One of my favorites. Okay who can tell me what movie this quote comes from. If you know or want to take a guess, don’t give it away! Please do not come right out and say it in comments ... leave it in a cryptic code, or as, the movie where yada, blah, yadity-blah happens. 

i’ll know what you mean. i promise.

  

images from When Sword Swallowing does Not Impress

-Being Red Skelton. 

Three memories with Hats:

1. There was usually a group of musicians over for the day or the fortnight blasting looped tapes out the second story window to see the street walkers reactions. These guys, judging by the sounds they crafted, majored in the most compelling + wonderful feedback imaginable. One handsome devil was obsessed w/ Einstein on the Beach at the time. We’d have parties depending on what we wanted to score. For instance; The Hat Party. People invited would know hats were mandatory. Eventually everyone would get drunk + a sea chapeaus would be left behind. Voila. +, if it ever got too weird, i could always crawl into my loft + pretend i didn’t know what was happening. 

 2. i went down to see the opera production director w/ a hat in question pinned together, mocked up to the nth detail. Upon seeing it, he ripped it apart verbally + shredded it literally. Humiliated, i came back up stairs to the craft room where Charles was huddled over a balsa block pining a turban. He glanced at me sideways for a moment + caught the mortified shock on my face w/ the hat draped over my arms in pieces. He offered, Oh, I forgot to tell you he’s in a snit today.  From Charles i learned of the blind nuns at dawn stitch.

 3. Manhattan winters are slap-in-the-face cold. Turning up toward the sun to warm our faces, we walked along planning a trip to the flower mart. We carried three regular coffees from Chock Full of Nuts steaming into the chilly early morning air. Heading down to the Bowery we traversed Union Square where we recognized the huge pile of fabric as Evelyn. She embodied a fashion statement by building a hat ornament day to day. If you had the time, you would notice that she added a bit of this or that to her chapeau everyday until her headpiece became too heavy. She’d have a two day break + then begin the building ritual again. She inhabited a homeless dingy heap moving from this place to Washington Park on quieter days. Kyle + i had been paid in cash for a restaurant installation the day before, so life was good. i casually handed Evelyn a twenty dollar bill + coffee as we passed her in the park. Her frosty breath rose from the lifeless pyre into the crisp air. When she bolted + came chasing after us, we didn’t know if she was in trouble or if we were. 

Mr. Brown:
It's one thing to out-think a man, quite another to outsmart him.

Mrs. Brown:
And who will say which is which?

-National Velvet

i’m not really here yet. 

i’ve walked up to the library to have a go at public internet.

+ now have the confidant, if not vindicated feeling, that when i give it all up + dump my life’s plunder into a cave i can indeed do the library blog-thingy. 

Of course i will have trouble with the VAs to illustrate the words. 

As this'in here: 

She was never really all there, but we never knew where to find her.

Moving into different digs this week + so do not know when i’ll be peering in again. 

While i was shuffling + purging i found this note in an old note book. It is legible + there are no misspellings, so i definitely did not write it.  

Not so much an urgent plea ... the tentative nature of this is more of a reminder than a mishap. But it seems like an appropriate symbol of the relocation orientation. 

 ...amid a flock of pigeons that I think of today as being like so many slaps in the face, whereas they seemed to me at the time like a foretaste of a thousand clapping hands. -Jean Cocteau 

i am suppose to say things about myself, but i reckon you know enough, + i will pass on til a later date as i need to put the computer into a box.

Simple Rhyme For a Gentle Bottle Cap
Snag art is here, popped off + left for dead.
Rusting, rusting into dust,
How can a bottle be so clean
When the cap seems so mean?

I will raise an eyebrow, Who wants to know?

-When Sword Swallowing Does Not Impress

BELL
He went and came, he beat his hands together, he ran from rope to rope, he animated the six singers with voice and gesture, like the leader of an orchestra who is urging on intelligent musicians.

...

He was wholly absorbed in spurring on his bells, all six of which vied with each other in leaping and shaking their shining haunches, like a noisy team of Spanish mules, pricked on here and there by the apostrophes of the muleteer.

All at once, on letting his glance fall between the large slate scales which cover the perpendicular wall of the bell tower at a certain height, he beheld on the square a young girl, fantastically dressed, stop, spread out on the ground a carpet, on which a small goat took up its post, and a group of spectators collect around her. This sight suddenly changed the course of his ideas, and congealed his enthusiasm as a breath of air congeals melted rosin. He halted, turned his back to the bells, and crouched down behind the projecting roof of slate, fixing upon the dancer that dreamy, sweet, and tender look which had already astonished the archdeacon on one occasion. Meanwhile, the forgotten bells died away abruptly and all together, to the great disappointment of the lovers of bell ringing, who were listening in good faith to the peal from above the Pont du Change, and who went away dumbfounded, like a dog who has been offered a bone and given a stone.

-The Hunchback of Notre Dame -Victor Hugo

Movement.

i sit by the fireplace as it flickers highlight + shadow w/ inspirational scenes.

Dana + i had walked to the tip of south Manhattan. Our heads hanging over the cement pier so all we could see is the choppy water as it sparkles as fallen stars. Then, shifts into an animation birds flying upward. This transforms into feathers sifting downward, fitting together in that complicated Escher-like geometric way. i get dizzy + look up to the horizon in time to se the Circle Line Ferry way off turning into the sunlight. The glittering sun hits each flat square pane of glass, sparking a flash, one after another in a kick line routine. As though each passenger were twinkling a bright idea.

Drivers travel on the expressway in the northeast, hi-way in the south, freeway on the west coast.
Riding in a car as a chain of thought.

The crew sat in the back of a Hong Kong taxi. This was 1996. One of us asked, What do you think about the hand-over?

It got real quiet + the cabbie looked around for a hidden mic. i leaned over the front seat and kidded, Hand over, what hand over? Later i realized w/ limited english, he may have thought we were attempting to rob him.

One late afternoon as i dropped letters into a mail box, three nuns in a Rambler stopped by to ask if i was a post man.

Burl Ives drove by in a green VW today. He didn’t look very happy stuffed in there like he was, so i didn’t try to brighten his day by waving hello. It’s great when i see folks that aren’t around any more.

Car memory of college student genré. I'd see them, eight or ten stuffed into a rusty Duster barreling south bound on thirty-eight toward Daytona Beach on spring break. I reckon I was waiting for the day I’d be one of them. By the time I hit graduation age I couldn’t have been farther from their reality.

Inside a repro of Lenny's hall of mirrors.

He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.  -Rainer Maria Rilke

I look in the mirror and say to myself, Can it be you once played Romeo? -Bela Lugosi

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. -Samuel Butler

Sister + i would sit in the attic w/ the dull winter light glancing in through the mutton barred glass. Staring at each other until we took on another form. So deeply frightening neither could move for fear it may be real. Years later i came across a passage of Dylan Thomas describing the same thing. Mr. Thomas called it Invoking The Devil. i knew immediately what he meant.  

-Script for a Practicing Artist and an Unfinished Life.

Everyone stands alone at the heart of the earth,
transfixed by a sun ray; 
and suddenly it is evening. 
-Salvatore Quasimodo, Tutte le poesie

sketchbook / cover # 45

Why do you have such bad handwriting, when you can draw so well?  

-Chloe

i get energy + inspiration from working on something completely different.

Want to work costume ideas? Illustrate a mandala.
Want a book theme? Sculpt the Mona Lisa.
Color story? Take off your glasses and make the lines disappear.

me: Hey, i just found an old scrap file named 'cities', in my writing ... it’s spelled wrong.

Lonnie: Well, if it were spelled right, we’d know it was a forgery.

...good luck will rub off when you shakes hands with me...
 -Bert  + we thought that was only coal dust.

It’s time to do the shuffle + purge, again.