Diving Deep

The above painting by Samantha French depicts the sensation of being underwater with an eerie clarity. There's a temptation to call it photorealistic, even. I'm not sure it is, though. That is, I don't know that this is what a camera would pick up, as opposed to a hyperreal feeling of what this pool would be like. Interestingly, French's portrayal's of people outside the pool and thus on dry land are openly stylized, Matissean, faces obscured. The water portraits give more an impression of physical accuracy, but I'm not sure it's the point.

View from the tents

Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reason we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites.

We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting a lollipop or a toy bear's worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reaches of our skulls for which there is no remedy, no safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.

Katherine Dunn's Geek Love is a book that had sounded interesting to me, and when I got a copy of it through interlibrary loan I looked forward to cracking it. Then when I first started reading it I was pretty sure I didn't like it. The language was too showy, the characters too pleased with their own perversity. But I stuck with it out of lack of anything better to do.

I'm glad I did. The story of a group of circus freaks, most of them deliberately bred to be such, it offers insight that might not come out in another setting. Plus it turns out to be a lot of fun.

Είναι όλα ελληνικά για μένα

Above is a clock face using  Greek numerals. I've wondered for a while if there was a Greek equivalent to the Roman numerals. Turns out there is, although the system is a little different. It uses more of the Greek alphabet. And it's still somewhat in use to this day, for certain things in Greece.

Anyway, a bit of useless trivia? Perhaps, but I'd like to use it for something one of these days.

Hues

Are there actually differences in color preference between men and women? Interesting idea, but I don't know. Sexual dimorphism exists in humans, but it's mild to moderate as compared to, say, the arachnid kingdom. Certain patterns will emerge in studies just because the researchers are looking for them.

At least this is research into something fairly innocuous, though.

All fall down

Have to admit to not being in the best of moods when I saw it tonight, but damn Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows is entertaining. A familiar setup: guy hates his boss, has the hots for the boss's wife, so with her approval he kills the boss. But in this case absolutely everything goes wrong. Not just for him, either. While other idiots seem to be making out while he's trapped - I won't say where - his bad fortune turns out to be contagious.

There are certainly familiar elements here, but Malle has fun jumbling them up and throwing them against Bohemian Paris. Then there's Jeanne Moreau as the boss's wife and protagonist's lover, who takes her time revealing what she's capable of.

Also, there had been crime movies before this with jazz scores, certainly. But putting Miles Davis on the soundtrack was something else again. Bolder.

You just need to hear this

Which is funnier? Ray's patronizing childspeak? Or Bob's aggravated slow burn? Both are such profound things of beauty.

Centers

Geocentrism, egocentrism, ethnocentrism: you can see where they come from. Our perspectives put us at the center of it all, which is just an outgrowth of having survival skills. And you can't get away from this perspective. You can train yourself to look past it, though, or aspects of it.

That's the sniff

For a big part of the day I noticed this weird smell. Sort of like wet tobacco, which is not pleasant, but at least it wasn't strong. Just persistent. I'd notice it in one room at home, and in another, and when I was out.

Finally I figured out that it was from this shirt I hadn't worn in a while. Never rolled it in tobacco or anything, but that probably wasn't the source of the odor. The olfactory sense is an erratic one, or at least our knowledge of it is. Anyway, the smell eventually went away. Or got sweated out, or something.

From the Hart

Just getting word that Grant Hart has passed. Hart was, of course, one third of Husker Du, drummer and singer/songwriter. He also had a fitfully brilliant solo career after that, heard by too few. While I won't relitigate the feuding that occurred between him and Bob Mould during and after Husker's time together, he truly elevated the band. RIP.

Traces of summer

Generally I've been wearing shorts at home at night. Regardless of what the day's been like, or whether it's cooled off outside by nighttime, it tends to be quite warm in the apartment. I'm sure it's like this for a lot of other people too, and that it drives kids crazy they're back in school when they can hardly tell it's fall.

Complete field

The ganzfeld effect is a new term to me. I've heard of something like it, though. It's a limited form of sensory deprivation effect, where the lack of new information coming in through a particular sense - most often sight - can cause hallucinations. Besides Brion Gysin's Dreamachine the principle has also been used in artist Robert Irwin's installations. It's an interesting effect. Best if you have the option of walking away from it. But if anything we're subject to sensory overload most of the time.

The key to happiness

I've been re-watching the second season of Happy Endings really for the first time since it went off the air a few years ago. I remembered it as being very funny. It's committed to being nothing more or less than a show with a lot of well-written jokes, and one where every character has good chemistry with every other one. When it first started it was supposed to be a rom-com about a couple who split up when she left him at the altar, and how they learn to deal with this. As a focal point this was kind of dull, and the four supporting characters were a lot more fun. Taking the hint, the writers put that premise in the background for the most part. They also made the erstwhile romantic leads more eccentric, essentially making everyone a wacky supporting character. Expectedly or not, this worked a lot better.

It's well-suited for home video, too, given how easy it is to miss one of the funny throwaway lines. They come fast.

Tune

This is Robert Maxwell's "Solfeggio", known to be the song played by the Nairobi Trio on Ernie Kovacs's show, so it feels like there should be another musician. You know, just for visual balance. Nonetheless it's a nice rendition.

Labor Day post

Summer draws to a close now. In meteorological terms it lasts three more weeks, but by schoolchildren's criteria it's over. And this year summer has been largely mild, sometimes chilly. This has meant less frolicking by the water, and maybe it's been a little harder to convince people climate change is real. On the plus side, if there's been a summer with fewer mosquito bites, I don't remember it.

The difference

If your face is hairy and your neck - front, under the chin - is hairy, it looks like you've just been neglecting to shave. If your face is hairy and your neck isn't, you look like you have a well-maintained beard. All it really takes is a few seconds in the morning. For a few days running I just shaved underneath because I was running late, but it didn't show. I didn't really feel like keeping the beard, though, so it went this morning.