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.