C-130

Brett made me a copy of the Wilco show we went to on the night before Halloween, 2002. The show was at the single most unbelievable venue I've ever visited: the rooftop of the Gibson guitar factory. At one point in the recording, I think I can hear Brett yelling, "LeRoy!" What an amazing thing to have.

Steven reminded me of an encounter we had with the law that reads worthy of publication. Leaving the house of an Indian friend, Sapan, we got pulled over by a very irritable and fiercely-moustachioed Sherwood police officer. I had no way of yet knowing, but it was to be my, indeed our, first encounter with the stupid, human aspect of civic law. We were seventeen and he was forty-something. He suspiciously approached us, tender child-thieves ripe for the picking (this is the closest to his thoughts that I can come just by guessing). His demeanor is difficult to describe objectively: I have never at once been so offended and yet so flattered in my life. Where had we come from? Who lived in the house we said we'd come from? [His actual response: "Saw-Pan? Whut kindvuh name is that? D'you just make that up?] Where did we live? Were we out causing trouble? I remember he demanded to look through the backpack carried by my friend Steven. Although we were very aware of how improper his request was, we indulged his demands simply for the glee of witnessing his dashed hopes as he failed to find drugs or obviously stolen property. After his untriumphant quest, we took over. Immediately on the phone (well, Steven's phone) I had to think fast of how to embarass the hell out of this fucker. I called my mom so that I could riff comfortably: "Can you believe he's pulled us over, mom? Oh, and get this: he thought we had made up Sapan's name!, ..." It got better and better as Steven sat and honed his nascent cross-examining skills with the officer. I took the time to put my mother on a brief hold while I asked for the dude's badge number and a written reason for which we had been pulled over. I think that part did it... he started fuming like a... well, like a 16 year old. About how we'd made an illlegal turn (a left at a stop sign after a full stop) and that we had been going 'too fast for conditions' (how quickly can one accelerate when a) it's dry and b) the house one just left is only 50 feet behind?). We can hear him grumbly from his squad car, but he finally walks up to us, throws a written sheet of paper into our cab, and then grumble away talking about "rich kids callin' mommy and daddy." I think this is about where I lose it and start freaking out at this poor cop/asshole about how I don't have enough money to go to college and whatnot. He drove away that night under a complicated tapestry of our early intellectual attempts and an eager vulgarity that stemmed from his out-of-place brand of judgment.

Last night Megan and I went on a walk through the drizzle-slicked Riverfront park. I suppose that it had been unseasonably warm for the past week or so, but yesterday geeted the city morning with drizzle and a hint of cooling air. It was all a trick; by ten p.m. the temperature had risen to an equatorially humid position somewhere close to room temperature. The paving bricks, cool by comparison, began to sweat with condensation along with most all other solid objects exposed to the air. After the periodic showers had passed, turbulence was replaced by an equal stillness, manifest as a muddied yet mirror-smooth Arkansas River. A boat passed with a buzz, slicing a line upriver with gentle, slowly-oscillating waves scattering to the banks behind. A few reflections from North Little Rock responded to the undulating surface with disorientingly metered pulse patterns. We stopped in the Belvedere, a squat, harshly-lit cement structure intended by definition as a priveleged viewing spot. Some odd combination of the thermal properties of the Belvedere's construction materials had it sweating water out of the atmosphere at an amazingly rainy pace. After we'd finished with the grassy park, we climbed across Cantrell (La Harpe?) at the footbridge beside the (surprisingly poorly-guarded) Old State House. Megan pointed out some of Bean's bronzes that she had finished in one of the more gentrified galleries along Markham.

"The capacity for remembrance by the manipulation of symbols is a transcendant achievement for an organic machine. It has authored all of culture."

E.O. Wilson, Consilience

Check it out, this post is the first time that I've gotten to write "2004" today. 2004. 2004. 2004. I need practice.

Last night (year?) was fun even if I only made it to about half of the places I'd hoped to visit over the course of the night.

The Asti was delicious even though I caved in and opened it about a half hour before midnight. I vividly recall a shot of something that tasted exactly like chewable Tylenol, not that I'm complaining. There was a frosty bottle of Jagermeister in the freezer that I didn't dare touch. Silly string stains football jerseys, but it also graciously adheres to beards. Steven's neighbor showed me his prosthetic leg and told me the story of losing it to a train. Ringu, the Japanese template movie for The Ring, is as hokey as all get out, but Japanese teen girls are so giddy that I didn't even care. There is a Backyard Burgers billboard on Capitol that reads "Wake and Bake." Laura and Ryan are getting married in May. Some people are of a kind of group quietness that amplifies to a deafening secrecy when others are around. Amber is a trip, she names cats in groups. The riverside walk from the Old State House to the covered theater is really nice at two in the morning. Was someone bludgeoned in Megan's kitchen? We theorized that, at some point, Billy would misjudge the distance from the stein to his mouth, and I hoped he had dental insurance. What was the name of those cookies, 'no-bake squatting toads'? And if you're going to sit in the sun room, for god's sake don't silhouette yourself against the light... it makes you an easy target.

I feel like I'm vibrating in anticipation...

Make sure to hit: Megan's haunted-ass house, Steven and Dave's apartment (happy birthday David!), Brady and Dawn's, Billy's, Midtown, Backstreet/Disco, Riverfront

Shopping list: Asti Spumante, some Diamond Bear, piece for Jasper, confetti, film, batteries for flash, sticky film, black-eyed peas

Reflection: I found an iconically old picture of me in the early days of hairexperiment. It made me feel old. It made me feel stationary. In response, I am borrowing this from the newest issue of National Geographic in an article about the Hanle Valley in India: "While secluded indoors, a nun performs a meditation given to her by a visiting rinpoche, or senior teacher: She pours seeds onto a plate, gently brushes them off, then repeats the process for hours. 'You have to go through the boredom of repetition until an energy arises of itself,' says a Ladakhi yogi. '[Then] you will find yourself entirely free of wanting anything.'"

Being at home for a few days with a looser schedule than normal has been something of a blessing. Short breaks are generally all a person needs to be reminded of the goodness of their own... ah, what the hell am I talking about. It's just a good thing to not do anything occasionally. I would prefer a little more frequently than occasionally, but what can you do, so to speak. I have cranked out so much Photoshop material in the past three days that I've had to go and buy some DVD-RW (not cheap!) to store all of it without killing my lovely computer.

I started with stellar images simply because I'm attracted to the luminosity that a phosphorescent screen can provide: whites can actually have intensity and one can work with color in transparent layers to give other interesting light effects. I had some stock images of butoh dancers lying around so I worked at blending the two together. No symbolism, just experimentation.

Playing off of an old high school science fair topic I had the idea to misrepresent (or something like that) facial angles and features. It's an old idea that one can fuck up a visual representation of "face" pretty significantly (in specific fashions) without disrupting the recognizability of the face in question. I had absolutely no luck with actual people, so I moved on to bronzes and busts. More interesting output.

I also came across my friend M.'s online briefcase, from which I have lifted this image of a collage she completed about two years ago. We were still buzzing from our European excursion (literally... see the leafy green in the foreground?) that M. resorted to reconfiguring pictures and advertisements from our trip into new visual symbols of what we had seen, done. It came out looking rather badass in my opinion, rather Munchian... only much less manic.

Oh yes he is absolutely it, so totally the top, the top, crainte riante, crainte de sourire when you ask him to raise his free arm.