Blue Monday

Seems like the holiday season starts a little earlier every year.  Even the Thanksgiving boundary didn't hold this year, with carols ringing out in public places days before.  Is this holiday creep?

I'm not necessarily against extending a time of good cheer and generosity -- and I certainly am a sucker for blinkie lights -- but I don't think I like six weeks of Holiday Season.  The songs really aren't good enough, and Thanksgiving gets short shrift.

And many have personal reasons for blustering through the holidays -- something is pushing all those suicides (will the rate reflect the extended season?)

So I'm for putting off the decorations, musical and otherwise, until mid December.  Let the autumn play out, give Thanksgiving it's due, and make the weeks surrounding the New Year more like Christmas. 

Blob Scholar

A long time ago, I observed that some of Hans Arp's concretions were strikingly similar to painted biomorphic forms in the work of Yves Tanguy:

I approached the professor who prompted my observation, in order that I might learn about a connection, perhaps even impress the old man. He said he didn't know of any connections, but that I could "perhaps make a small contribution" to the field by researching the subject.  In some way that italics cannot really capture, the emphasis was on the word small.

So I never got around to researching the question, and in the years since have decided I don't care.  But maybe somebody else does, so take up thy mantle, Scholar of blobs.

Though the particulars of dates and influence don't much interest me anymore, I am still wondering (as perhaps you are) why anyone wants to use blobs as subject matter, and what they represent.

The generic answer is depiction of the unconscious.  But if you accept that all art, even everything a human does represents the unconscious, what is the difference between blob art and Mona Lisa?  

Does the specifed intent to create an unconscious landscape matter?

And if you accept that your perceptions are shaped by unconscious forces, does that make everything a representation?  Is there a difference between blob art and reality?

So, a blob scholar I remain.

Oscar Wilde

Great tune, by a band that can really play.

Frottage

Attirement of the Bride, Max Ernst, 1940.  Oil on canvas.

See also.

Oh Poor Baby

This is the second in a series of posts, drawn from emails I wrote during the last few months, in the wake of what may have been a tornado.  


Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Holy Fucking Shit. The last week has been a parade of sorting, moving, and low-budget cruise missiles . . .

I was "supposed to" have my living room cleared by Tuesday, but was unable to complete that even with the Labor Day Weekend, which I completely burned on apartment stuff. I left a note on my door asking for two more days and was rebuffed by a living room floor made of a giant tarp covered in my cieling. My stuff was moved to the sides, disorganizing it enough to cost me at least a day's effort.

And for effect, some of the food I left for myself in the apartment had been consumed.  A wrapper was tossed on the floor in plain view, I assume, so I would see it.

Plus I now get to work in an environment of exposed fiberglass insulation. I've got one of those masks like people wore during the SARS breakouts.

Unfortunately I didn't have the means to take a photo on the day, but take this one from a week later and fill that tarp, triple it's size, then add my stuff jumbled up against three walls.

But yet it gets better, because today (Wed 9/9) the three who collectively make up my landlord were on the premises, and all three managed to insult me. In summary:

The lady who is half owner told me I and all the other tenants were acting like we were blaming the ownership for the "tornado," and refused to even listen to the basic reality:  I was up in the air for over a month, which means I wasn't packing much, so how much can you expect me to do in a week? "I packed a house in a week", she snidely replied. Really? Did you have anything else to do during that time, and did you have to stop at 7:00 pm because it gets too dark with no power?  Did you do it without a running toilet because the water is turned off?

Then the male who is the other half owner gave me a similarly hard time, again bringing up that their "forgiveness" of my late fees (I made late rent payments about three times in four years) was lisence to hurry me out. Never mind that most of their late fee structure is illegal. Never mind that I am owed four days rent from when I couldn't live in the building at the end of July, which is about the same as any legal late fees they might have decided to put in the lease.

Their ignorance of the law is titanic, not to mention their total inability to connect with what has been happening to the tenant's lives in the past six weeks. They accused me of having a storage space for free, which technically I do because THE APARTMENT IS MINE BY LAW UNTIL THE END OF SEPTEMBER. They have no clue that the lease is still in force minus the requirement to pay rent.

And Mr. says to me, contemptuously, "you're so smart, aren't you? You know all the ins and outs?"

WHAT?

I know what a lawyer told me, and that you are a self-centered pig. I also know that part of the reason I consulted a lawyer is because you had no answers, and that I found out about your late fee structure because you tried to use it to force me out.

But the coup de grace is this: The son of Mr. and Mrs, who is caretaker pretty much only in name, comes by on his riding mower and blasts my car with grass, then later proceeds to yell as he drives by "Oh, poor baby."


Now, in fairness, I realize some crazy people still actually want to move back in, and so work is supposed to proceed quickly, and if I can beleive what I've been told (a bad idea, I've been finding) the work on my place had to be done before work on the roof could proceed.

But with all the lies, half-truths, constantly changing stories, and just plain talking when not a clue is had about that which is being spoken -- for all I know work on my place could have waited until fucking Thanksgiving.

As of this posting it is almost Thanksgiving, and last I drove by a week ago the roof was still not finished.  Should I believe that there was any hurry at all to work inside my place?

Ran (So Far Away)

Next in this apparent series of Tips from Brooding Filmmakers, from Akira Kurosawa's Ran:

"We are born crying. And when we stop crying, we die."

I'm not sure the Flock would agree.