Profound Whatever

Burned all my notebooks--

What good are notebooks?

They won't help me survive

I've been on a bit of a Life During Wartime hiatus, but I'm getting used to "the sound of gunfire off in the distance," so I'm back.

I sat down after a good dinner and a glass of wine and gave the internet a gentle poke. It promptly proffered up this well-executed clip.

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview. This was in the midst of Lennon's "bed-in" phase, during which John and Yoko were staying in hotel beds in an effort to promote peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries traditional pen sketches by James Braithwaite with digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.

Nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Short, I Met the Walrus is a visually compelling accompaniment to John Lennon's words. Like a good accompanist, the film adds to the meaning of the audio, fleshing out and improvising on the dialogue. I particularly enjoy the seamless interweaving of artistic styles and modes of graphic representation in the film.

I do wish, however, that the sound quality of the audio had been improved slightly. Due to the crude recording, I occasionally had difficulty following the dialogue. While I can appreciate the authenticity provided by using the original, I thought it detracted more than it added.*

Unsurprisingly, I Met the Walrus has a well-designed website, which is worth checking out-- if only for the smooth animation.

So thanks for stopping by and apologies for my disappearance.

My chest is aching, burns like a furnace
the burning keeps me alive

*Of course, this may not be an issue in a proper movie theater

Lyrics from Life During Wartime by the Talking Heads. Film blurb from www.IMettheWalrus.com

Quotidian Abstract

Photo Michael McDevitt

Nothing ever went quite exactly as we planned...

Was it ever worth it? Was there all that much to gain?
We knew we'd miss the boat and we'd already missed the plane.

Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault.  Lyrics from Modest Mouse Missed the Boat.

Invisible Mobile

Personally this song makes me remember staring down into the murky water of the Hudson River, but I enjoy this video well enough. I think it's a fan video and not from THT, but I'm not sure. At the very least, just listen to the exquisite music.



I do wish that the end was not simply the beginning in reverse, but I'll give the director the benefit of the doubt and accept that as a conceptual choice.

Steampunk Robotech

A Gentleman's Duel

by Blur Studios

If I have ever heard Gospel

it sounds like this...

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

-ee cummings

 ...and looks a lot like this...

Kohler’s Pig by Michael Sowa via this blog.

Wonderful.

This site displays a sun and cloud map of the Earth, which includes city lights. I'm not sure how often it refreshes, but I love it. Check it out.

Thanks to Thisbe for the link.

Ethological Miscellany

Walton Ford
"Loss of the Lisbon Rhinoceros"
2008
Watercolor and Gouache on paper
95 1/2 x 39 3/4 inches

- This past year, more reports of young bull elephants attacking rhinoceroses and turning on members of their own clans appeared in international papers and journals. Biologists believe that this rise in unprovoked violence is the result of prematurely elevated testosterone levels in the elephants. Because older bulls are not present in many elephant herds, the social hierarchy necessitates that younger males fill the role many years before they would normally be expected to do so. As they assume the mantle of seniority, they experience chemical changes, including a marked increase in the production of testosterone. The absence of older bulls is attributed to federal culling programs. These well-intentioned programs were instituted to reduce the stress of overcrowding within African elephant (Loxondonta africana) populations, but because the professional hunters usually kill the larger, older animals, they have unintentionally upset the social dynamic.

- In July 2008, a 61-year-old White Plains, New York, resident was found deceased after she consumed wild mushrooms that she had picked alongside a nearby highway. The mushrooms she unwittingly ate are called "death angels" (Amanita sp.).

- In May 2008, biologists reported that wild three-toed sloths sleep 9 1/2 hours a day, whereas their captive counterparts sleep an average of 16 hours a day.

- I recently learned of a Jamaican man who, highly regarded as an artist in his home country, decided to move to the United States in the 1970s. He settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he would live for many years. Yet, for some unknown reason, the man was no longer compelled to make art. Although he continues to reside in Baltimore, he only paints when he returns to Jamaica to visit family and friends.

- Biologists report that epaulette sharks (Hemiscyllium ocellatum) living in and around Australia's Great Barrier Reef shut down most of their nervous system and go blind when their environment becomes starved of oxygen. Because the sharks live on shallow parts of the reef, at low tide they can become isolated in large tidal pools, temporarily cut off from the ocean. These tidal pools commonly are hypoxic (having very low oxygen levels). To prevent suffocation, the sharks' electrical activity ceases. Because electricity consumes fifty percent of nervous system energy consumption, shutting down the nervous system allows the animal to survive.

Finally...

Mason Jennings (Featuring Zach Gill) - Don't Touch My Stuff - Live in Studio C from Eric deNeui on Vimeo.

...a song by someone who understands.

Perhaps we really are that small...

Winter. from Passenger Productions on Vimeo.

...Just little model people in tiny model towns.