Patti Smith

Today is the birthday of poet and musician Patti Smith, born December 30, 1946. The Godmother of Punk has been writing and singing her scathing poetry since the mid-70's with various degrees of success. She is getting her due this year with the widespread release of a documentary about her career as a poet and musician, Patti Smith: Dream of Life, and the release of a new memoir, Just Kids, which documents her long relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, set to come out on January 19. She has several readings and musical performances lined up in and around New York City in support of the book and movie, including Patti Smith and Her Band live at the Bowery Ballroom on 12/29, 12/30, 12/31; a reading of Just Kids on Jan. 19 at Barnes & Noble Union Square and on Jan. 21, Smith reads with longtime friend Sam Shepard at the 92nd St. YMCA.

This poem is from Patti Smith's 1978 album, "Easter."

Babelogue

I haven't fucked much with the past, but I've fucked plenty with the future. Over the skin of silk are scars from the splinters of stations and walls I've caressed. A stage is like each bolt of wood, like a log of Helen, is my pleasure. I would measure the success of a night by the way by the way by the amount of piss and seed I could exude over the columns that nestled the P.A. Some nights I'd surprise everybody by skipping off with a skirt of green net sewed over with flat metallic circles which dazzled and flashed. The lights were violet and white. I had an ornamental veil, but I couldn't bear to use it. When my hair was cropped, I craved covering, but now my hair itself is a veil, and the scalp inside is a scalp of a crazy and sleepy Comanche lies beneath this netting of the skin. I wake up. I am lying peacefully I am lying peacefully and my knees are open to the sun. I desire him, and he is absolutely ready to seize me. In heart I am a Moslem; in heart I am an American; in heart I am Moslem, in heart I'm an American artist, and I have no guilt. I seek pleasure. I seek the nerves under your skin. The narrow archway; the layers; the scroll of ancient lettuce. We worship the flaw, the belly, the belly, the mole on the belly of an exquisite whore. He spared the child and spoiled the rod. I have not sold myself to God.

Printed Matter

Sigh. Back from vacation, and slow to take up the heavy reigns of blogging. Quel trevail!

It doesn't help matters that I felt blessed to be away from the internets for a few weeks, and got reacquainted with the world of lengthy literature for the first time since the birth of baby Nico.

Waiting on my doorstep when I returned, helping to ease the transition, were two fantastic printed journals that brilliantly and deliberately illustrate the vast distances between browsing internet posts and reading large and thoughtful printed articles.

McSweeney's issue #33 has been praised far and wide, but it bears repeating here. The current issue of the quarterly magazine is a huge and gorgeous riff on a daily newspaper. The large format "San Francisco Panorama" has extensive news, sports, arts and books sections, plus 16 pages of full-color comics from the likes of Chris Ware, Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman. McSweeney's commissioned new journalism from William Vollman and Andrew Sean Greer, sports writing from Stephen King, new fiction from George Saunders and Roddy Doyle, dispatches from Afghanistan, and much more besides. It was available on the streets of San Francisco for a single day, and is now available in bookstores and online. Buy it. Read it. Hold on to it.

Less lavishly praised, but equally ambitious, is the latest issue of Coilhouse. Coilhouse was conceived as a daily "love letter to alternative culture" which quickly spun off a glossy print edition to cover the stories which couldn't be fully explored in the blog format. Issue #4 of the magazine, lovingly produced and published by photographer Nadya Lev, artist Zoetica Ebb, and musician Meredith Yayano, features a photo essay on "The Tarnished Beauties of Blackwell, Oklahoma," dozens of portraits of long-grown, long-dead children of pioneer America; a lengthy interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky, the filmmaker behind The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre; and paper dolls from cartoonist Dame Darcy. Available only through the Coilhouse website, right here.

Both of these documents are pointed and beautiful demonstrations of all the great things that printed periodicals can do and the internet simply can't. Well worth your money and time.

Tango

For the lonely days surrounding Christmas, a Hypnotic little film from Polish film maker Zbigniew Rybczynski. Tango won the 1983 Oscar for Best Animated Short.



Update: The "Tango" video seems to have been removed from Vimeo. I smell a lawsuit. Well, for now you can still see it here.

Salvador Elizondo

Today is the birthday of Salvador Elizondo, born December 19, 1932. The Mexican novelist, poet, critic, playwright, and journalist was one of the most unabashedly experimental writers coming out of the vibrant Mexican literary world of the 19650's & 60's. Elizondo is perhaps the best known of the Mexican "meta-fictionalists," his style combining a wonderfully poetic sense of language with vernacular outbursts from news reports, comic books and the sounds of Mexico City street life. Elizondo was a Professor of literature at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for two decades, and received dozens of international awards, including both Guggenheim and Rockefeller grants, and received the 1990 Mexican National Prize for Literature.

Elizondo's most widely read novel is Farabeuf, the fictionalized biography of an early-20th century renegade anatomist, but my personal favorite is the wonderfully strange and idiosyncratic El Grafógrafo ("The Graphographer"), a series of short texts using dozens of voices and unexpected twists of language to give a tour of a writer's mind as he puts pen to paper.

Elizondo died in Mexico City on March 29, 2006.

From El Grafógrafo

I write. I write I write. Mentally I am writing I write and I can also see that I write myself. I remember seeing and writing and writing. And I am remembering that I am writing and I remember seeing myself remembering that I wrote and I write seeing myself write that I remember having seen me write that I was writing I remembered having seen me writing and writing writing writing writing that. I can also imagine writing that he had written that I imagine writing that he had written that I thought writing that I am writing to write.

Puck Cinema Caravana

The smallest cinema in the world, the Puck Cinema Caravana, is making its way around the Spanish state of Catalunya this winter. The Puck Cinema is built into a tiny caravan with seats for no more than 6 kids under 5 feet tall. The Puck parks in side streets and wooded spaces and runs programs of splendid little animated films from around the world. Currently the Cinema is parked in Sabadell, about 30 miles south of Barcelona, showing a program called "Tales, Stories about Love, and some Poems" with 11 short films from Russia, China and the US. Don't miss it if you're in the neighborhood with your little ones. Check here for film times.

Down Mexico Way

I'm out of here for the next couple weeks, headed down South with Pepita and baby Nico to soak up some much needed sun on the Yucatan peninsula. This being the 21st century, I may sniff out an internet connection on some desert island or other, but basically I'm checking out until well after Hanukkah. Have a hell of a holiday, and thanks for flying Gurldoggie airlines. We know you have a choice.

Holiday Bizarre

BHerd Gallery in Greenwood has been doing a stellar job navigating the border between graffiti and fine art, creating lots of opportunities for Seattle street artists to create new outdoor pieces and providing an exhibit space for them to show and sell smaller works. The holidays bring a group show to the walls of BHerd which is basically a who's who of Seattle urban artists. "Holiday Bizarre" features artwork priced to sell, none of it larger than 12" x 12", from the likes of Parskid, Weirdo, Solace, EGO, Joey Nix, 179, John Osgood, NKO and a whole lot more. In their new digs at 8537 Greenwood Ave N. Show opens today, December 11, and runs through the 23rd.

Baby it's c-c-c-cold outside

Katie Paterson is a Scottish artist whose works claim a very unusual middle ground between sight and sound. Past works have included launching snow from a thousand catapults and recording the sound as it landed; creating invisible fireworks that explode with black sparks; and beaming radio transmissions of music to the moon in order to record the results as they bounced back to her earthly receiver. In her latest piece, Paterson recorded the sound of 3 melting glaciers on Iceland (Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull and Solheimajökull). She then pressed the recordings onto ice records made of melt water from those glaciers. The records were played on 3 turntables until they were completely melted, which took around 2 hours. You can listen to one here.

Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin turns 100 years old on December 12. In 1957, Rogovin was an optometrist practicing in Buffalo, N.Y., more or less minding his own business and volunteering as the librarian for the local Communist Party, when he was called in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused to testify, his family was outcast, and his practice fell apart.

Completely cut off from the world he knew, Rogovin turned to photography. He started at home, photographing poor and working class residents of Buffalo’s East Side, then traveled with his camera to document the downtrodden of China, Cuba, Czech, France, Germany, Mexico, Scotland, Spain, the United States, and Zimbabwe. In 1999, 1200 of Rogovin’s photographs were acquired by the Library of Congress. Here in Seattle, 40 of Rogovin's works were recently donated to the Henry Art Gallery collection, and a show of his work is currently being planned.

Rogovin, who still lives in Buffalo, was nominated to receive this year’s National Medal of Arts. In a statement accompanying the nomination, James Wood, the president of the Getty Trust, wrote that Mr. Rogovin has “created images that allowed us to see our fellow man with an intensity equal to that of Walker Evans or August Sander.” Photography historian Robert Hirsch conducted an in depth interview with Rogovin here.

A gala birthday celebration for Rogovin is planned for this Saturday at the WNED Studios, in Buffalo. Tickets to the birthday celebration are still available, and they are free. If you act fast, you can still R.S.V.P. for the party honoring this powerful artist and exceptional man.

Creative Typing

Two stories from the literary landscape that caught my attention.

The surprisingly popular novelist Cormac McCarthy is auctioning off his well-loved Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter. McCarthy, who recently wrote the apocalyptic bestseller "The Road" and years earlier wrote the fascinating and slightly less apocalyptic "Suttree," has used this machine exclusively for his entire writing life. He estimates that more than 5 million words flowed through its keys - his entire professional output plus several unpublished works. Bought for a mere $50 in 1963, McCarthy is hoping that the sale of the Olivetti will fetch $20,000 or more for the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit scientific research organization. McCarthy has already replaced the worn typewriter with a newer copy of the very same machine.

Fantagraphics, the Seattle publisher heretofore known strictly for publishing comic books, has taken up the challenge of publishing the newest collection of short stories by Stephen Dixon. Dixon, also known for composing on a manual typewriter, is a strange and compulsive writer whose fictions tend to feature neurotic men and their families. He has published hundreds of stories in dozens of collections, some great and some merely very good. The new book, entitled "What Is All This?" is a 900-page compendium of uncollected stories from throughout his career. Dixon is a masterful writer who deserves a wider readership, and it will be interesting to see how this experiment pans out. Will Fantagraphics bring his work to a larger audience? Will they establish themselves as viable publishers of non-comic literature? I'll pick up a copy for sure - that's 1.

Stargazer

David Narvaez, aka. Pablo D, has been a force in Seattle hip hop since way back in the day. Pablo was an early member of DJ 'Nasty' Nes Rodriguez's Emerald City Boys, and as a b-boy in the 1980's represented Seattle in street battles and national competitions. Not quite as limber as he used to be, Narvaez has turned his talents to photography, remaking himself as the premier chronicler of Seattle's hip hop scene. His good eye and impressive CV gets him backstage and on the floor at shows ranging from local heroes like Specs Wizard to superstars like Antipop Consortium.

Stargazer, Studio Narvaez's new solo show, opens Saturday December 5th at Vermillion on Capitol Hill. In addition to 20-odd years of Studio Narvaez photographs, the evening also promises performances from Capstan Media, Fresh Chopped Beats, Tulsi, DJ Able, Specs Wizard and doubtless many others. At Vermillion, 1508 11th Ave, beginning at 6:00 pm.

Gladiator

My very good friends lost their son this weekend. It was a gruesome and senseless death.

The Shield of Achilles

by W. H. Auden

      She looked over his shoulder
            For athletes at their games,
      Men and women in a dance
            Moving their sweet limbs
      Quick, quick, to music,
            But there on the shining shield
      His hands had set no dancing-floor
            But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
      Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
      That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
      Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

      The thin-lipped armorer,
            Hephaestos, hobbled away,
      Thetis of the shining breasts
            Cried out in dismay
      At what the god had wrought
            To please her son, the strong
      Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
            Who would not live long.

Full poem here.

Later Nerd

Adam Beadle, aka. "Team Nerd," has been a vital presence in Seattle's underground art scene for years. Primarily a print maker, Beadle creates celebratory and subversive images with wood and linoleum block prints, silkscreens and lithographs. He's shown his work in solo shows and group exhibitions, contributed to any number of zines and print collaborations, and created dozens of lighthearted pasteups and stickers that tweak Seattle's often glum streetart scene.

Beadle is off to Knoxville, Tennessee indefinitely to take a rare and precious gig at the Yee-Haw Industries letterpress studio. He's mounting one last Seattle show, opening this Thursday, December 3, on the 6th floor of 619 Western. He'll be there to sell off years worth of linocut prints, zines, stickers, t-shirts and more.

Beadle's aesthetic is both obsessive and joyous. Meticulously detailed and playfully spontaneous. We're gonna miss him around here, and wish him all the best on his new adventures.

Be Thankful

You may not have a car at all,
But remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tall.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Bike Repairs

In 2001, graphic designer Philip Carter published an esoteric little book called '1057', after the Highway Code number for the bike lane symbol used on British roads. 8 years later he is following up by collecting examples of symbols that have been repainted individually after the road they are on was repaired. He's using an ever growing Flickr site to gather the charming images. Check it out and contribute your own photos here.

Alias 'Man Ray'

A major retrospective of painter/ photographer/ filmmaker/ dadaist incarnate Man Ray opened this week at the Jewish Museum in New York City. Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was one of the defining artists of the 20th century. In addition to re-inventing his biography many times over, Man Ray was chameleon-like in his embrace of myriad cities, languages and art forms. First known as a Dadaist painter in New York, he became a Parisian Surrealist, an experimental filmmaker in Hollywood, a sculptor, a poet and a pioneering photographer. Contemporary biographical statements describe him as everything from the heir to a chewing-gum fortune to a coal merchant. A multimedia presentation is an absolute must to grasp Man Ray's enormous vision. This show offers paintings, photos, objets d'art and films in several languages.

Good essays about the exhibit here and here. 'Alias Man Ray' is at the Jewish Museum through March 14.

Back to the Punk Rock Flea Market

Things are falling into place for the 7th Punk Rock Flea Market, just a few short weeks away on December 5. Market spaces sold out in record time - within 3 weeks of announcing the date all 60 spots were gone - and we've got an unusually strong array of vendors this time around. In addition to the usual books, records and high-class trash, a number of nationally known print makers and crafters have sniffed us out and are traveling to Seattle for the occasion. Plus the loyal Pokie Bones from Bike So Good is making a return appearance with a full load of bike supplies. Good stuff for sale, I kid you not.

The band line up is also insanely good once again, with appearances from the Hungry Crow Sideshow out of Eugene, OR ("forged in the cauldron of transcendent poetics and stamped with the sepia-tinted
seal of vaudeville"), Variables (from a collective of intelligent, angsty, nihilist, and absurd Seattle hip hop musicians, rapping over old school, new school and punk beats.) and Mexican UFO (five piece glam/punk/metal rock n roll powerhouse, making trouble wherever they go.) The Underground is only just big enough to contain all this insane energy.

And of course DJ Port-a-Party spins old school 45’s and accompanying films, bringing us back to a time when hope was plentiful, love was cheap and recorded music occupied physical space.

All this plus our taps are full of beer, and it still costs just ONE DOLLAR to get in. Word. The market is on Saturday Dec. 5 from noon to midnight at the Underground Events Center, 2407 1st Ave. in Belltown. More here. Don't miss it!

Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz died on this day, November 19, in 1942.

Schulz was a writer, poet and cartoonist, born in Drohobycz, Galicia, now Drogobych, Ukraine. Schulz studied architecture at Lvov University and fine arts in Vienna, specializing in lithography and drawing. After returning to his native town, he worked from 1924 to 1939 as an art teacher in the local gymnasium. Schulz was often considered strange, and spent many hours on his own in his parents' house, writing fiction.

Schulz's literary career began in earnest in the 1930's. His first collection of short stories "Cinnamon Shops" appeared in 1934, and a second collection, The Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass was published in 1937. (The two titles are available only as a single volume in English, called "The Street of Crocodiles") With these two collections Schulz became celebrated as one of the most original figures of the Polish avant-garde. In 1938 he was awarded the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature.

In 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and the remainder of the country was occupied by the Soviet Union. Between 1939 and 1941 Schulz lived in Soviet occupied territory, but when Germany attacked the U.S.S.R., his town was occupied by the Nazis. A Jew, Schulz garnered the favor of a Gestapo officer who liked his drawings and arranged for him to paint frescoes on the walls of his house. However, Schulz's patron had an argument with another Gestapo officer, and to prove a point the officer shot Schulz dead while he was crossing the street.

It has long been rumored that the manuscript of Schulz's last novel, entitled Messiah, still exists in the KGB archives relating to the Gestapo.

Ever Yours, Vincent

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has recently launched a marvelous new website, presenting hundreds of Vincent van Gogh’s gorgeous and revealing letters. The massive website not only features high resolution scanned facsimiles of more than 900 letters to and from Van Gogh, but also translates the letters into English, and provides a richly annotated index of the letters, searchable by chronology, place, and correspondent.

Perhaps the most impressive feature is the menu called Concordance. Here, the letters are hyperlinked to profiles of people and images of artworks specifically referenced by van Gogh — all the cultural scraps that formed the artist’s world.

It's an absolutely splendid website, but the ironies are manifold. Of course there's the cosmic joke that an artist who never made enough money to pay his rent is now the object of international veneration. Additionally, a project like this only makes sense in a world in which access to the internet is fast and widely available. Sadly, it's that same speed and available that has marked the death of letter writing. Van Gogh's letters were uniquely beautiful even at a time when letter writing was common, and are even more so in a world where we can throw millions of words and images at each other with a keystroke, yet create so little of lasting value.

Finally however, the letters are a powerful remedy for the over saturated market that is the Van Gogh industry. It's hard to have an unjaded opinion of Van Gogh. Who even looks anymore at the millions of cheap reprints available in any Hallmark store? The letters invite a lengthy new look at a truly fascinating artist.

Another Beautiful Goddamn Day in Seattle