Sometimes mechanical reproduction is not the most accurate. In the 1890s, the composer Erik Satie bought seven identical velvet suits, and wore nothing else for seven years. In photos, they look gray: his biographers duly noted that; a record of his music was even entitled “The Gray Velvet Gentleman.” Later, scholars unearthed several color sketches by his friend Grass-Mick that showed the outfit as yellow: it just photographed as gray.
Here comes jolly Mr. Sun!
Won’t you wake me when he’s done?
picnics for nitwits
I never met a man who never met a man he didn’t like that I like.
Why did St. Francis have to preach to the birds? Did it ever occur to him that he might learn from them?
On one occasion, I visited my family out in Oklahoma; and my father wanted to know what kind of beer I drank. I said Guinness, only to learn that he’d never heard of it. In fact, none of my family had; and they were quite hostile to me for drinking some weird foreign beer that nobody had even heard of.
When you cross that busy street,
Don’t forget to move your feet.
Project: a row of geared phenakistascopes, facing a long mirror.
Won’t someone help poor Dionysus?
He’s out of wine, and that’s a crisis.
Today, I heard a newscaster call Arlington Cemetery “Arlington Seminary.”
How very noisy is the bigot!
To hear him bellow, turn his spigot.
(Posted by Doug Skinner)
5 responses so far ↓
1 mamie // Jun 17, 2010 at 3:50 am
I like them! Particularly the St francis, the bigot one and the Arlington Seminary.
2 Angela // Jun 17, 2010 at 10:16 am
I love that Satie wore 7 identical yellow velvet suits! What a fantastic revelation.
never met a man…. ditto… there are some real ass hats out there.
Your family never ceases to disappoint. I now have nightmares about Oklahoma.
The phenakistascope project sounds great. Hmmmm where does one get a bunch of phenakistascopes???? I hope you do this.
I love that you rhymed Dionysus with crisis. Beautiful.
and the bigot is classic.
Bravo sir! This may be my favorite collection yet.
3 Doug // Jun 17, 2010 at 10:58 am
You can buy reproductions of old phenakistascopes. The idea here, though, is that I would make my own. I did an installation a few years ago, in which I made three that were mounted on old record players, so you could get animation sequences in 33, 45, and 78 rpm. This was another idea from that project. (For those unfamiliar with it, a phenakistascope is an animation sequence on a slotted black disc; you spin the disc and view the images from behind, in a mirror.)
4 Angela // Jun 17, 2010 at 11:58 am
My mistake…I was thinking that giant heavy black contraption you have was a phenakistascope. Now that I get it…this project seems very do-able. A very long mirror could be problematic, but you could use several smaller mirrors.
5 The Coyote // Jun 22, 2010 at 8:12 am
I thought cold tots too taut, so
I taught cold thoughts to tots.