Monday, October 26, 2009
Thought Salad
Ok, so I'm back after an extended hiatus.I'm not going to make excuses and promise to always be here. Let's face it, Twitter is awesome. It allows me to update my bullshit in real time. But with the death of Mac Tonnies, it's caused me to reevaluate how much I want to share myself and the things I encounter with the world.
Those who follow me on Twitter already know how broken up I am over Mac's death.What makes me saddest of all is that to my knowledge, he was not a romantic relationship, and as I understand it, had a lot of difficulty finding and maintaining one.And I think was a symptom of his core sadness which surfaced from time to time in his posts and his Tweets. I think we shared a general feeling of isolation from the rest of the world, but it was more pronounced with Mac. You could see it in his photographs, of what he chose as his subjects: Statues, Manikins, automatons, architecture...not a lot of people (though you're there).
Sigh. Of course Mac had friends, good friends and caring friends. I know I'm attributing personality to Mac that may or may not be there, but those were the impressions I got from "reading" him. I knew that as much as he had hope for a digital, exobiotic future, the here and now ground down upon him daily. You have to have hope for the future when the present sucks so bad. And I believe that as distant as Mac thought he felt from everyone, he had an incredible empathy for the animals, the disenfranchised, and the have nots.
I'm sad because he didn't have the time to live where he wanted, to find a fulfilling daily job or career.But, I'm saddest of all because he didn't have enough time to fill the hole which I am sure bedeviled and plagued him to the end of his days. Me, I like to remember him smiling.
Much to my surprise I'm still keeping up with the weirdness.I've been sidelined all Summer with a foot injury from simultaneously doing extensive yoga and a Fitness Boot Camp in the park with crappy shoes. My foot still hurts after physical therapy and a Cortezone shot, so it may require surgery, though I'm not taking the time to look into the MRI. Which is foolish. I should do that. I guess I will.
Anyway, I ended up putting on a few pounds and feeling out of shape, so I set up my bike trainer in the basement to do some stationary cycling. The problem is, now the guest room is down there instead of the office, so I have to cycle out in the boring unfinished part (with no TV). So rather than be bored staring at the air conditioner I decided to make my own entertainment by strapping on my www.mindfold.com/ installing some ear plugs and doing Sensory Deprivation Cycling.
So far the results are not that much different from when I do this laying on a couch. Part of me is observer, part participant. The hardest thing to do at the moment is to concentrate on looking out through my eyes instead of rolling the up and looking upon my inner eye.
But that doesn't tell you anything does it? Ok...Here are things I've seen: Sometimes I can look out into the void before my eyes and feel the space. The basement walls vanish and it's just void. The the abstract shapes appear. Sometimes they are skull-like (since I've been drawing skulls), or alien grays (last night because of Mac). I get flashes of yellow/green in my peripheral vision. And I know that my mask is sealed tight.
click to enlarge
A few times I was able to lose my identity in the cycling and the vision for a few seconds before I panic about falling off the bike or the bike unmooring from the trainer, but so far it's taken all the speed and energy I can throw at it and dismounted. Hmmm perhaps I should do an inspection run before hand.
Also sometimes my inner monologue changes voice. I've had it in the past become black women, old people, Hispanic...others not mine. When that happens, I wonder if a blow to the head will cause me to speak with a new accent.Foreign accent syndrome. Last night I got a Hispanic accent which sounded a lot like Antonio Banderas. Go figure. Also for the first time I got an olfactory hit of airplane glue after a chain association made me think of the plastic Star Trek Phaser and Tricorder I build as a child.
So I'll continue to do these sense dep cyclings, and broadcast them on-line because...well, why not?
Even if Mac is gone, we still follow the motto of Planetary: It's a strange world, let's keep it that way.
Those who follow me on Twitter already know how broken up I am over Mac's death.What makes me saddest of all is that to my knowledge, he was not a romantic relationship, and as I understand it, had a lot of difficulty finding and maintaining one.And I think was a symptom of his core sadness which surfaced from time to time in his posts and his Tweets. I think we shared a general feeling of isolation from the rest of the world, but it was more pronounced with Mac. You could see it in his photographs, of what he chose as his subjects: Statues, Manikins, automatons, architecture...not a lot of people (though you're there).
Sigh. Of course Mac had friends, good friends and caring friends. I know I'm attributing personality to Mac that may or may not be there, but those were the impressions I got from "reading" him. I knew that as much as he had hope for a digital, exobiotic future, the here and now ground down upon him daily. You have to have hope for the future when the present sucks so bad. And I believe that as distant as Mac thought he felt from everyone, he had an incredible empathy for the animals, the disenfranchised, and the have nots.
I'm sad because he didn't have the time to live where he wanted, to find a fulfilling daily job or career.But, I'm saddest of all because he didn't have enough time to fill the hole which I am sure bedeviled and plagued him to the end of his days. Me, I like to remember him smiling.
Other Things
Much to my surprise I'm still keeping up with the weirdness.I've been sidelined all Summer with a foot injury from simultaneously doing extensive yoga and a Fitness Boot Camp in the park with crappy shoes. My foot still hurts after physical therapy and a Cortezone shot, so it may require surgery, though I'm not taking the time to look into the MRI. Which is foolish. I should do that. I guess I will.
Anyway, I ended up putting on a few pounds and feeling out of shape, so I set up my bike trainer in the basement to do some stationary cycling. The problem is, now the guest room is down there instead of the office, so I have to cycle out in the boring unfinished part (with no TV). So rather than be bored staring at the air conditioner I decided to make my own entertainment by strapping on my www.mindfold.com/ installing some ear plugs and doing Sensory Deprivation Cycling.
So far the results are not that much different from when I do this laying on a couch. Part of me is observer, part participant. The hardest thing to do at the moment is to concentrate on looking out through my eyes instead of rolling the up and looking upon my inner eye.
But that doesn't tell you anything does it? Ok...Here are things I've seen: Sometimes I can look out into the void before my eyes and feel the space. The basement walls vanish and it's just void. The the abstract shapes appear. Sometimes they are skull-like (since I've been drawing skulls), or alien grays (last night because of Mac). I get flashes of yellow/green in my peripheral vision. And I know that my mask is sealed tight.
click to enlarge
A few times I was able to lose my identity in the cycling and the vision for a few seconds before I panic about falling off the bike or the bike unmooring from the trainer, but so far it's taken all the speed and energy I can throw at it and dismounted. Hmmm perhaps I should do an inspection run before hand.
Also sometimes my inner monologue changes voice. I've had it in the past become black women, old people, Hispanic...others not mine. When that happens, I wonder if a blow to the head will cause me to speak with a new accent.Foreign accent syndrome. Last night I got a Hispanic accent which sounded a lot like Antonio Banderas. Go figure. Also for the first time I got an olfactory hit of airplane glue after a chain association made me think of the plastic Star Trek Phaser and Tricorder I build as a child.
So I'll continue to do these sense dep cyclings, and broadcast them on-line because...well, why not?
Even if Mac is gone, we still follow the motto of Planetary: It's a strange world, let's keep it that way.
Labels: Art, Aww Man, drawing, Friends
Monday, October 27, 2008
Using the Middle Eye
Speaking of eyes...I've been pondering this post for about a week or so and I was listening to NPR this weekend when I heard something interesting that moved it forward.
The speaker was a woman talking about language and infants. She said that because most babies are cradled with the left arm, it muffles the right ear and leaves the left ear exposed which connects to the right hemisphere which deals with language: intonation/accentuation, prosody, pragmatic, contextual (wiki) blah blah. (http://www.wpr.org/book/071104b.html segment 1)
This reminded of how I've been trying to view the world, which is with left eye dominance.
How do you move through the world? For those that don't know, you can willfully shift your attention. This attention is part of the active "you", and is guidable to all manner of different levels.
For example: Alessandra moves through the world looking out through her eyes. She actively, visually engages with the world. She's a sharp one for details. Like last night when she noticed the boobs of the stunt woman for Sarah Michelle Geller were vastly larger than Buffy's.
I, on the other hand, tend to move through focused on my inner eye. The world is engaged secondarily after it's processed through my own internal narrative. As a result I'm very clumsy. My attention watches movies through a secondary or tertiary layer of observation. This is good if you're a writer, but not so hot if you want to want to be a visual artist.
I have no idea why I want to be a visual artist. I can think of 3 points in my life where I was overcome with a visually creative drive, but lacking proper guidance and/or discipline, it didn't go anywhere. Rumor has it that I'm a good writer, but I think I want to stay out of my brain for while.
I have many years to go before I would consider myself competent. My first task is to learn to see the world more completely then marry that to my hand (which is goddamned difficult). I'm currently in the process of feeding my brain, by trying to focus my attention through my eyes (and subsequently my left eye for all the good it will do me). As well as filling up the tanks on other people's art.
I almost weep at the detail in images like this, and the best I can do when I see this is just open up the eye and let it all pour in for later analysis.
This has led to some stellar dreams, but it's still not the reason for this post.
The point of the post is to talk about what I call the Middle Eye. Maybe once or twice, at night. I've closed my eyes and watched pictures form themselves across the insides of my eyelids. It gives the feeling of looking through the eyes but without the analytical qualities of pulling back into the head, or drifting down into sleep. It also feels like you are peering into another world.
So this is a call for you to try and look through your middle eye. Close your eyes and look at the images without judgment and without comment, but with the intention to recall them later or to investigate the details but not allow yourself to fall deeper into your mind or to sleep.
This is very different from meditation wherein the idea is to look at the images dispassionately then move on to 1 point of focus. Here the goal is to watch the slideshow!
I'll let you know if anything more interesting happens, like the ability to freeze an image and investigate the slide with more detail without an inner monologue.
This just in: As I write this perhaps the Middle Eye slide is the visual/symbolic monologue from the Right Hemisphere?
Anyway, check it out and report back to me.
The speaker was a woman talking about language and infants. She said that because most babies are cradled with the left arm, it muffles the right ear and leaves the left ear exposed which connects to the right hemisphere which deals with language: intonation/accentuation, prosody, pragmatic, contextual (wiki) blah blah. (http://www.wpr.org/book/071104b.html segment 1)
This reminded of how I've been trying to view the world, which is with left eye dominance.
How do you move through the world? For those that don't know, you can willfully shift your attention. This attention is part of the active "you", and is guidable to all manner of different levels.
For example: Alessandra moves through the world looking out through her eyes. She actively, visually engages with the world. She's a sharp one for details. Like last night when she noticed the boobs of the stunt woman for Sarah Michelle Geller were vastly larger than Buffy's.
I, on the other hand, tend to move through focused on my inner eye. The world is engaged secondarily after it's processed through my own internal narrative. As a result I'm very clumsy. My attention watches movies through a secondary or tertiary layer of observation. This is good if you're a writer, but not so hot if you want to want to be a visual artist.
I have no idea why I want to be a visual artist. I can think of 3 points in my life where I was overcome with a visually creative drive, but lacking proper guidance and/or discipline, it didn't go anywhere. Rumor has it that I'm a good writer, but I think I want to stay out of my brain for while.
I have many years to go before I would consider myself competent. My first task is to learn to see the world more completely then marry that to my hand (which is goddamned difficult). I'm currently in the process of feeding my brain, by trying to focus my attention through my eyes (and subsequently my left eye for all the good it will do me). As well as filling up the tanks on other people's art.
I almost weep at the detail in images like this, and the best I can do when I see this is just open up the eye and let it all pour in for later analysis.
This has led to some stellar dreams, but it's still not the reason for this post.
The point of the post is to talk about what I call the Middle Eye. Maybe once or twice, at night. I've closed my eyes and watched pictures form themselves across the insides of my eyelids. It gives the feeling of looking through the eyes but without the analytical qualities of pulling back into the head, or drifting down into sleep. It also feels like you are peering into another world.
So this is a call for you to try and look through your middle eye. Close your eyes and look at the images without judgment and without comment, but with the intention to recall them later or to investigate the details but not allow yourself to fall deeper into your mind or to sleep.
This is very different from meditation wherein the idea is to look at the images dispassionately then move on to 1 point of focus. Here the goal is to watch the slideshow!
I'll let you know if anything more interesting happens, like the ability to freeze an image and investigate the slide with more detail without an inner monologue.
This just in: As I write this perhaps the Middle Eye slide is the visual/symbolic monologue from the Right Hemisphere?
Anyway, check it out and report back to me.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Tattooed Portraits (NSFW)
shawn barber Copyright 2008
Holy Cow! Are these works stellar! They just take my breath away. Just...wow.
Labels: Art, NSFW, tattooed chicks, Worth your time
