Audrizzle

So, I'm writing this from the plane. I am 36,000 feet above the planet earth, and since I don't have internet access, I can't distract myself with anything.

Well, technically I could distract myself with plenty of things, but right now I'm choosing not to.

Anyway.
I haven't posted in a long time which is terrible.

Not really terrible for anyone who reads this website, if anyone reads this website. But terrible for me, just because I hate it when I go for long periods without writing.

Today I got very angry at a man on the bus to the plane… he asked me to move my backpack, and I just got so angry because there are certain times when you have to sacrifice your personal space so that the group as a whole may move forward.

The subway, for example. I could never understand how anyone who is very particular about having a "personal space bubble" could live in New York City. Whenever I was waiting for a train with a crowd of people and one came, a lot of people would get on, but then some other people would rather wait around until the next train than squeeze into the last spots available. So, being the efficient person that I am, I would always move past and squeeze in before the doors shut. If you want personal space, you don't live in NYC.

Somehow, in the rows in front of me, directly to my right, and behind me are infants.

The one right next to me just threw up all over his mom. I feel kind of bad for her, it must be really embarrassing. But at the same time it could be much worse. The kid in front of them was banging on the seat for a really long time earlier and the parents didn't do anything about it, and that also made me very angry.

I guess I always thought people found their own kids much more annoying than other people found them to be, which is why strangers ooh and aah over how cute babies are. I guess you get used to the cuteness, just like you get used to the annoyance. So even though it's completely rude and disrespectful to the dozens of people around you, you just don't care, you just let the kid scream or hit his toys against chairs or spit up on strangers. Because you certainly can't be expected to bother to take responsibility for yourself and what is essentially your creation.

I just feel sorry for the woman next to me. She's changing her baby's onesie now, because the green one with the dinosaur on it had vomit all over it.
Luckily I didn't smell any of it.

Now the baby is looking at me and saying Daddy and smiling laughing and reaching out his hand toward me. I guess that's the main reason I feel so sorry for his mom, because she's alone, no dad, no aunt, and my god - she's soaked in his vomit. I am amazed a baby could even hold that much liquid.

I don't mind this baby. The one in the row ahead of me is being quiet now, but both his parents are drinking alcohol. I wonder if you are allowed to bring a 3-oz container of booze onto the plane with you (provided that it is in a 1-quart plastic zip bag).

Captain says we're at 37,000 feet now.
It's kind of funny because his announcement keeps getting interrupted by other people radio-ing in. You'd think they'd plan ahead so that doesn't happen. Kind of looks unprofessional.

Also, I apologize right now for any and all grammatical errors in this document. I am being lazy, and it's very hard to move here. It is also impossible to google English rules.

So, what's going on in my life?

Oh. Well, I'm on a plane. I'm coming back from Key West, where I spent Christmas. Christmas was OK,
(the flight attendant - or maybe I should call her the flighty attendant - just gave the dad of the loud kid a free margarita. Not cool.)
for some reason my first instinct when I got there was to clean & organize my mom's entertainment center. I also made her up a nice little list of instructions for how to use it - which remote to use, which buttons to press, how to play Wii and listen to the stereo at the same time.

It's kind of funny that my mom can't figure this stuff out. I always figured that I got my "good at hooking up electronics" gene from her father, who owned a TV sale & repair business. I guess sometimes these things skip a generation.

I also think it's kind of funny how good I am at working with my hands and doing "labor" type things, I guess because everyone has always considered me so cerebral. If you grow up hearing over and over how smart you are it kind of gets ingrained in you and you end up believing (or at least I did) that intelligence is the only thing that matters and why should you need to know how to do anything physical, you're so smart you'll be a zillionaire and paying people to do things like clean out lint traps or rake leaves or carry boxes for you. Never work with your hands.

But I still have to admit, I do love manual labor. Mostly what I love is that I can get into it, I can focus on it and not think, or my mind can wander and do whatever. But it's straightforward, repetitive, and you can see a visible effect or outcome when it's complete. You can see the hole you dug, and think about how they can't teach how to dig a hole at college.

Maybe they can.

It's just that more and more, I think college is overrated. So much of college is learning things out of books, which is ridiculous. Why pay thousands of dollars to have the "privilege" to pay thousands more for books you could find at a library for free? I mean, I understand the desire to discuss literature with someone, but when I went to Webster, the majority of the students either didn't read the books assigned, didn't read them on time, or didn't want to talk about them.

It's amazing, but looking back, my experience in college classrooms was a very isolated one.

Oh. Here's something I wanted to bring up.

I finished reading The Magus at the airport.
It's one of those books I enjoyed so much while I was reading it that I stopped for a while to prolong the moment when it would have to come to an end.

The last time I did this was with The Idiot, which I finished about 5 years after I started it. I think that's because I was reading the David Magarshack translation, the new one by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is a lot easier to get through… yet I still think it loses some of the cute little oddities the language held before.

It's so interesting to think about translation. There are double meanings, alliteration, so much fun that just isn't translatable. And then you wonder whether you should translate to a sentence that is 100 % accurate in meaning, or one that sounds as artful in your language as it does in the original. Very difficult. I can spend hours trying to work one sentence, I imagine it would take ages to do a full book.

Anyway.
The Magus was great. Great isn't really even a good enough word to describe it. I want to say "magical" but that's not it. Intoxicating, in some ways, I suppose… but mere intoxication is such a bland, colorless state compared to the sensations this book arouses in the reader!

I almost don't want to talk this book up too much. Not many people have read it.
At first, I told everyone to read it. Everyone. But now I like it as my secret, as my treasure, it's not a sluttish piece of writing that everybody knows inside and out. It's special to me.

Of course I want to read it again, immediately.

I also want to give up the internet. Maybe I should only allow myself certain times of day to use it.

I guess I'd have to be careful with my phone then.

I think the concern is that we've become such a society of instant gratification gluttons. What was that movie with that guy? I have to know now.

It's really interesting to think about wanting to know something for more than an hour or two… how did people learn anything before the internet? How were they satisfied without being able to find out whatever they wanted whenever they wanted?

It's infuriating, really. When I was at Angelus House there was no internet. There was a large collection of reference books, however (many of which were mine) and trying to glean a specific piece of information from a book is very fun, in a way, especially if you are used to using the internet.

I think it would be a neat experiment for me to one day, instead of looking up words in the dictionary or googling this statistic or that, I want to just write down every single question that comes into my mind, then look them all up at the end of the day. I'll do that tomorrow.

I'll need to carry my big notebook around with me, probably.

I should start a chapter in it called "Internet Withdrawal".

There will be so many things I think I "can't do" without internet access. Can't contact my friends, can't write, can't do artwork, can't think about the bank, etc.

Who knows.

Anyway, it's 9:52 PM on Sunday, 12/27/2009.

The seatbelt sign is on and the babies are being quiet. I am exhausted and I hope the plane lands soon. This is going to be it for now.

Oh, one more thing….
on my personal/mental state.

Had been doing really quite well for a while except for occasional bouts of indorsiness, but the last couple weeks have brought on serious empathy attacks.
I have also been more loving and helpful, which is weird.

I think it's so funny that they make such a big deal about adults wearing seatbelts on the airplane but the kids just jump up and down on their laps. Incredible.

Plus. It seems like I see a lot more kids on planes these days than I used to.

I wonder when the captain is going to tell me to turn off my portable electronic device. I think it is very funny the way they are called "portable electronic devices"… like anyone could really bring a non-portable electronic device on an airplane. "Whaddaya mean I can't set up my surround sound? I bought all the seats in first class so I could! Do you know how much these speakers cost me?"


Sigh. We're descending, surely. I imagine what I see to my left is Chattanooga, that would make perfect sense. Planes go about 200 miles an hour, right? And we're about half an hour away, and the Chatty is about 100 miles away, right?

Oh boy, here it comes… I don't know why I don't just put away my damn laptop. It's not like I'm being extra creative or clever. This post is surely quantity over quality; please forgive me.

If we are flying over Chattanooga, though, has it always been this big, and where is Lookout Mountain?

I've got to say. Maybe it's just because it's the holiday season, but I think flying with Tennessee passengers is a lot less pleasant than flying with … well, I don't know. I just get the feeling the people on this plane don't travel a lot and so they want to make the most of it - get all the drinks, start all the conversations, ask all the questions, use all the lavatories, stand in all the ways they can.

It kind of sucks that I won't be flying over Knoxville. The airport here is about 10 miles south or so of the city, and since we're coming up from the south I won't be able to see the city lights at all. I bet Knoxville is bigger than Chattanooga, but if this is Chattanooga on my left, Chattanooga is a lot bigger than I thought it was.

Oh, suburban sprawl! I like the suburban sprawl in Knoxville because it seems like Farragut, Oak Ridge, Maryville, etc. are all spaced out enough that you're not expected to roam through all of east Tennessee. Boy, I was not fond of Connecticut, where all my friends lived a half hour away - in different directions.

I want to see the movie of The Magus but I can't imagine it could possibly be any good. So much of the book is internal monologue.

The drunk people's child is being really annoying. I didn't mean to, but I gave the dad a look and they tried to quiet their child a bit. Basically he is still making all the noises he was before, but now he is sitting down on his mother's lap instead of standing with his hands on the back of her chair.

What else is going on in my life…

I play Wii a lot. Dave has made me clean the apartment. I have good ideas occasionally but I don't always write them down. I haven't been going out or spending money as much.

The child in the row behind me has now started shrieking, the one in front of me is repeating "Ayyy yii yii yii yaaa…" over and over. The one that threw up earlier is somehow sleeping through all of this.

I think the weirdest experience ever on a plan was once when there was a screaming child in the row behind me, and I couldn't see it, but then after a while the screaming sounded really muffled, like they were smothering the baby or something. And then it stopped. I mean, I'm sure they didn't kill or drug their baby right there on the plane, but still… just one of those very eerie situations.

I cannot get over how rude the people in front of me are.

Money is still a major issue, of course. I'm knitting quite a bit since it is winter. I made a hat and I look like a mushroom head when I wear it. So i am going to make another hat, where I will look like an alien instead.

I need to stop at Walgreens on the way home. Also an ATM.

Also, here's something I don't know very much about: When you want to buy a gun there's some kind of waiting period, where they check up and make sure you're not a confirmed homicidal maniac or whatever, but if you buy a gun at a gun show they waive the waiting period.

How does that make any sense? I mean, do the gun sellers check up on the people they sold guns to once the gun show is over? Or do they just not take any identification at all?

Again, you'd think that by now the whole system would be digital, but this country is just too big for that.

"Ayy yiii yiii yaaa".

Now I can't see anything. Clouds, I guess. I wonder why they put the seatbelt sign on 20 minutes ago, don't they usually only do it right before they're about to land? I guess I don't know.

Well, NOW it's time to prepare for landing. 10:16. Going to put up my laptop and hope that I don't have to wait too long at the baggage claim.

SEEYAZ

Labels: books, children, emotions, hateful people, knoxville, language, rambling, reading, the internet, translation, travel, writing

We all know I have a tendency to become obsessed with things.

Here's a new one.



Dear god.

I have always been a fan of Kool Keith (or "Special Keith" as some confused baby boomers are prone to call him) but I watched the "Livin' Astro" video again yesterday for the first time in about 4 years and fell in love with it.

Sigh.



I guess I first saw it in fall of 2005 on GTV, which I will admit to watching. I will also admit to hosting a show on GTV, but that's as far as I will go.

So, technically I can say that I fit into the following categories:

* Award winning writer
* Published photographer
* Museum-featured artist
* Former TV show host

On top of many other things.

Or alongside of them.

Whatever.

all of A sudden is the proper way to write it. I have been wrong for YEARS, thinking it was "all of the sudden." I can't tell you what an idiot I feel like for this. I can't even begin to bring it up.

Also, the other day...
this is getting a bit personal, OH NO! ... Well, the other day, J apologized. I'm not going to say for what, but the fact of the matter is that I had been waiting for J to apologize for 7 weeks, and a couple of days ago he finally did.

Now, I had been waiting and waiting and expecting and HOPING that the moment J expressed his remorse would come along, but when it finally did, something interesting struck me.

Everything that he was going to say I already knew.

Seeing as we had not discussed the incident, I can't say how I knew it... people often assume things and most likely they are wrong. I guess I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and came to my assumption which turned out to be right. And though I think the old me would have been ready to rub his face in it, would have preferred he lick my boots in addition to saying he was sorry, would have laughed as he groveled at my feet... well, the present me just felt sorry for him. I mean, getting to the root of the issue, I realized that his problem was his inability to react to things as a mature adult. He had felt uneasy the entire time about it whereas I was able to get over it after a very short time.

I felt horrible to think that two people could go through the same experience and come out of it so differently. I mean, I'm sure he wasn't agonizing over it, but the depth of his apology to me was so genuinely heartbreaking I fear that it was almost as bad.

What really struck me about the situation was this: J caused me to suffer, so in the past I would have wanted to see him suffer. BUT when faced with the actual front of his suffering, I realized that he had already suffered much more than I had as a result of his actions, and whatever petty need for revenge I'd had was long gone. I just wanted him to be my friend again.

So, I accepted his apology, I halted his pathetic pleas for forgiveness, and I told him it was alright, to stop fretting.

Anyway.

I guess my ultimate point is this.

There is something that I know the old me would have done. The bad me. The hateful, mean me. And I couldn't do it.

So many times when confronted with a situation, I have thought to myself...

A) This thing is bad but it's the only thing I can do.
B) This thing is bad, and I know I should do the good thing, but I'll do the bad thing anyway.
C) I want do to the bad thing, but I know I should do the good thing, so I'll pretend to be good even though I really don't want to.

This occasion brought me face-to-face with a new course of action.

D) In the past I may have wanted to do the bad thing, but now I can't bear the thought of it, so I must, i WANT to do the good thing. It's the only thing.

Result:

I am "getting better, becoming human".

Becoming a decent human at least. There are plenty of humans out there who are juvenile and oblivious and all the more unhappy because of it.

And I guess I'm not unhappy.
Saying so is really a giant leap for me.

In other news, some friends and I were going to go see The Goonies at Market Square in Knoxville this evening, but it ended up storming like crazy, so I stayed in and did artwork.

Soo, that brings us to the Friday Night Art Roundup!

If I wasn't super lazy, I would make a cool graphic for that. Who knows, maybe I will later!
(ha yeah right)

Anyway, here's what we've got:


First was the top left, then the bottom left, then the top right, and finally the bottom right.

The bottom right is very different from the other three, obviously, though you can still see some light dripage in the middle.

Anyway, I am pleased with the one on the top right less than I am with the other three, but oh well.

I think the one on the bottom right is interesting because it's obviously very intricate and took me longer to complete than all the other three (plus cleanup & setup time) put together.
Anyway, what's interesting is that I didn't notice while I was painting it, but am noticing now, 4 feet away, the lines through the bumps on the "enclosures" around the shape. If you look where the encircling lines go down (especially around the middle part of the right side) you notice some non-lines are formed in the pattern just by the shape of the painted lines. It's hard to explain, and if you can't see it already, it's probably not worth it to you or me to continue explaining.

Anyway, it is interesting, was unexpected, and like I said, I didn't even see it until after I was finished.

Another "discovery" that I will try to put to more use at a later date.

Sigh.

Wish I could sleep. Apparently I don't have any desire to stop writing.

It's been a long day, filled with terrible dreams about monsters and conspiracy.

And then some painting and some music and I'm feeling better now. But not tired, not tired at all.

Oy.

Well, I guess that's it for now. I'm out. PEACE!

Labels: art, knoxville, life, mental illness, music, obsession, people, rambling, relationships, self-improvement

Michael Palmer, the definition of pathology.


This is the letter I wrote to Michael's goddaughter in response to her question of "What happened?"

On Tuesday July 21, Michael told me that he had tickets to go see Marilyn Manson and Slayer in Atlanta. Tickets AND Backstage Passes. I'm not a huge Slayer fan, but I love Manson so I thought this sounded cool. The thing was, since Michael apparently had a DUI a couple years ago, he doesn't drive, and doesn't have a car. So he'd kind of be using me to drive him to Atlanta, while I'd be "using" him to go see this show.

I went to Atlanta with Michael on the condition that he would be paying for the trip in exchange for my driving. He told me he would pay for the gas, for the hotel, the meals, and entertainment, and promised me he wouldn't fall asleep when I was driving - that's my biggest pet peeve, if I'm taking a road trip with someone and I'll be the one doing all the driving, the least they can do is stay awake and keep me company.

20 minutes after I picked him up, we stopped for gas and Michael told me he realized he had left his credit card back at his house.

I said that we should go back and get it, since he had no other money (though this part he lied about... at that point he said he DID have some cash, later on he said he DIDN'T, then went back to saying he DID...) BUT he refused, saying that we would stop at a bank before leaving Tennessee and he would get money using his bank card.

Later when I asked him where we should stop, he said we would try a bank when we got to Atlanta.

I ended up paying for all the gas for the way there, which was not supposed to happen.

When we got there, we went to the hotel he had booked, I waited in the car, and he went to check in. He said that they would not let him stay since he didn't have his credit card with him, though they had all the information on file. He told me that he cursed at the hotel manager and told him to "fuck his mother, and that if she was dead he should go dig her up and skull fuck her." Needless to say, at this point there was absolutely no way they would ever let us in.

Then, Michael told me we would go to the Omni hotel, since somehow he had some free nights there. Originally he said he talked to them on the phone and we would need a credit card to secure the room, and I offered to let them use mine as long as nothing was going to be charged.

When we made it to the Omni, they told us they would have to charge my card and that when Michael mailed them the letter saying that he had free nights there (which he said was back at his house in Knoxville) they would refund the card. Michael said "Don't worry, we can go to a bank right after this and I'll get you the cash."

On those terms, I agreed to let Michael "borrow" the money for the hotel room - which was over $230.

Of course later that evening he never went to a bank. The next day he lied to me and said he had tried using an ATM at the hotel lobby to get cash, but when I spoke to the people at the front desk they told me there was no ATM there.

Later that night Michael had me run errands for him, buying him cigarettes and beer- promising me that first thing in the morning he would pay me back, he was going to have his agent wire him the money through Western Union.

The following morning, Michael got mad at another girl who was staying with us (Leigh) for not "cuddling" with him when he was cold, so he called her a "hateful psychotic bitch" and told her to leave. I told her I would drive her back to her house, and asked Michael for the valet ticket for MY car, but he refused to give it to me and said "that bitch can walk home". I felt horrible, and was truly afraid because Michael had gotten so angry and mean for almost no reason.

That morning he said we would go get breakfast around 8 but he never got his act together and got ready. He also called his agent around 8:30 and asked her to wire him the money, and told me that we would get it before we went to eat. All that morning I just did the crossword puzzle and heard him make jokes about fucking my mom, and telling me to suck his dick (which I had already told him I was not going to do). Eventually I forced him to get his stuff together by 11:45 because check-out time was noon, and I did NOT want to pay for another night at the hotel - after he'd broken so many promises I didn't want to take any chances and end up losing ANOTHER $230.

We checked out and were going to get the car when Michael noticed his ipod was missing. He said he'd run back to the room and get it - this was 11:55 AM - and be back in 5 minutes. After waiting in my car for half an hour, he called and said he couldn't find it, could I check my bags for it, etc. I looked thoroughly, called him back, and told him I didn't have it. At around 1 he called and said he was really angry and was going to call the police, though he didn't know if maybe Leigh had taken it. At 1:30, he called and said Leigh had agreed to take a polygraph so he really believed she hadn't taken it. At 1:45 I called him and told him that I had been waiting in my car in this garage (which is supposed to be valet, for pick ups and drop offs only) for almost 2 hours, and that I was going to have to move the car. He said he was going to call the police and file a report, and I told him to call me whenever that was over with.

So, after 2 hours of waiting in my car I finally left and went to get my "breakfast" at 2 pm. I was going to try and check out the area and was driving around until 2:45 when Michael called me. He said the police wanted to know if I would take a polygraph, even though he "knew I didn't take the iPod" and that I "would have no reason to take it" since I "drove him down there" and "had my own damn ipod". I said "Of course I'd take one, if they really want me to," and then I could hear him cursing at the police over the phone and he hung up. He called me back in 10 minutes and told me to come pick him up, which I did. He said there was absolutely no success with the police (which I had expected) and that we were going to his friend's hotel which was on this one road. He told me he knew exactly where it was and would point it out to me. Unfortunately, he kept falling asleep while I was driving and he didn't know where it was - and neither did anyone we asked on the street.

Finally, after an hour of driving around I said "Do you want to go back to Knoxville?" He didn't give me an answer, just said "The show is tonight... why, do you want to go back?" and I said "Yes, I'm really not having any fun, and you told me you would get me money over 24 hours ago but that was a lie, and you've been really mean all day" and he said "Well I'm sorry but I couldn't have foreseen that my iPod would go missing on me." and I said "I know, I understand that, but you're angry and you're taking it out on me, and I have been sitting around all day waiting to do something, ANYTHING, even spent almost 4 hours in my car just waiting for YOU and now you don't even know where we're going." Then I said "Would you mind just getting me the money like you promised you would and then I could go back? I mean, couldn't you take a bus back to Knoxville tomorrow or something?" He said "Yeah, ok." and hardly anything else.

He called his agent and she apparently told him where she had sent the money to, so we spent another half hour trying to find Peachtree center. Then at around 4 Michael pointed to a place up ahead and said "that's it, that's where the western union is, park the car over here and wait for me." I didn't see any sign that said Peachtree Center or Western Union, but like a fool, I believed him. He got his bag out and I said "Why don't you leave that in the car, then I can drop you off somewhere after you get back?" and he said "No, I'll need to show them my identification." I was a little suspicious, but I said "Okay."

After 15 minutes I looked on my iPhone for Peachtree Center and found it was 2 miles away from where I was then, and where I had dropped Michael off. I looked up Western Union as well, and yes, it was in Peachtree center - two miles away. I called Michael and he didn't answer his phone, I waited 10 minutes and called again. He didn't answer, so I left a message saying "Listen, I know there's no Western Union where I dropped you off, and I know that Peachtree center is 2 miles away. I understand if you want to ditch me, but I'd appreciate you actually telling me straight out instead of lying. If you want a ride to the real Peachtree center, I'll wait around here for another 15 minutes, or you can call me, but if I don't hear from you I'm just going to have to go."

He didn't call. I waited in the car for another half an hour but realized that he HAD ditched me.

Then today (Sunday) he sent me a text message that said "I know you got my Ipod. The best thing you can do is stay the fuck away from me."

I replied "I swear to Christ that I didn't take your iPod. The best thing you can do is pay me back the money you owe me." He didn't respond.

Not counting the gas for the return trip, Michael promised to pay me back over $277.

If Michael had done the honest thing, gone to the REAL western union and gotten me the money, I might have been willing to stay in atlanta at least for the night so he could see the show, and then take him back late that evening or the next day. However, he lied to me and ditched me, and didn't even give me the opportunity to change my mind.

Even if he had said "You know what, I can't get the money right now, I'll pay you back next week in Knoxville" I might have been OK with it, but it's just the fact that he lied to me constantly that made me realize I had to leave.

I found out that Palmer isn't even his real last name, and he was trying to keep it a secret from Leigh and me. His last name is Markham or Marcum, and now he's trying to go as Gonzo Palmer, probably because he knows that everyone who knows him as Michael Palmer knows he's a liar.

I didn't want to leave him, and I didn't - he left me. I would have given him a ride back if he had just paid me the money he promised or if he had told the truth for once, but he chose to lie.

If you talk to him, tell him I'm sorry he couldn't get a bus back, if I had known he didn't have ANY access to money (he lied and told me he did) I wouldn't have let him leave. But I left thinking "well, he's got the $277 he stole from me and more coming from his agent, that should be enough to get him through another night."

He really just needs to learn that his lying is what got him in trouble with everything. If he had told the truth we all would have had a great trip.

---This is the majority of the message I sent to his Goddaughter. She messaged me back telling me that he had also lied to her, and if she talked to him she would ask him to return my money, but she didn't want to deal with his lies anymore... which I found to be very sad. I mean, I had heard Michael claim to love his goddaughter, and now apparently he had lied to her and greatly hurt her mother. How terrible.

And now, the story continues... he's trying to go by a different name - "Gonzo Palmer" and we CAN'T let it happen again. Apparently he's trying to run the same scam again, get a ride to some show with someone on facebook and probably fuck her over the same way he did me... So, if you live in Knoxville or Atlanta or anywhere and you're contacted by this bald guy who looks like a sociopath, take caution: he IS a sociopath. Watch out, or he will take advantage of you too.

I am not the first person who has been taken in by him. I will link to Patrick Christian's story about the whole Les Claypool fake interview fiasco that Michael screwed The JustUs Leeg over with.

Labels: atlanta, fault, hateful people, jerks, knoxville, liars, people who owe me money

I'm not a big person for posting links, but right now I am just fascinated.

I mean there is so much art done with corpses these days that it's not really all that shocking anymore.

see: Ferrarri Forever - "Marco Evaristti is searching for a person on the verge of death, who wants to donate his body..." to be placed in an awesome Ferrari as 'art'!

It's funny, though, because I have always said that I would like to donate my body to art after I die. Art, then cannibalism, then science, in that order. But only art in a public sense - in a gallery at least for a while and if it does end up in someone's private collection, i would like there to be high resolution prints of it available online, no matter what.

At first my thought is "I'm not sure if I would want my name associated with it, though, what if it made me look bad?" Then I realize "Wait, I'd be dead, why would I care if I looked bad?" I don't know. I guess most bodies that are donated are donated anonymously.

Speaking of donating bodies... I was very shocked to hear about this almost 6 months after moving here. Just because I am weird and interested in this kind of thing but didn't know about it at all...

The original "Body Farm" (started by William Bass) is the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility located a few miles from downtown off of Alcoa Highway in Knoxville, Tennessee.

I drive Alcoa highway pretty much any time I go out. I know exactly where that is. Unfortunately, Google's satellite image isn't very revealing, but still, crazy, right?

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Anyway, I would love to go visit there but it's closed to the public. Maybe it's time to start studying anthropology?

I guess this is a photo of the body farm in winter, when you can at least kind of make out some of the structure of the place.

Also, here is a set of much closer-up photos, but all you can see is the fence.

Hmm, where was I?

Well, I was talking about dead bodies & art. Unfortunately I don't think many of the bodies at the "body farm" are taking part in any artwork of any kind.

So. Anyway, one thing I stumbled across (when reading about the Ferrari thing above) was Honoré Fragonard, who was an anatomist in the late 1700s. (See? I didn't even wikipedia link it, because the wikipedia article isn't actually very good)
I guess some of his écorchés or "flayed figures" (though I think the literal translation of écorché is "scorched" - ok, i looked it up and the answer is "skinned" but I can see how "scorched" is similar. A neat trick with French words is if they start with "é" that "é" can sometimes be changed for an "s" to create a cognate. "étudier" for example, is the verb for "to study", "épine" is the word for "needle" -like spine, get it?-, "école" means "school" ... so if you are ever confused in French and can't look it up, try that trick. It doesn't always yield the answer, but it does sometimes and it can help. Another useful trick is that the circumflex (^) often goes over a vowel where the S afterward has been removed. "pâtes" is "pasta", "hôpital" is "hospital", "île" is "isle", "fête" is "festival" etc.)

Ahem.

Anyway. It makes sense that the word for "skinned" would be similar to "scorched", I don't know though, I often try to make connections when there really are none.

What's cool about this Fragonard guy is his stuff really did leave the realm of educational or scientific and has crossed far over into art. Amazingly, the museum that has his stuff doesn't have very many good photos of it on their website, but I found a photographer's website which has some very nice photos.

Warning: You may find the image below offensive.


Click here to see the full series.

My favorite piece by far is "Man with a Mandible," which I will link to after the description.
Just because the description is so... I don't know, exciting.

This tall écorché was inspired by Samson knocking the Philistines down, using a donkey jaw. The work carries extreme violence : his arm brandishes the threatening mandible, his lips are tense, his look is deviated, his injected penis is obscenely taut. Fragonard went as far as twisting his ears and lips, and deep-setting his nose to give him an aggressive grin.

Click here to see "Man with a Mandible".

I guess it's just part of that whole incredulity I have with death, because these bodies are so ... energetic, it's just almost impossible to believe that there's no life within.

And to think about the guy that put that together, an anatomist being inspired by the bible, it's just awesome. And I don't mean awesome as in "bill-and-ted" awesome, but as in awe-inspiring. I don't know.
I just think of this guy and maybe the life he was living and how it came to be that he chose to do that pose. He had to put bodies together somehow and maybe he was complaining to his mom or something, "I just don't know how to pose them," and then she says "Well, why don't you look in the bible for inspiration?" And he did, it's perfect. Just perfect! This nerdy guy and his mom gives him the idea for it!
OK, well I don't know if that really happened, but this is the kind of thing my imagination takes and runs wild with.

Also, see the movie "Anatomy" with Franka Potente (trailer here). I am linking to the German trailer because the English language trailer sucks a lot. Walmart used to sell this movie for $5.50 and it's definitely one of their better deals. Most of the DVDs in those huge bins suck, but this one is great - however, I don't think they still sell it there, I think I bought it about 5 years ago. Anyway, it's all the "plastination" stuff where all the water is sucked out of the body and replaced with plastic so it doesn't decay... like that "Bodies" exhibit that everyone in the world has seen but me. And I lived in New York while it was there, what is wrong with me?

I guess it's in Atlanta until January, that would be a reason to go see it.

Hmm.

Anyway, I don't really have much to say right now. Just saw some stuff that I thought was interesting. Am moving soon, which is going to be exciting. I just can't wait to get out of Maryville. It's a cute town and all, but all I ever do is drive to and from Knoxville all the time. Oy.

So that's it for now.

See you all later.

Labels: art, bodies, corpses, death, knoxville