I'm thinking about the effect of place on art, as place influences art. The place creates of itself. Inspirations of Heironymus Bosch's delightful garden of twisted creatures and revelry, here where embodiment is as well a dream, it teaches us to live, and maybe more than once, that we have many influences set upon us. Either we draw the strings to make motions or we see ourselves a puppet on a stage.
-Skimming through Vision
16 March 2009
15 March 2009
Posty Post
Toasty roast. Psychosomatic tomato fantastic. I really don't want to update this now that I've begun. I wanted to write some of what I've done lately, such as Krakow. It was awesome what I saw some of the time a bit crazy, a bit of spinning out of control if you would compare the flushing of a toilet to the flushing of a whole people, of people as a whole because the world was really going to shit whenever someone thought there was a difference between you and I.
Between the cracks in our minds we slip little notes rolled up and get smoked like the barren earth from which we're birthed.
I'm all in for personal expression so here, but hear, you can't project your expectations on the space between sentences without sentencing yourself. Maybe you don't hear yourself, that other people should know already what you have to say. You don't have to. You don't have anything to give if you don't already cherish that someone is willing to take from you. Giving forth and relinquishing are quite opposite, but consider it giving or giving up. Synonyms of antonyms distinguish this. I find lately the curious equalizing of the word have to mean must. Possessing something is not to be taken for granted, though it may have been granted to you. That is a privilege. What the fuck be so frantic for? You only realize the value of time when that's all you don't have left, in the end. By that time you are not ahead of the game because it's not a game, and there is no winning.
:S/V:
Between the cracks in our minds we slip little notes rolled up and get smoked like the barren earth from which we're birthed.
I'm all in for personal expression so here, but hear, you can't project your expectations on the space between sentences without sentencing yourself. Maybe you don't hear yourself, that other people should know already what you have to say. You don't have to. You don't have anything to give if you don't already cherish that someone is willing to take from you. Giving forth and relinquishing are quite opposite, but consider it giving or giving up. Synonyms of antonyms distinguish this. I find lately the curious equalizing of the word have to mean must. Possessing something is not to be taken for granted, though it may have been granted to you. That is a privilege. What the fuck be so frantic for? You only realize the value of time when that's all you don't have left, in the end. By that time you are not ahead of the game because it's not a game, and there is no winning.
:S/V:
05 March 2009
Wash your shadow off the wall
Hey it's ME-lijah, let me date you. I mean keep you. I mean keep you up to date. I mean I'm just looking for a good time. No promises, and don't rely on me, but you can lie here all you want. My hair is getting longer, my fingernails never. My desks are amassing with paper cutouts and slash marks and my computer doesn't have room to let me work.
And I need your lovin like the sunshine.
It helped me barely make it through the winterstilte until I realized it was my heart that had stopped. I wonder what life-support is. I don't think machines can really guarantee your life. They don't come with a warrantee to say the least. I do believe you can leave your mind and your heart will go on beating, but not the other way around. Once you give up on the pulsing in-and-outs of life you cannot readmit yourself, admit that to yourself.
Man I've been gone over a month now. I just hit six weeks today, I just checked. I have a lot of space to myself, even though I have a small room and a small program with only a few kids I like and even then, I have my reservations. But really a lot of space to myself. The whole world. Sure, it's everyone's to share, everyone who's here now and past and future, but there's so much empty space. You really have to look across distances to get any of it. Maybe some things you bring a little closer to inspect, but that's not even necessary. There is enough room for everyone to distribute their wealth and their worth and there's never a reason to feel there is none for you. The poorest men are those who cannot see past their own dollars, while perhaps the richest are those who feel the weight of change in their pocket.
Well where I was going with that was that I am trying to reach my arms across oceans and into small crevices to find loose change and affix it where things are broken. Enough of that metaphor. Change, we all get it. I'm loving the German language because sometimes it makes so much sense and it even helps me understand (and possibly accept) english a little better. I had a substitute teacher Claudia for a week who was great at talking in approachable German and I was completely on level with learning through her exposure, rather than Anemone who likes to play simple games and gestures at learning. Either way my five weeks of class are over and I'm about to set about on travels for the next month before coming back to Berlin to focus on my semester project 100%, or 90%, or I'll figure out how much I have to subtract for sleeping time. I'm taking a train to Krakow on Friday. While I'm there I'll see how the Lexia program is there (there are only two students and I hear it sucks) and I'll be going to Auschwitz. That's going to be intense. My seminars have been mainly cultural, relevant to Germany's coming-to-terms with itself, and historical. I've had a wide scope of topics in art, specific movements relevant to the cultural context and society, which puts into perspective even contemporary art to some degree. I've been having ideas of my own, or at least having the idea of having ideas, or having the idea of having ideas become more than ideas. I have less to complain about my coordinators and certain instructors because it's simply not worthy of my time to think that way, or to bond with the other students in talking shit. However, I do talk about shit often, since there are so many dogs in the city and no regulation on curbing. Maybe the dogs here are so obedient and seemingly awesome because they just shit wherever they like. Think how much nicer people would be if they weren't obstinately pushing their way through a crowd simply because they'd been holding one back all day. There's value to the phrase anal-retentive, as in fact it comes from the irritability of human societies because of their reservations with bodily functions.
I have a decent amount of work due after Krakow which for sure will distract me from concentrating on the camp. That's not so well-organized. I need to just get the work done though because break is soon after and I will be seeing my father and stepmother. Free time (Freizeit) in Berlin will be nice because there are things I want to see and do yet haven't found the time for. I'm hoping I will procure a bike by April especially so I can ride to Grünewald. I'm making plans to reconnect with an old friend in Munich for a few days before the end of my break and then I head for Budapest and Romania with Lexia. Though I don't quite know what's in store I'm glad I get a chance to travel while I'm here. I've been thinking about traveling in May when I finish with Lexia because I will really be on my own when the program ends and most of the kids go back to the states. I'll have a few contacts left but I think it would really be something to get from place to place on my own and maybe stay with random people or see who I might be able to meet up with. It would be really great to hit up contacts in Amsterdam or Spain or Italy before vacationing with the family in the Dominican Republic in August. That will be really nice, but it will also be the biggest culture shock; visiting a region so rich in a culture I know little about, am intrigued by, but staying only on a private American-owned estate. Privacy... I hope to go someday with my friend Lis Mery to get a sense of life there. While I'm here I should be having more of a Berlin nightlife and trying to establish German relations.
More important things that happened lately were
A) trip to Dessau to see the Bauhaus school of design, directed by Walter Gropius as the heyday of modernity and sleek functionality. It was cool to be there and think about how it would have been as a functioning facility. The craziest thing was learning how it changed, was destroyed and rebuilt and overrun by the Nazis for a time. I think the Bauhaus had the whole ideal thing down pretty well, so it's weird that the Nazi party criticized its nature (but still took over the building after only minor changes). Also in Dessau is the Federal Environmental Agency which is housed in a fantastic and inspiring eco-building which provides 50% of its own energy. The building curves around itself to form a walking-space between two walls of offices where there are tropical plants and even a pool to give humidity to the office environment.
B)erlin's Fuβball team Hertha against Gladbach. Hertha won by the time I finished my liter-cup of beer. The Olympia Stadion where Hitler held his speech at the 1936 Olympics is an impressive stone fascist construction in a complex of arenas and fields. Rather eerie, but it was interesting to be there.
I wrote all that last night and I was expecting to continue but I'm not in the mood. Deutschkurs ist fertig! It was a lovely day out and I got to exercise in my favorite park and I ran into this Frenchman named Matthieu from the language school and we sat outside at a cafe and talked about life and the world and relationships and photography, and much on my mind. Earlier I went to see the Eastside Gallery, a large remaining section of the wall that is covered in artists' work with murals of reunification and some inspiring things, given it's taking back the eastside after the wall came down.
~Beeline Smilah
P.S. I want to see Prague.
And I need your lovin like the sunshine.
It helped me barely make it through the winterstilte until I realized it was my heart that had stopped. I wonder what life-support is. I don't think machines can really guarantee your life. They don't come with a warrantee to say the least. I do believe you can leave your mind and your heart will go on beating, but not the other way around. Once you give up on the pulsing in-and-outs of life you cannot readmit yourself, admit that to yourself.
Man I've been gone over a month now. I just hit six weeks today, I just checked. I have a lot of space to myself, even though I have a small room and a small program with only a few kids I like and even then, I have my reservations. But really a lot of space to myself. The whole world. Sure, it's everyone's to share, everyone who's here now and past and future, but there's so much empty space. You really have to look across distances to get any of it. Maybe some things you bring a little closer to inspect, but that's not even necessary. There is enough room for everyone to distribute their wealth and their worth and there's never a reason to feel there is none for you. The poorest men are those who cannot see past their own dollars, while perhaps the richest are those who feel the weight of change in their pocket.
Well where I was going with that was that I am trying to reach my arms across oceans and into small crevices to find loose change and affix it where things are broken. Enough of that metaphor. Change, we all get it. I'm loving the German language because sometimes it makes so much sense and it even helps me understand (and possibly accept) english a little better. I had a substitute teacher Claudia for a week who was great at talking in approachable German and I was completely on level with learning through her exposure, rather than Anemone who likes to play simple games and gestures at learning. Either way my five weeks of class are over and I'm about to set about on travels for the next month before coming back to Berlin to focus on my semester project 100%, or 90%, or I'll figure out how much I have to subtract for sleeping time. I'm taking a train to Krakow on Friday. While I'm there I'll see how the Lexia program is there (there are only two students and I hear it sucks) and I'll be going to Auschwitz. That's going to be intense. My seminars have been mainly cultural, relevant to Germany's coming-to-terms with itself, and historical. I've had a wide scope of topics in art, specific movements relevant to the cultural context and society, which puts into perspective even contemporary art to some degree. I've been having ideas of my own, or at least having the idea of having ideas, or having the idea of having ideas become more than ideas. I have less to complain about my coordinators and certain instructors because it's simply not worthy of my time to think that way, or to bond with the other students in talking shit. However, I do talk about shit often, since there are so many dogs in the city and no regulation on curbing. Maybe the dogs here are so obedient and seemingly awesome because they just shit wherever they like. Think how much nicer people would be if they weren't obstinately pushing their way through a crowd simply because they'd been holding one back all day. There's value to the phrase anal-retentive, as in fact it comes from the irritability of human societies because of their reservations with bodily functions.
I have a decent amount of work due after Krakow which for sure will distract me from concentrating on the camp. That's not so well-organized. I need to just get the work done though because break is soon after and I will be seeing my father and stepmother. Free time (Freizeit) in Berlin will be nice because there are things I want to see and do yet haven't found the time for. I'm hoping I will procure a bike by April especially so I can ride to Grünewald. I'm making plans to reconnect with an old friend in Munich for a few days before the end of my break and then I head for Budapest and Romania with Lexia. Though I don't quite know what's in store I'm glad I get a chance to travel while I'm here. I've been thinking about traveling in May when I finish with Lexia because I will really be on my own when the program ends and most of the kids go back to the states. I'll have a few contacts left but I think it would really be something to get from place to place on my own and maybe stay with random people or see who I might be able to meet up with. It would be really great to hit up contacts in Amsterdam or Spain or Italy before vacationing with the family in the Dominican Republic in August. That will be really nice, but it will also be the biggest culture shock; visiting a region so rich in a culture I know little about, am intrigued by, but staying only on a private American-owned estate. Privacy... I hope to go someday with my friend Lis Mery to get a sense of life there. While I'm here I should be having more of a Berlin nightlife and trying to establish German relations.
More important things that happened lately were
A) trip to Dessau to see the Bauhaus school of design, directed by Walter Gropius as the heyday of modernity and sleek functionality. It was cool to be there and think about how it would have been as a functioning facility. The craziest thing was learning how it changed, was destroyed and rebuilt and overrun by the Nazis for a time. I think the Bauhaus had the whole ideal thing down pretty well, so it's weird that the Nazi party criticized its nature (but still took over the building after only minor changes). Also in Dessau is the Federal Environmental Agency which is housed in a fantastic and inspiring eco-building which provides 50% of its own energy. The building curves around itself to form a walking-space between two walls of offices where there are tropical plants and even a pool to give humidity to the office environment.
B)erlin's Fuβball team Hertha against Gladbach. Hertha won by the time I finished my liter-cup of beer. The Olympia Stadion where Hitler held his speech at the 1936 Olympics is an impressive stone fascist construction in a complex of arenas and fields. Rather eerie, but it was interesting to be there.
I wrote all that last night and I was expecting to continue but I'm not in the mood. Deutschkurs ist fertig! It was a lovely day out and I got to exercise in my favorite park and I ran into this Frenchman named Matthieu from the language school and we sat outside at a cafe and talked about life and the world and relationships and photography, and much on my mind. Earlier I went to see the Eastside Gallery, a large remaining section of the wall that is covered in artists' work with murals of reunification and some inspiring things, given it's taking back the eastside after the wall came down.
~Beeline Smilah
P.S. I want to see Prague.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
