palimpsest.

"i left her sitting under a tree gazing up through dappled sunlight to observe the clouds parade across the sky. she said she would never leave that spot.  i placed a ball of gossamer thread in her lap and tied one end around my tongue.  i turned my back to her and with my first step she slipped away from memory. but... today blood poured from my mouth, and when i looked down i saw the faded dusty string with bits of my flesh dragging in the dirt.  i remembered the girl i had abandoned and began to follow the thread, shaking through all the lazy days and ugly ways that had come to pass between us. she was glowing when i found her.  i sat down next to her and she kissed my bloody mouth. together we buried that old cord under the tree.  i settled into her spot as she stood up to eye the horizon's far margin.  i saw the wanderlust grow in her eyes, and begged her to stay as she began to pull away."

my wife wrote this forevs back on her old blog, moments of grace...

it seems to fit eerily well with this vid and song.

it's impossible to overstate the amazing, that is the understated, that is grouper.

grouper-heavy water/i'd rather be sleeping mp3

wisconsin death trip has a flikr.

seriously amazing.




Wisconsin Death Trip is a non-fiction book by Michael Lesy, first published in 1973. It has been adapted into a film.
The book is based on a collection of late 19th century photographs by Jackson County, Wisconsin photographer Charles Van Schaick, mostly in the city of Black River Falls, and local news reports from the same period. It emphasizes the harsh aspects of Midwestern rural life under the pressures of crime, disease, mental illness, and urbanization.

the film is currently available streaming on netflix... so you might want to get on that...

and here are some reading's from Lesy's book... this was put out on CDR some years back... (link to mp3's)

"Hillbilly noir from Butchertown Allstars; i.e. - 10 musicians reincarnate Wisconsin Death Trip. 46 tracks range from 20 to 90 seconds, comprised of male and female spoken stories accompanied by sounds spliced of vast scope ranging from old-timey dust bowl blues to free jazz to alien forcep electronics (all performed by the Butchertown Allstars). The result is timeless, sounding as if it was recorded anytime over the last 100 years. Highly reccomended for suicidial introverts! Based on Michael Lesy's classic book "Wisconsin Death Trip", an intimate, shocking and sometimes hilarious account of the disasters that befell one small town in Wisconsin during the final decade of the 19th century. Lesy discovered a striking archive of black and white photographs in the town of Black River Falls dating from the 1890's and married a selection of these images to extracts from the town's newspaper from the same decade. It is from these extracts that Butchertown Allstars bring back to life the tropes of hidden lives, suicide, familial disaster, cross-dressing, acute paranoia, drug addiction, schizophrenia, 'crazy socialists' and myriad tales of ordinary madness."

life in san francisco

sorry it's been a busy couple weeks... here's an i-phone photo update.
(...and of course the b-side for lust for life single, life in san francisco. for those of you that live outside of san francisco, 'album' comes out tomorrow.)


















girls- life in san francisco mp3

memory

memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience. (wiki)

been thinking about memory quite a lot lately... specifically about how malleable it is. how different individuals recall the same situations in completely different ways. memory is a reconstructive process, so when you recall something you are essentially taking some scattered associations and using them to make up a story.
in thinking about this i remembered this photographer jennifer had told me about who had a show at the sf camerawork gallery...
liz steketee.
"i alter, chop, merge, and recompose photographic elements. this process allows me to represent a moment, a memory of life's reality as i see it. i disrupt linear structures and confuse elements of time to convey my notions of how life truly exists; a combination of independent moments that converge to leave us with a unique experience."
i am particularly drawn to a series she did called "reconstructed memories" where she took her old family photographs and rearranged various elements and subjects in them to suit her own recollection and whim. putting together people who may not have known eachother or even been alive at the same time... the result is a little bit creepy and a lotta bit beautiful.






haven't really been into cat power/chan marshall for some time... but this bare bones cover kinda kills it... in a good way.
cat power-remember me (otis redding cover)mp3