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MOTION THOUGHTS
Thursday, August 23, 2007chalkart ambush chalk art by night at the cité universitaire. by cadets camille and tom. mons, belgium july 2007. Labels: anarchy, fireworks, graffiti, group art Sunday, February 25, 2007burning bush i was intending to post this forever ago, when it actually happened (january 23), but i could never decide if i wanted to post more pictures than just this one. tom's post probably covered all my bases. except for mine are in color! if you're interested in more, let me know. so yes, this is from the state of the union party at the iron rail book collective in the marigny of new orleans. and yes, we are burning an effigy of the president. lagniappe:     Labels: anarchy, fire, fireworks, New Orleans, photography, president bush Friday, January 26, 2007concerned citizens.here is my brief follow-up to the photograph i posted on tuesday evening. this all went down at the Iron Rail/Plan-B warehouse on Decatur and Marigny in the Marigny district of New Orleans. The advertisement for the event, the "State of the Union Party," touted "Fireworks! Burning effigies!" and "Fire-breathing anarchists!" And, well, I think you'll see that these claims were not unfounded... the night started out with giant 8-foot in diameter hula hoops! this gentleman hulahooped with the best of them.  he was an expert, and also assisted with the filmings inside of the art space. on this night, he played mentor to the young girl on the right, who was soon hula hooping with great finesse.  inside the art space, kids from all over crowded in for food, drink, and a showing of the state of the union address and film "death of a president." during the first half of the presentation, the audience was encouraged to throw rotten vegetable matter at the screen.  then they brought the bush effigy out, which was once seated right of the viewing screen.  amidst some varied calls of, "no, you're not going to burn it, are you?" came answers...  of, "oh, yes we are!" the effigy was soaked with alcohol first.  and then after some trial and tribulation with lighters, surfaces to light, and other concerns...  it caught fire. in the background are two undercover detectives that came to the gathering in case if things got out of hand. they called for two squadron cars when things got louder, and their true identites were revealed.  chaos ensued once george REALLY got burning.  people interacted with their flaming president in many ways. here a young gentleman sees that the effigy's head is not adequately on fire!  george soon falls to pieces, much to the crowd's delight!  some begin to toast marshmallows on the open fire.  others simply come to warm themselves on the comforting glow.  fireworks also make an appearance, bursting into the sky, skipping gleefully along the streets, and making a genuine ruckus!  bam!  basking in the glow.  the collective stamps out their fires after the cops arrive. two police cruisers pull up after the fireworks get particularly intense. they were stationed about two blocks away towards the river since the beginning of the night. they demand that the collective cease all loud activity.  our hula-hooping friend from earlier talks to police, assuring them that everything is all right, and that the collective is just going to go back inside and watch another film. everyone wishes the police a good night. fin. Labels: black and white, fire, fireworks, New Orleans, photography, president bush Monday, November 27, 2006Straight from the Truth's lips:Seven thousand swans exploded over Stark Lake like fireworks, red light and guts splattered over our picnic blankets and parked cars. What a show. And we'll never know how else the evening could have ended. How much longer could we have choked down anecdotes and champagne, avoiding eye contact and chortling? The swans had to go; their numbers were only comparable to our hordes of children, the little bodies of entertainment only money could buy. It's fun to dress them smartly. It's fun to correct their language. It's fun to explain to them the one way arrow of time, the fact that we can't party forever, that we all must explode over Stark Lake water."My head is full of lemons!” little Nora exclaimed, grabbing an empty jelly jar from our picnic basket, and flinging her skirt's wasted bread crusts into our faces. Little Nora proceeded to gather select pieces of the defunct birds, a collection of the best bits in her empty jelly jar. The top half of a black beak, newly unwebbed feet, spinal bones, a slew of white messy feathers, and even a still beating heart. Joyfully the child bounds back to us, frozen under the protection of the poplar trees, ladybugs and aphids crawling over everything. She presents us with the jelly jar, beaming furiously and breathing heavily from the excursion. We are unimpressed. We are older – in our semicircle, in this curve where we're arranged and have sat with our asses grown onto the quilt, onto the ground, unimpressed by little girls, but that dress I put her in. Buttercup and lace. Oh, tell me true, who, when the picnic blanket was rushed to the tip of her nose, snug-bugged-bitten in a rug, who told the bedtime story that said, “Nora Blue, the entire universe is waiting for you?” We didn't have the time, so we squatted in our design, centered ‘round the half-eaten roast chicken and jam cookies. Unimpressed, white birds, beams bursting through wingspans, red birds while we partook of the deviled hams. The graceful arc, skeletal, spiraling, finally spiraling down, the collapsing messy parts. Nora's in the middle, splashing in the blood like mud. Her skinned knees, their skinned bellies, Nora's in the puddle, mixing up the gush. What is she doing? It's nibble night. Nora with her socks off, that dress is stained, daffodil is pomegranate red, positively red with that ruination from the stars, who knew? She's not my responsibility? Nora's in the gobbledygook, Nora's in the soup. Someone, hurry up and extract her from that dirty mess (Seven thousand swans exploded). It was a lonely trot back to the blood spotted Beemers, our arms empty (we left the blankets in the grass to be tossed out with the litter at dawn, or whenever). “Goodnight, Jonathan.” “Good Evening, Beatrice.” “Kisses, Harry.” Thank the good Lord for satellite radio, filling our empty retreats with international sports talk. I've never seen a game of Jai-Alai. Sounds nuts. We faked interest in the interest of ignoring potential interest in our starless sky and the giggling Nora and Norman in the back seat world. No more swan light distraction. No more thick splatter. I've never been so disgusted with the dim cleanliness of our doorstep. “Nancy, put the kids to bed.” New schedule. 7:30: Dig through garage piles for house paint. 7:45: Spread white primer in even zigzags across the lawn. 7:52: Create Jackson Pollock mimicry on stoop with dark brown muck paint. 7:55: Throw on some garden dirt for texture. 7:56: Pick best flower, sandwich it between left ear and skull. 7:59: “Put yourself to bed, Nancy.” 8:03: Roll around the garden bed, particularly mashing suit jacket into ground. 8:05: Smoke my last cigar, extinguish butt in lawn gnome's eye. That was satisfying. Upstairs, the wife and kids were probably in bed, staring at the ceiling, or maybe televisions. Bored. I went for a walk. But, God damn it! The beauty and terror of a streetlight! The inescapable uniformity of images, the unchanging look and texture of an electrical socket. Scents float by me as I walk – trash receptacle, flower bed, dog shit, apple pie cooling on a windowsill. All of them predictable, even similar, the bullshit you can count on, and remain disgusted with for as long as you're required to put up with it, until the day your body or your brain finally says, “I've had it with this world of pills and keys and advertisements for remote controls that operate the white AND the multicolored lights!” But for now you just breathe in the unbearability and move through space with a new knowledge of devastation, the carnage of a fleet of swans and the delight it gave a child. The constant and overwhelming everything pushes in, almost crushing us as we strain to just be. But, God damn it, that's just one more thought to fold up and put away and hide in my desk drawer like a letter from a lover, and one day Nancy will find it and say, “What's this?”, her eyes splattered bugs on glass. It didn't mean anything, honey. That was just that night. I was thinking about straining about being. Do you believe it? I love my daughter. I love my son. I love beneath me, the rugged receding sidewalk because it's like my face in the early mornin' on this late night's salacious escapade, having affairs with all the streetlights, and I feel their arms winding around my ribs, stone-cold wrapped around my waist. From here I see a pretty girl with an eager set of lips – young, the youngest – lean to the windowsill. I want to swoop in, knock the crust out of the way, grab her, let the lights grab her, and Nora, and Norman, and illuminate the atmosphere when they're lifting us up, saying “This is what the swans see.” Do you feel the bones growing, cells extending, the web between your toes, and atoms split, our bodies multiply. The stitches of Nora's buttercup of a dress have finally been severed, and I'm sorry, sweetie, but now I see your wide, white wings unfold in the cloth falling from you, down there. We're all over. We pool on the elastic surface of a cloud, making a V which is quickly ruined, shaping, reshaping, our flock, my kids, there's seven thousand of us, we got away. Watch us go. Explode. Redistribute. Assimilate. Devolution to singular particles free of family ties. Beautiful. But, God damn it. I'd rather be light. I'd rather be sound. I'd rather be a fleeting moment with no evidence of existence beyond a one sense observation. The stoop is beautiful. A muck explosion. Let's redecorate the known universe, break apart the ordered randomness, the clinical patterns. I don't want to be inside. I don't want to be outdoors. All that's left to hope for is morning reports of the world's entire collection of birds amassing in one open field, ready to burst. This story was written in a round by Cadets Ledet, Alanna, and Morgan Rose. Thanksgiving Day 2006 Labels: birds, feet, fireworks, water Sunday, November 19, 2006Hungry and the Seven SkirtsMy feet, my scuffed and pealing leather shoes, will clatter on the cobblestone of a slumbering town! A dress of seven skirts, a dirty cape with a head-enveloping hood will billow behind me! The sloppy tied laces will be slipping! I won’t need you! And I’ll keep running until the road turns to dirt and I’ll still be running when all wagon tracks and horse shoe prints have disappeared and the road too. I will be in a place that never knew peddlers with smirks like yours, those cunning men that peddle shampoos. I won’t need shampoo! A place that is wild, witchy, and cold, silver-washed by the celestial beast that you never once compared me to! My hair will grow a foot; the frosted weeds will crunch under me like brittle bird bones shot from the mouth of the owl in the forest where I’ll go! I’ll go, the trees even blacker than their background, more twisted than my wrist the day you made me try your experimentally flavored eclairs. They were less pretty than glistening plumbs. But you never appreciated light on fruit of any kind, I know. I remember when I put chocolate-covered strawberries in your new suit just as a surpise, to be funny. You got mad. You said that you didn’t want juice in your pockets. But I will be in the woods and you won’t be able to find me if you try! The nearby trees will melt and so will I at the sight of electrically lit flowers! My shoes, lost! I’m dancing, trotting! I am a fox! Your eyes are fireworks! No they aren’t! Stamp, twirl, and dip myself, and beat the hollow drum of a belly that is hungry! Oh! I collapse. I roll through the grass as it thaws leaving thousands of droplets for me to drink. Full orange flowers tipping nectar over the curling edge. The pockets of my seven skirts full of juice for me to drink! And when the electric eels trickle by I won’t be scared; I’ll even be a welcoming committee for the meteorites, God’s very own dandruff! As well as a cheerleader. As well as a strike leader. As well as a plumb as well as sparkling as good as gone from you. As well as a lover of anyone but you.Labels: birds, feet, fireworks Thursday, November 02, 2006joy in simple things (mp3)this is a song that cadet kat and i wrote together in spring 2005. it can be found on our band Scandaliz Vandalistz's album, I Forgot Where I Was Going So I Came Back, which we released indepedently in august. violin by cadet alice, guitar by katherine, vocals by me and katherine.lyrics: Middle of July, the fireworks are over Running around in circles Simply waiting for Godot And I was feeling kind of numb Taking an icy shower Then I heard a knocking on the door Whoever is it? It was you Hey look, I've got a shovel and a pail Why don't we sail, And look for whales? No use waiting for something that never comes At the beach, we'll have some fun Don't be blue The sky is blue So don't be blue The sun is shining down So lovely to be with you Before you came I was a mess Worrying over nothing But to hear the tap of your feet along the boardwalk shows me joy in simple things I found Godot a while ago with you Labels: feet, fireworks, music
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