impulses + influenzas

one for one, murder + murder

blue — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:52:09 +0000

I feel profound affection for wild canines. I am ready to execute a man who traps foxes. Why do I feel this way, exactly? People hear this and are horrified because I am breaking a taboo about respecting the sanctity of life. But is one man's life worth a hundred foxes' lives? What if each life is the same value? What if I can imagine what it feels like to be a fox? How does one imagine this? At some point, I had to go out and meet foxes, and I did, and now I can say quite honestly that one man's life is worth approximately one fox's life, and the willful killing of one wild fox for whatever reason results in my impulse to execute the trapper. It would give me pleasure to do so. I'm not breaking any taboos at all, but living up to my own expectations based on my own explorations of the world around me. I like wild canines, and feel deep affection for them, and do not recognise any god-like entity that will punish me in the future because I took a man's sacred life and destroyed it. On the contrary, the winds and tides tell me daily to pull my triggers.

-- from All My Young Kisses starring Maya Nelson Wolfsdottir, written by Mr. Blue

Self Stalking on Red Lands

blue — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:21:46 +0000

The mightiest forest or the deepest ocean depends on memes sprinkled like stardust from faraway places. You can continue always to be yourself and sink your roots more deeply into your destiny, but ideas and affections and adventures will always fall like pollen onto your curiosity, and that's how we all become pregnant with ambition. The fact that you shoot, that you are always looking, is evidence enough that you are already infected with possibility, and you will never stop looking for more. It's tempting to deny our desire to evolve by getting comfy and clutching contentment, but we're the product of millions of years of nomadic scavenging; it's in our genes to wander and wonder, and that reality we cling to is often a cruel lie. Yes, that family is lovely, yes, that hand feels good to hold, yes, it is good to laugh with friends, but it is always important to know exactly where the exits are, because we can hug and kiss all we like but sooner or later will have to escape. And that's when those delicate connections to the outside world become grapevines to swing out of the crowded jungle into the open skies of your own imagination. I am always intrigued by your trap and how consistently you seem to wriggle free; I joke about following in your footsteps, but I really do study how to walk like you, so I am grateful to this connection with your sense of being outside yourself. You're like a map I can read when I wish to go lose myself and ignore my mountains of promises and responsibilities. Your reality needs to be shared, because it is one in which the woman walks constantly toward her own escape. The question will always be: Does Rachel get away from her own stalker, that demon bent on destruction, Self?

-- from an ongoing fascination with the photographer Rachel McKinnie, who shoots Utah the way all of us should shoot our fantasies.

woman with mask

blue — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 11:11:51 +0000

Photography, in its mysterious way, is the most liberating mask an intelligent person can wear. Everything can be hidden by wearing it; and yet everything gets shown, laid bare, and the viewer may find themselves wishing for their very own mask, for their very own audience, for their very own photographer. That should be what every photographer wishes for. And almost everybody is a photographer, because it is so much easier to do than music or painting and a lifetime easier than writing or good poetry. -- from correspondence with M.P.

Celestial Heartbreak

blue — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:31:51 +0000

This is a short experiment in nonlinear story-telling. We're interested in emotional weights and indirect expositions, meaning what we show is not always what we feel or think. In this case, the act of leaving a comfy fire and lovely friends to look for the Aurora Borealis in a blizzard might not be exactly what we should be doing, so telling you why we're doing it comes in this artistic disguise. Not only that, this video ends just when it gets interesting! There are heartbreakers everywhere, people who turn you on and leave you cold. This visual exercise is an example of this. But the bonus is that we do intend to examine heartbreak and report on how it can be used to slow down time. More soon, from Iceland, where Sean and Sandy and Mark Hooker have gone in anticipation of a firestorm at the poles, courtesy of a solar flare or two. January 2 is looking good for this.

Explaining Heartbreak As a Celestial Metaphor from wonderbox on Vimeo.

Lust, now

blue — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:42:00 +0000

Live, love, lust and learn now, in this moment, because nature is beauty shaped from danger: the bird does not sing, it survives ambush on a momentary basis. The quake and its waves must wake me up, push me out of routine and comfort, those two cancers of being. Live now, not next week or next year!

Roar, Louisiana

blue — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 09:45:00 +0000

Roar wakes me up, rain screaming down. Texas Stormchasers tweets possible tornado 4 miles NE of Slidell, and damn if I am not 4 miles east of Slidell. Much worse last Fall when I got caught in Indiana "land hurricane" but now flood reports have scared away some Mardi Gras pals, and we are on the lake, which shakes ominously. Tad bless his heart says these rumors happen every year, but he is asleep next door and I am awake and now here again is that roar! He will wake up and say: Wasn't that a treat?

And seconds after I write this, Tad emerges in an all-yellow head-to-toe raingear suit and clamly walks to the end of the property to fetch the newspaper. He does not say, "What a treat." He says: "It is really raining! Holy shit!" and that little panic starts to swell. Then he says: "Nothing we can do but hunker down and wait it out." And we do. And the sun comes out and we go fishing and catch nothing but a soft breeze and a little sunburn.

Imagine thinking: from "The Wax"

blue — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:17:00 +0000

"I think; therefore I imagine."

Imagine if Descartes had the knowledge to speak this instead of reducing life to a single tense of “I am.” To think is to think, and not just be. One word without limits might have replaced a word that confines the self; if Descartes wrote differently, how would we understand the individual?

It seems to me the most important thing for you, my happily married lawyer friend, is to embrace (admit to) and release (kick the ass of) your "inner individual." But you cannot, because little kiddies get hungry and frightened. How much do your own responsibilities affect your view of a society's responsibilities? It's possible that if you were completely free to do as you pleased, to waste endless time in pointless examination of self and surroundings, you might see the constructs of society as an emancipation of your desires and ambitions, rather than a restriction of all desires and ambitions, right? You could then abuse the system for your own good, and every thief uses a smile as his best weapon; you would make sure to pay lip service to the traffic lights, even if you do not pay taxes, as I do, and you would buy a camera on a credit card you do not intend to pay if that camera was used at least partly for the "social" good. It seems to me that academic depth retards the link between one's responsibility to self with one's responsibility to society. And by "retards", I don't mean limit or prohibit as much as I mean "influence". So the handicapped thinker still wanders society and conducts business freely, often with other handicapped thinkers who congratulate the wanderer for his taste and business, as long as these are similar to their own.

-- from a long-term dialogue with the brilliant Mark W., laid out in a PDF/iPad ditty titled "The Wax," to which his replies and contemplations will be published as "The Wane." Here's a link to my full piece as it appears on Facebook (!) accompanied with a photo of mine:

Thinking without simply being.

Gareth Branwyn, slightly catalogued

blue — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 11:14:00 +0000

Could not get the kiss on his forehead onto my bloody iPhone until I stopped trying to shoot and said to myself, forget the picture, what's the problem, and the problem was the only Gareth in the right light was the one in the mirror and not the one in his own skin, so i made this picture of that mirror, and sure enough the kiss is cl...ear, a tattoo of affection for his birthday, planted in such a way that he becomes his own walking participle: people stare as he passes because he trails this lipstick on his crown, what king could he be? Of whose decorations?

A cake with Gareth is a feast of wit and width; how quick your thoughts, how broad your books? You eat multiple meanings, swallow possibilities and sip your ignorances like musty wines from faraway places: what you do not know might be a delicacy elsewhere, but the new taste on your brain is like the first licorice on your tongue. Puckered, you savor the new sensations: better than Hong Kong or Mumbai, you are in a bibliography with friends who wish to read you and catalogue your surprises and your surmising. The mind is freshened; I must think freshly!

Donna Ferrato, imagined

blue — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:23:00 +0000

The lovers become mothers and fathers. A few people want my flirts, but most hope for some wisdom. When did I become wise, when I always saw myself as wild? When did the wolf turn fox? Every friend was once a stranger, and many friends I wish now had stayed that way; they were more mysterious, more dangerous, more of a thrill. And now some of them depend on my flights of fancy to remind themselves of their own escapes and scrapes; my crashes excite their scars. And I see you this way, as the flier who risks herself in unknown skies. You are still the lover to me, and I see you in flames or on ice and feel comfort that you will either help me find my way or be there on the path when I find it myself. I look for you here and try to sense your fights and flights; are you ruffled by wind or rattled by calm? You are bound here by us, the people you love, because we all need to be reminded that we cannot be killed by the pains of our imaginations, and only dreamers can deliver this message: do as you want, desire, act boldly even if your actions are done wrongly, and the dreamer leads these lessons with a million tiny deaths of her own. You are not only your self, Donna, but part of all our imaginations; yes, it's insane to throw away an evening on facebook, but who objects to your loss but you? We're happy to have you here, an example we could all imitate, and we'll wait patiently while you go out and make some thrill. But don't dry our addictions to you because we help you waste your time! The superfabulous Teddy Roosevelt said if you kicked the ass of every person who you thought was responsible for wasting your time on facebook, you wouldn't be able to sit down for a week.

-- from a correspondence with Donna Ferrato

eclipsed

blue — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 10:36:00 +0000

The very unusual eclipse last night led the crew at the Wonderbox to put together this short video for their Christmas Eve orphans and porridge late late late night hang. There are several things to watch that night, but the Moon is always such an attractive subject. For Seanie Blue and the players of the Moonlight Project, the Moon is a metaphor for lost loves. The Sun, that burnt-out star, represents love's urges and passions; the bigger the star, the more quickly it burns out. These astrophysical laws apply to love, too. The music comes from the Moonlight Project, and the visuals from Seanie Blue's shoot of the eclipse and the Raindancer. This piece was produced by the Wonderbox. Music produced by Blue, Fox & McCormick as the Moonlight Project.

The Lunar Eclipse & the Moonlight Project & a Porridge Party from wonderbox on Vimeo.