June 2007 Archives

'She was now in Morocco visiting the baths with the native women, sharing their pumice stone, and learning from the prostitutes how to paint her eyes with kohl from the market place. 'It's coal dust, and you place it right inside the eyes. It smarts at first, and you want to cry; but that spreads it out on the eyelids, and that is how they get that shiny, coal black rim around the eyes.''

'Anais Nin, A Spy in the House of Love, 1959.

'[T]he director . . . seems pleased; he sucks on his red lollipop.

I begin to wonder or that is realize about his red lollipop; at first I thought it was a whistle; and then a gadget; and then an eccentricity; and then a gag; and then a plain lollipop that happens to be on location; the Director with the Lollipop, he gets his ideas better by suddenly lifting it to his lips, in the glare of kleigs, at a moment when the crowd expects him to do something else, so that they're all arrested and bemused and made to comment about the lollipop.'

'Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.

'What is it now, that a well-dressed man who is a plumber in the Plumber's Union by day, and a beat-dressed man who is a retired barber meet on the street and think of each other wrong, as the law, or panhandler, or some such cubbyhole identification, worse than that, things like homosexual, or dopefiend, or dope pusher, or mugger, or even Communist and look away from each other's eyes with great tense movements of thier neck muscles at the moment when their eyes are about to meet in the normal way that eyes meet on the street. . . . Looking at a man in the eye is now queer. Why else should you be looking a m. in the e.'

'Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.

'I want to stretch a pretty girl with soft lips who maybe usherettes on Sundays at a B-movie on Main Street, or whichever street that is, over a sandy old lousy bed in a fishing shack along the brown sluggish old Neuse River, and lay her.'

'Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.

'With the coming of the suit and this adult gesture, Cody's life in Denver entered a second phase, and this one had for its background, its prime focal goal, the place to which he was forever rushing, . . . nothing less and nothing more than the redbrick wall behind the red neons: it was everywhere in Denver where he went and everywhere in America all his life . . .'

'Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.

'I'm having a huge fifteen cent beer in a bar off the waterfront but a brown businessman's bar and at the hem of the financial district with Emil-like feathers and men drinking at long bar'I say 'brown' bar not in jest, red neons or pink ones too shine in the smoke and reflect off dark browned panels, the beer is brown, tabletops, the lights are white but embrowned, the tile floor too . . .'

'Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.

'. . . it's as though I was battling black evil birds tonight and not anything human, something that the Devil sends, not the world, and the great black bird broods outside my window in the high dark night waiting to enfold me when I leave the house tomorrow only I'm going to dodge it successfully by sheer animalism and ability and even exhilaration, so goodnight''

'Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.

'This movie house of mine in the dream has got a golden light to it though it is deeply shaded brown, or misty gray too inside, with thousands not hundreds but all squeezed together children in there diggin the perfect cowboy B-movie which is not shown in Technicolor but dream golden . . .'

'Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, 1972.

'I think it must have been just after ten in the morning when I saw a silver light far up in the sky. A brilliant flash of silver. That's right, it was definitely light reflecting off something metal. That light moved very slowly in the sky from east to west. We all thought it had to be a B-29. It was directly above us, so to see it we had to look straight up. It was a clear blue sky, and the light was so bright all we could see was that silver, duralumin-like object.

But we couldn't make out the shape, since it was too far up. I assumed that they couldn't see us either, so we weren't afraid of being attacked or having bombs suddenly rain down on us. Dropping bombs in the mountains here would be pretty pointless anyway. I figured the plane was on its way to bomb some large city somewhere, or maybe on its way back from a raid. So we kept on walking. All I thought was how that light had a strange beauty to it.'

'Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore, translated by Philip Gabriel, 2005.

''A deaf composer's like a cook who's lost his sense of taste. A frog that's lost its webbed feet. A truck driver with his license revoked. That would throw anybody for a loop, don't you think' But Beethoven didn't let it get to him. Sure he must have been a little depressed at first, but he didn't let misfortune get him down. It was like, Problem' What problem' He composed more than ever and came up with better music than anything he'd ever written. I really admire the guy. . . .''

'Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore, translated by Philip Gabriel, 2005.

'Life is no brief candle for me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.'

'George Bernard Shaw.

Click here, and then click there, for your Father's Day moment of Zen.

Pictured is the fourth side of the two-disc vinyl version of Low's Things We Lost in the Fire from 2001, an extreme example of a phenomenon that we might call inscribed vinyl.

Usually these inscribed vinyl messages are more discreet. Their size is limited to the 'run-off' area after the end of a song, and so they are easily overlooked. According to my Google research, now spanning into its third day, a 'matrix number' is usually inscribed here to identify the pressing before the paper label is applied. But sometimes there is a message directed at a wider audience. The earliest such message may have been a charming 'Phil loves Ronnie' on one of producer Phil Spector's early 45s from the 1960s. I don't know which 45, if it was a Ronnettes 45, or anything more. (OK. This may just be a rumor, but Phil's been in the news lately so I thought I'd mention it.)

I have more confidence in the following sightings: on the Grateful Dead's album Anthem of the Sun there is an inscription that reads 'The faster we go, the rounder we get,' on their Terrapin Station the question 'Where do you keep your stereo, Jer'' and on John Lennon & Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy one can glean the message 'one world one people.' (Where is John Lennon now that we really, really need him')

These inscriptions are not to be confused with 'backmasked' messages in the music itself. These are sonic vocal snippits which make no sense until the record is played in reverse and the hidden message is revealed. Some of these are the famously feared 'satanic' messages of the 70s and 80s. Unlike inscribed messages, which have yet to be fully studied, these backmasked messages are neatly listed, for our convenience, on one page of the ever-growing and amazingly handy Wikipedia.

Click here, if you think you can handle them.

'That is indeed very good. I shall have to repeat that on the Golden Floor!'

'A.E. Housman, responding to a risqu' joke told to cheer him up just before he died, 1936; Daily Telegraph, February 21, 1984.

'The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.'

'Vladimir Nabakov, Speak, Memory, 1951.

'The music that had been playing in my head has vanished, leaving behind some faint white noise like a taut white sheet on a huge bed. I touch that sheet, tracing it with my fingertips. The white goes on forever.'

'Haruki Marakami, Kafka On The Shore, translated by Philip Gabriel, 2005.

'The moon belongs to everyone
The best things in life are free
The stars belong to everyone
They gleam there for you and me'

'Buddy De Sylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson, The Best Things In Life Are Free, 1927 song.

'A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it is written on.'

'Sam Goldwyn, cited by Alva Johnson in The Great Goldwyn, 1937.

'That old black magic has me in its spell
That old black magic that you weave so well'

'Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen, That Old Black Magic, 1942.

'Eeyore, the old grey Donkey, stood by the side of the stream, and looked at himself in the water. 'Pathetic,' he said. 'That's what it is. Pathetic.''

'A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926.

'There can be no whitewash at the White House.'

'Richard M. Nixon, April 30, 1973.

'The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highway man came riding-Riding-riding-
The highwayman came riding up to the old inn-door.'

'Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1907.

'Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.'

'Wilfred Owen, Greater Love, from Poems, 1963.

'A rose-red sissy half as old as time.'

'William Plomer, Playboy of the Demi-World, from The Dorking Thigh, 1945.

'Night and day, you are the one,
Only you beneath the moon and under the sun.'

'Cole Porter, Night and Day, 1932 song.

''Oh Jerry,' she said when she could trust her voice. 'Don't let's ask for the moon! We have the stars!''

'Olive Higgins Prouty, Now, Voyager, 1941.

'They said, 'You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.'

The man replied, 'Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.''

'Wallace Stevens, The Man With The Blue Guitar, 1937.

'To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night
in the small town, starless and bible-black,'

'Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood, 1954.

'I know the colour rose, and it is lovely,
But not when it ripens in a tumour;
And healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike,
In limbs that fester are not springlike. . . .

So in the simple blessing of a rainbow,
In the bevelled edge of a sunlit mirror,
I have seen visible, Death's artifact
Like a soldier's ribbon on a tunic tacked.'

'Dannie Abse, Pathology of Colours, from A Small Desperation, 1968.

'Black is beautiful.'

'American civil rights slogan, mid-1960s, cited in Newsweek, July 11, 1966.

'God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time.'

'Home In That Rock, traditional Negro spiritual.

'He rose, and he put down The Yellow Book.
He staggered'and, terrible-eyed,
He brushed past the palms on the staircase
And was helped to a hansom outside.'

'Sir John Betjeman, Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel, from Continual Dew, 1937.

'Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear,
And he shows them pearly white.'

'Bertolt Brecht, Prologue, Threepenny Opera, 1928.

'CUSTOMER: I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

SHOPKEEPER: Oh yes, the Norwegian Blue'what's wrong with it'

CUSTOMER: I'll tell you what's wrong with it'it's dead that's what's wrong with it.'

'Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones & Michael Palin, Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1969.

'Where the blue of the night
Meets the gold of the day,
Someone waits for me.'

'Bing Crosby, Roy Turk & Fred Ahlert, Where the Blue of the Night, 1931.

'A rainbow and a cuckoo's song
May never come together again;
May never come
This side the tomb.'

'W.H. Davies, A Great Time, Bird of Paradise, 1914.

'It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,
And left thee all her lovely hues.'

'W.H. Davies, Kingfisher, Farewell to Poesy, 1910.

'You see, but you do not observe.'

'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scandal in Bohemia, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892.

'In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.'

'F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925.

'The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea.'

'James Elroy Flecker, Gates of Damascus, Golden Journey to Samarkand, 1913.

'It was the lovely moon'she lifted
slowly her white brow among
Bronze cloud-waves that ebbed and drifted
Faintly, faintlier afar.'

'John Freeman, It Was the Lovely Moon, Stone Trees, 1916.

'angleheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.'

'Allen Ginsberg, Howl, 1956.

'And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light
And a striving evermore for these;'

'Julian Grenfell, Into Battle, 1915.

'There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town,
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.'

'J. Milton Hayes, The Green Eye of the Yellow God, 1911.

'I stood upon that silent hill
And stared into the sky until
My eyes were blind with stars and still
I stared into the sky.'

'Ralph Hodgson, Song of Honour, Poems, 1917.

'I will die like a true-blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning'organize.'

'Joe Hill, November 18, 1915, a farewell telegram the day before his execution by firing squad.

'Pale hands, pink tipped, like lotus buds that float
On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat
Crushing out life; than waving me farewell!'

'Laurence Hope, Kashmiri Song, Garden of Kama, 1901.

'The sexophones wailed like melodious cats under the moon.'

'Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932.

'Mother, give me the sun.'

'Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts, 1881.

'Life exits in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.'

'Sir James Jeans, Mysterious Universe, 1930.

'The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.'

'James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922.

'The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.'

'James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922.

'As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.'

'Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1962.

'We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We're little black sheep who've gone astray,
Baa-aa-aa!'

'Rudyard Kipling, Gentlemen-Rankers, Barrack-Room Ballads, 1892.

'Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, 'Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.''

'Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant's Child, Just So Stories, 1902.

'And at the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.''

'Rudyard Kipling, The Naulahka, 1892.

'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.'

'Dylan Thomas, The Force that through the Green Fuse drives the Flower, 1934.

'Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.'

'Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill, 1946.

'Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green.'

'Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill, 1946.

'Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.'

'Mark Twain, Following The Equator, 1897.

'She wore an itsy bitsy teenie weenie, yellow polkadot bikini.'

'Paul Vance & Lee Pockriss, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie, Yellow Polkadot Bikini, 1960.

''Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!'

'Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.''

'Mae West, in Night After Night, 1932.

'I used to be Snow White . . . but I drifted.'

'Mae West, quoted in Joseph Weintraub's Peel Me A Grape, 1975.

'There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.'

'W.B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, 1892.

'The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.'

'W.B. Yeats, The Countess Cathleen, 1895.

'When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die''

'W.B. Yeats, To The Secret Rose, 1897.

Click here to catch up on the London 2012 Olympics logo controversy. Just yesterday I was part of an online discussion of the newly released logo, or 'branding system,' with some of my design school buddies. (Not to influence your unique opinion, but we happened to agree with the author of this Design Observer article: it's crap.)

'I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.'

'Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men In A Boat, 1889

'Now it was Be-In
and this one event set the
cultural tone of the year
along with the rhymed doublet: Flower Power

There were 20,000 there to surge
in primary-color splendor
with the fine Pacific psyche-light
at last outshining
the Puritanical searchlight
from Plymouth Rock

as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver
Messenger Service, Jerry Rubin, Gary Snyder, Tim Leary,
Lenore Kandel, Ginsberg & others
made words and music.'

'Edward Sanders, The Poetry And Life Of Allen Ginsberg: A Narrative Poem, 2000.

Paul Dean, Incense And Peppermints, collage, 14"x14", 2007.

Paul Dean, Paper Sun, collage, 14"x14", 2007.

Paul Dean, Echoes, collage, 14"x14", 2007.

Paul Dean, Journey To The Center Of The Mind, collage, 14"x14", 2007.

Just back from the Baton Rouge Gallery, these four collages are meant to resemble simple cubic diamonds. They are named after a few of my favorite psychedelic songs. Because, let's face it, diamonds are psychedelic.

'By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and [his body] was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.'

'Hebrews 11:5, Holy Bible, King James Version, 1611. Enoch went directly to heaven without dying. A neat trick!

'Every black cat has within its body one bone that will either grant the owner invisibility or can be used to bring back a lost lover. To secure this bone, a black cat must be thrown alive into a kettle of boiling water at midnight. The animal dies in agony, and the practitioner boils the carcass until the meat falls off the bones. Some say that the special bone will be the top one left when the water boils away, others say it can only be found by placing each bone in turn beneath the tongue while an assistant stands by to notify the practitioner that he has become invisible, and still others swear that if all the bones are thrown into a stream that runs north (uncommon in most of North America), the desired bone will be one that floats on the water and heads south. Once found, the black cat bone is carried in a mojo bag and anointed with Van Van Oil to bring back a lost lover. The oil or fat of the cat is bottled for use as a candle dressing and for anointing gambler's charms.'

'Harry's Blues Lyrics Online, blueslyrics.tripod.com, updated December 17, 2000.

'Van Van is an old hoodoo formula for oil, incense, sachet powders, and washing products that are designed to clear away evil, provide magical protection, open the road to new prospects, change bad luck to good, and empower amulets and charms. It is the most popular of the New Orleans or "Algiers style" hoodoo recipes. As an amulet enhancer, it is closely associated with both the rabbit foot and the lodestone. . . .'

'Catherine Yronwode, Hoodoo In Theory And Practice, www.luckymojo.com, 2007.

'1 - The Blues... It's 12-bar, bent-note melody is the anthem of a race bonding itself together with cries of shared self victimization. Bad luck and trouble are always present, and always the result of others, pressing upon unfortunate and down trodden poor souls, yearning to be free from lifes' responsibilities. Never ending beats repeat the chants of sorrow, and the pity of a lost soul many times over. These are the Blues;
2 - Found under the blazing sun of the Northern Mississippi cotton fields, it's father, the old African tribal call and response, and it's mother, the Gospel sounds which bellowed from the church choirs;
3 - A lead worker would chant the opening lines, and the chorus of workers would answer, falling into a regular pattern to match the task at hand. This ancient African call and response chant is the core of the Blues, found both in African American church pulpits (an elevated platform or high reading desk used in preaching or conducting a worship service), and antebellum (existing before the Civil War) plantations;
4 - W.C. Handy was the first trained musician to capture the sounds of Blues on paper. In 1909, Handy penned the first written Blues song "Mr. Crump Blues" in the Pee Wee's Saloon on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennesse. . . .
5 - "If you wants to know about the Blues, you got's to go back to the church" -- Muddy Waters --;
6 - "We were always singing in the fields. Not real singing, you know, just hollerin', but we made up our songs about things that was happenin' to us at the time, and I think that's where the Blues started" -- Son House --. . . .'

'Harry's Blues Lyrics Online, blueslyrics.tripod.com, updated December 17, 2000.

'Was it not youth, the feeling he experienced now, when, coming out to the edge of the wood again from the other side, he saw in the bright light of the sun's slanting rays Varenka's graceful figure, in a yellow dress and with her basket, walking with a light step past the trunk of an old birch, and when this impression from the sight of Varenka merged with the sight, which struck him with its beauty, of a yellowing field of oats bathed in the slanting light, and of an old wood far beyond the field, spotted with yellow, melting into the blue distance' His heart was wrung with joy.'

'Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877, translated by Richar Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000.

'Beyond the snow-covered roof he could see an open-work cross with chains and rising above it the triangular constellation of the Charioteer with the bright yellowish Capella. He gazed first at the cross then at the star, breathed in the fresh, frosty air that steadily entered the room, and followed, as in a dream, the images and memories that arose in his imagination.'

'Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877, translated by Richar Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000.

'Most Americans did not have televisions when Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, and those who did watched 7-inch screens in black and white. Interestingly, his book imagined a future of giant color sets ' flat panels that hung on walls like moving paintings. And television was used to broadcast meaningless drivel to divert attention, and thought, away from an impending war.'

'Amy E. Boyle Johnston, Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted, LAweekly.com, May 30, 2007. Ray Bradbury, still brilliant after all these years. Click here for the whole article.

The terror fax.