knots, because Jay is a sweet curmudgen

His skin is lighter than mine where the sun doesn’t touch, though we’re multi-racial enough to get us lynched in certain places, (we know he has problems at the border). I can see in the dark how the outline of my wrist – you know this story. I know this story. I will never get enough of his clever mind, his smile, or his hair, but it slipped from my mouth that the latest death.pool bet says he’ll run off with his employer next. I mistakenly used the word “cheat” before demurring that I know he is only as committed as a cat offered a dish of cream. I know the ending already, the cotton candy clouds blow away in a predictable wind. Last time I bled myself dry and then moved to another part of the country. It didn’t change anything.

Another story – The clock is heaped with minutes that need to be folded and placed into drawers. Fragments of conversation, of laughter like honey in my throat, of shared yearning after mystery. I am made of clay and I can feel in the dark how the shape of my body fits surprisingly into his (as it crumbles into dust). Everywhere are tiny, running wolves disguised as mice. On the blackboard, my name has been erased. I am a self-portrait, stars for eyes, blindfolded. His skin belongs to someone else. The sheets describe pacing, the threads worn where the line was drawn. Thou Shalt, not. The pillow tells quietly of the hollow curve of a braincase. I didn’t belong there any more than I do elsewhere, but at least it felt safe. There was water in a cup on one side of the bed.

I wonder if when I am older, I will place a cup there too, as they do, these men, these ten minute husbands who deprive me of stability. I don’t like their common habits. I want all of their mistakes to be different, they should continue to be separate creatures in as many things as possible.

My New Year hasn’t started yet. I feel, instead, that I was on the set of a film shooting a scene about New Years Eve. How else to explain where I was, who I was with? Surrey? What? I came home today soaked to the cells of my marrow from working many hours in the rain. Work began at five, where I was on gate. Somewhere around midnight, I assumed my way backstage and made myself available. After the count-down and the fireworks, my time was spent hauling about heavy bits of everything. Work was tear down, strike, a rush of blood to the lungs. The skin of my hands has been polished so raw my nerves are misfiring in interesting ways, I might have split my lip and possibly cracked a rib. Sleep was a couple of sheepish hours in a hotel room, too early in the morning to be morning yet. Then we worked again. This time in a gradual and persistent downpour. Tents had to be puzzled down, missing pieces had me to be made to fit into trucks and lamentably weighty slabs of steel needed to be dragged from one end of the complex to the other. Same with sandbags. I cannot explain how much I dislike sandbags, except to say that sometimes being female’s a bit of a bitch.

(It’s always a bit of a toss-up between letting people be nice to me and accepting the easier, indoor “nice” jobs or going out in the crappy weather and attempting to prove myself a little more to a group of strangers who all assume me to be capable anyway. Mostly I took the indoor jobs and didn’t mind when people called me “sweetie”. They can call me “sweetie” as much as they like as long as they follow orders.)

I might sound like I’m complaining, but really I love this stuff. I chose being on crew over any of the parties I was invited to. (Is it just me or was everyone really slap-dash about plans this year?) I appreciate being useful, as well as chances to constructively use basic physics. (What, you think I can heft things twice my weight without the stuff?) The best part is that apparently I’m to be paid for my hours, which is nice, as I would have been out there anyway. Just tattoo geek on my forehead in invisible ink.

it’s a-peel-ing

I’m intrigued. The Geostationary Banana Over Texas project calls itself “an art intervention” and is scheduled to be ready for launch in August of 2008. The 300 meter banana will be constructed of bamboo and paper and be filled with helium. It will float at 30 to 50 km above the state of Texas, which will put it on the line between Earth’s atmosphere and space. From the ground, the banana will be visible and recognizable day and night from all over Texas. On thier “The Team” page, they list the Canadian Council for the Arts as a contributor.

what I get up instead of sleeping properly

Johnny Rotton on Judge Judy.

Sanex has created a beautiful film that transforms over 100 naked strangers into living skin cells for their new brand campaign. A UK exclusive, it just went live this week. The mesmerizing advert, built to sell how Sanex different from other skincare products because it works with your skin’s natural processes to “keep it at its healthy best”, was made in only three days by Director Lucy Blaksted, with a crew of 45, which included four skin airbrush artists.

This style seems to be part of a trend. Vaseline did two shorts this year that also featured astonishingly nice use of naked people – Sea, which has beautifully placed people in enchanting situations I wish I could have been part of, it sparks of a seriously fantastic art director, someone who could maybe make me cry, and Locked, which is lighter in tone and only uses hands.

Dolphin’s leap crushes woman in freak accident.

Stuck is a nice piece of work too. A two minute viral spot promoting a Canadian Becel Margarine contest, it uses the idea of an escalator break-down to play nicely on public assumptions of transportation. The type-casting is a little strong, but I think it works well. Apparently it’s based on a short film created back in 2003 by the writer/director that I’ve been unable to track down. The cute 30 second TV version is available on ihaveanidea.org, (appropriately, as it’s a margarine ad, a contender for “slimmest website”).

Heavy snow falls in Jerusalem; dozens injured due to bad weather.

While we’re on the topic of art tied to the hand of advertising, V&A and Playstation® sponsored something interesting this season, ‘Volume’ – an array of columns that respond to movement set in the centre of the V&A’s John Madejski Garden in London. A luminous interactive sculpture, the columns have been programmed to respond to movement with startling audio-visual displays that ripple complexity. On the surface this sounds hokey, a science-centre trick from the 80’s that’s been done countless times before, but the photos by John Adrian are unexpectedly lovely. The striking placement of the pillars and the obvious depth of the patterns mix so nicely with everyone’s obvious delight that it makes me wish I could hear the project as well as see it. It seems like such a perfect thing to stave off the darkness of winter.

(mcstrick, who put up the Volume pictures I linked to, also posted about Jeongmee Yoon, the artist behind the eerie Pink & Blue Project, a collection of photographs wherein children are almost lost in the vast mono-colour array of their blandly gender-coded belongings.)

the holidays are passing me by again

Foxtongue Productions Inc. is still selling shares for 200$CAN. If you’re interested, contact me at jhayne.holmes@gmail.com.

Andrew pointed me to a nice site today – The Unseen Video. It’s a dynamic flash music video with content changing based on weather data from your area. It’s really very pretty. Mine today is olive green, with light rain and complicated branches that fade into tender vintage photographs and flowers made of small crawling clips of footage. I like this kind of thing, that people took the time to make it and let it loose.
There’s a Flickr.pool of screencaps of the video from all over the world, that’s nice to peer through. I posted four of mine there. The amount of variation seems a little intense. I’m going to try and remember to check back later in a few months, when Vancouver has weather again. I’d like to get the clip of the woman or see what the crystals look like when they’re animated. This rainy hail doesn’t change the details very much from viewing to viewing.

Nick Carr calculates that a Second Life avatar consumes as much electricity as a Brazilian.

There’s a letter from Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille (that Duncan posted, bless his soul) that burns my heart with accuracy:

“There is vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatsoever at any time. There is only a queer, divine, dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

Archaeologists discovered an artificial eye dating from the times of the great pyramids and Stonehenge.

that thunderclap threatehed to break my window

Alastair’s footage of inside the Raja theatre has been put up on YouTube.

I can’t tell if enthusiasm about Heart of the World is flagging because of the holidays or from the misconception that we’ve managed to get the down-payment together already. To clarify, we’ve raised the $48,000 deposit, not the $500,000 down-payment. Until we get it together, we’re dead in the water. I recommend writing anyone you think might be interested in financing the project. Every little bit helps.

finally home after four days

Red cape, red hair. I don’t know what I’m doing, but what time is it mister wolf? has found me on a doorstep at two in the morning. There’s an engine running metaphorically behind me, I had to force myself to go to Oliver’s party, I had to force myself to leave. Ginger beer in a keg on the front lawn where we fell dreaming together. There was a woman asleep in the bed. Brown hair, I don’t know. I hope she’s less threatening.

Finally it’s not raining, the weather this week calling for cold sun and circles of wind. Leaves making doughnuts in parking lots, perfumed drunk little devils throwing a thousand colours at the air and attacking my ankles with damp. The soft unbiting scent of alcoholism floating across the mulch and exhaust of the city. I like the fall, it’s not as unrelenting as the other seasons, it allows for mercury. Silver shining from puddles, from the sky, spitting on water to make it wet.

  • Richard Dawkins on The Colbert Report.

    I let someone kiss me this week. I don’t know why yet. I’m wary.

  • now my bed, too, smells like clever musician

    So my dear treasure of a friend, Mark Campbell, whom only a few of you have heard of, came over last night and introduced me to one of the most stunning spectacles I have ever seen, so consummately remarkable as to strain credulity. By chapter seven, I was struck speechless. I could barely process anymore, except to writhe painfully in constant breathless laughter.

    Welcome, my friends, to R. Kelly’s superb act of genius, “Trapped in the Closet.”

    Part IPart IIPart IIIPart IVPart VPart VIPart VIIPart IIXPart IXPart XPart XIPart XII

    the fountain was beautiful

    Toren, this is for you.

    A shadow bringing the young girl’s heart to the wicked queen, killing the wolf that ate grandmother on his way, those huntsmen have another thing coming. It’s a lovely idea, having live mass-produced Disney princesses. There should be more flashlights shining blindly on Das Maus. I especially appreciate how it’s an open invitation to the local women, “hey, come out, show us your differences by emphasizing your similarities.” There’s something crudely emphatic about it that I respond to, that picks at me. I know that if I were within distance, I’d be in there twice a week without fail, donning the plastic wig and splaying on chairs.

    Upon the heels of the pronouncement that the Pope is abolishing Limbo, game designer Arnt Jensen has unveiled a charming trailer for a creation of the same name.