Poem-A-Day #237 : The Library

The Library

Broken
the spell of Hill House
somehow
come inside

Dance
of the iron railing
the rotting of wood
in the veins

The broken
once there is
so hard to puzzle
together

Poem-A-Day #30 : Glow

Glow

I sit in the light of a thousand LED lights - it's comforting - they last thousands of hours - that something will last longer than the cells in my face

It's like the lighting in Barry Lyndon - flickering bonfire on the skin
Let's put on our topcoats and dance the volta - let's dance the volta like it's the Restoration and our hair is piled in powder and curls with a model sailing ship on top

A brown swirl of water comes up over the bank of sand - it foams like sewage - the sound of it absorbing is the sound a tree pressing its roots into earth

What is this circle of lights here for - it's in the trees of this forest - fireflies can't hold a - they dance in the wind that whips itself the wires are barbed cat-o-nine tails are lashing the molecules of oxygen are burning them and scattering them

It's difficult to understand - it's a stone rolling itself down a hill and breaking the surface of an ice cold lake

Source: Paper Lantern Store

Dust Jacket : Women With Men

Women With Men (1997)
Designed by: Carol Devine
Photo by: Ernst Haas

The cliche of photos telling a thousand words is easy to roll your eyes at. A moment frozen in time is ripe for the projection of the viewer.

This photo by Ernst Haas is no different. And also is an example of the cliche being proven true.

Look at the face of the woman. Really look at her expression. The man is kissing her cheek? Whispering in her ear? She grasps his jacket tightly. Behind them is a train. Which explains everything and nothing. Is she leaving him? Him leaving her?

The simple title and author treatments put center focus on the image. This is a book about relationships. Complicated relationships. Ones that may need more than a thousand words to explain.

Haas' photos are strange. There is always a mystery. His most well-known works are purposefully left out of focus and blurry. He used dye-transfer to create saturated colors and enhance the moods. He was all about the question behind the image. About that story that isn't being told. If a picture says a thousand words, his speak only riddles. Beautiful riddles.

On the set of The Misfits 1960.

Within 12 years of becoming a photographer, Haas had a solo show at MoMA. In 1964 he created the opening sequence for John Huston's epic film The Bible. He also worked on the sets of The Misfits, Hello Dolly!, Little Big Man, and Heaven's Gate.

I love photography on book jackets. There is something visceral about a photo. Great paintings or text or illustrations are fine, beautiful even, but a photo gives you real people to deal with. Emotionally. Those people exist. You must deal with them in relation to the book in your hands. That woman and man in a train station felt things. And now I am looking at them.

Photography implicates us in our viewership. It points a finger back at us and says, You are witness to this. The Haas photo on Ford's book reminds me of the cover of Antony and the Johnsons' album The Crying Light:

The photo is of Kazuo Ohno in mid-dance. Ohno was a seminal modern dance artist in post-WWII Japan. He is most well-known for his butoh choreography. Butoh is a dance form that rose in the 50s to  deal with taboo or grotesque subject matter. You can see it as a reaction to the devastation of war, to cultural upheaval, to life itself.

They are actions that say a thousand words. Actions that the viewer must fill in. With emotion, with themselves.

Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.

Pavlova

Pavlova 8/23

Ballerina are you a dessert ?

A tutu shaped trifle - rainless cloud

Taffeta darling

The Dying Swan
On a table
To be cut into

Ballerina are you a meal for the hungry ?

On your toes - dance for us

Darling taffeta light and airy

On one knee wings trembling
Breaking light on horizon
The edge of the stage

The end of the world
Glowing embers of the sun

Pilot Hole

Pilot Hole 5/17

Hanging paintings you make a hole and blow away the dust there is light through the wall and you look into it and on the other side is a woman in a dress spinning slowly to an old recording of big band music she notices your eye and smiles the lights go out and then there is nothing but a space to hang a screw and then a painting

Pink

As cheesy as something like this



is, I can't help but smile a bit.

Modulation, dance dance dance

On Thursday I went to BAM to see Decreation by William Forsythe. From BAM's website :

"a work that challenges our notions of dance in the 21st century and asserts his place as one of the world's most innovative choreographers. A piece on love, jealousy, and the soul, Decreation explores the forces that shape and rend our relationships—with one another and ourselves."

The show was all kinds of amazing. It's hard to explain in words. Which is equally amazing. The work is based on the essay "Decreation" by Anne Carson (my favorite living writer). The essay is about a trio of women dissecting God, love, jelousey, heartache, etc. The dance is definitely about these same things, BUT it holds to a fairly straight-forward narrative of two characters int he midst of a breakup/breakdown.

The show's use of language and space definitely recalls the forms of Carson. The dancers moved about on stage in broken thought patterns, they swapped rolls, they suddenly yelled. They had mics. The room would vibrate from the noise one moment, then go deathly quiet for huge periods of time. The entire cast froze silently for what felt like eternity.

It was all over the place, a storm, but a perfect one.

65min, no intermission
Tickets: $20, 35, 50, 70

Go. Now.

Modulation (10/10)

I hear that you are telling me this -
See that park over there - the one with the yellow bars and the fence
I know a man who was beaten in that park -

I hear that you are telling me this -
Have you seen the blood - it was a clear day really shockingly beautiful
He was wearing a blue sweater -

I hear that you are telling me this -
Move - sit on the swings with me and let's never talk about it again
Hold my hand and swing -