micro
ashes and words
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
On Invisibility
“Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value.”
“An impression—city in peril—dead city—equestrian statue—men in closed room—clattering of hooves heard from outside—marvel disclosed on looking out—doubtful ending”
- Demophon shivered when the sun shone upon him. (Lover of darkness = ignorance.)
- Inhabitants of Zinge, over whom the star Canopus rises every night, are always gay and without sorrow. [x]
- The shores of Attica respond in song to the waves of the Aegean. [x]
- Horror Story
Man dreams of falling—found on floor mangled as tho’ from falling from a vast height. [x]- Narrator walks along unfamiliar country road,—comes to strange region of the unreal.
- In Ld Dunsany’s “Idle Days on the Yann”
The inhabitants of the antient Astahan, on the Yann, do all things according to antient ceremony. Nothing new is found.- “Here we have fetter’d and manacled Time, who wou’d otherwise slay the Gods.” [x] Horror Story
The sculptured hand—or other artificial hand—which strangles its creator. [x]- Hor. Sto.
Man makes appt. with old enemy. Dies—body keeps appt.- Dr. Eben Spencer plot. [x]
- Dream of flying over city. [Celephaïs]
“And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.”
(mildly NSFW)
“Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.”
Stan Brakhage – Comingled Containers (1996)
“Comingled Containers is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage. “This ‘return to photography’ (after several years of only painting film) was made on the eve of cancer surgery – a kind of ‘last testament,’ if you will… an envisionment of the fleeting complexity of worldly phenomenon.””
“Commingled Containers is often interpreted in light of Brakhage’s health problems at the time, and is considered to represent the director’s own spiritual quest. Scott MacDonald describes the film as “a talisman that expresses Brakhage’s determination to continue his spiritual quest and to offer viewers something of Light, despite his fear of mortality, for as long as it was given to him to remain in the flow of life.” R. Bruce Elder wrote that Commingled Containers, unlike most of Brakhage’s work, “remains a nearly organic (or biomorphic) abstraction across its entire length.””
“In din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place”
“A poem is an act of memory, first forged out of the need to remember what would otherwise be forgotten – in an oral tradition record-keeping is an art, not an act of administration.”
“we forget or tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense”
“Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There’s no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance … not that I’m interested in reassuring people – bugger that.”
Swinging the Lambeth Walk
An Ingenious Abstract Colour Film Interpreting a Famous Dance Tune on the Screen in the Form of Moving Patterns
‘In this film coloured designs convey in simple visual form the rhythm of “The Lambeth Walk.” Patterns move and mingle in time to the music. The sounds of the various musical instruments are interpreted in as simple and direct way as possible, and each note was studied for its individual characteristics before it was drawn and coloured. Double-bass notes are conceived as thick cords of colour vibrating vertically on the screen, while the notes of the guitar are shown as separate horizontal lines. The different sound qualities are indicated by the extent of vibration, and the pitch of the notes by their position high or low on the screen.
The music is composed of excerpts from recordings by popular dance bands. Len Lye, a New Zealander, who developed this original film technique, chose the excerpts for their orchestration of the original tune, and aimed at capturing the emotional spontaneity of good jazz, rather than at creating an intellectual exercise in visual accompaniment.’
(Films of Britain – British Council Film Department Catalogue – 1940)
A memo from the 1945 British Council Film Department lists the reasons for films being withdrawn from circulation. It states that “Swinging the Lambeth Walk, a colour cartoon film made by Len Lye, is a failure in that no theatrical manager will show it. A sneak preview of this film was given at the Cosmo Cinema, Glasgow, but the audience howled it off the screen and the manager had to take it off before the reel finished.”
Paul Greer 