*My First Photoshow*
The Brew'd Awakening Coffee house (61 Market Street in Lowell) is hosting a small show of my photographs. This is the first time I've had my own show and it's a great place to hang out anyway, so check it out if you're in the area. The pics go up Saturday, April 21 and will be up for two weeks.
<img src="http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d7/dougsparks/flyerreal2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket">
The Brew'd Awakening Coffee house (61 Market Street in Lowell) is hosting a small show of my photographs. This is the first time I've had my own show and it's a great place to hang out anyway, so check it out if you're in the area. The pics go up Saturday, April 21 and will be up for two weeks.
<img src="http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d7/dougsparks/flyerreal2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket">
Lucinda Williams was on Letterman. They never show her up close, because she looks like some 100 year old Aunt. Really beat. Fact remains, she's one of the greats, and even if she's all torn only some sick blackhearted motherfucker would hold it against her. She is one of the greats, plain and simple. "Are you alright?" she sang over and over. It was too good for television -- too real. Uncomfortable. Only her out of focus, faded face made it televisual.
*
During jits, I went into the secret hidden upstairs and lay on my back. My facial tic is exploding and my left eye closes. I have no idea why. I can barely lie on my back, because the muscles spasm. Something is wrong with me. What is that something? Just growing old? Not having a career? Maybe it's coming off a week's sickness. Maybe it's seasonal affective disorder. How the fuck should I know how to live in the world of doubt. All I know is that I can feel the muscles in my back releasing and unreleasing and my eye is closing up even as we speak. There is the part of me that has given up, and the part that perseveres, time after time. I've been writing since before I had pubic hair, since before I had an inkling of a sense of who I was. And yet, here I am.
While rolling, still, perhaps because I'm coming off that bout with a lung infection, I gas quickly. "Maybe you're just bored," the guy I'm rolling with says to me. I lie on my back and think, well, that's the thing. I'm not. I learn something new about jits every day. It's daunting. So much. A world lies ahead.
A week ago, someone gave up while rolling with me. He said he'd have enough rolling with, what he called, the "Zen Mountain." Of course, this is flattering, although I never thought of myself in those terms. It was exactly what I wanted to be, at that moment, but it was only his ignorance that lead him to believe this was anything more than an illusion. I don't even know what a zen mountain is.
*
Flattery. Someone wrote me to express sympathy that I couldn't take pictures without my computer, and the way they said it, it was as though I was a runner with a foot cut off, unable to get out among the trails. I liked that. It confirmed that this was part of me, or some essence, at a time when I'm questioning what that essence is. And of course it bothered me. And of course, taking up the camera again made me feeling somehow whole. But still, it was only her ignorance speaking. It's no more what I am and what I do than anything, perhaps except for this. Not even this. Don't fool me. The essence of all things, to the oldest and wisest and pre-idiotic philosophers was change. I change here and you change here. Let's me lucky if we meet briefly for some french toast at breakfast. It's all we can ask for.
*
I've said it before. The problem with the writing courses at UML is that the profs try to make them too literary, and most of the students don't relate. And it doesn't matter to me, that they can't relate. They shouldn't relate, so it's not just that.
It's something else.
How to explain?
There is this instrument, writing, and you want to introduce it to the tribals, so do you have them read Henry James and spend five years pointing out psychological nuance that most of them will never recognize or even want to recognize? Do you have them read shitty essays and brainwash them into being good liberals? Do you make them doubt God? Do you make them save the seas? So you think back -- what is writing and what is it for and what is good writing and why does it work. Writing as a hammer. Building, destruction, contruction, repair.
In the next major paper, I'm going to have my students explain to me how to survive a zombie infestation. Sounds lax, no? And yet, in this, there is much. Problem solving. Thesis. The sense of a contemporary plague. Values: do we band together or do we fight alone? How do we survive? Objectively, candidly, without reservation, what does it take? And this in the face of the irrational. I'm having them read about the history of the black plague this week, because I'm that kind of guy. Why did Chaucer live in the plague, witness the distinction of, perhaps, a third of all humanity, and not mention it in his writing? Why is Chaucer not the exception? We put the question in forty minutes time. Beneath it all: aesthetics and God. During the plague years, so many gave up their values for fucking in the streets and stealing and backstabbing. How to survive the plague? I hope you see it is no simple question.
*
During jits, I went into the secret hidden upstairs and lay on my back. My facial tic is exploding and my left eye closes. I have no idea why. I can barely lie on my back, because the muscles spasm. Something is wrong with me. What is that something? Just growing old? Not having a career? Maybe it's coming off a week's sickness. Maybe it's seasonal affective disorder. How the fuck should I know how to live in the world of doubt. All I know is that I can feel the muscles in my back releasing and unreleasing and my eye is closing up even as we speak. There is the part of me that has given up, and the part that perseveres, time after time. I've been writing since before I had pubic hair, since before I had an inkling of a sense of who I was. And yet, here I am.
While rolling, still, perhaps because I'm coming off that bout with a lung infection, I gas quickly. "Maybe you're just bored," the guy I'm rolling with says to me. I lie on my back and think, well, that's the thing. I'm not. I learn something new about jits every day. It's daunting. So much. A world lies ahead.
A week ago, someone gave up while rolling with me. He said he'd have enough rolling with, what he called, the "Zen Mountain." Of course, this is flattering, although I never thought of myself in those terms. It was exactly what I wanted to be, at that moment, but it was only his ignorance that lead him to believe this was anything more than an illusion. I don't even know what a zen mountain is.
*
Flattery. Someone wrote me to express sympathy that I couldn't take pictures without my computer, and the way they said it, it was as though I was a runner with a foot cut off, unable to get out among the trails. I liked that. It confirmed that this was part of me, or some essence, at a time when I'm questioning what that essence is. And of course it bothered me. And of course, taking up the camera again made me feeling somehow whole. But still, it was only her ignorance speaking. It's no more what I am and what I do than anything, perhaps except for this. Not even this. Don't fool me. The essence of all things, to the oldest and wisest and pre-idiotic philosophers was change. I change here and you change here. Let's me lucky if we meet briefly for some french toast at breakfast. It's all we can ask for.
*
I've said it before. The problem with the writing courses at UML is that the profs try to make them too literary, and most of the students don't relate. And it doesn't matter to me, that they can't relate. They shouldn't relate, so it's not just that.
It's something else.
How to explain?
There is this instrument, writing, and you want to introduce it to the tribals, so do you have them read Henry James and spend five years pointing out psychological nuance that most of them will never recognize or even want to recognize? Do you have them read shitty essays and brainwash them into being good liberals? Do you make them doubt God? Do you make them save the seas? So you think back -- what is writing and what is it for and what is good writing and why does it work. Writing as a hammer. Building, destruction, contruction, repair.
In the next major paper, I'm going to have my students explain to me how to survive a zombie infestation. Sounds lax, no? And yet, in this, there is much. Problem solving. Thesis. The sense of a contemporary plague. Values: do we band together or do we fight alone? How do we survive? Objectively, candidly, without reservation, what does it take? And this in the face of the irrational. I'm having them read about the history of the black plague this week, because I'm that kind of guy. Why did Chaucer live in the plague, witness the distinction of, perhaps, a third of all humanity, and not mention it in his writing? Why is Chaucer not the exception? We put the question in forty minutes time. Beneath it all: aesthetics and God. During the plague years, so many gave up their values for fucking in the streets and stealing and backstabbing. How to survive the plague? I hope you see it is no simple question.
Anatomy of a Suicide Girls music article.
1. Writer indicates that respected, influential, or innovative musical act is in studio or going on tour.
2. One member posts that they are excited.
3. Another member posts that said band sucks or is over rated.
Repeat forever and ever.
1. Writer indicates that respected, influential, or innovative musical act is in studio or going on tour.
2. One member posts that they are excited.
3. Another member posts that said band sucks or is over rated.
Repeat forever and ever.
Anyone here going to see the Pogues? I only had one other chance to see them, but was dead broke at the time and couldn't swing the hefty ticket price.
I picked up a brace of passes today and just the fees alone from the evil scumlords at Ticketmaster amounted to almost thirty dollars. How on earth can they justify that?
But I have them. In hand. The Pogues. I wouldn't have thought it possible years ago.
After a long period of avoiding new music, I've been on a binge recently and have been soaking up a lot of great new releases. Either there is a new, fresh musical spirit out there now in various forms or I've gotten past my curmudgeonly belief that there is nothing new under the sun. I have even gotten over a long spell of folk organicism and bought some electronic music for the first time -- Hot Chip, Fischerspooner, Ladytron, Boards of Canada -- as well as an array of other stuff, the new Shins, the Good, the Bad, and the Queen, Grizzly Bear, Joanna Newsom, Gnarls Barkley. I finally bought the Wire reissues and shored up the holes in my Roxy Music collection. Nearly everything sounds excellent to me. I can sit and do nothing but listen to music, and that's rare for me because I get antsy sitting around "doing nothing."
I'm still old-fashioned enough to want the actual CD although I immediate download it to the my iPod and put it in the closet. I suppose this is wasteful, but I grew up with vinyl and even the disc is just a pale shadow.
*
The photography continues to develop but at a slower pace. I have two shoots planned for the weekend (not SG or erotic type stuff -- this is for my show of portraits later this spring). I also have an idea for an extended photo project, inspired by the films of Rohmer and Olmi. It is hard to explain, but worth pursuing assuming I can find the right people. I've been lucky in this regard. I sent out a lot of feelers before holiday time and now people are getting over the Christmas time stun and hitting reply. That, and I'd like to think there's some vague sense this is actually worthwhile and going somewhere.
I made some big prints of my photos for the first time -- 13 x 19 glossies. I thought of how the singer/guitarist from the old punk band the Wipers talked about the pleasure of simply cutting the grooves into vinyl, the tactile nature. Having the pics digital is nice, because they are easily conveyed across space, but it still doesn't beat the almost flesh and blood feeling of a mounted print that you can hang or handle, delicately or otherwise.
I picked up a brace of passes today and just the fees alone from the evil scumlords at Ticketmaster amounted to almost thirty dollars. How on earth can they justify that?
But I have them. In hand. The Pogues. I wouldn't have thought it possible years ago.
After a long period of avoiding new music, I've been on a binge recently and have been soaking up a lot of great new releases. Either there is a new, fresh musical spirit out there now in various forms or I've gotten past my curmudgeonly belief that there is nothing new under the sun. I have even gotten over a long spell of folk organicism and bought some electronic music for the first time -- Hot Chip, Fischerspooner, Ladytron, Boards of Canada -- as well as an array of other stuff, the new Shins, the Good, the Bad, and the Queen, Grizzly Bear, Joanna Newsom, Gnarls Barkley. I finally bought the Wire reissues and shored up the holes in my Roxy Music collection. Nearly everything sounds excellent to me. I can sit and do nothing but listen to music, and that's rare for me because I get antsy sitting around "doing nothing."
I'm still old-fashioned enough to want the actual CD although I immediate download it to the my iPod and put it in the closet. I suppose this is wasteful, but I grew up with vinyl and even the disc is just a pale shadow.
*
The photography continues to develop but at a slower pace. I have two shoots planned for the weekend (not SG or erotic type stuff -- this is for my show of portraits later this spring). I also have an idea for an extended photo project, inspired by the films of Rohmer and Olmi. It is hard to explain, but worth pursuing assuming I can find the right people. I've been lucky in this regard. I sent out a lot of feelers before holiday time and now people are getting over the Christmas time stun and hitting reply. That, and I'd like to think there's some vague sense this is actually worthwhile and going somewhere.
I made some big prints of my photos for the first time -- 13 x 19 glossies. I thought of how the singer/guitarist from the old punk band the Wipers talked about the pleasure of simply cutting the grooves into vinyl, the tactile nature. Having the pics digital is nice, because they are easily conveyed across space, but it still doesn't beat the almost flesh and blood feeling of a mounted print that you can hang or handle, delicately or otherwise.
I got some weird infection in my foot, either from doing bjj or by accident, and I've been lying in bed for a few days. I had to cancel a big photo shoot this weekend.
I put up some really nasty pics at http://monkeythewanderer.blogspot,.com.
The nurse insisted that it was a spider bite!
I put up some really nasty pics at http://monkeythewanderer.blogspot,.com.
The nurse insisted that it was a spider bite!
