Passionate Discourse

"Passionate Discourse" is the second part of a three part series by Surrealist director Jan Švankmajer. This series, Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), addresses multiple modes of communication and language.

This short film affected me. Sitting in a darkened classroom as it played out on a projector screen, I found myself tossed from loving peacefulness to broken, betrayed tragedy; I nearly cried aloud at its close. I have since read a few reviews and analyses of the film. Some of the more pedantic ones have attempted to stretch this into a commentary on the political situation in Czechoslovakia, Švankmajer's home. Most revolve around the "child" lump of clay and the way its unwanted presence destroys love. I, however, shy from any such analysis. I reacted viscerally to this film. It is not what it is about, but how it makes me feel. It makes me feel like weeping. How, if I may be so bold to ask, does it make you feel?

Love Bug

VW Beetles

I call him Archibald

Archibald

He's so hideous that he's adorable. Apparently, Sphynx cats are a loving, curious breed. With the lack of fur, they lose body heat very quickly and so are prone to snuggles and typically unfeline-like displays of affection. They are also, for the sneezy, teary-eyed types among us (i.e., me), hypoallergenic. If only Archibald cost slightly less than the going rate of 1500 large...

Avant Garde Class, 9 November

It's called the hall of witnesses. They want you to experience what it's like to be in the presence of no one, to live in that indigenous region of the jungle that is a kind of Disneyland, a simulacra of people who live in that area. It is a special house for serpents and it looks like an ark. What attracted them to this place? Is it the hearing trumpet in the architecture that molds to the landscape? Perhaps.

They fantasized together. They placed this creation in the lineage of memories, where humans could honor nature. If you are being attacked by a watch or a tree or Camembert, you are being attacked by decay, by delirium--the secret road to paranoia and schizophrenia. For them, nothing is taboo, but madness can become a tool of knowledge. They don't always reveal what you're looking for, or even anything. They simply mean to show you the cycles of nature, blowing with dust, where you can make a living archive.

So who cannibalizes whom? My life does not fit into their frontier of survival, into an English picnic on the grass. It is embarrassing. But as fate would have it in my life, it slides off my back like wearing a raincoat. I am a cabinet of curiosities, synchronicities; you should hope to live as long. The provenance of the works in Wonderland is their thing; it does not have to be mine.

Beautiful Angle

I have lived in Los Angeles for over five years now. For the ten months of that time that I lived abroad, I located home and my longing for it in LA, the place that many, if not most, of my loved ones inhabit. But back, in sunny Southern California again, I would give anything to trade palm trees for pines, the sun and sand for drizzly overcast and the slimy rocks and wood pilings of Titlow Beach. I miss Tacoma. The statue of the Native American in the Antique Sandwich Co., the sound of howling wolves from the Point Defiance Zoo, October pumpkins at Tacoma Boys, and the footpath between Garfield Park and Park Drive.

So, here is a little bit of it, one of my favorite bits, in fact:

Beautiful Angle

Beautiful Angle is a guerilla arts poster project in Tacoma, WA, promoting Tacoma as the holy city on a hill, helping to make it so. I can't wait to be back and go on poster hunting parties at 4AM with my best friend.

I'll be there soon.

I promise.

Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie

Cumulus