Hourly Comics Day

February 2, 2009May 21, 2018 | Paul Greer

First thing next morning looking over it, it didn’t turn out as I expected, I meant to do it all myself, but chores and parental stuff took over, and once the children had seen what i was doing they all wanted to do it themselves.

So the experience has been great for three reasons:

1). Introducing me to the idea of diary comicing again. something I’d like to keep trying, because I do believe it helps fluency.

2). My wife really got into drawing her bit, and was inspired to do the “butterfly parade” page at the end there. That made her very happy.

3). Introducing my children to the idea of drawing comics. They’ve seen me sitting about drawing in little books, but was great to invite them in and then see them taking part.

My Eldest was so inspired, she ended up continutng her own spin-off-cross-over piece I’ll attach below.

So we all had a full day and a great time doing the comic, hopefully I’ll be on board next year.

cheers then

You can see our comic here.

Stan Brakhage – Water for Maya (2000)

Video | January 30, 2009December 27, 2025 | Paul Greer

Water for Maya is a hand-painted work which came into being during a film interview with Martina Kudlacek about Maya Deren. There was a sudden recognition of Maya’s intrinsic love of water and thus of all Mayan liquidity in magic conjunction, reflection, etc.

see also: Comingled Containers and Mothlight

“On Photography”

Quote | January 23, 2009September 12, 2018 | Paul Greer

“It is a nostalgic time right now and photographs actively promote nostalgia. Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. An ugly or grotesque subject may be moving because it has been dignified by the attention of the photographer. A beautiful subject can be the object of rueful feelings, because it has aged or decayed or no longer exists. All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”

— Susan Sontag

via

ashes and words

Quote | May 9, 2008May 21, 2018 | Paul Greer

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

Leonard Cohen

Stan Brakhage – Comingled Containers (1996)

Video | April 4, 2008December 27, 2025 | Paul Greer

“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”

Quote | March 19, 2008June 19, 2018 | Paul Greer

“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.”

– Jeanette Winterson on Ted Hughes