feathers are not troubled
they weather wind elegantly insensately
they render waterfowl hydrodynamic
they spread and advertise desirability
quills have held the written word
down has comforted the human head
primaries have adorned headdresses
and sculpted convection
there would be no hope in a featherless world
and if that reminds you of something
i hope you will double of joy
featheringly
Here are some more self-rejected pages of mine. Ironically, there are yet more pages that I am yet again self-rejecting. The ones that don’t make the cut either are not visually engaging enough or are repetitive of themes or motifs previously presented.
Once upon a time the Phoenix Art Museum had a show of some of the stuff Claude Monet did at Giverny that was still unfinished at the time he died. Of the dozen-and-a-half canvases presented, there was only one that was worth looking at as a painting and not as a clue of Monet’s creative process; and “sketch and then fill in” about summed up his creative process on individual canvases. It was thin soup indeed, and if it hadn’t been Monet doing it the museum would never have shown it. Consequently, in the (I hope) far future when I start to get a glimmer of that Tunnel with the Bright Light, I hope I will have tagged those sketch-musings of mine that are not worthy of a viewer’s attention, that they may be consigned to the flames. (See Harlan Ellison’s ALL THE LIES THAT ARE MY LIFE for a more extensive discussion of this philosophy.)
Onward:
Popefullness
Must’ve done this around the time the latest Francis tried on his funny hat.
Struggle/Pinnacle/Afterwar
Comic book writer Steve Gerber, whose Howard the Duck made a great comic book but a horribly Uncanny Valley movie that misused Lea Thompson and Jeffrey Jones, once said something like “You know what there is at the top of the ladder? Another ladder.” And that’s where you Kick It Up A Notch or more aptly Take It To The Next Level. More irony: I wasn’t able to do that with this one; I realized it would take about five times the effort a ‘normal’ page requires.
Involvements
Here’s one that would be easy to finish. I vote it Most Likely To See Completion amongst these Salon entries.
Skeleton/Key
Gee, I just love bone configurations, especially if they hang together…
Logarithm
Logarithm, I got music. I got Readers; who could ask for anything more? (See also Algorithm…)
Collide O Hadrons
I’m sure this was done around the time scientists confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, the misnamed “God Particle.” I guess “Make-the-Universe-Possible Particle” is too much of a mouthful.
There you have them, for now. There may be a Part Three, but I’ll do a few posts prior even if there is one.
Today I was looking for an unfinished page I’d undone-edly done on Sally Ride. The Science Channel just showed a terrific movie about Richard Feynman’s involvement in the commission investigating the Challenger disaster, and watching it I learned that Sally Ride was the one who’d indirectly pointed Feynman to the O-Rings as the probable cause.
Alas, I’ve thus far not found the Sally Ride page. What I did find was a boatload of abandoned works. Either my enthusiasm for the idea had dimmed, or it was worthy but a lot of work to finish, or I was stumped for a rhyme or an image completion, or the drawing had gone sour, or Other. But all of the ones I’m posting here make me wish I could devote more time to them.
Addled Wit Sharpener
Some day there’ll be a pharmacological solution to addled wits. Were this the day, I’d be a customer.
Poetry As Motion
This is well started, but the figure depicted is the last of what would be several poetically posed–and moving–figures.
Ultimate Gargoyle
I want to sculpt some imposing gargoyles before I die. (I have other plans for after I die. [smiles]) Here is a try at gargoyle design.
3Deified
Intended as a quasi-discussion on the trend toward 3d in movies. But ulteriorly I wanted to immortalize yet another bad pun.
Sixto Rodriguez/Sugarman Finder
This would have been a love song to the film SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN and its subject. I put it off because I would need a lot of time to do it right.
Revolver Resolved
Earlier this year I was invited to participate in an art show entitled “Children and Guns.” I got this far with my would-have-been contribution before the pain of the subject compelled me to stop.
(End of Part One)
A long time ago, in an Archie Comics feature far, far away, someone made up some book titles with author punchlines. The only one I remember from that feature was Over the Cliff by Hugo First. Slightly later (and at least one of these will be edited for television) and on the 4th grade playground, I learned of Antlers in the Treetops by Hoogoost the Moose, Under the Grandstands by Seymour Kiesters, Mad Dash to the Bathroom by Willie Maekit (illustrated by Betty Doant), and Revenge of the Tiger by Claude Nads. My own modest contributions to the genre include Worm Capture by Earl E. Byrd, Psychosis Geological by Sedda Mental, and FAIL Fail by Noah Vail. All of these helped bring to being the above character, whose full name includes two red herrings and whose book-jacket moniker is P. R. Angster. The book might be called You Talking to Me, Punk’d?
I think I’ve read more words that Stephen King has written than words by anyone else. (Robert Heinlein and Herman Wouk might be close.) That includes CARRIE, THE STAND (both the cut and uncut editions), THE DARK HALF, THE DEAD ZONE, CUJO, FIRESTARTER, HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, CHRISTINE, MISERY, PET SEMATARY, INSOMNIA, GERALD’S GAME, DANSE MACABRE, collections SKELETON CREW and FOUR SEASONS, THE SHINING, the entire Dark Tower series, and most recently, DOCTOR SLEEP, sequel to THE SHINING. I also read ON WRITING, which I’d recommend to creative people of all media.
Naturally I want to pay some sort of tribute to a man who’s provided me with numberless hours of imaginative entertainment. A few days ago I got this far with a draft of the Stephen King page:
This draft was doomed, but I felt bad scrapping it: I really liked some of the character portraiture, and since I’m an erratic portraitist, when I get it right it breaks my heart not to use it. So here it is.
And here are the words to the acrostic:
SPIDERS help weave his tapestries–hence dyers use batik
Thrown in: all AND the kitchen sink; a float evokes Caltiki
Ectoplasmics & ashenness get kith & kin & kine
Paranormal phenomena are fodder for his Shining
Caltiki? Well, there’s a bad half-Italian movie of the late 50s entitled CALTIKI –THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (or, when in Rome: CALTIKI — IL MONSTRE IMMORTALE) that I’d be willing to bet 500 to 1 Stephen King has seen. He’s got a similar flesh-devourer in one of his short stories; it floats by an anchored raft. (It’s dissimilar enough to be considered an independent creation, though.) The name of the King story escapes me.
Steve, if you ever see this, I echo my apologetic chicken regarding the awful “poultry-geist” joke. I needed to fill up the space. Keep up the good work, man.
Ayn Rand must be turning over in her grave. A long time ago, she proclaimed that A equals A. Now people everywhere are saying “It is what it is,” and not giving Ayn any credit. (Nor, to my knowledge, did John Prine tip his hat to Rand when he put “You are what you are, and you ain’t what you ain’t” in his lyrics to “Dear Abby.”)
“It is what it is” is a semantically empty phrase that usually (in this neck of the woods, anyway) connotes that something not-great but unchangeable exists. As Robert Heinlein was wont to say, “You can’t argue with the weather.”
So why use it for an acrostic? Well, ten years from now it will remind me of the way people were talking ten years ago. (Fifty years ago, kids my age were calling Cool stuff Boss. Cool survived; Boss died.) Also, the end-letters work out fairly well for acrosticization, and enabled a reference to Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, heroic mongoose of the Kipling oeuvre, as well as the Robert Mondavi vineyards, which I was privileged to visit in the mid-80s, enjoying their five-course meal accompanied by five different wines.
Here are the words to the triple acrostic:
It pays a Cobra to BEWARE of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
The savage Truth would humble the most cock-eyed optimist
It’s like an alcoholic at a vineyard of Mondavi
So many vampires want to taste the blood of whom they kiss
Two things make this unlike a day like any other. One is that month, day and year in the mm-dd-yy format are in numerical sequence for the second-to-last time this century; the other is this is the 300th time I’ve punched “New Post” at WordPress and deemed the result publishable. Since I’m forever enumerating and otherwise manipulating numbers, the two phenomena are a good fit for “A very SPECIAL episode of ‘One with Clay, Image and Text.'”
Opus #300
Of course the Cosmos has my #
Pale penumbra; 1-2-3
Undercut the Grand Vizier-0
Seek ye Wisdom NOT from her-0
(Some ambiguity is built-in, and some is added. The Pound sign is now employed in referral, and it and a given phrase then referred to as a ‘hash tag;’ it also means both Pounds and Number. FYI: it means “number” in the acrostic. The zeroes are pronounced “Oh,” and, oh, by the way, they do not mean “zero” in the acrostic; they are a syllable dependent on their surroundings. “Her-0” should be pronounced “Hero.” As for the stuff in brackets, Googlers of “Lord William Not-from-here” will get a very SPECIAL lowdown on an intriguing character in the Instrumentality of Mankind mythos according to Cordwainer Smith.)
Eleven Twelve 2013
Endearing 2-some says À Bientôt
Leave 2lips in the sun to bloom & glow
Elopement’s zer0 hour makes them pale
Vivacious c0uple shakes but does not bail
Enlisting Space 13 for their RV
Now Wedded Bliss yields 13 forms of Glee
What better thing to do on this special numerical day than to get married? Truth is, a couple got married on today’s Today Show.
As for the illustration, attempts to deconstruct it may well prove it indeconstructionable. [proud-kid smile]
This is a poem and an image addressing that aspect of reality and/or literature some call “layering”– several things are going on simultaneously, and as your focus shifts your perception of reality changes though reality itself doesn’t. In the image a flashlight shines through a stencil of the number 10, superimposing all or part of the 10 on four aces. That is one way to Ten an Ace.
Calliope is one of the nine Muses. The Muses are goddesses of inspiration in Greek mythology, daughters of Zeus, ruler of the gods, and Mnemosyne, who personified Memory and from whom the word Mnemonic is derived. The other eight Muses are Clio, Thalia, Erato, Euterpe, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Urania, and Melpomene. If you’re a Terpsichorean you have probably correctly guessed that Terpsichore is the Muse of Dance. If you’ve ever ridden on a Calliope, and are unfamiliar with Greek mythology, you have probably incorrectly guessed that Calliope is the Muse of Music. Given another guess about who is the Muse of Music, you might go for Polyhymnia. But that’s also incorrect, or at best only a little bit correct. According to Wikipedia, Calliope is the Muse of EPIC poetry and Polyhymnia is the Muse of SACRED poetry. So who is the Muse of Music? None of them or all of them. The word Music is derived from the greek μουσική, pronounced something like “moose-ee-keh” and translated as “art of the Muses.”
“The calliope crashed to the ground” is a line from “Blinded By the Light,” written by Bruce Springsteen and performed by Manfred Mann. Lots of layers in that song too. One line was quite controversial, but I’ll let Wikipedia tell it: “The most prominent change is in the chorus, where Springsteen’s ‘cut loose like a deuce’ is replaced with ‘revved up like a deuce.’This is commonly misheard as ‘wrapped up like a douche (the V sound in “revved” is almost unpronounced, and the S sound in ‘deuce’ comes across as ‘SH’ due to a significant lisp).’ Springsteen himself has joked about the controversy, claiming that it was not until Manfred Mann rewrote the song to be about a feminine hygiene product that it became popular.“
I love it that no fewer than three of the Muses are designated for Poetry. (Erato is the Muse of LOVE and/or SEX poetry.)
So why Ten an Ace? The answer is derived from the punchline of a dirty joke (technically, though, it’s the answer to a dirty riddle. This post is joked with inconsistencies). The answer is Because We Can. And not just Canners can.
I could go on with this post forever but I’ve got to Layer to rest…[unjustified grin]
I’m embarrassed, but not quite ashamed, to publish this one. It was done in haste and the drawing is crappy, but the idea is OK and the pun, though I say so myself, is elegant.
Here are the words:
Motivations vary. Some will give it tooth & claw
Even laying down a life for Flag & Ma & Pa
Money, bragging rights & buzz are ways of keeping power; breathe our last & always there’s a whiff of sweet & sour
I keep trying and missing with Spoon-capture. A spoon can be a wonderfully reflective surface, or it can be a real mud-dog, depending on a lot of drawing choices. Before the year is over, though, I think I’ll have a good one.
Here are the words, followed by a couple more spoon studies.
Sacred to our folklore is the sacrificial lamb
Poisonous the notion lives are set upon a trammel
Overlooked the making active use of déjà vu
One must wonder what we’d change to make it non-ensue
Never going backwards means that everything is news
One with Clay, Image and Text 