My parents and my sister and my nephew are here visiting, and they brought me a portrait of my grandparents, painted sometime in the 20s or 30s, dressed in their graduation gowns. I'm quite besotted with it. There are several strange things about this portrait, one of which is the wedding gown or river of white fabric streaming out from under Lola's gown -- some kind of allusion to the fact that they are married? They also graduated from different universities at different times, so this portrait records a moment that never happened, unless they posed for it years later, which adds yet another layer to the mille-feuille of artifice. Or maybe this picture was taken from photographs?

One thing I love about old photographs is how dignified and iconic they are; since less than ten pictures were taken per person per lifetime, each photograph is burdened with great representative responsibility.
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Sadly, bhikku was taken down last week.
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Rain, rain, go away.
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Apparently there was a symposium on Athanasius Kircher, who inhabits my pantheon of cult figures (which makes me wonder who in fact is in this pantheon of cult figures I have? Athanasius Kircher, Giordano Bruno, Syd Barrett, Julian Jaynes, James Merrill, Nicholas Roeg, Alice Aycock come to mind...)

All around interesting guy, Kircher. I have this great book about him somewhere, which I couldn't find in a half hour of searching (viz. the entry three entries ago about getting rid of books) Anyway, I was interested in this image:

I have a vague memory of a similar invention appearing in a movie or an animation somewhere, but can't remember where. This started me thinking about projects which involved making music using instruments or technologies that were not originally designed to make music, but which made sounds nonetheless, like Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers by The User or Dialtones: a telesymphony and those street kids in New York in the 80s who would play buckets...and then I thought about the guy in Victoria last weekend who had a turntable with a stick projecting from it from which hung a string at the end of which was a rock, which, when he turned on the turntable, struck the glasses he had filled with different amounts of water, making beautiful music, and that guy who's always on Granville playing his invented instruments.... I also remembered the Piano Thing at Burning Man and the incredible instrument in Nova by Samuel Delany -- which I don't have here, but hopefully Ray will read this and remind us what it's all about...

And I will now append to this rambling post a list of books I couldn't find today, possibly lost. (Maybe they're at my studio?)

• (The Chants of) Maldoror by Lautreamont
• Athanasius Kircher by Somebody Or Other
• Bible (King James)
• The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre (sp??)

Possible Moves by Jeremy Bushnell, in the same vein as Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies. (Weird phrase, "in the same vein". Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable gives me nothing on this, and I've just discovered my Partridge's slang dictionary has gotten the hell out of Dodge...)
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A partial recounting of Luke’s conversation with a junkie, who he found shooting heroin in his backyard:

Luke: You've got a lot to offer the world.
Junkie: No, all my stuff’s in storage.
Luke: No I mean all the stuff you’ve got inside.
Junkie: Look at me, man. I’m just skin and bones.
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I'm always on the lookout for books that I can give away, sell, donate or otherwise get rid of to free up some shelf space for the unstanched flow of incoming books. So I stood for several long minutes considering two adjacent books and wondering: should I get rid of Anti-Oedipus and/or The Book of Thoth? Impenetrable and Thereby Useless Arcana or Potentially Interesting and Possibly Brilliant Stuff? Jury's still out, and has been since 1997.

Admissible evidence: when I was searching Amazon for "Anti-Oedipus" two study guides appeared before "Anti-Oedipus" itself.
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Break-up night at the beach. One log over on Sunset Beach Mr. and Ms. Earnest were having an earnest conversation about their relationship -- apparently some ongoing communication problems on his side -- as we left them she said, "I'm 25 years old and I'm ready," she said, he said nothing and they sat there uselessly, not even looking at each other. My assessment: doomed. What is this "ready" business? Shit or cut bait is what I always say.

Down the beach Ms. Hotpants with flipup hairdo was stomping off as loudly as you can stomp off wearing sneakers, totally steamed. But, woe and molasses!, she was not able to not look back over her shoulder to see if He was following. He wasn't. Double whammy! Consider that bridge burned.

"They just broke up after a big loud nasty fight," Candace said, who was skating by on her new rollerskates. Canada geese started honking noisily SKWONK SKWONK SKWONK and Peter flew by on some kind of wheeled longboard apparatus, crouched into a monkey fist. We were on wheels ourselves.
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Ranjit's Sketching Device #1 will be competing in a robot talent show called Artbots. Unlike Battlebots, there won't be any crushing, maiming or throttling; this show is about visual art, and music.
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Nick sends along this gem, from Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (which I haven't read, but which Nick assures me is glorious, mad, comic and Joyce-admired):

The Dia Foundation Book Store is now online. All kinds of rare and difficult-to-find-in-Vancouver books.

You know, it never occurred to me that I wasn't supporting the publishing industry and a vast community of writers, since I buy dozens of books every month. But I read an article a few weeks ago (which I can no longer find) in which a publisher lamented the proliferation of online used book sites -- Powell's and Abebooks and Bibliofind and the like -- since publishers and writers don't make a nickel off of the sale of used books. Used books are what I mostly buy, in the interest of the trees, and in the interest of used bookstore owners who are usually booklovers like myself, because of my inborn Yankee frugality, and because I'd rather put my money towards good books than towards, say, Disney products, junk food or consumer electronics. It had just never occurred to me before that by not buying new books I wasn't contributing to the publishing and writing economy -- to authors and readers too.
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Farrago

• portmanteau words: dramastic insinuendo
• hysteron proteron: jelly and peanut butter sandwiches
• Rick Moody: That's what we do in America: Take all the mystery out of everything until we're just left with a business.
• “In 1940 Orwell wrote a passage that flashed into my mind after September 11, about Hitler and his "pathetic, doglike face, of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs." In still more extraordinary words he went on to say that Hitler had "grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life."

  All "progressive" thought has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain ... Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.

  Bin Laden may not have a pathetic, doglike face, but hasn't he—because in his joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength—grasped the same thing Hitler did? Doesn't he laugh in the face of the pursuit of happiness? And isn't that understood by Naipaul, who could almost, mutatis mutandis, have written that passage of Orwell's? (From The Atlantic.)

• Caterina got the grape. Caterina got the tomato. Yes this is one of those dreadful mystery posts. But all will be explained in due course.

Today is "Queen Victoria Day" here in Canada, which means a day off of work and school and whatnot. I was looking around for a picture of Vicky and found this great one on harrumph.
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It occurred to me today that Thing One and Thing Two would make an excellent tattoo. Not that I'm looking to get one.
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Peculiar. Fascinating. How did he? How could she?
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British Columbia, represent! It wasn't the skinny white teenager's baseball hat worn sideways that made me laugh, nor was it the absurdly baggy jeans, with one of the legs rolled up over his knee, exposing his hairless shin. It wasn't the straight-outta-Compton walk, flapping his hands around like freshly caught fish. What made me laugh was his eyes darting around to see if anyone was noticing, and if anyone thought he was as cool as he was trying to be, though he suspected -- he was almost certain -- he was not. His anxiety was deep. He was like Vanilla Ice, but, like, uncooler. And yet, he was trying, as we all tried when we were fourteen or fifteen, and still are trying, though we disguise it better, to achieve this thing he had in his head of this person he wished he were and wasn't and could never be.

I laughed.
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This is Nabokov's joky first line in Ada.
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Ray and Juliet have been listing their favorite first and last lines, and not to be outside the fun, here are mine:

First lines (this first one is really a first paragraph):

This is the beginning of White Noise by Don Delillo. Waffelos and Kabooms! And by George, I love the second paragraph too, which I had mistakenly thought was part of the first:

Phew. That was some typing. The ending is lovely too, an echo and undermining of the college arrival scene. It takes place in a supermarket where goods have been rearranged, and shoals of lost and stricken shoppers move up and down the aisles, unable to connect with their products. Can't type it now. Maybe tomorrow I'll post more first lines. Good night!
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You will notice that The 5k competition has launched and is now open for entries. Cool! Remember when I mentioned that I was working on a site that was completely black and white, no grey? This was what I was working on. You may notice the weblog on the side has an apology to 'the designer' about it not being fully operational. Someday it will look like this. And the judges page will look like this. Neato!
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Having put cream on my face that I knew and forgot that I was allergic to, I woke up with an inflated face, particularly about the eyes. I am feeling crummy, and so am lying in bed reading Gravity's Rainbow again, and not going down the studio today. I found The Gravity's Rainbow Companion in a box, and was inspired to pick it up again. I've started and abandoned it at least five or six times now.
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Today is a sad day in weblogland.
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Since Leanne and Moya left for Seattle -- after we had three lovely days of touring about and eating good cheese --I have been down at my studio in Gastown listening to Sigur Ros and building installations such as this one:

I need to go to the lumber yard tomorrow to get some wood to put inside the boxes Ewan made for me. Also need more beads and washers, a saw, (how much is a table saw?) Ektachrome slide film and polyester resin catalyst.
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On Thursday, Stewart and Derek and I were sitting exchanging "facts". Stewart's was: There are more scientists working today than there has been in the rest of history combined and mine was Yak milk is pink. Does anyone have any good (interesting) facts?
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From an interview with Michel Foucault on the subject of hypomnemata, meaning "a copybook, a notebook.":

and more:

"Such is the aim of hypomnemata" Michel Foucault writes, "to make one’s recollection of the fragmentary logos, transmitted through teaching, listening and reading, a means of establishing a relationship of oneself with oneself, a relationship as adequate and accomplished as possible." He later adds that this kind of writing aimed "to capture the already-said, to collect what one has managed to hear or read, and for a purpose that is nothing less than the shaping of the self."

Thanks, Dirk!
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• An interesting bibliography on Death, Afterlife, Tombs and Ancestral Cults (This guy, Philip Clart, seems to have an interesting area of study, including Chinese geomancy and spirit-writing.)
• Japanese Ancestor Worship
• Ancestor Worship Today

Quoted in The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje:

Interesting factoid from the Doors of Perception weblog:

Last night on the way home from dinner, Moya was shaking the cherry trees, while Leanne, Stewart and I stood underneath, letting the petals snow down on us.
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do it is a manual of artist's instructions for you to actualize. It includes works by over 60 contemporary artists including:

John Baldessari / Louise Bourgeois ("When you are walking, stop and smile at a stranger.") / Lygia Clark / Felix Gonzalez-Torres / Douglas Gordon / Mona Hatoum / Mike Kelley / Jonas Mekas / Bruce Nauman / Yoko Ono / Nam June Paik / Andreas Slominski

Once you've completed a work, you let them know, and they include you in the manual.
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Continuing in my researches on the 60s, I somehow got my hands on a 1968 book called The Negro in the City by Gerald Leinwand, a well-intentioned but woefully misguided reader which is part of a series called "Problems of American Society". The Negro in the City has 75 pages of essay about "the problem" and then selections from the writings of Richard Wright, Booker T, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, MLK and others. Mr. Leinwand was clearly trying to do good, but the anxious don't be afraid of black people tone was all over the place, as in this passage, following a list of black people in high places:

One of the best books I've read on the social history of the 60s is David Remnick's King of the World, the story of Muhammad Ali and how he transformed politics as "a new kind of black man". Next up I've got Norman Mailer's essay The White Negro and some Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary. Maybe I'll rent some Oliver Stone movies....Nah.
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A list of things I've never done that I think I should get a pat on the back for not having done, since the urge to do them is sometimes quite hard to subdue:

• I've never tied the laces of a pair of sneakers together and flung them up on the telephone wires.
• I've never yanked the tablecloth out from underneath a fully set table to see if the dishes would land back on the table in the same place.

To tell you the truth, I was not impressed. The titanium on the museum in Bilbao was getting a little dingy -- streaks of rainwater and rust were already marring the shiny perfection you see in all the photographs, and the novelty of all the wings and waves of metal was dulled by too many pictures in too many articles, a diminished Wow, dribbling down into a humdrum 'oh yeah'. And the art was clearly riding second class here, while the building and Frank Gehry's ego reclined in first.

Guggenheim schmuggenheim. What impressed me about Bilbao was the bathroom at the Hotel Ercilla. White marble on the floors and the walls! Superchic overdesigned bidet! Indirect zit-obscuring lighting! Piles of toiletries in the cabinet that I hadn't even realized I'd left behind! Shoe horns, hair nets, emery boards, lint removers, shoe polish! Towels thick and thirsty as the ones that don't ever go on sale at the January white sale at Macy's! Whoever cleaned this bathroom was a cleaning master -- even after spending fifteen hours -- non-stop! -- on my hands and knees, barfing into the spotless Villeroy & Boch john -- I was unable to find a single hair or mote of dust in that marvellous marvellous bathroom.
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