22nd Century Art

16 Speculations

I Missed that the Web Urbanist Site Used One of My Photographs

for a feature on strange garage doors.

That's from 2016. I never even noticed they shared that until tonight.

The garage door in question was painted over about the time they were publishing that. I think it might have been related to the sale of the house.

I assume it was a family solidarity thing, or maybe a magic symbol to protect the house.

Penny Woolcock's Gritty Documentary The Wet House (2000)

Oddly enough, I had never even heard of a wet house before today.

I wasn't even reading about alcohol. It just appeared in an article I was glossing over and I was mystified by the term.

Apparently, it's quite common for people to drink themselves to death in these establishments. Such habitations are justified based on the money (allegedly) saved by taxpayers and the notion that recovery help is available through the facilities.

But studies have demonstrated that residents in such facilities often drink significantly less. That probably makes sense, since the stressors associated with homelessness are removed. That's not an inconsequential psychological burden, I'm sure. Homeless alcoholics probably drink more precisely because they are homeless.

In doing a search for the term, I found this documentary by Penny Woolcock. Talk about difficult viewing.




I also watched this depressing documentary which gives you the truth about the American occupation of Afghanistan and its challenges. Sisyphus all the way around. No need to ask about the Bechdel test with this one. I think the only female you see in the entire documentary is a four-year-old girl who gets pushed out of the way by the soldiers passing through. You get the feeling that country might be half a century away from any sort of modern liberation and respect of human rights. I realize the documentary focuses on one of the worst problem areas in the country, but still.

1976: The Pandemic That Wasn't

Someone should make a longer documentary about the swine flu (H1N1) scare of 1976.

It's clear the government acted from the best motives, but it was a non-starter.

The best writing on this I've encountered is the chapter dedicated to it in Laurie Garrett's stellar nonfiction book The Coming Plague (1994).

A brief synopsis.

Guillain-Barré is scary as hell. It can be caused by the flu vaccine (on the order today of one in a million) but it can also be caused by the flu itself (much more frequently). I've seen accounts of it occurring in a variety of viral syndromes. And yet it still seems to remain a medical mystery when it comes to the mechanics of what is actually occurring in the human body.

Some speculate that the government's initial response to AIDs was so lackluster because the epidemiological cognoscenti had only recently sounded the panic alarm for an epidemic which never materialized. Perhaps they were afraid of crying wolf again a mere five years later.

A Little Closer Look at Wreaths Across America is Warranted

It doesn't take much digging to realize there are many unanswered questions.

I'm Happy to Have Some Fiction

in the new issue of Visual Verse.

I love the writing challenges each  month.

I like seeing how wide the interpretation of a visual image ranges, in poetry and fiction.

Ekphrasis now and forever.

Why Guernica Would Be Impossible Today

Because aerial bombardment was somewhat new. Because humans cannot show themselves to be surprised too much or too often. This could be arrogance of pride but more likely it is a cognitive phenomenon. But perhaps graphic representation of tragedy is passe. Please don't mediate it through a human body that intimately. Painting ceded to photography which ceded to don't even show us. Because an armed culture is a luxury and a screen. Guernica becomes, instead, closer to today, something Boltanski would do. Respectful, less ego. The clothing being lifted over and over by the claw of the machine and dropped from a height onto the ground. The way the simulacra of bodies, the empty clothes, dance as they plummet. This instead of drawing. The self pretending to be removed, pretending not to draw, from what is still drawing on the air, somehow. But it is the otherness drawing. It is the emptiness celebrating itself. A new innocence that is not us. We become leaves of the molting tree. A new innocence that is not human being. The moment preceding and the moment following a human thought. 

Poor Species

I feel increasingly distant from you. Your weak attempts at birdsong. Your dominion, which was enjoyable, warm and cozy, while I was young. But more and more the frayed sweater of the DNA. We pick at it on the television news. The sound of gunfire in the streets. But still: Poor Species. I wonder if the search for expression will end. The search for expression will not end. It is the search for expression which is Guernica and that which Guernica depicts. And how long ago was Guernica painted? Do you feel that slippage? Today, nobody would attempt to paint it. Irony is lifeblood. But the secret is encoded in the art itself. That there is pleasure in the forms which quote pain. If they are imaginatively conceived, they are a distraction, an invitation to play. Guernica was such an invitation presented as a raw scream. Infantile and dark. Shelter of speaking or drawing. The people come out of the bombed theater speaking. The film still plays.The lovers are on the screen in black and white as the rafters fall. They are toying with each other. Their faces the size of the entire screen. It is only the childhood of the work of art. The work of art is eternally at play in a form of childhood. We feel like shadows, like shades, when faced. 

Pete Buttigieg

is being ridiculously pilloried by fake ass people.

George Mayerle’s Eye Test charts, Schmidt Litho Co., San Francisco , ca. 1907

I want to order it as a shower curtain. 

Below Central Park

was this.

I recently learned our own State Capitol Building's park and surrounding capitol complex in Harrisburg was also constructed where an African American and immigrant community was thriving. It was razed for that purpose and erased, largely lost to history. This was Harrisburg's wild and woolly Eighth Ward.

I'm glad there is a monument being placed there in 2020.

Looking back.

Horrific: New York's History of Slavery

Wabi-Sabi and Zen in Photography

Nice Ta-ta's, Shakespeare!

I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries.

— Charles Darwin, 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

In 1861, historical linguist Max Müller published a list of speculative theories concerning the origins of spoken language:

Bow-wow. The bow-wow or cuckoo theory, which Müller attributed to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, saw early words as imitations of the cries of beasts and birds.

Pooh-pooh. The pooh-pooh theory saw the first words as emotional interjections and exclamations triggered by pain, pleasure, surprise, etc.

Ding-dong. Müller suggested what he called the ding-dong theory, which states that all things have a vibrating natural resonance, echoed somehow by man in his earliest words.

Yo-he-ho. The yo-he-ho theory claims language emerged from collective rhythmic labor, the attempt to synchronize muscular effort resulting in sounds such as heave alternating with sounds such as ho.

Ta-ta. This did not feature in Max Müller's list, having been proposed in 1930 by Sir Richard Paget. According to the ta-ta theory, humans made the earliest words by tongue movements that mimicked manual gestures, rendering them audible.

Interesting Graphic

One could still argue about the subjective interpretation of raw data, but overall isn't there a smack of truth to this assessment and ranking? Alcohol is definitely in the right place on this list.