DEEP MADDER

"I guess a lot of people already know, because I use her name in songs about it; it was Khaela from the Blow. But as much of a struggle, frustrating, heartbreaking, back-and-forth thing as it was, it was also a learning experience and very productive.'"
-Phil W. Elverum, on the romantic focus of the Glow Pt. 2, in this wonderful article you should read

I'm currently sitting alone in an empty house, tapping away at an email using my newly-replaced keyboard. It has a certain springiness to it that my fingers are appreciatively lapping up. My sole light source is that of a fixture in the hall way; one that has a tendency to give off a buzzing noise. Sometimes I find the noise madness-inducing, whereas at other times I find it strangely soothing. Right now it thankfully falls into the latter category.

I thought I was going to hear from/do something with various other Pickering-ites tonight, but at this point in the evening it seems rather doubtful that such things will come to fruition. I don't mind too much though, and in fact didn't even bother to phone around, because I figured I needed the time to work on the aforementioned email (which, upon completion, will travel across the long tubes of the internet to you, my dear Alejandro). I've been working on it for the past 3 hours or so (though not without frequent breaks for pointless internet perusal) and it's perhaps half finished, currently standing at 3200 words. I'll probably soon cease work on it for the night, and make some sort of snack. I begin work tomorrow, so a decent bed time is a must.

While tonight hasn't been a complete waste, it certainly isn't exactly an ideal way to spend one's time. Self-reflection (and its subsequent transference to text) seems like only a marginally more respectable to whittle away the time than my other solitary options for the night.

I wonder if I'll do anything productive or worthwhile this summer.

"'I Could Have Been the One Listening' by Lanterns"

To his club-footed child said Lord Stipple,
As he poured his post-prandial tipple:
"Your mother's behaviour
Gave pain to Our Saviour
And that's why He made you a cripple."

Each night father fills me with dread
When he sits on the foot of my bed;
I don't mind that he speaks
In gibbers and squeaks
But for seventeen years he's been dead.

"Weak things have power.
...Only the truly weak are free of
the temptation to dominate, to harm.
That is why democracy is about weakness,
why it is to the weak we turn for help
when we are beaten, condemned.
This is why poems continue
like the air."

I am going to have pasta with tomato sauce for dinner. I called Christopher but he wasn't home. I have installed my little aloe plant in an equally little pot on my window sill and it looks fetching if I do say so myself. I have to read a tonne of stuff to be ready for my examinations on Wednesday and Thursday and it will be very difficult. I wait for posts and comments on these two blogs when I'm lonely. I want to make songs about fundamental human feelings lately. Like, wanting to be loved and being selfish and insecure; (attempts to be) honest accounts of facets of my/our personality. and songs that are simple mere quotidian communication between two people like this weird relatively recent one by adrian orange. i've been writing about the self, about one's conception of the separation of themselves and others, and how you need others and how you need people's love and attention and that's why you do a lot of things that you do, etc.

"Come on and sit by me ...
and I won't criticise you, no I won't, ... no, I sympathise
and i won't conflict with you, ... no, I will be true
And I hope you like me but I know you will
Because we've shared a lot and we share it still.
...
I love you like you love me
I love and trust you like you trust me"

I feel that contemporary art is far more concerned with being ostentatiously "clever" and innovative than pleasantly affecting the senses and making an immediate profound effect of some kind, which is what I think ought to be the primary objective of visual art, just as it is for music, poetry, etc.. It seems that contemporary art has lost touch with the senses and emotions, dismissing them as kitsch, and appeals now solely to the intellect and exists almost exclusively in a highly academic context. Visual art ought to be enjoyed immediately when viewed, like a piece of music is when listened to, not only upon extensive further analysis and retrospection. Like my high school art teacher once said, such conceptual art reaches a point when one wonders why the "artist" didn't just write an essay instead of make the "artwork".

(i posted this on a blog yesterday)