Will there be a last letter?

An idea for a short story:

2010-10-18T19:50:00.000-07:00

A Marxist revolution topples the government of a small Latin American nation. To curry favor with international creditors, the leaders of the new regime promise to honor the public debts of the state, but not the personal debts of the former dictator. The task of sorting and separating the two falls to an idealistic young accountant. Left alone in the presidential palace, in the chaotic early days of the revolution, he must open every cabinet, annotate every invoice, value every personal item, and, so doing, perhaps come to terms with where the private life of the tyrant ended and the public life of the state began in a nation ruled by one man's whim.

A dream

2010-04-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Last night, I dreamed I met Delia Derbyshire, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop engineer best known for her electronic realization of the Doctor Who theme. In my dream, she was a sullen and surly teenager, dressed in black, sitting Indian-style on her bed, fiddling around with Boss guitar pedals. We had an awkward conversation, in fits and starts, about the history of electronic music. Strange, eh?

Too much Dracula?

2010-04-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

Though I'm surprised that the thought would ever occur to me, I have noticed lately that as I'm reading Gore Vidal's Burr, I've unintentionally started picturing Christopher Lee in the titular role; this is pleasant, to be sure, but a bit suspicious.

An idea for a sitcom

2010-04-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

President Dracula: After a series of strategy gaffes in an unsuccessful national campaign, political advisor Jon Harker finds himself unemployable and unpopular. His future seems hopeless until he is approached with an astonishing offer - to direct the third-party presidential campaign of Count Dracula! With no other prospects, Jon accepts, and to the surprise of all, crafts a message that resonates with the American voter, delivering the Dracula campaign victory at the polls. Appointed White House Press Secretary, Harker finds himself swept up in the daily struggle to put a positive spin on the the administration of Count Dracula, 500-year-old vampire President of the United States!

Does anyone know?

2010-04-01T18:23:00.000-07:00

...if an alternate-history fiction has been written wherein Burr defeats Jefferson in the presidential election of 1800 and the Louisiana Purchase never takes place, leading to a present-day North America where Mexico is the dominant power, stretching from Chiapas to Canada, separated from the 24 United States by a francophone Republic of Louisiana? Just wondering.

An idea for a cartoon

2010-03-05T16:58:00.000-08:00

Dracula: The Animated Series - set 10 years after the events of Bram Stoker's Dracula, TAS chronicles the further adventures of Stoker's band of vampire-hunters: Jonathan Harker, his wife Mina and their son Quincey, scientists Jack Seward and Dr. Van Helsing, aristocrat Arthur Holmwood and Texas cowboy Franklin W. Morris (brother of the novel's Quincey P. Morris), as they battle to foil the dastardly plots of a resurrected Count Dracula and his nefarious league of gothic monsters (look out for special guest villains like Carmilla, the Wolfman, Mr. Hyde, Dorian Grey, Heathlcliff, Jack the Ripper and Baron Frankenstein)!

Things I have seen since moving to Los Angeles...

2010-02-25T15:16:00.000-08:00

...that I have never seen before:

- Flocks of green parrots

- Palm trees growing up through the levels of a parking structure

- More independent hamburger joints, donut shops and professional psychics than anywhere else in the world, I think

- Hand-pushed taco carts looking for business in a residential neighborhood

- Shopping cart return entrepreneurs

A list...

2010-02-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

...of people who've been surprised, pleasantly or otherwise, by the fact that I listen to Steve Reich for pleasure: Alec Soth, photographer, 2003, Kristin Makholm, PhD, curator/art historian, 2006, Paulus Berensohn, potter/dancer, 2009.

An idea for a movie

2010-02-23T18:36:00.001-08:00

Robin Hood vs Dracula - Count Dracula terrorizes the medieval english countryside, searching for the last of the mythical silver arrows from the Quiver of Longinus, the only weapon with the power to destroy him forever. The corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham finds himself unable to quell the hysteria of the peasantry in the face of a rising plague of vampirism. Seeking to restore civil order, and desiring the silver arrow for himself, the Sheriff offers heroic outlaw Robin Hood and his band of merry men a pardon in exchange for eliminating Dracula and bringing him the arrow. Who will win and who will die when the Prince of Thieves battles the Prince of Vampires?

An idea for a television series

2010-02-23T13:19:00.000-08:00

Pseudoscience! - shot on 16mm film and featuring dramatic voice-over narration and a synthesizer-heavy soundtrack in a stylistic homage to 1970s pseudo-documentary programs like In Search Of..., Pseudoscience! will trace the historical development of easily-debunked modern myths like the Da Vinci code, mayan calendar prophecies of an apocalypse in 2012, satanic child-abuse cults of the 1990s, the biological basis of race, pre-millenial tension, extra-terrestrial encounters and more, in order to demonstrate that the stories behind them are often more fascinating than the myths themselves.

An idea for a graphic novel

2010-02-23T12:11:00.000-08:00

In a terrifying collision of black magic and mad science, the dead Beatles return from the grave as bloodthirsty cybernetic zombies! Only by learning to set aside their differences and open their hearts can the living Beatles hope to put an end to their former bandmates' homicidal rampage!

An idea for a movie

2010-02-21T17:41:00.000-08:00

A mysterious radioactive meteor falls to Earth, causing the recently dead to rise as zombies and attack the living. In a desperate attempt to save humankind, a team of scientists assembles the ultimate fighting force: a cowboy, a ninja, a knight of the round table, a bomb-heaving anarchist, a shaolin monk, a riot grrrl and a mexican wrestler. Together they must battle their way through the zombie hordes to the smoking crater where the meteor lies and destroy it.

Nattering Nabobs of Negativism

2009-09-28T06:15:00.001-07:00

For years, I thought this phrase was attributable to Spiro Agnew. It turns out, as I discovered in a radio eulogy for columnist and speechwriter William Safire, that it was he who coined the alliterative epithet. This may mean I'll have to rethink my estimation of Safire; for years I've wondered, "What special qualifications does this cranky old conservative possess that suit him for writing On Language?" Well, now I know.

Historical regret is like a phantom limb or an aching joint; it's ever-present, but recedes into the background because immediate matters are more demanding of attention, but every once in a while it twinges or throbs on a cold morning or in a sudden rainstorm. If only Safire's talent could have been directed to a worthy cause, say, ridiculing the opponents of liberal politicians, or libeling the architects of the Vietnam war instead of its critics... ah, well, I suppose that's the crux of why I became an artist instead of an historian. Too many things have gone the wrong way, and I don't think I have the fortitude to report it all accurately, without giving in to the temptation to improve it by rewriting.

R.I.P., William Safire, right-wing writer of withering witticisms. My grudging respects to perhaps the last man I can remember who made political invective worth listening to.

If you're fighting a robot...

2009-09-28T06:08:00.000-07:00

...don't try to win with blunt force. This is a common fallacy I've seen in many movies, and, in terms of effectiveness, it ranks right up there with hiding under the bed to evade a masked killer. Unless you are extraordinarily strong or plan to amplify your own strength with power tools, don't try to punch or kick the robot or beat it with a stick. Most robots don't feel pain, so it is extremely unlikely that you will weaken one to the point of submission in this way. No, when fighting a robot there's really only one sure way to go - bodily dismemberment.

Goin' down d'Ocean, hon!

2009-09-06T05:39:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving this morning for my family's condo in Ocean City, Maryland. I'm planning on coming back to Penland on Saturday. I haven't been there since Melanie's wedding in 2001, but I have fond memories of the place. Hopefully, it will be the thing to slow down my heart-rate. I plan on listening to Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders" on tape in the car.

More recent artwork

2009-09-03T11:26:00.001-07:00

Here are some drawings I did in my final class of the summer, "Illustrating the Personal Narrative," with Ruth Marten. She's most famous for her cover illustrations for Peter Mayle's "Year in Provence" novels. Many students in the class made books; I had just finished a books class, so I decided to draw storyboard panels as though I were making a movie. The story is an imaginary version of the death of Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius, who drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece on his way back from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The middle of August part II

2009-08-19T06:02:00.001-07:00

I wrote this little poem walking home to Morgan the other night:

Even today,

a few red leaves on the green grass;

in the fruits of summer,

the seeds of fall.

The middle of August

2009-08-17T14:53:00.001-07:00

Last night, when I left work at 8, the sun had already dropped below the mountain behind me; golden light touched only the tops of the mountains across the knoll. Summer is almost over... I'm not ready for it to end. I'm not ready.

More recent artwork

2009-07-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

These were made in "Transforming the Landscape," a 4th-session photography class taught by David Graham. Using natural light softened with tissue paper, I got up close to the interiors of books with Marianne's Canon Powershot G9 (I should really think about buying one of my own), which has a wicked built-in macro lens and astonishing resolution for a non-SLR digital camera. Perhaps because it felt a little like working with a large-format view camera, these photos look very MCAD-y to me. I haven't decided if I like that yet, but I do like the images themselves. I call the series "Illuminated Manuscripts."

Today

2009-07-22T17:39:00.000-07:00

At breakfast, I talked to Ledelle Moe about what it's like to live in Baltimore. Then I cleaned my car and bought 2 CD/DVD organizers, a 3-ring binder, a pack of 8.5 x 11" sheet protectors, and a new pair of jeans. I hunted down all my stray CDs and put them all together in the new case. I scanned, uploaded, and backed up work images from this summer. I backed up some other stuff that had been sitting on the public computer for a while. I put all my DVDs/CD-ROMs of work files in the new case (made of steel for protection), and I checked out what was on all the blank burned DVDs that were floating around, labeled and stored them. I pulled together and organized the objects and prints that I've made this summer. I cleaned out the car.

This evening, it came to me gently, with a mixture of sadness and exhilaration: today was the day I started getting ready to leave Penland.

Recent Artwork

2009-07-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

Here are some prints I made in "The Visual Narrative," my second-session class in photography. The instructor was Fritz Hoffmann, a National Geographic photojournalist. Hoping to use my familiarity with and access to the Penland dishroom to my advantage, I photographed the work-study students (with permission, of course) as they cleaned up after meals. In the process, I discovered that what I was really drawn to in that situation was the action of working bodies in space, the interaction of bodies with bodies, and of bodies with the crowded, challenging environment; it was like visiting a filthy, sweaty, soapy sculpture garden. Over the course of five days, I shot about 700 photographs, and then edited down to these final 11. They were taken with a Canon Powershot G9 (thank you, Marianne!), printed on handmade paper (again thanks to Marianne Dages), and hung on the dishroom wall for a day to get splattered with food waste and greasy suds.

ID 1

2009-07-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

Because of some funny scheduling issues, Penland celebrates Independence Day today, July the 1st this year. I've volunteered to help fire off fireworks this evening. I've also been asked to present trophies to the winners of best-parade-float awards. When she approached me about it, Stacey Lane said, "usually we have some really glamorous woman do the presenting, but this year we'd like you to do it." Apparently, she got the idea after seeing my self-portraits as a woman in one of my slide presentations. Since I don't really feel like stepping out in drag this evening, I'll be presenting the awards in the persona of a cowboy (well, sort of a posh cowboy, I guess). As I was dressing this morning, I thought of a great idea for a piece of sketch comedy: The Cowboy Congressman. Basically, he's a stereotypical cowboy, elected to the US Congress, and every time someone disagrees with him in a debate, he shoots them. Also, whenever there's an important vote, he rounds up all the members of his caucus with a lasso. Genius, right? I'm waiting by the phone, Tina Fey. As I'll be spending the real 4th of July cleaning the Pines for changeover, let me wish you all a happy Independence Day today.

A vocational question, tossed into the ether...

2009-06-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

So if one loves making film/video art and literature, how does one become a successful video artist/art-filmmaker? How does one find the financing to make work on anything other than a tiny scale that is challenging and unconventional in its structure and relationship to its source text?

Mustasche March

2009-04-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

This March, I participated in a competition to see who could grow the best mustache. The thing was dreamed up in February by Adam and Slate, who by their own admission saw it mainly as an excuse to have more guys walking around Penland with creepy mustaches. The rules were simple: the mustache had to be grown of the participant's own hair, on the participant's own face, and each contestant had to start the month with a clean shave and agree to pay the winner a dollar. Voting took place at lunch in the Pines, on Monday the 30th, and the winner was announced at lunch the next day. I am pleased to announce that my mustache took home the cash prize and a trophy, which was beautifully crafted by Glass instructor Martin Janecky and gilded by studio assistant Carrie Battista. I believe that the reasons for my victory were twofold: 1. fast-growing facial hair, and 2. the courage to grow and wear it as a mustache for the entire month, rather than growing a beard and shaving the excess near the end as many of my competitors did. Cheered by the crowd to make an acceptance speech, I offered these words: "I'd like to thank my parents for giving me the genetic material that made this victory possible, and the good people in the kitchen who fed me such a delicious, high-protein diet. Also, thanks to Adam and Slate for having the vision and making it a reality, and to all of you good people for your encouragement and your votes. I hope that my victory today may go some distance toward rehabilitating the popular image of the mustache. It seems that somewhere along the line, the mustache fell out of favor in our culture. Maybe this is because (as my fellow core student Mark Warren suggested) many of us grew up with an unconscious fear that Burt Reynolds would steal our mothers from us (though in my case, it was Tom Selleck); or perhaps we watched one too many cheap pornos in college or saw Charlie's Angels kidnapped by one too many mustached men in a conversion van. Whatever the reason, I think it's a mistake, and I am here today to declare that I am not a child molester, nor a 70s porn star, nor your 6th grade gym teacher. I am a good man, a gentle man, a friendly man, a man with a mustache."
It was a proud moment for me. But one shouldn't rest on laurels, and it seemed that a March mustache might be bad luck in April, so that evening before bed I snipped, clipped, and shaved my upper lip back to the factory preset, as it were.

Dante the pilgrim

2009-03-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

I was watching Peter Greenaway's TV Dante on Ubuweb yesterday, and it called to mind a moment from the fall of 1995, when I was a student at Anne Arundel Community College. I was enrolled in a course in World Literature (which to its credit was truly global in scope - we read bits of everything from Indian theater to Mayan creation myths, from Chinese poetry to Faust), and we were discussing Dante's Divine Comedy. My professor remarked, somewhat offhandedly, that the directness of Dante's narrative and the richness of his descriptive verse could only be the result of lived experience. This struck me as an odd thing to say, and so I asked him if he meant to say he believed that the poet had literally experienced the events related in the Inferno. "Yes," he said, "That's exactly what I mean. Dante lived this story, or at least he believed that he did. This stuff is for real."

"Blago gets the boot"

2009-01-30T07:57:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to miss Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Seriously, the guy had really begun to win my sympathy in his last few days in office. It's not that I disbelieve the charges against him, nor that I thought of him as a particularly venerable political figure. Rather, it occurs to me that for much of my adult life, I've been growing accustomed to watching the winners in politics act like gloating, petulant jerks, even as ever more of their victories could be chalked up to fiat, dishonesty or error, while the losers were expected to behave politely and contritely, in the interest of stablity and decorum. Reading excerpts this morning from governor Blagojevich's final address to the Illinois senate, I realized that I had begun to get a special pleasure from watching a loser defiantly refuse to give in, even as the tide of inevitability rose all around him. Having spent the last few weeks recoling from the sickening grey spectacle of George W. Bush leaving the presidency with the false air and gestures of a gentle, respectable statesman, it's been a refreshing change for me to watch a villain boldly refuse to go quietly. If all politics is theater, Rod Blagojevich's was at least an impassioned, compelling performance.

Warmth and light

2009-01-24T08:08:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, I looked up from my email at 6 p.m. to discover, though the sun had sunk behind the mountains, there was still light in the sky. Friday was brilliant and clear, with a high temperature in the 60s. A bright sunrise filled my bedroom with early light, and it occurred to me that I've been waking progressively earlier recently, in little bits and increments. I drove to the grocery store in a sweatshirt, with the windows down, listening to the Hallmark Sounds of Halloween tape that Marianne gave me. In the evening, Marianne, Andrew and I walked to new resident artist Amy Tavern's housewarming party. The warmth and light of the day were liberating; in the winter, I feel trapped, cut off, but Friday I felt a part of the world, free to walk around in the open air. It was like being reborn. Today it is chilly and gray; winter is far from gone, but I have gotten a hopeful reminder that it won't last forever.
In Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Kathleen Norris writes,
"Weather Report: February 10 - Spring seems far off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day."

A dream

2009-01-23T07:20:00.000-08:00

A few nights ago, I dreamed that my grandmother was still alive and making dinner for my father, my aunt and I. She was cooking very slowly and we were tired of waiting, so dad took me out to eat instead. As we ate microwaved pizzas at a folding table in the freezer aisle of a grocery store, he looked me in the eye and told me I should give up art and become a writer. The next morning on the radio, Garrison Keiller quoted someone famous (whose name I can't remember now), saying "How does one become a writer? Try to do something - anything - else." So by that reckoning, dream-dad, I'm right on track.

A new age of Hollywood musicals?

2009-01-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

I think it's time for the crowd of young Hollywood filmmakers who keep giving us mediocre depressing-and-uncomfortable-life-situation comedies with brilliant, loony musicals buried in them to admit that they are better at creating brilliant, loony musicals than depressing-and-uncomforatble-life-situation comedies. Seriously, Nicholas Stoller, jettison the rest of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and just show us the Dracula puppet rock opera. And Andrew Fleming, why not cut the dead wood that makes up the other 60 minutes of Hamlet 2 and just present the musical in it's entirety? Dare to let go of your ironic detachment, take sugar over saccharine, stop acting like you're too smart for the things you're good at and we (the audience) are too smart for the things we enjoy, and you may just begin a new age of Hollywood musicals.

Last night,

2009-01-18T12:13:00.000-08:00

I woke up suddenly from a dream I can't remember, my heart filled with terror and self-loathing. Today, I feel as though I am lost in the woods, and I don't know how to find my way again. So I think that for now I will live in the woods. I've got The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross with me, and I will read by the winter light filtering through the trees. I may also watch the Ravens game tonight. For some reason, Baltimore has been very much on my mind lately, and I find myself strangely interested in the outcome.

Do you read the New York Times?

2009-01-17T10:48:00.000-08:00

I do sometimes, most often while waiting for paint, oil, or wax to dry, because there is a stack of last year's Sunday Times kept in the wood studio for use as drop-cloths, and I usually find it depressing. It's not because of the quality of the journalism, which is very good, or the political bias, which tends to coincide fairly often with my own. It's the tone of the writing, and the aesthetic stance that informs it, particularly in articles about music and art. There's a knowingness to it, a sort of numb hipsterish point of view that yearns to be moved, but has seen too much, and is too dismissive of each new thing it sees to let it happen, as though it believes it has already thought critically a few steps ahead of the artists. Reading the Times, one might be led to believe that beauty can be found only fleetingly, in weariness, like a tiny delicate flower in a big ugly city, and it sometimes leaves me feeling tired and angry.

An Allegory for the Art of Painting

2008-05-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

Painting is taking much longer than I expected. As I removed the masking tape from the trim last night, aglow with pride and the expectation of a good night's sleep in my own bed in my own room, I discovered that the tape had leaked, allowing runs of (India Ink, semi-gloss) black paint to mar the (Chalk, eggshell) white walls every few inches. So now it seems I will have to do some scraping and touch-up. Urrgggh.
Also, I've been doing some painting work for the school, changing the color of some flat files and display shelves for the supply store (for the princely sum of $10 an hour, roughly 10 times what I make for my work in the Pines; I think I've already earned enough to pay for my first tank of gas). By odd coincidence, the shelves will be the same color as the trim in my bedroom (but satin finish). By lunchtime today, I began to feel as though I was really becoming pretty competent with a paintbrush. Nonetheless, I think this experience seals it - all natural or patinated finishes on my work this summer.

Shhh, listen...

2008-05-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

Spring Concentration has come to an end. All the students and instructors have packed up and gone home, the kitchen is closed, and with our short work-week behind us, most of my house-mates have gone away on vacation, leaving me, Joshua, and Shane nearly alone on an empty campus. I had forgotten how quiet it was when I first arrived here (on my first morning walk, I was afraid that I had gone deaf until I realized that I could still hear my feet on the pavement) and now I'm remembering in a big way. Last night we sat, waiting for Tina's spaetzle to finish cooking, with the windows open, savoring the sound of the birds and the occasional passing train. I'm looking forward to a relaxing week. I should be getting my car back tomorrow. I'm planning on doing some major reportage about the spring here on the blog, but first, I'm going to finish painting my room, reacquaint myself with the Nintendo 64 (courtesy of former Core John Shearin), and take a nap. If you're within half a mile, you should be able to hear me snore.

Little Earthquakes...

2008-04-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

I never would have suspected that I would experience my first earthquake in North Carolina, nor that said earthquake would be centered in Illinois, but that's just what happened Friday morning. I woke up at around 5:35 with the sensation that the walls were trembling, but it had stopped by the time I was awake enough to be sure I wasn't dreaming. Then it happened again; the house shook lightly for a few seconds around and under me and then was still. It had never occurred to me that this could be a geologically active area, so it wasn't until I read the news in the afternoon that I thought "earthquake." At the time, my theory was centered much closer to home; I figured Joshua, who lives in the room above mine, must be doing a particularly intense regimen of early-morning push-ups.

On the anniversery of Lincoln's assassination...

2008-04-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

This morning, inspired by the Gillian Welch song "April 14, Part 1," Beth drew an "On This Date In History" board, listing the beginning of the Dust Bowl exodus from Oklahoma, the sinking of the Titanic, the train wreck that martyred Casey Jones, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. She accompanied each item with a chalk drawing, except for the death of the Great Emancipator, which she asked me to illustrate with a portrait plaque of Lincoln that she gave me as a gift a few weeks ago, and one of my Abe Lincoln votive candles, which I will burn at lunch and dinner in his honor. [Professional side note: To date, I have sold 2 Lincoln candles ($18.65 each) and 2 Platos ($12 each) in the Core Gallery.]

It's cold here on the mountain today; it snowed last night and we were all afraid that Amy the Gardener's beautiful flowerbeds might be damaged. Luckily, no, and I got a rare chance to venture down from the hills, thanks to a field trip to see the work of another Amy (Tavern, an Asheville-based jeweller). After the open-house at her studio, she joined my classmates and I for dinner at an Indian restaurant down the street. I had a lamb curry with saffron rice, and tried some of Raina's Baingan Bharta and Amy's Malai Kofta with Peshwari Naan. It was exquisite, and quieted my mind but set my body humming (possibly because of all the spices?). The sensation was akin to being high, and it took me by surprise until I realized that this was the first non-Pines meal I've had in over 6 weeks. On the ride back (Asheville is about an hour away) I reflected on how often I dined out when I lived in Minneapolis (not a good idea financially, but it was my principal indulgence), and how this and other things once daily and mundane, like putting coins in a parking meter or sitting for a while in a car speeding through the dark, have become strange, unfamiliar treats to be savored for their novelty. My teacher's lady-friend Lisa, a native of Cornwall and thus no stranger to wild, enchanting landscapes herself, remarked during the trip down to Asheville on the beauty of the mountains and forests in this area. "It seems the trick must be to not go numb to it all," she said, and I thought about this again as I shivered through my morning walk across the dreamy, misty forests and valleys of intense green which have become, for me, the new daily and mundane.

Zzzzzzzzz...

2008-04-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

Early this morning, I discovered a brand new impediment to a good night's sleep. No, I'm not talking about the turkey that gobbles in the woods just outside the house (which I didn't believe was real when Marianne told me about it last week, but must concede that I have since heard for myself), nor the freight trains that sound their horns and fill the valley with resonant echoes as they race past, though they have been known to give a steampunk flavor to my dreams. I'm referring, rather, to the sound of snoring. My own.
For several years, I've known that I can't sleep for long on my back; in that position I quickly snore myself awake. But now it's begun happening when I'm sleeping on my side as well. What to do? Will I lose the safety of belly-sleep, too? Will I have to wear one of those funny adhesive strips across my nose? Heavens to Betsy! Growing older is difficult.

Robot Repair

2008-04-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

Searching through the large cabinet of videotapes left behind by former Core Students in my living room the other night, I found "Saturday Night Live: The Best of Phil Hartman." I watched, and was reminded afresh of the genius of the man and the tragedy of his untimely passing. Not only was his Donahue amazing and his Bill Clinton absolutely spot on (I couldn't find it online, unfortunately, but here's another masterpiece), but the video contained my new favorite piece of televised comedy: Robot Repair. Check it out.

Unsettled

2008-03-19T16:32:00.000-07:00

In our first official meeting as a group, Core director Mark Boyd described spring at Penland as "an unsettled time." After a few weeks here, I've begun to appreciate the truth of his observation. The weather changes so quickly here, and, if I may be so pretentious, with it my heart.
Yesterday was gray and cold; I could see my breath but not the stars on my walk to work. One of the work-studies in the kitchen asked me to watch the windows and call her out to see the sunrise. I didn't bother; the sun was invisible behind the clouds. She was disappointed when I told her this. "I get up so early," she said, "but I never see the sun rise." I promised to watch the horizon for her on Thursday morning if the sky was more favorable.
This morning I woke to mist in the trees outside my window, and left the house to find that what I thought was frost on the windows of my housemates' cars was, in fact, drizzle. A foggy, chilly type of damp that I will always associate with the east coast of Scotland dominated the morning, until a fierce wind and rain storm overtook us just before lunch, hiding the mountains in deep blue murk as it approached. Rain soaked the afternoon; I was glad I had brought my umbrella (also I have received a lot of complements on it today, because it matches my new neckerchief). When I left dinner, the sky had cleared, bright evening sun illuminated the campus with a nearly colorless light, and a warm breeze blew up across the knoll. (Dinner was clam chowder. I'm beginning to think the kitchen can sense my mood.) Now as I write, dark clouds are rolling in again and the light is going out of the sky.
When I was preparing to leave Minneapolis and come here, I noticed a change in my emotional background noise. The dull and vague dread that had come to characterize the last year began to be replaced by a sort of terror that I remember from childhood and, more recently, from art school. It's a terror associated with motion, like the sensation in the stomach when you go over the top of the big hill on a roller coaster and feel the center of gravity pass the tipping point. Fear of that sensation kept me off of roller coasters for years, until I suddenly discovered that I loved them, and from then it was the bigger the better, and so as I packed and trained my replacements and had goodbye lunches I kept reminding myself of the possibility that what I was feeling was not danger but renewed motion, unfamiliar after some time of losing a battle with my own inertia.
It can be intensely quiet here at Penland, and I have quieted down inside as well, but in the background I can still hear the terror at times, though it has changed form (I suppose for now I'm not on a roller coaster anymore, but something more like "It's a Small World,
After All.") and sounds not so much like metal moving through on rails (though I do hear trains moving through the valley all the time) as like waves. It's a strange metaphor, but I've been visualizing the feeling something like this:
I'm standing on a beach. It's dark, and everything reads in black-and-white; all I can see is the white of the sand and the white of the breakers and foam atop the black waves. I hear the surf, and it's a familiar and comforting sound, because I remember the sea, but I can't shake the impression that the ocean is shallow and only goes out about 20 feet, only as far as I can see it moving. Beyond that is the real ocean, which I can't see or hear, and do not know. I imagine it as an emptiness, deep and black, and it makes my heart go cold.
This is not always in my mind. It goes away when I am melting wax, sanding plaster, winding colored thread around the handle of a spoon, or drinking a selection from the Twining's "Teas of India" collection (that box of tea has treated me right today!). Just constructing the metaphor above has made the feeling lose some of its power, which is nice but also a little sad, because it is frightening but deep, and I don't like to be scared, but I do like depth.
If asked, I would say that I am very happy here. But what I am most often asked is if everything is "all settled in." I don't have a good answer for that.

Trip to Penland, Part 1

2008-03-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

My stepfather, John, arrived after lunch on Friday the 22nd. Naturally, I was nowhere near as far along with packing as I had anticipated. Heading to his truck to go to the bank to close my account and to Minnetonka to pick up the towing dolly that we would use to pull my car behind us, we made an unfortunate discovery: John had left his keys in the ignition and locked the doors. A quick call to Mom in Bloomington, Indiana confirmed that the spare set was just where he'd left it, hanging next to the telephone in the kitchen. Fearing the approach of the end of the business day, I went alone to the bank, which took just enough time for AAA to arrive and jimmy the lock.
Closing my accounts was the most pleasant customer-service interaction I've ever had with Wells Fargo: they smiled, they flirted, they took my personal identification documents at face value, they gladly accepted my word that there were no outstanding charges or transactions, they handed over my cash with politeness and ease. It was delightful, and I must say that if I had even once been treated so kindly by Wells Fargo when I was actually banking with them, I might consider opening another account with them some day. This has to be considered some kind of customer-service in reverse; I found myself wanting to stop doing business with them again, because the experience was so enjoyable.
Back at the apartment, the truck was open and so we headed out to the western suburbs to pick up our U-Haul device. I elected to let John do most (in fact, literally all) of the driving once we had the tow dolly hooked up, since he's into that sort of thing, having spent most of his adult life hauling around scientific equipment behind a Suburban. Thanks, John!
The rest of Friday night was spent packing. And Saturday morning. Ugggh. The less said about that, the better. I had stuff I didn't even know I had. I had stuff I didn't want. I had stuff I thought I had gotten rid of a decade ago. I had stuff I assumed was Ashley's, and let me assure you, if you naively assume that we're still living in the days when you can just foist an unwanted blender or rice-o-mat off on a soon-to-be-former roommate and she'll be happy about it, we are not.
We left Minneapolis around lunchtime on Saturday, John's truck filled to the gills with stuff earmarked for long-term storage in Indiana, my car, similarly stuffed with belongings bound for Penland, in tow. We had driven as far south as Savage when two guys in a pickup truck pulled up alongside and motioned that the tires on my car were smoking. So we pulled off, confirmed that there did in fact seem to be some nasty frottage and burning going on around the rear driver-side wheel, shifted some weight around to take it off that corner of the car, filled the tires (naturally, I had not done this before embarking on a cross-country trip), got gas (at $2.93/gallon; I suspect I shall never pay so little for gas again as long as I live [the lowest price I've seen in Spruce Pine is $3.19]), crossed our fingers and started off again. Subsequent stops for meals, bathrooms, snacks and gasoline appeared to confirm the theory that we had solved the problem - there was little, if any, smell of burning rubber and no sign of smoke.
I can't remember the name of the Interstate oasis/town in Illinois where we stayed for the night, only that it was one stop west of I39 on I80, a 5-mile digression that brought us a greatly expanded field of motel options, and that it looked oddly familiar (it is extremely unlikely that I had ever been there before). I think I can safely say that this is the only motel room I have ever stayed in where I did not turn on the television. I did steal all of the soap and shampoo, though, figuring I might need them in the future.

I have not forgotten you...

2008-03-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

...dear friends, but these have been 3 very busy, very full weeks, leaving me almost no time until now to reflect on the many and massive recent changes to my lifestyle and report them to you. I miss you all, and from this point on, now that things have begun to settle down into a more comfortable and predictable pattern, I will do my best to regularly share my experiences here at Penland, as well as some of my thoughts and feelings about them. I suppose it makes sense to begin with a recap of my trip from Minneapolis to North Carolina, and of my early days here at the school. This will likely require several installments, so don't touch that dial, batfans... the kookiest is yet to come!