Pictures from my show last saturday here in Prague

I showed a bunch of pictures and writing last saturday here in Prague. man was I nervous I wanted to bail. but it was a good experience. I wanna describe the whole thing and show some pictures for anyone who may have wanted to see but couldn't be there.

Ok so basically the whole thing was to show some writing in a way other than by putting it up on this blog or in e-books. I wanted/want to do something with writing that makes it more tangible. So I worked on some pieces of writing about different things and wrote them on large boards and put the boards on easels to show that way.

Right off the bat, saturday was sort of a mess. wind was blowing knocking stuff over. Two of the boards were thin so the wind got caught behind them and blew them over. marshall was terrified, tail between his legs the whole time. So I had to lay two of the pieces on the ground rather than pick them up every five minutes. I could only really keep two of the easels upright. I had a chair there with a few copies of info about where the paintings and stuff came from and saying welcome. I wanted to have something saying welcome. I never understood why painters never write anything in their own voice to the people who come. At least where you're from, what you're doing, maybe some background. It took me more than a minute to throw that info together, so why not show that here...

It's funny. Writing about it now feels like I'm walking through pointing out the things I want you to see. It's completely different than if you were just looking at the pictures on their own on saturday, but whatever. maybe this is actually better. It's way more comfortable doing this than standing out there was. for sure. I don't know about the name materurbium. I haven't tried searching my name, but I don't think you reach the blog. If you search materurbium you end up here though.

Here are some of the pictures from the event.

This one is about Karel Rachunek, a Czech hockey player who died last November in a horrible plane crash. It's a tribute sort of. A few people asked about this picture. They were Czech and they recognized the name. That was cool. This picture is tactile, so you can touch the letters (which I hoped people would do). The style of putting something together that's tactile with writing I think comes from when I had a poetry teacher in college who told us if you write about something, describe as many of the sensations as you can. I don't remember her name but I remember getting sort of stuck on that idea. When I go see art somewhere I'm never sure if I'm allowed to reach out and touch the stuff I see. Anyway the text of this one goes like this "Rachunek thank you for scoring that goal against Sweden in 2010 with 8 seconds to go. We were watching on the big screen at Spirit Bar. Everybody went nuts. You're gone now. You were killed in a plane crash. But that goal that night...". And there's a sort of faded "I want to remember that night forever. Goodbye." towards the bottom if you look closely.

Another...

This one really has two parts. Straight up and down there's writing on the top and a picture on the bottom. The writing goes like this "Ovid said only god is form. There are no 3 clues. God is simple white patch in front of numbers before + after. So there's no symbol of age." The picture on the bottom doesn't look like much of a picture like this, but it is. It's just meant to be seen on its side, this way...

It's a picture of a person to the right in front of a desk in a room with a giant window in it. The desk has writing on it that says "hearing god is from form too". The writing about Ovid is inspired by this Ovid quote I read in Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Next picture.

The text of this one is a bit more personal. It's just a comment I guess. The words go like this "There isn't only one way. There's what works for me. It can't be for everybody. I'm in one place and they are in another. In some ways, they're right and I'm wrong. "You know the truth when you hear it," says mom. But I don't know if that's true. I change my mind all the time. There has to be love. But even that's sometimes...Sometimes I don't want to love the face of a closed down person. I want to just walk away." Just a comment really. 'They' is no one in particular. It's anyone who believes something different than I do.

and one more...

This is a more poetic one. More along the lines of the Ovid one I mentioned before and the types of lines you catch in ancient poetry. I like that language sometimes. Some of the letters broke off in transport, so I gotta glue those back on. I started writing this little piece of writing when I was in Nepal, sitting on the edge of a staggered rice field watching a yak munch on some grass. I loved the animals there. It was so interesting to see cows and yaks and goats wandering around. The text goes like this "Let me write the way the yak eats, burred in summer by the gold, seeing just what's right in front, turned by sounds. No friend of nature. Nature." Burred is not a word. But burred like bur is what I mean.

There were a few more pictures in the show, but some of them have a hard edge I'm not ready to show on the blog here right yet. I'm trying to let stuff write itself, but sometimes the results are sort of harsh and the language less than sweet. I'm not sure what to do with that. I want the language to be straight, but it's gotta work for me too. The impulse is to not care and just to go. Why not go since I'm only really talking to myself on this blog anyway. But I'll keep it just to these few pieces from the show for now.

honestly not too many people came by on saturday. I didn't have much in the way of expectations. I put together what I could. I was glad if anybody came by and looked. Some people actually did. There was a friendly taxi driver who asked what I had written about Rachunek. There was a drunk guy who wanted to know why in the world I was writing in English (point taken). A bunch of tourists. A few people read a piece or two, looked at me, looked back at the board. That was cool. I sort of got the feeling later that the writing on the boards might be coming off like protest placards of some kind. I really hadn't done enough to explain what I was doing there and what people were looking at. I thought people would read one piece then move on to the next. most people read a little and left. I expected people to read more and ask me something. that's what I do when I see stuff on the street. but pavla said that's not the czech way. she said I should have had more information up on boards the way I had my writing.

for some weird reason even though basically no one read very much I actually feel like things went okay. i didn't have any expectations really. i wanted to finish a bunch of stuff by then and I did. so I was happy about that. honestly, really proud of all of it. I put a lot of time into giving all that stuff a bunch of layers. It was sort of funny watching how people take stuff in. funny how I'm sitting there and pavla and marsh are there and we're standing in the middle of a square. it was funny. the most uncomfortable thing in the world though.

Later y'all.

It's so awesome having a blog. You can just write whatever you want. Finishing up a bunch of the writing and pictures I'll be showing tomorrow on the street. There's a bunch of stuff that's aside from that that I hope will come through. Like how to display. We've got four or so easels which I guess I'll use. The only other option would be some sort of display wall I'd have to rent. But that's a hassle. Funny though since I never used an easel. Never even used a canvas. Of course you have to think about the goal. The goal I guess is just to finally have something out there, even if it's done-it-meself. I tried to invite a few people I think are probably into writing and art, but we'll see how that goes. Every time you try to get yourself shown in a gallery somewhere they always ask have you ever had an exhibition before. It's annoying. Maybe it's better. They make you wonder what you want them for anyway. I can rent a spot, I can tell people myself. I can use the blog. I can just write to people I know and invite them. Whatever they can do I can do, and probably I'll do it better because it's for me.

Exhibition in Prague

I learned something from an old boss I used to have over here in Prague. He was a consultant that came in and had to get a group of technical writers up and running in the company. Dude was wise. I remember he said think about the goal before you put a bunch of work into something. yeah, I always remember that. He was right. I've had this goal for a while to turn the writing I do into tactile pieces of art, then show them in some sort of exhibition that people will come and read/touch and (hopefully) enjoy. The hardest part is actually getting the stuff somewhere people can see it.

Amazingly though (thanks to my miracle maker girlfriend) the hard part has been taken care of. On June 9th I'll be showing a bunch of stuff outdoors on Namesti Republiky in the center of Prague from 5pm to 10pm. June 9th also happens to be Museum Night here in Prague, when most museums and galleries in Prague are open to the public all night for free. So that's an amazing coincidence :)

I think the pictures/writing I'm finishing is great. Really. Proud of it. Sharing pictures and writing digitally has been missing something for me. I wanted to make some things that are tactile, so that's what I've done/am doing. I don't know too much art or writing that's meant for that. So here's to that.

So I'm working towards June 9th. Got plenty of work to do. I'm gonna have a bunch of pictures and writing there for y'all to see. I'm not sure how many people who read my blog live here in Prague, but feel free to stop by Saturday night and introduce yourself if you do.

View Larger Map

I want there to be a way for the travelling through the internet to be sort of tracked. Not tracked tracked, the way it is of course. Sometimes reading one thing, you follow a link somewhere else, then you see a word that you don't know, you open another tab to look up the word. Before I know it I have 5 or 6 tabs open. I think that's kind of interesting since it took time, and it's gotten you somewhere. Maybe there's nothing to that, it's interesting though. One day, I was reading the Pitchfork review of the reissue of Paul McCartney's Ram and there was the the line

"It's just the critics who say, 'Well, John was the biting tongue; Paul's the sentimental one,'" Linda observed shrewdly in a dual Playboy interview from 1984. "John was biting, but he was also sentimental. Paul was sentimental, but he could be very biting. They were more similar than they were different."

That led me over to the Playboy interview (really good) but more important to look up the word shrewdly. I heard that word in business, but I didn't really know what it meant. It means...

1. Characterized by keen awareness, sharp intelligence, and often a sense of the practical.

All that to get to this. I wanted to show everybody...

I just bought Steven Pressfield's The War of Art for kindle today. There's something to this particular chapter that I saw in the book preview that I think is said shrewdly.

Just because he says that so well I had to get the book. Just started it so I'll stop short of saying the whole thing's great. We'll see. High hopes though. So, shrewdly, here's to you...

yeah dude

"The free­lance gig tur­ned into a per­ma­nent job. I sta­yed. The first month in New York for a new­co­mer has this cer­tain ama­zing magic about it that is indesc­ri­ba­ble. Incan­des­cent luci­dity. Howe­ver long you stay in New York, you pretty much spend the rest of your time there trying to recap­ture that fee­ling. Cha­sing Manhat­tan Dra­gon. I sup­pose the whole point of the cards ini­tially was to somehow get that buzz onto paper."

- from a 2001 blog post by Hugh Macleod, brilliant writer-of-comics-on-business-cards.

And here's a picture I made inspired by his work,,,

The writing goes like this:

We do still live and be alive.
Not everywhere you see is awesome.
But women and men, kissing,
making love, having children, seeing
beautiful trees, laughing, dance parties.
All this is still, still awesome.

was reading the Vandalog art blog advertising a "street art" fair in London. makes me sort of crazy when I read things like "regardless of the level of talent involved in the act of graffiti the action itself is a pure form of artistic expression." So left a comment...

yeah, but I think it's tough with graffiti. this is all just my opinion, but if you were bringing people together to show their art, like paintings and stuff they did at home, it'd be a different thing than bringing people to one section of a city where you led an "insurgency" and put up a bunch of art that's basically been sprayed on a surface owned by someone else. I don't get that whole spectacle of it. I live in Prague. The city is full of graffiti. A house, a garage, whatever, is freshly painted and it doesn't take long before someone comes along and tags it. is that supposed to bring people together? does that "create a positive environment for creativity and give back to the public"? i don't know guys. art is everything. it's about sharing and communicating what you feel that might be like what other people feel. graffiti bums me out because they same way you don't want adverts and stuff imposed on you, you are imposing your art on people. most people don't care about your art, my art, or anyone's art. i don't get it. just share with like-minded people, screw the rest.

normal life

“The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.

The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job."

― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (not an affiliate link)

i spend 8 hours at work. why not make pictures of what I see all day on my screen? or what I want to see? sounds boring maybe. wanna see?

somoething to not being oerfect wanting to always change it

beautiful logic diagram

Checked

Hi Lukhym

tree

gold_is_something_else_at_work, gold means...

Harmony

watching a guy in russia marking up his slides in different colors on my screen via teleconference 1

watching a guy in russia marking up his slides in different colors on my screen via teleconference 2

watching a guy in russia marking up his slides in different colors on my screen via teleconference 3

watching a guy in russia marking up his slides in different colors on my screen via teleconference 4

Seth again...

"Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.

I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.

The job is not the work.”

― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (not an affiliate link)

A photo from the nepal trip and some killer Browning

Machhapuchre Base Camp

Here we are. 13,000ft. It's 3pm or so. Done for the day. The way up to this modest guest house was insane, probably the hardest of the whole trip for me. We'd started 4 days ago in sticky jungle. By this altitude in the trek, we're walking along the sides of mountains. Clouds roll in around 2pm. Snow and rain are not far behind.

3pm is late to finish but I'm the slowest of the group. The path was covered in fog in all directions except for a few feet ahead. I'm convinced I have a healthy dose of altitude sickness (symptoms: severe headache, nausea, feeling drunk) and it didn't help to watch a young girl rushed down the mountain held onto tightly by a sherpa. (The only way out of altitude sickness is to go down the up way immediately.) Eventually we make it to this point in the photo, our stop for the night, where I snap this before rushing off to get some tea and food in me. I end up being fine, the altitude sickness passes by morning. We start the last portion of the trek at 4am, in total darkness, to reach Annapurna Base Camp by sunrise.

The whole dumb thing about all of this is that I'm struggling to make it to the freakin base camp. That's where climbers start to climb Annapurna. It sort of feels like walking to Boston to reach the starting line of the Boston marathon. I don't know how much of this stuff is interesting to people who don't know me at all. A lot of the events of the trip are still sort of frozen in my brain, and it's hard to know how much is interesting to the casual reader of this blog. The trip was great, but it was big, and I feel like I have to take back pieces of it at a time, for me, but it would be great if you read it and enjoy it too. Whether or not y'all want to stick around for that...

Here's some killer Browning better describing what it feels like to barely make it to 13,000ft and see those badass mountains...

These are wild fancies, but I feel, sweet friend,
As one breathing his weakness to the ear
Of a pitying angel—dear as a winter flower.
A slight flower growing alone, and offering
Its frail cup of three leaves to the cold sun,
Yet and confiding, like the triumph
Of a child—and why am I not worthy thee?

I can live all the life of plants, and gaze
Drowsily on the bees that flit and play,
Or bare my breast for sunbeams which will kill,
Or open in the night of sounds, to look
For the dim stars; I can mount with the bird,
Leaping airily his pyramid of leaves
And twisted boughs of some tall mountain tree,
Or rise cheerfully springing to the heavens—
Or like a fish breathe in the morning air
In the misty sun-warm water—or with flowers
And trees can smile in light at the sinking sun,
Just as the storm comes—as a girl would look
On a departing lover—most serene.

- Robert Browning Pauline

a solidly freakin' awesome blog

If you're into clean, crisp writing you have to check out the 37 Signals blog. They're software designers who blog about all sorts of stuff. This particular post is about small leather company that tells its story well.

Read the rest of the post here.

Layout change

Had to change the layout of the blog to fix some formatting issues. Commenting wasn't available for some reason. A bunch of weird bugs too. I might go back to the other format later, but doing it this way for now. If the new layout is annoying, let me know.

couple of drawings in nepal

A couple of drawings there in Nepal...

 

Related posts: 
Back from Nepal 
A photo from Nepal and some killer Browning 
Back atcha nepal

Love this

From Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman I'm reading. Well written. Excellent.

April 23, 2012

From an interesting article at Fast Company - "The Lost Steve Jobs Tapes":

It's a higher-risk strategy, but the rewards are gonna be much higher, and it's where our hearts are.

Back from Nepal

Back from Nepal. Wowee. Nothing to say right now. Maybe the pictures will do the talking? I don't know. Maybe later. I bought a brilliant book there: The Snow Leopard. Part Never Cry Wolf. Part history of Nepal and Buddhism 101. All around, my cup of tea. Better than Into Thin Air. And speaking of Nepal and the Himalaya, I saw this quote today from W. H. Murray's The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951):

... but when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money— booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

My Batman comic

Heading off to Nepal right now(!) but before I do, wanted to upload this small story I prepared about Batman. It's sort of a comic, sort of not. Sort of vulgar, sort of not :) Seriously tho, there is a parental warning on this one (a few swear words and adult themes :) But that's the way I'd like Batman to be. Real and all (Aye, slit moon, yachtsman of out is an anagram of Too many lies. Too much fantasy.) Enjoy, and if you like it, pass it around.

 

Adolf Wölfli is off the grid

Caught the Adolf Wölfli exhibition at the Stone Bell yesterday. Overwhelming is the right word. Finally though.

There are plenty of places to read about the troubled life of Adolf Wölfli if you'd like. There's also a really good Czech site about the exhibition. In short, he made thousands of drawings and filled something like 40 books with writing and music notation during his lifelong residence at a mental asylum in Bern, Switzerland.

His pictures combine drawing with text and musical notation. The number of pictures, the detail in each, the time it must have taken, the mix of poetry with music with drawing - all on show here - are pretty impressive.

Kudos to the exhibition people that a lot of this music is actually available to listen to here. But it's a bummer that with all the writing in pictures that there's no translation beyond the titles of the pieces. The text is in German as far as I can tell. Occasionally there's a taste of his writing in one of his quotes up on the walls

"I can rock the whale, the whale rides it."

which is great. I just wish there were more translations since there is so much text in each picture. According to the exhibition, he was writing a semi-autobiographical 45-volume epic inside these pictures. Thankfully, throughout the exhibition you get bits of information about him from hospital reports and from things he said in correspondence, like this gem which reminds me of Walt Whitman:

"Adolf Wölfli, naturalist, poet, writer, draughtsman, composer, farm labourer, milker, handy-man, gardener, plasterer, cement-layer, rail worker, day-labourer, knife-grinder, fisher, boatman, hunter, migrant worker, grave-digger, and soldier of the Emmenthal Battalion, 3rd Company, 3rd Section. Alright!"

Adolf Wölfli, self description 

Not everybody will love the exhibition. The pictures and colors are dim, which may be his fault for using colored pencils and not paints. But he was in a mental asylum at the time. In addition, there are a lot of pictures. Maybe too many. It's a bit overwhelming to go through them all at once, but it does encourage repeat visits.

Adolf Wölfli until May 27, 2012 at City Gallery Prague - The Stone Bell
Staroměstské Nám. 13, Praha 1  
Open daily 10 a.m to 8 p.m. except Mondays
120 czk 

samuel barber

Platoon was just on czech TV the other night. I've never seen it. I started to watch it but had to get to bed. I was reading about it the next day and I came across this letter from Samuel Barber, who contributed music to the movie:

Dear Mother: I have written this to tell you my worrying secret. Now don’t cry when you read it because it is neither yours nor my fault. I suppose I will have to tell it now without any nonsense. To begin with I was not meant to be an athlet [sic]. I was meant to be a composer, and will be I’m sure. I’ll ask you one more thing .—Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football.—Please—Sometimes I’ve been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad (not very).

 Real poetry. Completely human. Real. Down to the misspelling.

 Samuel Barber is best known for this:

This the whole thing. This letter to his mom when he's 9 is what makes him real. He was born in 1910, and he's dead now. This letter though is his first step. And the music wouldn't have come without it. It's a beautiful letter. I'm a big fan of things that show people we put on pedestals being normal. But we're all fans of that. I think those sorts of things are extremely healthy to see or read. Anyway, just loved this and feel like I discovered it even though it's on Wikipedia.

here's a new picture I made. proud of this one. chalk on paper

cus

came across some awesome clips about tyson today. of course the documentary Tyson about tyson is awesome. the original mickey line from rocky monologue came from mike tyson's trainer cus d'amato.



this is cool about another one of his trainers, kevin rooney:



this is cool too. A younger Cus with Ali. Narrated by Cus.

...after Miroslav Tichy.

batman trailer

I love a great trailer. A good trailer's like a good poem. Starts in one way but there's a touch of something really wild in it that's interesting. It's like in this trailer that starts with the boy singing and then you see Bane coming up the stairs totally casual. Love that. Genius since we all pretty much know Bane is in this one and that's he's a nut. It's downplayed a bit. Love that.

a new book Međugorje

Well this is gonna be long and potentially blowhardy. I’m putting up a new picture and poetry book called Međugorje. Anyone not interested in what it all means can skip this and go read the book below. It’s pretty short. Dante's in there. Hiroshige too. Van Gogh stops by towards the end. Darkman closes it out.

From here on, spoiler alert...

Međugorje means "an area between mountains" in Croatian. It's a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina where a group of children said they saw apparitions of the Virgin Mary. The Church is still investigating whether or not it believes them. A lot of people go there though. One of the boys (Ivan) tours churches in the US.

I first heard about Međugorje from the book Our Lady's Messages at Međugorje by Jim and Barry Tibbetts. It's a book about the history of the place and has all the messages that the apparition supposedly told the kids over the years.

There’s some beauty to the texts if you move them around or modify them a little. The text could be poetic and beautiful if it would lose some of its religiosity. So that’s this book I made. It’s called just about the same thing as the original. Međugorje.

I’ll warn ya. The language is a bit off, and the grammar and spelling were not priority numero uno. A couple of the poems are just a few words on the page. Some of the pages are just pictures. I did the more is more route before. This is small.

I took some of the pictures from the original book and put them in mine: the pictures of the two-towered church in Međugorje on the cover and throughout, the pictures of the kids who saw the visions. The pictures not from the original book are the pictures of a few churches and places in France (Verdun, Sully, Cap Fréhel) and the picture of a man diving into the ocean (I made that by rearranging a couple of Hiroshige pictures). The one color image towards the end is my drawing but a total steal of the only artwork Van Gogh sold in his lifetime. (p.s. from a letter of his to Eugene Boch October 2, 1888 about this painting: Ah well, I have to go to work in the vineyard, near Montmajour. It’s all purplish yellow green under the blue sky, a beautiful, colour motif. Good handshake and good luck, and much success in your work. Ever yours, Vincent). The picture on the last page is a modified version of a drawing in the original book. My version is supposed to look like Darkman. I think it does. I love that movie.

Ok. That’s that. Maybe more than you wanted to know, but my girl told me I should explain it so that it’s clearer. Hope that’ll do for now.

Here she is:

for annie by edgar allan poe

threw this together:

with music "Feedback Zwei" from the album Playthroughs by keith fullerton whitman. Awesome album if you like washy droney long songs. Words from For annie by edgar a. poe (1849). awesome too.

Enjoy.

TELEVISION
"Marquee Moon"
(Verlaine)

I remember
how the darkness doubled
I recall
lightning struck itself.
I was listening
listening to the rain
I was hearing
hearing something else.

Life in the hive puckered up my night,
the kiss of death, the embrace of life.
There I stand neath the Marquee Moon Just waiting,
Hesitating...
I ain't waiting

I spoke to a man
down at the tracks.
I asked him
how he don't go mad.
He said "Look here junior, don't you be so happy.
And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad."

Well a Cadillac
it pulled out of the graveyard.
Pulled up to me
all they said get in.
Then the Cadillac
it puttered back into the graveyard.
And me,
I got out again.

new morning

give any
give it
the Spirit
you need the
to convey the
to them or
to you. Pray
the spirit of
Mother say that

new pictures

I read a lot of music sites and I saw something awesome on pitchfork about how the local news in wisconsin did this story about justin vernon and his family. It's so good because it's so completely normal and real. I'd love to see more stuff like this on the local level.

http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/ASSIGNMENT_13_At_Home_with_the_Vernons_138621779.html
besides that though, did a couple new drawings. working on a few big ones all about the US. A couple of pictures about sports. they're bigger and mostly about missing certain things from the states. but here's a couple of these smaller ones for now. I'll put them up in the picture gallery section too.

nice shot

such a well-made cover

photo by Joel Van Houdt

from this NY Times mag cover story.