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Archive for December, 2010

Hyperthymesiacs!

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , , , on December 20, 2010| 5 Comments »

There was an interesting story on 60 Minutes last night about a condition that it is very rare called hyperthymesia where the affected individuals have superior autobiographical memory.  That is the the ability to recall practically every moment from their lives and all the events they encountered in those moments.  They are able to somehow, withoutany effort or without  resorting to the use of mnemonics of any sort, organize this vast store of memory and randomly pull the information out as needed.

It’s an extremely rare  condition with only 6 known cases in the USA, although there are probably many more out there who have not come forward for examination.  Actually, before this 60 Minutes story there were only 5 known cases.  Reporter Leslie Stahl, who was doing this report, upon hearing the effects of this condition thought it sounded like her friend, actress Marilu Henner, best known from her role as Elaine on the show Taxi.  She agreed to be tested and was added to the so far small group of individuals.

The story was fascinating.  If anything it raised more questions than it answered.  Would this be a good thing or a curse for those who possess it?  How does it affect their day-to-day life?  Does this recall have any effect on these individuals’ overall intelligence?  Is there a tradeoff of some sort for this ability?

These are not savants or people who are crippled by the seemingly compulsive nature of their condition.  The 5 of the 6 known cases that were shown (one did not want to appear as part of this story) all appear to be extremely high functioning people.  Besides Henner, there was a concert violinist, a radio talk show host, and  a man in the production end of the entertainment field.  The final man’s occupation was not disclosed. 

Only Henner was married or in a relationship.  Perhaps the inability to set aside another person’s flawed moments would hinder any relationship or perhaps there is a certain alienation caused by the condition that inhibits intimacy.  The concert violinist expressed a certain alienation when she spoke of feeling as though she were fluent in a language that nobody else knew, one that she couldn’t share with anyone.

Not mentioned in the story was a recent documentary film about one the subjects.  Called Unforgettable, the film, made by his brother Eric Williams, focuses on the life of Brad Williams who is a radio talk show host and is known as the Human Google.  Jeopardy super champion Ken Jennings makes an appearance.  I don’t know if they show the two of them competing but,  in his blog, Jennings talks of Williams “wiping the floor” with him when they ran into one another at a trivia contest at a local bar.  He also makes the distinction between the way his and Williams’ minds work, pointing out they are functioning in completely different ways.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since seeing it, wondering if it would be great to possess such an ability.  I obsess, as it is, over the loss of memory so why not be able to have such an organized brain that you could easily find that which was put in there to begin with?  Would it make our lives different?  The concert violinist made an interesting point when she spoke of it as a gift that allows her to live her life with great intention.  By that she meant that because she knew she would remember every moment she strived to make every day significant.  No throwaways.  An intriguing concept.

I feel like someone in the 1970’s who has Commodore computer and is suddenly given a glimpse of the best computer available in the year 2020.  Envious, but stuck with what I got.  Oh, well…

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Wanderers

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged on December 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I wrote yesterday about the site Square America which is a great collection of everyday photography of all sorts from the last century.  I came across this photo in one of the galleries, Down By The Tracks, which features photos of railways and railway adjacent places.  This photo just caught my eye and made me stop.

It filled me with an inexorable sadness.  I’ve sat for a while looking at this photo and can’t fully explain how it makes me feel other than to say that. 

 The fading from age and probably a flawed camera or poor processing give this photo a ghostly feel, as though you’re watching lost spirits wandering in search of a final place to rest.  The fact that you can’t see the faces give this piece a greater sense of anonymity and the posture of the lady in the rear, with her arms set straight down as she shuffles forward, feels like hopelessness.

It’s an odd little picture and one that raises many more feelings than probably was meant when it was snapped those many years back.  There was probably at one point a series of photos that accompanied this photo and gave it context, filled out some sort of narrative for the people in and around the scene.  But taken from this context it becomes ghostly and forlorn for me. 

I wonder where they were heading and why they were walking the tracks.  Why did someone take a photo like this?

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Square America

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, tagged , on December 18, 2010| 2 Comments »

I love this site that I’ve recently come across.  Called Square America, it is a site dedicated to preserving vintage photos from the first 3/4 of the 20th century.  Not art photography but everyday family photos, police photos and other vernacular photos of the time.  These photos give a beautiful narrative to life in America during this time and are really engrossing.  I could spend hours just browsing through the many galleries.

There are many, many great galleries of photos coveing a multitude of subjects, some that contain police mugshots, photos that chronicle  television coverage of JFK’s funeral (actual pictures of a TV!) and, my favorite, the ones that have photobooth pictures that play as a slide show to give the effect of moving pictures.  If you click on the photo above you will see a great example as the young girl ages through the pictures until she is well into middle age. 

The creator of this site is Nicholas Osborn who also has a book of these photos that he compiled in collaboration with photographers Michael Williams and Richard Cahan, called Who We Were.  It looks like a great, albeit late, gift for those who love such things as Americana and how we lived in the last century.

If you can find a few minutes to just browse a bit, check out this site.  There is definitely something for everyone.  Here’s a beautiful Christmas memory from their site.  I think it might have been inspired by the poor little tree from A Charlie Brown Christmas.

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Getting Ready For Christmas

Posted in Neat Stuff, Television, Video, tagged , , , on December 17, 2010| 7 Comments »

Last night on The Colbert Report, Paul Simon appeared and played a new Christmas  song called Getting Ready For Christmas.  Before singing he explained that it was based on a sermon from December of 1941, in the weeks after Pearl Harbor.  The preacher was the Reverend J.M. Gates, a fire-and-brimstone Baptist from Atlanta who was famous for recordings of his sermons in the years before his death in 1945.  I don’t know much about him.  Actually, I had never heard the name before last night.

But the song Simon played was pretty good and there were samples of Gates’ recordings in the background at certain points in the performance that intrigued me.  I don’t know exactly which sermon Simon sampled but there are several examples of Gates’ work online.  One, Death’s Black Train Is Coming, was his bestseller and is a great example.  My favorite however is Hitler and Hell which plays very well in the video off the sound of the footsteps of the jackbooted figure that goes through the darkness in it.  I’m thinking that one of the recordings in the advertisement shown here might be the one used in Simon’s song.  Will Your Coffin Be Your Santa Claus! sounds like it might be the one.  Funny, that with such a catchy title it never caught on like Jingle Bell Rock or  Grandma Got Ran Over By a Reindeer.

Anyway, gives a listen to the Rev. Gates, if you are so inclined and here’s Paul Simon’s new song, Getting Ready For Christmas.  It’s a very watchable video.

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Continuing Upward

Posted in Early Paintings, tagged on December 16, 2010| 2 Comments »

This is a piece from 2002 called Continuing Upward.  It’s a 10″ by 16″ image on paper and is from has been called my dark work, which was painted over a dark base.  Despite the name given to this work, I’ve never felt that were dark undertones in the feelings that these pieces brought up in myself.  I think that this piece, for instance, feels light yet  rich and uplifting. 

  I’ve always liked this painting a lot and particularly like the way the piece is divided by the bluish tone which continues upward from the road through the tree.  There’s a real coolness in this bisecting path of color that plays well off the golden, warm tones of the land and the sky, a coolness that I associate with a movement of air like a cool refreshing breeze.  It was the upward rise of this path of blue that gave me the title and gives me a sense of spiritual uplifting, an ascension from the dark base of the landscape to light.  This defines this painting.

I haven’t seen this piece in many years and wonder how it stands up in person now.  Over the years my surfaces have changed and it’s always interesting to see how a piece painted even only eight years looks to my current eye.  Would I change anything now?  Would I make different choices in the way I applied the paint or in the colors used?  It’s purely an academic exercise because the piece stands as it is and always will be just that.  These questions allow me to take certain things from this piece for possible use in the future.  Maybe the bisecting blue swath.  Maybe the golden undertones in the color.  Many things.

Or I could just stop thinking for a moment and let the piece be just what it is– one allows me to enter it easily and raises my spirit immediately.

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Cool Carnival Wheel

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged on December 15, 2010| 4 Comments »

I’ve come across a couple of interesting sites, mostly ones that have been linked to the American Folk Art @ Cooperstown site, that highlight folk art finds and curiosities.  Candler Arts is a treasure chest of the neat and obscure as is Anonymous Works which listed this cool Carnival Wheel from the 1930’s that features cartoon characters of the time around the outer edge.  There was probably a  board with corresponding squares for each of the characters where a wager of some sort was made.  If the spinning wheel came to rest on the Dick Tracy or Wimpy that you chose, then you would win.

This is a really interesting piece that has a pop art feel.  I can name quite a few of the characters but there are a few that evade me.  For those who can’t live without a piece of Carnival Americana to hang on their playroom wall, this is still available on ebay even as I write this.

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The Writing’s on the Wall

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, tagged on December 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This is another from the Exiles series of 1995, one that is called The Writing’s on the Wall.  It’s the smallest of the Exiles series at a mere 4″ by 6″.  But, for me, the size does not diminish the potency of this piece. 

Painted at the time of my mother’s death from cancer in 1995, it’s about the resignation  that comes from seeing the life of one you love about to end.  The hope for recovery has passed and an end seems imminent, leaving you somewhat empty.  The world around you moves ahead and you are left struggling to regain the pace, not wanting to for fear that leaving the past behind will mean that you’ve left that person behind as well.  It’s a daunting moment that actually lasts for weeks and months.  Maybe years.

As I painted this piece and the face began to take shape, the intent was to have an expansive landscape in the background.  But the circumstances at the time began to make clear the inevitable was coming and the landscape closed inward, walled in.  I mostly seek ambiguity in the message for my work but here I wanted to be unequivocal with the message from this piece and opted for the graffiti that stated it clearly.  For me, this piece meant only one thing and I didn’t want it to read any other way, at least for myself.

I can’t say that this is a good painting, can’t compare it objectively with other work.  The feeling for me is to close to the bone here and makes such comparisons moot.  It is what it is and that is what I want it to be.

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A Different Kind of Claus

Posted in At the Movies on December 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

We’re in that time of the year when seasonal films extolling the virtues of Christmas usually appear.  Films like Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life,  and White Christmas are among the many.  But this year there is a new and different take on one of the traditional myths behind the season, Santa Claus.  It’s a film from Finland titled Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale which has a story that concerns itself  with the Nordic traditions of Sinterklaas set in a modern Finnish setting.

San Francisco Examiner movie reviewer Pamela Alexander-Beutler starts her review of the film with this  brief description of the myth behind the premise of the film: “Once upon a time in pre-Christian nordic mythology Sinterklaas is accompanied by ‘Zwarte Pieten’ (Black Petes). During the Middle-ages Zwarte Piet was a name for the devil. Later in Alpine regions of the North, these characters became known as St. Nicholas and Krumpus. Children were told that if they were pure of heart and lived without sin, St. Nicholas would bestow gifts and treats on them in December. But if they were bad the demonic Krampus would punish them. Arcane images often show Krampus with a basket or sack on his back carrying bad children away and dumping them into the pits of Hell.”

Basically, the story has to do with the discovery during an archaelogical dig of sorts and the capture of the real Sinterklaas, who is a darker and more sinister version than the jovial Santas we grew up with.  We might not be too thrilled about this guy shimmying down our chimney.  The film has gotten very good reviews so far and is opening in large cities around the country but, as Alexander-Beutler points out, this no film for children.

Here’s the trailer:

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Wayfarin’ Stranger

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on December 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve always been a big fan of Tennessee Ernie Ford, who died in 1991.  I saw him quite a bit on the television of the 1960’s and in reruns from the 50’s.  He was always extremely funny in the persona he adopted onstage as a hillbilly caricature and it was always startling when he would shift from that higher pitched bumpus voice into his singing voice was as smooth and deep and rich as one can imagine. I picked up a box set of his music several years ago and find myself listening to it for long periods of time.  It may not be hip.  It may not be cool.  But there’s something incredibly authentic in his voice and the personality he projected that I really am drawn to.

Here’s a nice version of one of my favorite songs, Wayfarin’ Stranger, which is also the title of the painting shown here, one from around 2004 in the Red Roof series.  Enjoy and have a good Sunday.

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Exceptionalism

Posted in Biographical, Opinion on December 11, 2010| 4 Comments »

I woke up much too early this morning.  Deep darkness and quiet but my mind racing.  Oddly enough I found myself thinking of a person I had come across in my explorations in my personal genealogy.  It was a cousin  several generations back, someone who lived in the late 1800’s in rural northern Pennsylvania.  The name was one of those you often come across in genealogy, one with few hints as to the life they led.  Few traces of their existence at all. 

 At the time, it piqued my curiosity for some reason I couldn’t identify.  He was simply a son of  the brother of one of my great-great grandparents.  As I said, you run across these people by the droves in genealogy, people who show up then disappear in the mist of history, many dying at a young age.  But this one had something that made me want to look further.  I could find nothing but a mention in an early census record then nothing.  No family of any sort.  No military service.  No land or property.  No listings in the cemeteries around where he lived.  I searched all the local records available to me and finally came across one lone record.  One mention of this name at the right time in the right place, a decade or so from when I lost sight of them.

It was a census record and this person was now in their late 30’s.  It was one line with no other family members, one of many in a long list that stretched over two pages.  I had seen this before.  Maybe this was a jail or a prison.  I had other family members in my tree who, when the census rolled around, were incarcerated and showed up for those years as prisoners.  So I went to the beginning of the list and there was my answer.

It wasn’t a prison.  Well, not in name.  It was the County Home.  This person was either insane or mentally or physically handicapped and was living out their life in a home when they could or would no longer be cared for by family.  It struck me at the time that this was someone who lived and experienced as we all do and who has probably not been thought of in many, many decades.  If ever.

This all came back to me in a flash as I laid there in the dark this morning.  I began to think of what I do and, as is often the case when I find myself wide awake  in the dark at 3:30 AM, began to question why I do it and what purpose it serves in this world.  Is there any value other than pretty pictures to hang on a wall?  How does my work pertain to someone like my relative who lived and died in obscurity? 

In my work, the red tree is the most prominent symbol used.   I see myself as the red tree when I look at these paintings and see it as a way of calling attention to the simple fact that I exist in this world.  I think that may be what others see as well– a symbol of their own existence and uniqueness in the world. 

If I am a red tree, isn’t everyone a red tree in some way?  Isn’t my distant cousin living in a rural county home, alone and apart from family, a red tree as well?  What was his uniqueness, his exceptionalism?  He had something, I’m sure.  We all do.

And it came to me then, as I laid in the blackness.  Maybe the red tree isn’t about my own uniqueness.  Maybe it was about recognizing the uniqueness of others and seeing ourselves in them, recognizing that we all have special qualities to celebrate.  Maybe that is the real purpose in what I do.  Perhaps this realization that everyone has an exceptionalism that deserves recognition and celebration is why I find it so hard to shake the red tree from my vocabulary of imagery. 

 Don’t we all deserve to be a red tree, in someone’s eyes?

There was more in the spinning gears this morning but I want to leave it at that for now.  It’s 5:30 AM and the day awaits…

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