Call me Productive
Jun. 2nd, 2002 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonark"Oh, to capture just one drop of all the ecstasy that swept that afternoon
To paint that love upon a white balloon
And fly it from the toppest top of all the tops
That man has pushed beyond his brain
Satori must be something just the same"
--David Bowie, from "Memory of a Free Festival"
Man, I never knew I was such a hippie. I shoulda used Joy Division for the poll, or maybe Pink Floyd or Rickie Lee Jones. I wish more people knew Be Bop Deluxe.
Of course, my "David Bowie" and "sixties megaband" polls work with lots of different bands and songs. The important thing to me about both polls is "no judgment". More dada, please. Or maybe not--today I realized I'm essentially a Trollope man living in a Dada era.
I'm a very judgmental person--occupational hazard--but which song or which group one should like is a pretty individual choice. Besides, how would one judge? If I'd put in a poll for "which Rickie Lee Jones song are you?", then someone might well answer "Chuck E.'s in Love" when the *real* answer was "Last Chance Texaco". Besides, am I the only one who felt like my college Marvin Gaye song was "What' Goin' On", while all the other kids were getting down to "Sexual Healing"?.
Who can know from these little internet journal things what really matters and who we really are? "Which one's Pink?", indeed. I say, less judgment, more savoring journals. Please don't make me read the ones about violent fantasy or the rock band GWAR, though, or else I'll have to quote "Song of Myself" ('am I inconsistent?') to defend myself.
This weekend I've been at the top of my game. We got to Home Depot
and bought the new cordless weedeater (weedeater--yet another invention for which the world must Thank Arkansas) to replace the one that spontaneously disintegrated in my wife's hands recently; reading LJ taught me to get the quiet battery powered one. We got the table upstairs in "my hobby room" put together, although in fairness I should say that my role was purely helper. I got to my office and hung those many picture frames I'd been needing to hang. My wife and I saw Spiderman together--isn't it great when the leading male and female actors actually have chemistry?
I would have died in college for an upside down kiss. In real life, when I *was* in college, though, my personal equivalent of Kirsten Dunst told me she preferred irresponsible, difficult men to me. Who could blame her? Isn't that what college was for?
I am not really one of those people who talks about Things, by the way, at least in a non-satiric way, but our house guests gave me a PRESENT I must mention here. A 9.2 grade certified edition of "Peter Parker--the Spectacular Spider Man", Issue number 1. I would have been proud of that gift at ANY time, but this month it makes me trendy for at least 15 minutes. Call me, and we'll do lunch. What a nice gift.
I picked up things for some gift boxes I will send next week.
I wonder if there's a gender difference in such matters, as boxes of "cool stuff" for men are much easier for me to assemble.
I got my e bay book mailed out, and put another up on auction.
I received and tested the first electric football field. I'm completely excited about the ambient music project, and extend apologies in advance to those of you who will receive "mail art CDs" of the resulting noise (if you want one, btw, let me know...it'll be a few months off). I used the new weed eater to trim the Bermuda grass off the sidewalk, which might help us avoid raising the ire of the various kind people who live around us and keep immaculate yards. I helped my wife compost the little rivulet of a front garden. I soon will go to the chain haircut place with the alliterative name and get a solid cut, followed by grass mowing.
I took a solid two hour hike at Trinity Trails, throwaway Kodak in hand. Trinity Trails is the local horse/hike trail near Lake Lavon, some 20 minutes from my home. I hadn't been there since some weeks ago, when I went there to shoot pictures for a scrapbook that I sent tolaruth. The place had changed from "end of the winter" to "end of the Spring". A few months ago, the sight of a huge Giant Swallowtail was a world-beating event in and of itself. This morning I saw six of them, each regal, each amazing, lepid zeppelins. My camera and my penmanship fail me, or I would share them with you. Throwaways only work at distances too great for really effective butterfly work. Numerous horses and riders passed me by, all extremely courteous. One taught me to talk to the horses, to calm them during the passage by me. Cardinals and mockingbirds and huge crows and cardinals and grackles flew and sang everywhere.
When I hike, I have that ingrained "grew up in the river bottoms"
way of walking which is mostly about looking for poisonous snakes. This part of north Texas has fewer water moccasins, copperheads and rattlers than my Arkansas youth, but the close watch gives me great perspective when viewing bugs and flowers. Today I saw the grass rustle, just like that poem that I think is an ee cummings poem (or is it A.E. Housman? rather big difference, that, and I have no idea), but instead of it being a snake, it was dozens of tiny grasshoppers jumping in the tall grass to escape my coming. Soon I saw similar hordes of tiny fleeing hoppers everywhere that I went.
Flowers! What flowers! The violettas and little weedflowers of March have given way to heat-loving black eyed susans, a wonderful red flower, and the purplest phase of thistle. Something that looks like wild ranunculus, but can't be, was blooming everywhere on huge bushes. Flowers of white and yellow and pink and blue beyond my powers of description sprung up from tall field grass and thick scraggle forest.
A monarch butterfly landed just in front of me, then rose and flew a circle around me as if he meant to do so. A question mark
butterfly poised on a weed, while another butterfly, all orange,
sunned herself on the trail. A grasshopper poised in the center of a flower, as if mistaking his life's vocation for a bee
(and how many of us are grasshoppers trying to be bees? hmmm?).
I snapped photos of the lake, of the plain, of the trees, of the creeks. I will affix these cards to corrugated plastic (corruplast) cards and mail them to people who do not have the blessing of June in flat, scraggly, wonderful north Texas.
I began another mail art project which is entirely fun. It is
a curious mail art construction, with one intended recipient. It's in medias res, so I will just mention that it is fun to "see" something and then just do it. I worked at breakneck speed, and think the final result will be entirely fun.
I mailed out the first of the two nervousness exchanges I signed up for, but need to do the second. For the first, I sent out a green corruplast card decorated with beautiful snaps I took. The second is to put a poem in a blank notebook and mail it to TN, which is within my limited skill set.
I won the coolest stuff on ebay, but it's a secret, because it's needed for yet another mail art deal. I just love to bid low and win. It's better than Vegas. I'll have to mail out a money order for a sum which is essentially peanuts on tomorrow.
A postcardx card came back to me, address wrong. It goes into my
box of "misfit toys", cards too late for mail art calls and misaddressed cards. Someday, I'll send all these misfit toys to someone, but somebody has got to be really open minded to get
Gurdonark rejects, because it can't get much less prime than a Gurdonark art reject.
Now if only I could do myself an Artist Trading Card. "Hi, I'm Gurdonark, my last batting average (in Little League) was .400, and I'm into absract expressionist throwaway camera photography, because I don't know how to point and shoot realistically".
But that would require reading, and possibly even craftsmanship.
I was thinking about how when I take LJ polls, no matter whether they are "which Barbie are you?" or "which Wynonna are you?" or "which WWF wrestler are you?", the answer always comes up "Bjork". Then I thought wouldn't it be cool if I could have an Icelandic name like Bjork Gudmundsendottir (or whatever) has.
Then I could be Robert Robertson, i.e., Robbie Robertson, and
Martin Scorsese would make a film about me and Neil Young would sing at my final concert.....
To paint that love upon a white balloon
And fly it from the toppest top of all the tops
That man has pushed beyond his brain
Satori must be something just the same"
--David Bowie, from "Memory of a Free Festival"
Man, I never knew I was such a hippie. I shoulda used Joy Division for the poll, or maybe Pink Floyd or Rickie Lee Jones. I wish more people knew Be Bop Deluxe.
Of course, my "David Bowie" and "sixties megaband" polls work with lots of different bands and songs. The important thing to me about both polls is "no judgment". More dada, please. Or maybe not--today I realized I'm essentially a Trollope man living in a Dada era.
I'm a very judgmental person--occupational hazard--but which song or which group one should like is a pretty individual choice. Besides, how would one judge? If I'd put in a poll for "which Rickie Lee Jones song are you?", then someone might well answer "Chuck E.'s in Love" when the *real* answer was "Last Chance Texaco". Besides, am I the only one who felt like my college Marvin Gaye song was "What' Goin' On", while all the other kids were getting down to "Sexual Healing"?.
Who can know from these little internet journal things what really matters and who we really are? "Which one's Pink?", indeed. I say, less judgment, more savoring journals. Please don't make me read the ones about violent fantasy or the rock band GWAR, though, or else I'll have to quote "Song of Myself" ('am I inconsistent?') to defend myself.
This weekend I've been at the top of my game. We got to Home Depot
and bought the new cordless weedeater (weedeater--yet another invention for which the world must Thank Arkansas) to replace the one that spontaneously disintegrated in my wife's hands recently; reading LJ taught me to get the quiet battery powered one. We got the table upstairs in "my hobby room" put together, although in fairness I should say that my role was purely helper. I got to my office and hung those many picture frames I'd been needing to hang. My wife and I saw Spiderman together--isn't it great when the leading male and female actors actually have chemistry?
I would have died in college for an upside down kiss. In real life, when I *was* in college, though, my personal equivalent of Kirsten Dunst told me she preferred irresponsible, difficult men to me. Who could blame her? Isn't that what college was for?
I am not really one of those people who talks about Things, by the way, at least in a non-satiric way, but our house guests gave me a PRESENT I must mention here. A 9.2 grade certified edition of "Peter Parker--the Spectacular Spider Man", Issue number 1. I would have been proud of that gift at ANY time, but this month it makes me trendy for at least 15 minutes. Call me, and we'll do lunch. What a nice gift.
I picked up things for some gift boxes I will send next week.
I wonder if there's a gender difference in such matters, as boxes of "cool stuff" for men are much easier for me to assemble.
I got my e bay book mailed out, and put another up on auction.
I received and tested the first electric football field. I'm completely excited about the ambient music project, and extend apologies in advance to those of you who will receive "mail art CDs" of the resulting noise (if you want one, btw, let me know...it'll be a few months off). I used the new weed eater to trim the Bermuda grass off the sidewalk, which might help us avoid raising the ire of the various kind people who live around us and keep immaculate yards. I helped my wife compost the little rivulet of a front garden. I soon will go to the chain haircut place with the alliterative name and get a solid cut, followed by grass mowing.
I took a solid two hour hike at Trinity Trails, throwaway Kodak in hand. Trinity Trails is the local horse/hike trail near Lake Lavon, some 20 minutes from my home. I hadn't been there since some weeks ago, when I went there to shoot pictures for a scrapbook that I sent to
laruth. The place had changed from "end of the winter" to "end of the Spring". A few months ago, the sight of a huge Giant Swallowtail was a world-beating event in and of itself. This morning I saw six of them, each regal, each amazing, lepid zeppelins. My camera and my penmanship fail me, or I would share them with you. Throwaways only work at distances too great for really effective butterfly work. Numerous horses and riders passed me by, all extremely courteous. One taught me to talk to the horses, to calm them during the passage by me. Cardinals and mockingbirds and huge crows and cardinals and grackles flew and sang everywhere.When I hike, I have that ingrained "grew up in the river bottoms"
way of walking which is mostly about looking for poisonous snakes. This part of north Texas has fewer water moccasins, copperheads and rattlers than my Arkansas youth, but the close watch gives me great perspective when viewing bugs and flowers. Today I saw the grass rustle, just like that poem that I think is an ee cummings poem (or is it A.E. Housman? rather big difference, that, and I have no idea), but instead of it being a snake, it was dozens of tiny grasshoppers jumping in the tall grass to escape my coming. Soon I saw similar hordes of tiny fleeing hoppers everywhere that I went.
Flowers! What flowers! The violettas and little weedflowers of March have given way to heat-loving black eyed susans, a wonderful red flower, and the purplest phase of thistle. Something that looks like wild ranunculus, but can't be, was blooming everywhere on huge bushes. Flowers of white and yellow and pink and blue beyond my powers of description sprung up from tall field grass and thick scraggle forest.
A monarch butterfly landed just in front of me, then rose and flew a circle around me as if he meant to do so. A question mark
butterfly poised on a weed, while another butterfly, all orange,
sunned herself on the trail. A grasshopper poised in the center of a flower, as if mistaking his life's vocation for a bee
(and how many of us are grasshoppers trying to be bees? hmmm?).
I snapped photos of the lake, of the plain, of the trees, of the creeks. I will affix these cards to corrugated plastic (corruplast) cards and mail them to people who do not have the blessing of June in flat, scraggly, wonderful north Texas.
I began another mail art project which is entirely fun. It is
a curious mail art construction, with one intended recipient. It's in medias res, so I will just mention that it is fun to "see" something and then just do it. I worked at breakneck speed, and think the final result will be entirely fun.
I mailed out the first of the two nervousness exchanges I signed up for, but need to do the second. For the first, I sent out a green corruplast card decorated with beautiful snaps I took. The second is to put a poem in a blank notebook and mail it to TN, which is within my limited skill set.
I won the coolest stuff on ebay, but it's a secret, because it's needed for yet another mail art deal. I just love to bid low and win. It's better than Vegas. I'll have to mail out a money order for a sum which is essentially peanuts on tomorrow.
A postcardx card came back to me, address wrong. It goes into my
box of "misfit toys", cards too late for mail art calls and misaddressed cards. Someday, I'll send all these misfit toys to someone, but somebody has got to be really open minded to get
Gurdonark rejects, because it can't get much less prime than a Gurdonark art reject.
Now if only I could do myself an Artist Trading Card. "Hi, I'm Gurdonark, my last batting average (in Little League) was .400, and I'm into absract expressionist throwaway camera photography, because I don't know how to point and shoot realistically".
But that would require reading, and possibly even craftsmanship.
I was thinking about how when I take LJ polls, no matter whether they are "which Barbie are you?" or "which Wynonna are you?" or "which WWF wrestler are you?", the answer always comes up "Bjork". Then I thought wouldn't it be cool if I could have an Icelandic name like Bjork Gudmundsendottir (or whatever) has.
Then I could be Robert Robertson, i.e., Robbie Robertson, and
Martin Scorsese would make a film about me and Neil Young would sing at my final concert.....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-06-02 01:44 pm (UTC)Funny Jon and I were just having a discussion yesterday about Ricki Lee Jones. Wasn't she married to Tom Waites? well, evidently he isn't married to her now because he was on *Fresh Air* yesterday talking about his wife--and it wasn't Ricki Lee Jones.
I was saying I've always thought Ricki Lee Jones was a BFP (Big Fat Phoney)-- a poseur who probably has a Betty Boop voice in real life but hacks up some phlegm and sings REAL LOWWWWWWW--- ---LIKE--- THAT, and cocks that beret over one eye and tries to make everyone think she's SO COOL! Man she is SO PHONEY!! and what ever happened to her anyway-- if she was such a true artist, what ever happened to her? BLECCCHHHH I never liked Ricki Lee Jones-- even her NAME is phoney-- her real name was probably Linda Lou Lavery, or something dumb like that. Jon disagreed though. He'd bought her first album and thought it was good.
Yeah yeah yeah... so you say!
Rickie Lee Jones
singer-songwriters. Like Tom Waits, who is a big influence, and Laura Nyro, she seemed to be attracted to ordinary blue collar folks and outsiders in her lyrics, but she's much more like failed vaudeville or failed torch or low rent nightclub than "authenticity'. I like her a lot. Her "jazziness" is not Mingus, but
old fashioned roadshow stuff. Her first three albums are simply great. But she's not to everyone's taste.
Re: Rickie Lee Jones
Date: 2002-06-02 01:57 pm (UTC)Re: Rickie Lee Jones
Date: 2002-06-02 02:06 pm (UTC)Reinvention is a GOOD thing! :)
no subject
Date: 2002-06-04 08:58 am (UTC)i am also collecting Spiderman, the movie, trading cards. there are some fabulous transparent pieces and will look for them at comicon possibly
i am envious of your gift and your friends who thought to give it to you and not ashamed to say it.
i collect odd and interesting toys more than comic books so two new Spider man editions were most welcome
your poll:
Beatles, Kinks, Stones, Who
but really i grew up on Janis, Joni, CSNY, Small Faces and the Beatles
your hippiest friend, lynn
turn and face the strange with my Spidey sense
Date: 2002-06-04 09:20 am (UTC)I love the gift, too. I'm trying to remember what the name is for the type of frame in which you can open a little door and put a book inside. I know there's a name, but I can't remember what it is.
You are much more hippy than I am. I grew up on the 70s bands, Sparks and Grand Funk Railroad and Bowie and Black Oak Arkansas and Be Bop Deluxe and basically any art rock or prog rock band that wore a tuxedo or sang about elves.
I remember Rickie Lee Jones came out just before I started college. The campus radio station must have worn out the grooves on "Junior's All Star Joint".
My Aim is True was also played, and I still sing "Alison" in the shower, at karaoke events, etc.
My freshman year of college was much about Before and After Science, Live! in the Air Age!, and
in the summer after, U2's Boy. I still consider Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, a few years later,
a real high point for me. So I guess I'm from that time when art became punk, but I like all sorts of things....
My favorite Joni Mitchell? "Ladies of the Canyon".
Yours in eclectic weirdness....
Re: turn and face the strange with my Spidey sense
Date: 2002-06-04 09:29 am (UTC)and yes, send me spidey things, please do
dollar stores are almost as cool as ebay
watch your mailbox ;)
ATC's
Date: 2002-06-04 09:35 am (UTC)it is a very sound community with some great folks and the cards traded are excellent!
there's a new swap to be completed by the end of this month "Self-Portrait" and i have seen some marvelous work, still dreaming up mine...