make up anything,find a victim, throw a fit. These raw energies were exploited by both Kinski and Herzog to temper the 'beast' to the point when they reach saturation and independently plotted to murder each other. In result, one sees this disquieting tension in each of K's performances. Kinski is an asshole and he is beautiful.Indeed, the wrath of God.

I have a lot of good things to say about the documentary, but I'm tired, so I'll stop here.


Ps. Claudia Cardinale was still pretty and dreamy in old age.