New Digital Works

Me, at Jim Morrison's grave, 2013.

Cthulhu Alchemical (AI-generated). 

                 Me, one year-old, watching a turned-off TV. -JF (The Cthulhu image was strictly AI-generated; the other two items originated from personal photographs). 

A photo, from Jimmy Carter's Visit to Mt. Hood Community College, 3 November, 1978

 The limousine, carrying President Jimmy Carter, at Mt. Hood Community College (Gresham, Oregon); 3 November, 1978 (the photo was either by me, or by mom). -JF

 A micro-length tale I wrote last year. -JF 

Collage: Infinitesimal Balcony

 A new year, a new collage, Infinitesimal Balcony (which I created 1-1-23). I made this entirely with material by Laura Lee Burroughs, the mother of writer William S. Burroughs. The cut-ups have some mysterious oracular flashes.  Happy New Year!

--JF 

Draft Card Roundup; H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, William S. Burroughs

WWI-era draft registration card for H.P. Lovecraft; and WWII-era cards for Clark Ashton Smith, and for William S. Burroughs. I extracted these, from Ancestry.com. 

H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon 2022

 On October 8th and 9th, I shewed up (as I have many times, starting with the first one) at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, at the Hollywood Theatre; staying for two full days. I took in Freeze, directed by Charlie Steeds, Short Blocks Three, Re-Animator, and Bride of Re-Animator (both followed by question-and-answer sessions, with Jeffrey Combs -- he made reference, to among other things, how Re-Animator originally took off through word-of-mouth, and then rentals). I also attended a showing of Night of the Comet (first time for me to viddy this hilarious, and atmospherically campy cult film), with Kelli Maroney appearing afterward (she provided great insights into the movie, mentioning for example that the sequences at the department store were filmed after hours, at the real deal). 

I also attended some panel discussions, on Lovecraft's Favorite Films, The Aquatic Origins of Weird and Cosmic Terror; along with one on comics, and one on video games. Sipping beer, then alternately removing a mask, I tossed the panels a couple questions, including one involving Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen; and another with reference to Skull Comix. 

Gwen Callahan, with Kelli Maroney. 

Alice's Restaurant Massacree Doesn't Live Here Anymore

 

The name of Alice has a recurring association with restaurants, in a song, in (unrelated) movies,  and in the TV series of the same name (based on the Martin Scorsese movie). During the original run of the show, I was aware of it, but only viewed it a few times. In 1975 or 76, 1977, for example, the show would not have formed part of my gestalt. Rather than watch  television, I might have been ranging in the deep forests and creeks of the area where I then lived, in the midst of the Boring Lava Buttes. I could have been occupied reading comic books, or books.  I might have been on family trips, to California, Nevada, eastern Oregon, Idaho, Montana.  I had also started on some initial creative projects, including collages, and a bit later, writing. The world of waitresses in old school utilitarian uniforms, humor, drama, failed romance and jokes based on the bad quality of Mel’s cooking, would not have drawn me in. The signals from the broadcasts remained unseen, passing the atmosphere, and drifting into the outer spaces.

The show was threaded with light (if often repetitive) humor, guest spots by celebrities such as Martha Raye, Joel Grey, Telly Savalas, and Robert Goulet, and topical references which would have hit the spot in their day. I’ve written elsewhere of how my family often brought up the sudden death of Frank Sutton (who played Sergeant Vince Carter, on Gomer Pyle). Vic Tayback, as his diner-owner character Mel Sharples,  even eerily foreshadowed his own relatively early passage, on one episode. There is a cluster of premature, or tragic deaths with the series (including Tayback, Philip McKeon, and Charles Levin). – JF, 9/2022

The Mystery of Frank Tayback; digital collage by JF, September 2022

Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Above: An instant photo I took, 23 June, 2022, at the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And this post marks the 14th anniversary of this here blog; which started in the murk and distance of 2008. 

 

Ray Wallis

 

Blogger and collage artist, Ray Wallis (photo by him; I enhanced the picture).

The Magic and Mystery of a CV

 Here's a piece I wrote (ICV) in 2008, concerning some past employment experiences of mine: 

1917 Draft Registration Card for Farnsworth Wright

 

 WWI draft registration card (which I located on Ancestry.com) for future Weird Tales editor (and journalist, veteran, Esperantist, and author) Farnsworth Wright. 

More from the H.P. Lovecraft Annotated Bibliography

 

From the final version of my H.P. Lovecraft Annotated Bibliography, for Professor David Holloway's class at Portland State University; 1994.

From the Leaves of an H.P. Lovecraft Annotated Bibliography

A couple sample draft pages from an annotated H.P. Lovecraft bibliography; which I wrote in 1994 for Professor David Holloway's English 596 course, at Portland State University. 
 

Season's Greetings and Yuletide Visions

 

I'm posting this photo I took in Paris, 17 December, 2013 (at a Christmas market on the Champs-Élysées), as we creak past another solstice. Holiday greetings! 

From Hubbard to Hamm

 

Here are a couple variant digital collages I made of late; playing on an imagined, virtual meeting between two of my ancestors about whom I've previously posted, Norma Bassett Hall and Adalbert Falk (in reality, their lives only overlapped by a bit over 11 years; and such a meeting would have been improbable, of course). 

Axel Weiß took the photos of the Adalbert Falk memorial (which I subsequently visited); the background of the first collage, is a photo I took of the moon, in the early 2000s. 

The Charring of the Flag, 23 September, 1989

A piece I wrote, after an event, at the long-defunct Blue Gallery (the actual performance took place outside the space),which I attended on 23 September, 1989 (along with my friend, artist Roman Scott). Nirvana (as a replacement for a band called Cat Butt!) had performed at The Blue Gallery, just a few months prior to the flag burning -- I wish I'd seen that concert. 

Roman also made a short film (almost certainly lost, in all formats) of the episode, using a PXL-2000. 

The Pallid Giant

 A few years ago, at a going- out- of- business sale at a bookstore contained in an older house, in Portland, Oregon, I purchased The Pallid Giant: A Tale of Yesterday and Tomorrow (1927), by Pierrepont Noyes.The book is a curious novel, with some disorienting leaps in pacing and style. The initial parts take place in Europe, during and after the post-World War I peace conference in Paris.  The book has different elements and tones (including a section, ostensibly a translation of a manuscript from a group of humans in an ancient epoch)  which are inconclusive, and which never cohere. The opening chapters contain some engaging narrative, including an account of an exploration of a cavern in the Pyrenees, along with the discovery of enigmatic artifacts. The unnamed narrator, together with other characters, including Grudge, Professor Gribbon, and the local woman Mraaya, have some suspenseful and enthralling adventures on their quest for new knowledge. The novel loses momentum with its tale-within-a tale, with coined words, names, and disquieting elements of eugenics; but the author does loosely, and correctly, anticipate a future of cataclysmically destructive weapons. 

Roman Scott: Painter (Video)

Recently I watched again this video (in its original VHS format, from 1997), featuring interviews with Roman Scott, and related images and sequences. The director, who did a stellar job, left his name out of the credits; and some searching by me has not yet revealed his identity. With material such as clips from Taxi Driver (one of Roman's favorite movies, for its painterly qualities, as he explains), intersecting with his art; and an appearance by a work including the Twin Towers, the videocassette has an atmospheric and spectral feel.  As Roman stated, it's a mysterious thing to create something out of nothing.

Here's a link to the production, digitized by, and posted by Todd Mecklem, in 2015.

 

13 Year Anniversary

 

A digital collage I created recently, to mark the 13th anniversary of this blog, Adalbert. The background for the collage was a photo I took in 2004. 

Digital Collage

Occultation; a digital artwork I made; 7/7/21. 

 

KKEY: Talk Radio Echoes from the 1980s

 I recall residing in the forest with dad, 1983-84, listening on a battery-powered radio to Portland talk radio station KKEY (a favorite station of his). The station (at least the version with those call letters) is long defunct, passing the way of all phenomenona, transitory and evanescent. (Talk radio was especially important in those days before the internet was accessible; and this was also in the heated context suggested by the Talk Radio film.)   I recall from memory walking past the station's singular, small corner office on Burnside street, in downtown Portland, Oregon. The bellicose Dave Collins; Lee Evans (a laid-back host, a retired lawyer), Jerry Dimmitt, Henryne, Mary Pierce, Jim Lindsay, (no doubt some, or all were assumed names) and others fielded phone calls, and discussed political, domestic, and quotidian topics. The hosts held a range of political views, moderate, left, right; or in same cases, they avoided partisan matters completely. The late, controversial religious leader/former mesmerist, Roy Masters, showed up occasionally on the station, in those days; I even called in and asked him a question, once.  

At that time, the station only held a license to broadcast during daylight hours. I recall those twilights, when the station faded early off the air; especially haunting in fall or winter's dusk. 
I have been unable to locate any audio recordings from the station, online or elsewhere. A number of callers were regulars -- one nervous guy seemed to be from the local red cell. His calls always culminated with something about the greatness of the Marxist bloc... "uh... uh...Communism...". My father and I pictured another frequent dialer, as a sort of Captain Willard (from Apocalypse Now) figure, with a pack of smokes, a bottle of pills, and a .45 with a live chambered round; tightly wound and chattering fast. "Caller, you're on the air..."

Casual web-searching indicates few traces of this phantom, in the data record; a photo or two, and a few brief references. It might exist chiefly through recollection.... The nearest thing I have encountered since was Art Bell's radio broadcasts, which a friend drew my attention to around 1998; but Art retired, quit, and flamed out in different ways, before his final passage... 

Digital collage by JF, May 2021 (including an image of the 1983-84 camp; and the same camper, on a 70s slide photo).

42nd Street Precognition

 A photo I took; NYC, 10-17-19. 

The Caterpillar of Otranto (poem)

 

The Lace-Maker

 The Lace-Maker 

June 30, 1987. Beverly Beach, Ore.

 The leather of the sole must be half-an-inch thick when in glass cupboards for leprous dolls which lace-like stumps probe.

"Right now!" Triangular lenses look belligerent 'neath black-belt eyebrows. He waves his hand: Five stub-ends. 

The very inner circle of each stump has never healed, & was wont to discharge clear fluids, especially when his limbs mimed karate motions, kind of iridescent & glowing like stupid monkey heads strung on tree- leaves. This was ever so far away from a "do not drink the water" warning, on the 20th floor of a worn city building, a bit like a beacon against poor posture & conterminous with the museum. Dull mahogany cabinets, I bet you fellows haven't seen anything like that before. And just as his cataract-laden eyes winked with victory, a wax-plastic figure (based on that of a wooden dummy) showed a glittering smile. 

J. Falk, R. Scott

A collaborative poem I wrote with Roman Scott, after a visit to the now-defunct Lacey's Doll Museum in Lincoln City, Oregon (we then traveled to the Newport area, where we created these works). My family also dropped by the place a number of times, stretching back to the early 70s. 

A drawing by R.Scott and me; from the same day as the poem. 

Plain's End (prose poem)

Plain's End, a prose poem/freewrite of mine, based on impressions of Japan, and South Korea (and contents/cover) of Sunflower: A Literary Journal for Freewrites, 1st quarter, 1994, Berkeley, CA. Art/editing:Myeongsuk Jeong. A few web searches found almost no traces of the magazine (or the editor); which had its run right around the first glimmers of widespread internet availability (although one of the queries found this previous post of mine, from 2013).

 

Torn-edge Collage

A collage I created, circa 1985. I gathered some of the images from medical books.

Anomalies of Surgery and Snake-Handling

Mixed-media work of mine (ink/collage), early-mid 1980s. 

 

Dreamland Brings Memories of You

A collage, including some poetry, I made; 1980s.

 

Visiting Newave Artists in Nebraska, March, 1985

 Visiting Newave Artists in Nebraska (March, 1985)

I had the fortune recently to meet two artistic spawn of the horizontal corn-hell known as Nebraska. These two young self-publishers, Marc Myers and Clark Dissmeyer, may provide their state's first chance to redeem itself since the time it spewed S. Clay Wilson into the world. 
As a life-long denizen of the great & mountainous west, the trip itself was a weird experience for me. Departing from Denver at 9:00 PM (on a Trailways bus), and traveling wide-awake through alien towns such as Brush, Otis, and McCook (where Clark once worked briefly as a rabbit-shit shoveler), I felt I was entering a land of no-return. The farmers and grain elevators and endless fields of wheat convey a sense of the sinister as well as of the earthy and mundane, perhaps the very awful sterility of the landscape & people turns the vision inward, to the point where parades of hallucinatory images march by as in a collage of Marc's. At any rate, time has fossilized in its tracks here since the 1950s or before...
Arriving in Grand Island not long after 7:00 AM the next morning, I ate at the nearest fast food slophouse, after which I phoned Clark; awakened from his slumbers, he promised to be out shortly. As he and a relative (his stepfather) traversed the 40 miles from Fullerton to G.I., I sat in the bus depot and meditated on the game shows the attendant, the only other person, watched.
An hour or two later, a tall figure clad in denim entered; of course, I knew instantly the identity of the person. Dragging on a generic cigarette, with curly longish hair, a day or two of stubble, Clark took me out to the car and we departed for Fullerton. 
His cohort Marc still in Omaha (where he now resides), Clark and I talked about everything from the mystical composer Scriabin, to Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The ride from G.I. to the farming hub of Fullerton covers extremely boring territory, the only objects I noticed being the rotting husks of barns & concrete grain elevators. We compared our respective territories, I expounding on the colour & variety of the "far west," Clark trying to picture this while looking at the center of Nebraska. 
Fullerton is an isolated town of 1,500. As we first drove through it I had a strange, peaceful impression which didn't cease as we arrived at Clark's house around noon. After spending time with his folks, the artist and I descended to his basement hermitage, there to talk, listen to tapes and look at books and comix. After the noon meal, we went on a walk, to the "old dam" long since disused, and by the gigantic grain elevator, where we were unexpectedly blasted by hot air coming from a tube, something to do with preparing grain, I imagined. I'd also noticed a few long swivel-headed stares from the locals, no doubt stemming from my status as a stranger and reprobate. 
That night Marc Myers, creator of Stick and countless other publications, arrived from Omaha, and we met him at his turn-of-the-century house. He took us up to his small upstairs room, where for a couple of hours the three of us scanned his remarkable paintings and surreal notebooks, observed abstract and multi-layered slides, exchanged a few gifts, and spoke. 
We finished the night by visiting the town's graveyard, the celestial vault reeking with unimaginable beauty. After heading to Myers' Appliance, we ended up at Clark's place, played an incoherent game of ping-pong. Having been in a state of waking consciousness for around 40 hours, I finally fell into bed, falling asleep within a few seconds. That night I dreamt of Marc nonchalantly carrying a blood-spattered corpse in his arms. 
An odd incident occurred the night before I landed in Fullerton -- a person named Schreck (same as the mysterious actor who portrayed Count Orlok in the silent masterpiece Nosferatu), was crushed to death by a pin-setter in the town's bowling alley. I couldn't help thinking that this might have been intended as a signal to me, from who knows who or what? At any rate, an assortment of photos were taken of Clark, Marc, and me in front of the alley where the death took place.
The morning after my arrival I awoke fairly early. Clark still slumbered, but after deliberation on the subject of early rising by his stepfather the artist was awakened, and appeared sleepily in the kitchen. Some trouble had arisen the day before, as Marc had come from Omaha to Central City, about twenty miles away, in honour of my visit. He was unable to contact his parents & was contemplating hitch-hiking, but C. finally managed to locate M.'s mother & the problem was over. 
On the second day, we ate some bread, miso, & seaweed (after I ate a traditional breakfast of eggs) -- on the first day, as Clark and I walked down railroad tracks, someone in a passing school bus shouted at us "smoke a doobie for me!" 'Twas on day two or three, I'm not certain which, that we went on a fairly long walk, M., C., and I. Walking through the town, we came out on the highway, hiking along the pavement for some distance, evidently came to some prearranged spot, and crossed a barbed-wire fence & walked through a farmer's field. Cow manure dotted the ground but no cows could be seen.  
The ground was hard and irregular, covered with dead, brown grass. Barren trees always in the distance. After walking for about twenty minutes, we spotted a white-tail deer crashing away from us, about two hundred feet in distance. 
After we took several different pictures, Clark made the remark: "Maybe someday there'll be an Arkham House book with these pictures of us out here." He also made reference to the future book of "Dissmeyer/Falk correspondence." I did my famous impression of the redneck old-boy whilst out on these solemn wastes. We eventually came to a gradually rising stretch of land; Clark at one point ascended before us and tossed cow pies, hard & white, for great distances. At the top lay our objective -- "The Leap!" Actually, we weren't immediately at this much discussed spot; "The Leap" does not come until the end of the great arm of land we stood upon. 
(And there the piece suddenly ended. One memory I didn't include, from my time in Fullerton, was of a drunken electric guitar performance by the three of us, in Marc's father's shop. I also met several of my friends' former teachers.)
-- Jonathan Falk

I originally wrote this (recently-slightly edited) account around April or May, in 1985. This was shortly after my first visit to Nebraska (at that time, the furthest east I'd been), in March, 1985. 

Marc and Clark, photo by me; visiting Fullerton, Nebraska, in August, 1986, a year and five month after my first trip there. 

Meeting with Allen Ginsberg, April 12, 1985, Boulder, Colorado

 A (lightly edited) journal entry of mine, covering a meeting with Allen Ginsberg, at the Boulder Bookstore in Boulder, Colorado, on April 12, 1985. 

Written on April 15, 1985 (Boulder, Colorado). Monday. Saturday (April 12), R. arrived. We stayed in the Trident Coffee House for a while, then sat out on the courthouse lawn and snapped pictures of each other. At 5:30, we went to the Boulder Bookstore and met (Allen) Ginsberg; talked to him around ten or 15 minutes, interrupted only by people who wanted their books signed. We told him a little about Oddities, our philosophies (?) and so on. In the books which he signed he stamped two Tibetan symbols, of which he explained the meanings. One, I believe, indicated a Boddhisatva. Ginsberg asked Roman what kind of camera he had; R. explained it was an 'idiot' camera. Upon which we saw that Allen had a similar one himself! He asked us to buy film for him; we agreed, but were unsure of a near location. Another guy bought the film in the end. 

G. snapped a picture of me, also one of a man holding a Blake/Dante book. I was grinning idiotically. We finally left through nervousness and because larger crowds were gathering about the poet. He seemed friendly and courteous as well as cryptic. Also I saw a reading he gave at the Naropa Institute on Wednesday. Quite an exuberant reader. Yesterday we saw The Wicker Man... 
-- JF 

Aquarian Visions: Algernon Blackwood's The Promise of Air

A letter attached to my copy of The Promise of Air. 

Some time not long past, I found a copy of Algernon Blackwood's novel, The Promise of Air; which I recently read. 
The book has moments of resonant poetry and originality. At times, the tone is breezy and light, perhaps to an excess. The darker currents threading through some of Blackwood's strongest works (such as his short story The Wendigo, or his memoir Episodes Before 30), are mostly absent from The Promise of Air. With its Aquarian Society, and proclamations that all are one, the book anticipated some trends that appeared much later -- in the 1960s, for example. "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius," indeed. References to birds, as symbols of liberation and transcendence, pepper the novel. The chief character, Joseph Wimble, and his ethereal daughter, Joan, gravitate toward a life of spontaneity and freedom (while his son and wife are, at least on the surface, more earthbound and conventional). One compelling scene revolved around a family night at the movies, in their days of silent glory and novelty: "The cinema frees and extends the consciousness, restores the past, and sets distance close beneath the eyes. Only the watching self remains -- pregnant symbol! -- in the darkness." (p. 168). Despite the novel's flaws, its themes are timeless and significant.

-- JF, 2020