Edges, Fractals and Doorways

re-posted from http://www.dearcharmides.com/2009/05/edges-fractals-and-doorways.html

Edges, Fractals and Doorways

Richard Taylor, associate professor of physics at Oregon University, has discovered a relationship between the "drip" paintings of Jackson Pollock and Benoit B. Mandlebrot's geometric fractals. Using a computer program the "repetitions of patterns at different magnifications" became apparent. Taylor went on to say:

Pollock wouldn't have known that fractals were out there, and he certainly wasn't a mathematician. He must have tuned into some natural process to create these.

Taylor also inferred that his exploration into Pollock's fractal-like working method could help scientists to authenticate works of art.

From my work in making marks and images, there certainly is a point at which you arrive, a tuning-in to a natural process or a state of no-mind (mushin). You feel it much in the way that you know you are "in the zone", intention, action and energy unite. Previously undreamed of possibilities emerge. And yeah, it will be authentic in every sense. This transcendence in Pollock's work from the time of the "drip" paintings onwards has always bothered art historians. The aesthetic progression and development of this artist just didn't jive with the sudden greatness of his achievement. I believe that Jackson Pollock attained mushin (the no-mind, fractal-like zone) that has been the conduit of many of the arts, artifacts and disciplines I have discussed in Dear Charmides. These paintings were the byproduct of that experience. We have all experienced these moments, if only briefly.

Celtic culture abounds with quantum/chaos/fractal references. Several years back I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mary Pat Mann's article Doorways to Other Worlds, The Infinite Fractal Edges of Faery (Parabola, Fall 2003). In it she says:

Rational order is not a prominent feature in Celtic myth. Heroes and seers who deliberately sought out other worlds in quest of power, inspiration or both, inevitably found the strange and unpredictable. Those who returned told tales of beautiful people who never aged, but also of sheep that changed from black to white and back again by jumping over a fence, shouting birds, giant ants and wondrous beasts that twisted their bones within their skins and their skins over their bones. Among Celtic people today, the doorway to the between ordinary reality and these other lands are still ajar. At any time, ordinary people can find themselves, suddenly and without warning, in the presence of magic.

She goes on to say:

Edges are rich environments...setting the stage for interactions and exchanges that happen nowhere else. In Celtic legend, the opening between this world and another is always an edge. These include the meeting of water and land, but also the hilltops (where earth and sky meet) or openings in the earth like caves (the boundary between above and below).

There is in painting another stunning example of the magic of edges in the work of Johannes Vermeer. In his paintings Vermeer created each of the edges, or meetings between objects, surfaces, materials and people in a way which also taps into all of the comments above. He made an edge, not by drawing a boundary, but by approaching that meeting place from each side, in turn, with its own touch, its own sensations, its own level of focus, truly "setting the stage for interactions and exchanges that happen nowhere else."

Mural On Indian Red Ground, 1950, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Girl with a Red Hat, c. 1666-1667, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Devil's Poetry

Devil's Poetry

AFRO-SURREAL: Bob Kaufman's California duende blues

BY NICOLE HENARES

Wednesday May 20, 2009
re-posted from the San Francisco Bay Guardian
(click on top title to go to SFBG article page)

AFRO-SURREAL Sadly, the mythology of poet Bob Kaufman almost rivals all we have left of his poetry. However, to place Kaufman within a mere "cult of personality" (along the lines of some of his contemporaries) undermines the innovation of his process and what it brings to the tapestry of American poetics and the complicated and surreal orality of his poems.

Called "the American Rimbaud" by the French, Kaufman lived as a poetic assassin. A frequently arrested union organizer, like Stagger Lee wielding a .44 of devil's poetry, Kaufman assaulted the willing and unwilling (even white police officers) with verse. If you were cool, you knew his assault was meant as a cipher, a juxtaposition of rhythm, image, and sound meant to invite the listener into a dialectical examination of identity, even the identity obtained from syntax: "I went to a masquerade/ Disguised as myself/ Not one of my friends recognized."

Kaufman's poetics were Kerouac's spontaneous prose without the notebook, taken literally.

Think an un-choreographed version of "Amethyst Rocks," the prison yard scene in Slam (1998) where Saul Williams stops a would-be beatdown with poetry. Except for Kaufman the beatdown was always real, inevitable, and though sometimes provoked, never for the camera.

Kaufman was the spirit of true North Beach bohemia: the street poet who stood "on yardbird corners of embryonic hopes drowned in a heroin tear," panhandling "with moist prophet eyes" free styles of surrealism, the blues and duende, meant to disturb, disrupt, and ultimately liberate.

Kaufman's "crackling blueness" is distinctly Californian. In poems like "Carl Chaessman Interviews the PTA," Kaufman filters the "west of the west" through absurdist reflections that juxtapose outlaw figures such as Chessman (a 1960s serial killer on San Quentin's Death Row) with figures from California's mythology, all to the rhythms of a radio announcer calling a ballgame: Carl Chessman is in sickly California writing death threats to the Wizard of Oz, his trial is being held in the stomach of Junipero Serra, at last the game starts, Chessman steals all the bases & returns to his tomb to receive the last sacraments from Shirley Temple.

Ultimately, according to poet and scholar Nathaniel Mackey, what Kaufman creates is a cross-cultural poetics difficult to categorize. Though he lived in North Beach and is credited with coining the phrase "beatnik" — and infused his poetry with jazz and Eastern religious influence — Kaufman transcends the singular categorization of "Beat poet." By aligning himself with the pain of "all losers, brown, red, black, and white; the colors from the Master Palette," Kaufman creates a new American poetics — a hybrid poetics of projective California duende blues, an examination of the exhaustion that comes from the persistence of breath.

Basic Grounding Meditation by Starhawk

A basic grounding meditation led by Starhawk, and done very well. The visuals are an amateur's attempt (artists don't use jpg, and especially not blurry ones) and most are poorly adapted to this video, but some are OK. I closed my eyes -- it's the voice that's important.

This video originated at: http://www.hypnose-leben.com/?p=847

One Bullet

One Bullet

It's cold
Too cold
I can't see you, from across the room
I move closer
Slowly
Urging myself, just keep going
It's not you
It can't be
They made a mistake
It's just an arm
Could be anyone
That big, white sheet
So deceiving
Curious
No, don't pick it up
The tattoo tells me
They're right
It is you
Cold
Too cold
No real hand is that cold
Something is not right
This is all wrong
I'm angry
I want to yell at you
I do yell, but you can't hear me
I cry
For you
For me
For all of us
Left here
Picking up these pieces
One bullet
So much damage
A life gone
Too soon