by Jean Marie Carey | 6 Jan 2014 | Animals, Animals in Art, Art History, Franz Marc, Music
Franz Marc’s Deer in the Snow at the Lenbachhaus; Persona
The article M83: Why Music Is Contemporary Art on the Installation website provides an excellent forum, in the comments section, for the discussion of the title subject.
I like M83 a lot and agree that their sound is ambitious beyond poptronica though as commenters on the Installation site point out this is not necessarily because of compositional enterprise or chord progression For me the attraction is the “celebrate the apocalypse” mood of “Midnight City” or the spoken “created sample” in “OK Pal:”
“We’re walking in the streets – or what’s left of them,
I take your hand, and the city is slowly vanishing.
There’s no crowd anymore, no cars, no signals.
But in the middle of the road, a purple and mellow shape is floating.
The shape of our mutual dream.
Stay calm, hold me tight, give it a chance to take us away.
We will live, we will dream on the shadow of our world.”
I had a dream the other night that incorporated both this song and the painting in the photo, Franz Marc’s Deer in the Snow (1911). In the dream a good friend of mine who recently has been through a difficult time was one of the deer, but hampered by a hank of rope or net caught between her hoof and head. The reindeer tender freed her, and despite being “caught,” my friend as the deer, didn’t have any broken bones, or even any bruises or lost fur. I hope she will be OK like the deer in the dream. In the dream, I heard the music from “Midnight City” (which reminds me of this friend). I don’t know why anyone would think people (and animals) don’t see colors or hear music in dreams…maybe everyone does and they just forget.
by Jean Marie Carey | 3 Jan 2014 | Art History, Franz Marc, German Expressionism / Modernism, Re-Enactments© and MashUps
One hundred years ago today, August Macke celebrated his 27th birthday – his last.
I spend a lot of research time excavating lost, unpublished, and little-known writings and facts about August Macke and his cousin (more like a little brother) Helmuth Macke. Franz Marc really loved the Mackes and his interactions with them are important for many reasons. But the Mackes are amazing on their own.
Famous Hyperbolic Color Chart
Like Franz Marc, August Macke was incredibly prolific across a number of mediums. As Marc notes from their first meeting, August is inescapably a benthic Capricorn, materialistic and practical. Yet his prose reads like verse, exploding with jokes (especially at the expense of Marc to whom he often “mit seinen im Ulk treiben”), imagery, sounds, and cheerful energy.
by Jean Marie Carey | 12 Oct 2013 | Art History, German Expressionism / Modernism, LÖL, Re-Enactments© and MashUps, Stuff Found in Library Books
The Blue Flask: A Story Told in Text Message
Pt. 1
A few nights ago, I had a dream in which one of the key objects later appeared in physical form during the day. I thought this was a bit unusual, in that the object, while quotidian, is not something you would see every day, let alone find on the street…
The object is this: a blue thermos type aluminum flask. The dream was actually a fragment of memory about something that had actually happened: a battle of petty ecological one-uppersonship and unintentionally amusing symbolism. Seeking to appear both more recycly than thou and also make a statement of personal taste, this guy had dispensed with plastic water bottles for a flask that looked exactly like the one in the picture, except I am sure minus the millions of microbes. The guy’s sort of but not really rival, a female, at the first opportunity produced her own personal power statement water bottle, ornately patterned in some sort of pink, green, and brown-over aluminum paisley. Also, this bottle was significantly larger.
Because I was in fourth grade (not really it was only a few years ago), and had a clear line of sight to the bottle duel, I poorly concealed some giggling. Observing this my friend across the room looked at me questioningly, whereupon I silently pointed out the comparison. My friend also began quietly laughing, and later, in another location, we both laughed quite a bit.
This was a tiny episode in a sprawling “big fish”-type saga, and I have not thought about it in some time, until this week when someone brought to my attention the names of both bottle-owning individuals, reunited for a charity affair, a telethon to benefit the humorless…J/K those last two phrases.
Pt. 2
The dream about the bottle was very fleeting, and it was about the incident, and then I dreamed about other unrelated stuff. But when I woke up I could see those bottles through my lashes before I quite opened my eyes. IKR! But it was a dream.
Pt. 3
Later the day of the morning/night of the dream, I went to the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek. This is not unusual, I go there almost every day. What is unusual is to see a blue aluminum water bottle wedged into the space between a windowsill and a window on the second floor in a rarely used reading room (and in fact by a window that is rarely opened since it is always winter). Instead of fleeing in distress I leaned out over the parapet and window frame and fished the bottle in with the help of my scarf. I brought it home and I still have it, figuring that like in The Grudge there is no point in getting rid of it since it has already located me. Even though I can drink as much Löwenbrau Triumphator as anyone in my adopted kingdom I don’t like to carry glass bottles around because I am afraid they will break when I inevitably drop them, so maybe I will use this flask to transport beer during Wies’n – the most fun it will ever have in all of its lives.
The Blue Flask: Postscript
The blue flask/dream incident last week was one of a series of very strange things that have happened to me this year, so though it was “haunting,” I didn’t freak out. While I was in the library, I remembered suddenly that I wanted to check out The Author of Himself, the autobiography of Marcel Reich-Ranicki. I got the book and have been reading it instead of packing. On Friday it was reported that Ranicki had died after a long illness.
by Jean Marie Carey | 20 Sep 2012 | Art History
Since the actual original bike accident on 1 May 2011, I have been under full anesthesia for more than 25 hours. That is a lot.
I had extreme misgivings about this last surgery, now 10 days ago. I have not been in a very good mood, and there is a lot of stuff that would be better to be doing. The ophthalmologic surgeon insisted that this was, like, the last chance to save the left eye, that it’s too busted up and nothing else has worked in terms of less drastic repairs. So even though, once I considered the alternative — of just having a fake eye that was an exciting color like violet or orange and different from the remaining eye and that eyes from the future like in Mona Lisa Overdrive will probably be invented soon — in my subdued state I agreed to this sort of new surgery where they graft some part of your good eye into your bad eye.
Unfortunately, until the moment the anesthesiologist told me what was going to happen I failed to realize that this would entail both eyes being totally patched for some number of days, and I was not very happy (as in extremely surprised and unhappy)* when I did realize it. But maybe I had been meaning to listen to the audio book of The Pale King anyway.
The trauma of surgery for me is normally the anesthesia…I am really kind of used to not being able wear my glasses, or see perfectly. This time I was out from about 10:30 a.m. until about 3:30 p.m. — quite a spell. In the recovery area I had some very vivid dreams and memories during which the nurse kept interrupting me from telling me to breathe…. I remembered so clearly a particularly sharp cold day in the hautes fagnes seeing a herd of deer emerge from the dense fog. A few years I looked up into the eyes of an acquaintance and discovered that instead of the blue I has always assumed they were these eyes were actually a sparkling golden hazel with flecks of green and black, like a lynx or a cheetah. I was so amazed I lost track of what the person was saying and just stared at them. This moment seemed to go on and on although it took only a second. Everything I imagined or remembered had to do vividly with animals or seeing or both so even in being partially aware that this was partially a synthetic effect of synapses snapping to Versed and Dilaudid this was an exceedingly intriguing state, and alluring.
(more…)
by Jean Marie Carey | 25 Apr 2012 | Animals, Animals in Art, Dogs!, Music
Centurion is supposed to be historical fiction about the disappearance of the Legio IX Hispania in the third century in something like the Battle of Teutoberg Wald but it kind of lapses into … semi-fantasy. There is a lot of snow and awesome alpine scenery and fun costumes. Basically the only reason to see Centurion is for Dominic West in one of his typically movie-stealing supporting roles (as “General Titus Flavius Virilus” – really!) and Etain, the “guerra picta” played by Olga Kurylenko. Etain doesn’t speak, takes the wolf as her attribute animal, and endures a strange sort of Penthesilea-like death. She has fantastic Pict ordnance and body decorations.
I was sort of half-waking up, half-dreaming about the movie when the song “Signs” came on the former dataheaven.us I haven’t paid much attention to Bloc Party previously but I was blown away by this particular song. Maybe it was just the combination of sound and imagery but it really shook me up.
What do these two things have in common that together they should make such a resonant impression? I don’t know.
Here is the link to “Signs” on Soundcloud, and a snippet of lyric: “I could sleep forever these days because in my dreams I see you again.”
