You know sometimes, you need to stop and take a long, hard look back at all the things that happened over some time and contemplate about the inherent movement of time and its utter inanity. It helps to get the hold on oneself and retain some sort of a perpicatious balance.
This is what just happened to me. It was rather rough. I had a bout of anxiety for no reason at all. Just felt really-really lost all of a sudden.
But while i was trying to get myself together - one image came to my mind and denied going away before it was spewn into the ether. It was somewhat indelible but otherwise not quite significant. The word that best describes this image is perplexing. And then haunted because it was not going away.
Here is this little picture:
It is a photo by Vlodko Kostyrko, an artist from Lviv. He is a good chap with some really cool paintings. You should check him out.
The photo documents a message. It is a proverbial writing on the wall. A sentence if being exact. An assertive one. The text says:
"Gotta be hard. Dick.".
I guess this needs phrase no further elaboration because it says everything for itself. It is as tongue in cheek as it gets and that is what makes it so special. It makes sense. Probably too much sense, but you can't really argue with the message. It is true. That's the way it should be.
The photo was made circa 1993. No further information regarding the piece is available but who cares when this is the piece we are talking about. This piece needs nothing to be appreciated.
As it is - it is a nice little piece of provocative graffitti that is rarely to be found these days when the very concept is utilized and commodified to walk in line with the party. It shows everything truly great writing on the wall should be - blunt and direct, pointing at vaguely abstract and erupting eerie opaqueness that engulfs everything around it just to prove its point.
I've always thought that Google Translate must be used exclusively for creative purposes. It is truly amazing tool for making conceptual writing of out there variety. The reason for that is in the translation algorithm itself - it is not perfect and the translation rarely if ever makes perfect sense. There is always a stumble somewhere. Whether because it is a different structure of the sentence in the original sentence or because the verbiage used in it can be widely interpreted.
This may be a bad thing you just want to read the thing or you life depends on it. But this is a blessing if you are an artist who is looking for something unexpected, some bizarre wrench being out of nowhere. In that case - Google Translate is your trusted ally. This thing knows how to mess things up.
Here's another document of how to make a creative use of good old Google Translate. In this video you can see an experiment in enforced voice synthesis sound poetry. The algoritm is forced to perform one single letter in continuous succession that creates somewhat dubious and incredibly inherent soundwave. I think this is magnificent.
This is “Blank Verse”. It was written in 1916 by Ernest Hemingway. It started out as a school assignment but went far beyond the original intent. The piece was published later in November of that year in a humor column Air Line of a school newspaper Trapeze.
As you can see — it is a five line poem that consists only of punctuation marks divided by a certain amount of spaces to resemble some sort of a text object.
To be exact — there is a pair of quotation marks with a wide white space inside; an exclamation mark, colon, comma, dot; comma, comma, comma, dot; comma, semicolon, exclamation mark; comma. All peppered with a deliberate amount of whitespace.
It was Hemingway’s VERY literal interpretation of the eponymous literary term. While it was definitely conceived as a joke — it is more than just a frolic trifle. Even if it goes far beyond the author’s intention.
Consider the moment in which it was written. Things were obnoxiously dire in 1916. It was the year when the world was petrified in abhorrence of the World War I bloodbath. Earlier that year a group of renegade artists and writers gathered together in Zurich to declare their complete and unmitigated desperate disdain to over-sanitized, bowdlerized mess that Western Culture had turned into. Accidentally, Hemingway channeled this disdain for the old ways in his jest of a poem. Simply because he didn't gave a damn about the possible implications of his piece. He just wrote it.
Because that’s how you make cool stuff.
***
“Blank Verse” is a poem that haves fun. It is an attempt to avoid the usual pattern of thought regarding poetry. It is a dare of sorts. The poem denies the opportunity to be read, perceived and interpreted in any conceivable way.
Instead, the reader needs to acknowledge the impossibility of perceiving the poem the usual way and let it go as it is. Because it is a joke.
There is also a fruitless alternative — to try to fill in the blanks or think about the missing pieces in a given context. In a way, the poem can represent the starting point of the creative act, a plan of sorts.
But this is a mere assumption. This is not what the poem is about. As it is — “Blank Verse” is a shell of a text, a plan, a score. It can both ways — be anything and nothing in particular.
The composition gives some sort of a faux guidance. Vast white spaces in-between the punctuation marks suggest that there is a space for the text. It was left out and it can be added. The punctuation itself provides with clues of what could have been or could be.
The punctuation marks are the narrative of a poem. There are, at least, five potential sentences. Quotation marks obviously give away the title or the quote. Or it can be something described as a catalyst of a poem. Then there is something exclaimed. Possibly the nexus point of the poem. The next sentence digs into the concept. There is a possibility that it is turned around 180 degrees, then another 360 and then another 180. Afterward, there’s some sort of a aggravation with intense imagery. Recounting of features or dense, rasp of actions is also possible. At last, there’s a sentence cut in the midst of the action, possibly by means of dynamics. It is left ambiguously unfinished. And then another exclamation mark that concludes the narrative.
The last mark — coma is a sole symbol in the line and it just hangs there — as a biting reminder of the sheer impossibility of full comprehension.
***
Aesthetically — “Blank Verse” is a concrete poem, the one where visual, typographic elements prevail and dominate over the textual.
Its blankness is the point. It emphasizes the ubiquity of poetry as a concept and at the same time mocks its dubious pretense. You don’t need words to compose a poem. After all — it’s all about the composition.
And since the words tend to be interpreted in a variety of ways (sometimes way too many for the benefit and the detriment of the text) with a decent possibility of being misunderstood in varying degrees of severity — why not just leave them out of a poem? And instead — use something that can be definitely understood only as it is.
The thing is — you can’t interpret punctuation any other way than it is. Any way you look at it — it is there to perform its function and nothing more. It may be confusing in a certain context, it may be misused, but it is never something else.
And the thoroughgoing audacity of it performs an elaborately vicious extermination of a rational thought which brings this odd and misplaced notion of transcendence.
***
“Blank Verse” is what it is. It is a fascinating poem that doesn’t even need such basic elements as words to work. Its presence is imposing enough to make an impression. In the same time, it is still a throwaway joke. Just the one that goes way beyond its original intent without even trying — by mere accident.
And if you think about it, for what it is — “Blank Verse” is very effective at doing its job. It is aware of what it is and yet there is an indelible mystique to it. It is unknowable.
It is the poem that humbles the reader. It is what it is and nothing else. One can’t beat it, can’t crack it, can’t put it in a certain perspective, can’t impose own meaning to it, can’t claim any interpretation as something worthwhile or relevant to it. All the reader can do about it is to admit defeat, swallow the pride and take the poem for what it as it is.
In the same time, it is a poem that is so devoid of clues required for any sort of interpretation — it leaves a lot of space for it to thrive unanchored. It gives an additional dimension to the poem. In a way, it also needs nothing but overthinking. “Blank Verse” strives for the ironic interpretation — for all sorts of imaginary making-of, changes of context, transformations and overzealous analysis. It can bend any way imaginable and yet retain its mystique and even magnify and multiply it.
If anything — this is what real poetry is all about.
How much vanity one man can have? That's the question i was pondering for a moment or two after i have witnessed this thing. Then i felt emptiness and entitlement to tell my story.
It is a trailer for Sylvester Stallone signature pen and watch titled Montegrappa Chaos Limited Edition. It was made in 2013 by Montegrappa, an italian luxury accessory brand. And it is a beautiful piece in the most opposite manner possible.
A bit of background. In 2013 Sylvester Stallone was riding high on his successes with reviving Rocky in 2006, Rambo in 2008 and even starting a new franchise in a trilogy of Expendables movies. He also finally co-starred with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Escape Plan and even did a schlocky balls to the walls piece of pulp with Walter Hill. Finally, he was in talks with Ryan Coogler to return as Rocky in Creed. And in the middle of all this jazz he did this little shilly-shally.
The thing is, for the lack of the better world, eldritch. It is horrendous. It is ugly. It makes no sense. It is hard to understand what is the point of this whole thing and what Mr. Stallone has to do with it. In addition to that - it is also really hard to comprehend why this thing needs a trailer. Especially the one like this. It is a pen and watch presented by a celebrity - there is not much you can do in the trailer format with the stuff like that. But Mr. Stallone pulls off the impossible.
Instead of presenting a product or explaining the reason for its existence - the trailer drops bunch of stuff and summarizes it with a wham out of nowhere that barely has anything to with this pen and watch in particular or the very concepts behind these things.
This thing spawns perplexion, confusion and enbafflement. It is a rush of "huh?" and "why?" through your brain.
The trailer is narrated by Stallone which makes a bit dense verbally. The text captures Mr. Stallone musing on the nature of existence. Here's what he says, don't think too hard about it:
"To have light, there must first be darkness. Death does not exist without life. To have peace, war is required. To keep order, first there must be CHAOS.”
Chaos also happened to be the name of the pen because of course it is the name of the pen endorsed by Sylvester Stallone. It seems pretty obvious if you think about it. The design of the pen is a jumbled mess that will make your mind go blue screen of death if you try to unravel it.
After the bit of narration we get a kaleidoscope of wartorn imagery. There is computer generated skeleton lying on the ground, slowly disintegrating. There is a transitional shimmer splash and we see something resembling a monolith or a pillar or something like it. It is supposed to represent a pen. There is a skull on it because of course. Then a snake crawls from the river up the monolith-pen and sticks to it. And then there is a broadsword that is fencing on its own in the air because of course. And it all merges together in a form of a pen.
Then we get more close-ups of a computer-generated pen then human brain can processes with whooshes and swishes of transitions. It turns out that in addition to the skulls, snake and sword there is also a fist on top of it. A fist, a snake, a skull and a sword. There are words "exotic", "majestic" and "imposing" going over the images. Then there is knockout sentence: "The Power of the Written Word in Your Hands" and Mr. Stallone posing with this pen and a watch on his wrist. Look like it photoshopped there, but who knows. Maybe it really looks that unreal.
Whatever...
Here's what i feel about this thing. Sometimes you stumble upon a thing that makes so little sense any way you look at it - you just can't do anything but stuck fascinated out of morbid curiosity. That perfectly sums up this thing.
"When I kiss you (I can hear Charlie Parker Playing)" is a song by British extraordinaries brothers Mael of Sparks. It was released in 1994 on their comeback album "Gratuitous Sax andSenseless Violins". The song itself is demented, twisted inside out backwards spin on then burgeoning genre of eurodance pop trash that was at the peak of its popularity by mid 90's.
The thing with eurodance genre is that it is so limited in its aesthetics you can't really do much with it. It is based upon a barebone templates. You have this imposing rhythm backbone upon which "verse - chorus - verse - chorus - break - chorus" structure is tacked on and it can go until the end of time and two more minutes just in case. The song closely follows its formula and in the same time it manages to subvert every single element of it and make something of its own that resembles the other thing while being fundamentally different.
The arrangement is the fascinating element of the song. It is obnoxious and gaudy. The tempo pumped up to eleven and gallops at the ridiculously breakneck speed. It brings displaced cognitive dissonance inducing cartoonish feel to the song. It blasts through.
The instrumentation contributes greatly to this uncanny notion. While being completely synthetic, the arrangement is based around typical traditional pop orchestrations - it is strings of all walks and tembres mashed together in a melted plastic something-something peppered with splashy orchestral hits. Underneath it goes by the numbers bumbling eurodance rhythm track. At times it feels as if it wandered into a song from some other placed and stuck around because he enjoyed the vibes.
The lyrics are stylized as machine gun ratatat stream of consciousness circling around desire and longing and also pitiful merciless waste of passion. The images move in jump cuts - from one thing to another.
The sequence of images slowly but surely builds a narrative out of these blocks. It paints a vivid story with very masterful fleshing out of the scene, characters and their dynamics. There is yearning, deception and treachery, despair and restlessness and abrupt shutdown of feeling.
It is really impressive how it manages to tie train of thought and the story into one knot so seamlessly. You don't even notice how much information is spelled out throughout.
"When I kiss you (I can hear Charlie Parker Playing)" is a master-class in turning things inside out make doing something special with extremely limited form eternally banished in the template purgatory.
Kyle Kallgren's Brows Held High is one of the most celebrated video essay series about cinema. The man knows how to uncover lots of deep stuff in various films. His videos are always insightful and full of inspired editorial choices. You can just watch the visual with no sounds and it still will retain some of the punch.
However, this story is about that time when i've stumbled upon the other channel attributed to Kyle Kallgren.
It was three years ago. I was surfing on YouTube, looking for some sweet videos to watch. And then - i've found another channel of Kyle Kallgren. It wasn't what I was expecting. It was full of weird abstract stuff. Not as uncanny as Webdriver Torso - just swathes of static color and nothing else.
I was a big fan of his works and it was really strange to find a another channel full of nonsensical monotonous videos. And i wrote a post about it on Zouch. And then i received a comment from the real Kyle Kallgren - and it turned out that the channel was not his in the slightest - it was some "troll-impostor" as he called him.
This was a fascinating turn of events. You may wonder why anyone would take another persons name to get attention. This also may be the answer. But don't think too hard about it. Even I don't care. There's more than this.
The channel in question contained something that in certain circumstances may be considered a conceptual art of sorts. In a Martin Creed way.
It is very vile and mean-spirited kind of art. The one that can be best described by the phrase "take that". It's a collection of videos - most of them posted years ago - all of them are 15 minutes and one second long and they all have no sound and just one fixed image. In case of this post - colours. And it's wonderfully mesmerizing in its dumb simplicity.
So why it matter? Because it literally discharges the pus.
Yep. And because of that - it is good. It produces this legendary "void of blank-nil-null-any-none". And honestly - after some disappointing bullshit and cowbell like The Tribe (the movie that was so lame and empty i thought all the substance was evacuated from its own atrocity) - looking at this is a relief.
Sure, it's more of anger management but at least these videos retain some sense of casualty. Y'know - happens. Phosphenes do their job better than one might expect. Raise a weathered thumb. The blurred mesh and murmur will drift in the gregarious smoke.
The channel has been deleted long since and you can't really experience its glorious pointlessness. But you can read my description and sleep with it. And you can also watch Jarman's Blue again...
This is an unusual review of the newest videogame about Marvel Comics franchise player character Spiderman. It was released a couple of month on Sony Playstation 4. The review video was made by Mr. Sunday Movies and it is not your standard game review. On one hand, it is not what it is supposed to be, but on the other hand - it is more than one would expect.
Unlike any other Spiderman game reviews that flooded Youtube around the time the game was released - this one stands apart as being a thing of its own while retaining a semblance of a routine assessment commentary with a tongue firmly and tenaciously in cheek.
Part of the reason it is so lies in the very simple fact - this review blatantly omits every single trope of the traditional video game review. There are no background to speak of (except for the statement that the review copy was provided by the publisher), no technical context of the review is presented, there is no personal perspective in any manner, there are no comments regarding controls, no comments regarding the narrative structure or the pacing of the game. In a way, it gives little to no information about the game that might be helpful in the consideration process. And despite all this - it succeeds in making a lasting of what the game is about.
Instead of relying on info readalong and truism spattering - this review just lists bunch of stuff you can do in the game. There is a reason for that - an author admits he never really did a game review and has no idea how to put it together and make it stand apart from the rest. And so he does just the opposite. He makes a game review and makes distinct by not making it.
And since the game is made in the genre of a sandbox - this is probably the best way to show an audience what the game is about on a practical level.
The text of the video is something to behold. It is an unintentional piece of poetry. The that happened on accident despite lack of effort. Sometimes it happens that way, especially when the thing in question is clearly of throwaway nature. Since the text is built on the list structure - there is certain hypnotic, monotonous rhythm. It is what makes it work.
Here's a transcription in case if the video will ever go down:
Hello!
This is my review for Spiderman on a Playstation 4.
I have never reviewed a videograme before
So i'm going to list all the things you can do in the game.
Let's go.
You can run up the wall
You can climb in a vent
You can kick and kick
and web and punch and flip and kick
and jump and web and punch and kick
and kick and jump and jump on a web and then
WHOP!
You can be strangled
You can play a circuitbreaker minigame
You can play a different minigame (matching wavelengths)
You can run up a when
Then you can flip pver the building and it is beautiful sunset
And you are falling and you are falling
You think you need to grab a thing
and then you web and you go up in the air
and you do another flip
and then you are in free fall
and then you zip and you are on a little lamppost
You can have your Playstation 4 internal software catch a program glitch
so you are extremely limited by what you can show in your review
You can stealth
Look at me stealth
Dah - Knock on these boxes
You can stealth as Spiderman
and then injure a man beyond repair
You can stealth on a speeding vehicle
or die trying
You can run and run
and run and run
and run and run
and round and round
and run and run
and run and run
and run and run
and round and round
and run and run
and run and run
and round and round
round round...
You can swim - uh...
You can web three guys to a garbage truck and celebrate in front of them.
You can watch carrot chopping...
(awkward pause)
You can ice skate... you can't ice skate...
You can chase a pigeon
and then kill a pigeon.
And that's all the things you can do in Spiderman on Playstation 4.
